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Judging small, rich island nations purely on their wealth and emissions is unfair in climate change negotiations, Singapore's climate envoy said on Saturday, as pressure builds on more countries to curb carbon pollution. Under the Kyoto Protocol, the UN's main weapon to fight climate change, only 37 industrialized nations are committed to curbs on greenhouse gas pollution between 2008-2012. But the UN list in Kyoto's parent pact that defines rich and developing nations dates from 1992 and wealthy nations such as Argentina, Singapore, South Korea and Malta are still deemed to be developing states under the UN's climate treaties. Under Kyoto, developing nations are exempt from any binding emissions curbs but recent studies show poorer states now contribute more than half of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions. Australia and the European Union say the 1992 list doesn't reflect economic reality and should be updated. They say rich nations outside of Kyoto must commit to binding curbs as part of a broader climate pact likely to be agreed in December in Copenhagen. Singapore's chief climate change negotiator, Chew Tai Soo, said Singapore was responsible for 0.3 percent of global greenhouse emissions but faced pressure to curb its emissions because it was rich and had high per-capita carbon pollution. "This approach is flawed as it does not take into account the unique considerations and capabilities of different countries. "It penalizes small countries with small populations without taking into account their limitations," he told a sustainability conference in Singapore. The city state is one of the world's wealthiest nations with 2007 per-capita GDP of S$52,994 (US$35,163), according to government figures. Its greenhouse gas emissions are the same as many European countries at about 11 tonnes per person, compared with 20 tonnes for the United States and 4 for China. In a submission to the United Nations last November, Australia said the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto's parent pact, let many advanced economies off the hook on carbon reduction obligations. "Since the Convention was adopted in 1992 no work has been done to better differentiate the responsibilities of Parties," the submission said, adding the two annex lists of countries in the Kyoto Protocol were now out of date. Chew said Singapore covered an area a fifth the size of Long Island in New York, was densely populated, lacked natural resources and its agricultural sector was virtually non-existent. "With such economic restraints, we have no food security and are heavily dependent on trade and commerce for survival." He also said the country was investing in research and development of solar and other clean-energy areas and that a decision to use natural gas in its power stations had slashed carbon emissions. CRITICS But critics point to booming sales of cars, rapid population growth, a vast petro-chemical industry and large shipping and aviation sectors as off-setting some of the benefits. Government figures show 98 percent of the country's energy needs come from fossil fuels and that carbon emissions are rising 2.8 percent a year, despite energy efficiency programs. The country's climate change strategy doesn't mention a government role in bringing down the city-state's absolute emissions, professor Natasha Hamilton-Hart of the National University of Singapore told the conference. She said Singapore had to stop the fantasy of presenting itself as a developing nation and risked damaging its credibility in UN climate talks by asking others to make emissions cuts it was unwilling to make itself. | 0 |
WASHINGTON Sep 7, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Environmentalists hope the push in Congress for climate change legislation is not overwhelmed by the debate dominating Capitol Hill over changing the US healthcare system. But it might be. Already two months behind schedule and unsure whether enough Democrats will play along, Senate leaders still aim to pass a bill by December when a United Nations summit convenes in Copenhagen to set worldwide goals for reducing carbon dioxide and other pollutants. But as the debate over healthcare legislation rages and with President Barack Obama due to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday to try to rescue the faltering plan, it was unclear whether rattled lawmakers will have the time -- or the inclination -- to take on climate change. "It's not an impossibility, but it's certainly not a slam-dunk and never has been," said Frank O'Donnell, president of the activist group Clean Air Watch. The healthcare debate, O'Donnell added, "has basically sucked all the oxygen out of the room." With many moderate Democrats facing a tough vote on healthcare, O'Donnell wondered whether they also would be willing to do so on an environmental bill that could increase consumers' energy costs. "How many salvos in one year can they take?" O'Donnell asked. Staffers at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have been working behind the scenes on language intended to reel in enough of those moderates. Senator Barbara Boxer, who heads the committee, has been working off of a bill passed by the House of Representatives intended to cut utility and factory emissions of greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. It could be late September or beyond before Boxer is ready to unveil her bill. Beyond healthcare, the climate bill might have to compete for time with some other major debates, such as new financial industry controls, annual spending bills, U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan and some must-do tax measures. AVERTING THE "ABYSS" U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday said the world was "heading toward an abyss" without swift action to reduce carbon emissions. Without it, he told a 155-nation climate conference in Geneva, melting polar ice and rising sea levels will threaten cities from Tokyo to New Orleans. Environmentalists hope that such high-profile attention will help jolt Congress toward action. While public support for healthcare legislation has eroded in recent weeks, environmentalists are heartened by polls indicating that voters want Congress to fix global warming by expanding alternative energy sources such as biofuels and solar and wind power. "Support for energy and climate legislation held firm and ticked up a bit" lately, said Joseph Mendelson, the National Wildlife Federation's director of global warming policy. But if the legislation sputters in the Senate, that would not halt Obama's drive to reduce carbon dioxide pollution. The US Environmental Protection Agency is considering regulations that would force large polluters -- those spewing at least 25,000 tons annually -- to reduce their emissions. "EPA can do some important things to start to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in our country," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said. Interviewed on Thursday on National Public Radio, Jackson noted that her agency has authority under the existing Clean Air Act, but like Obama, she prefers Congress pass comprehensive legislation. | 0 |
Australia will create the largest network of marine parks in the world, protecting waters covering an area as large as India while banning oil and gas exploration and limiting commercial fishing in some of the most sensitive areas. Australia's marine reserves will increase from 27 to 60 under the new scheme, covering more than 3 million sq km, or one third of the island nation's waters. The announcement of the network was made a week before more than 130 heads of state and government will gather in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations' sustainable development conference as part of global efforts to curb climate change, one of the biggest conferences in UN history. New reserves will be established from the Perth Canyon in the southwest to Kangaroo Island off the southern coast, but the "jewel in the crown" will be the protection of the Coral Sea area which surrounds the Great Barrier Reef in the northeast, Environment Minister Tony Burke said on Thursday. "The Coral Sea marine national park ... combined with the Great Barrier Reef area, becomes the largest marine protected area in the world," Burke said. The protection plan will ban oil and gas exploration in all marine national parks, including across the Coral Sea and off Margaret River, a popular tourist and wine-growing area in the southwest. Burke acknowledged the plan would also have an impact on the fishing industry. The plan attracted immediate criticism from some environmental groups, as well as independent and opposition politicians and lobby groups. "This is devastating and those that will suffer most will be coastal communities," Dean Logan, chief executive of the Australian Marine Alliance, which represents commercial and recreational fishers, told Australian television. Burke said the government would talk to the fishing industry about compensation during a 60-day consultation period. "NOT FAR ENOUGH" A lawmaker from the minority Greens party said the government had been bowing to oil and gas interests in drawing up the boundaries for non-exploration areas. "The boundaries the minister has determined have been very strongly determined on oil and gas prospectivity, and clearly determined by lobbying from the oil and gas sector," Rachel Siewert, the Greens' marine spokeswoman, told reporters. Conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott said the plan would "damage the rights of commercial fishers and commercial tourist operators". Wildlife and environmental groups also said the steps did not go far enough to protect marine mammals from the impact of oil and gas exploration in many areas. "Offshore petroleum exploration hasn't been addressed properly by this process," said Matthew Collis, a campaigner for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "This is bad news for whales and dolphins because many of the areas where industry operates or wants to operate are also important habitats for whales and dolphins," he said. Earlier this month, a United Nations report said Australia's world-famous Great Barrier Reef was under threat from industrial development and may be considered for listing as a world heritage site “"in danger" within the next year. Last week, Australia delayed environmental approval for a A$10 billion coal project proposed by India's GVK Power & Infrastructure in Queensland state that would increase shipping traffic through the Great Barrier Reef. | 0 |
All those events will take place at the Prime Minister’s Office. He arrived at 10:08am on his first ever Bangladesh visit. Exchange of documents Instrument of ratification of Land Boundary Agreement will be exchanged along with the letters of modalities for implementation of LBA signed in 1974 and its protocol in 2011. Unveiling foundation plaque Khulna-Mongla railway line Rabindra Bhavan at Kuthibarri, Shiliguri Bangladesh-India Friendship Bridge-1 over the Feni River Kulaurha-Shahjadpur railway link Bangladesh-India Friendship Building at Sardah Police Academy Inauguration Upgraded BSTI laboratory Brahmanbarhia-Tripura border haat Exchange of agreements, protocols Agreement on bilateral trade Coastal shipping Protocol on inland waterways Agreement and protocol on two bus services namely Agartala-Kolkata via Bangladesh and Dhaka-Guwahati via Meghalaya’s capital Shillong and Sylhet. Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) MoU signing between Bangladesh and Indian coastguards MoU on prevention of smuggling of fake currency notes MoU on Indian endowment on climate change for SAARC MoU on prevention of human trafficking MoU on cultural exchanges Semi-government MoU MoU between Rajshahi University and New Delhi’s Jamia Milia Islamia MoU between the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research India and Dhaka University’s Department of Oceanography for joint research in the Bay of Bengal MoU for bandwidth leasing between BSNL and BSCCL Document exchanges between the two PMs Modi will hand over a CD containing record of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s speech at Kolkata in 1972, his first official visit after Bangladesh’s independence. He will also hand over the transcripts of the Indian Parliament’s sessions regarding amendment of constitution related to settlement of the Land Boundary Agreement. Hasina will hand him a photograph of “signing instrument of surrender of 1971” that shows Pakistan army surrendering to the joint forces of Bangladesh and India. Private companies of the two countries may sign several agreements between them. | 1 |
With as much as 475 millimetres (18.7 inches) of rain in the previous 24 hours, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a "severe weather warning" for the border area between New South Wales and Queensland states, a heavily populated area that includes the Queensland state capital Brisbane. A week earlier, nearby Fraser Island was evacuated due to bushfires, dashing hopes that wetter weather would make seasonal fires less catastrophic than last year. Scientists attribute the erratic weather in the early Australian summer to a La Nina pattern - which typically features strong rain - combined with climate change. Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island, is now under the flood warning, which includes urging drivers to avoid roads where waters were already rising. "These are dynamic weather systems and you should always expect the unexpected," bureau senior flood hydrologist Justin Robinson told a news conference. The warning comes soon after Queensland opened its border to the neighbouring state after months of closure due to COVID-19. The authorities urged people travelling for end-of-year holidays to exercise caution since they may not be familiar with flood-prone areas. "It isn't a time to take a chance and drive through those floodwaters," said New South Wales emergency services commissioner Carlene York. "Be aware of your surroundings and where you might be parking your caravan or you may be driving." Emergency services had rescued four people, including some from cars trapped on flooded roads, and received about 700 calls for help, she said. At the heavily populated Gold Coast, south of Brisbane, the authorities closed beaches due to dangerous surf, while the emergency services set up several locations where people could stock up on sandbags. | 0 |
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hopes to find ways in which the United States can cooperate on a post-Kyoto Protocol framework when he meets US President George W. Bush later this week, the Japanese leader said on Monday. A Japanese official said earlier that climate change and nuclear energy would be on the agenda when the two leaders meet during Abe's two-day visit to the United States from Thursday. "An alliance is a relationship of trust and to show at home and abroad that this trust has been strengthened is in Japan's national interests," Abe said in a televised interview. "In that context, I think it would be a great result if some way emerges for the United States to cooperate on the environment, on a new framework," Abe added. The United States has been criticised for pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2001 and Japanese officials have said Washington should take part in whatever framework replaces the pact when it expires in 2012. The Yomiuri newspaper reported on Saturday that Japan and the United States would agree at the summit on developing non-weapons use of nuclear energy and on steps to fight global warming. Under the agreement, the two countries would work together on developing an advanced technology which would recycle nuclear fuel into a form difficult to use in weapons, the paper said. The two sides will also eventually try to set up an international framework under which countries without means to reprocess their spent nuclear fuel would outsource the task to those with the advanced technology, it added. "One of the key factors for addressing post-Kyoto will be involving China, India, developing countries, of course the US as well," a Japanese foreign ministry official said last week. "We have world class technology together with the United States, which would be key to overcoming some of the difficult problems as we go into the post-Kyoto phase," he added. The United States is now the world's top carbon emitter, but it may be overtaken by fast-growing China within the year. | 0 |
The European Union's executive adopted plans on Wednesday to slash greenhouse gas emissions, seeking to push the world into tough climate action, but delayed key decisions on how to soften the impact on industry. The plans will transform Europe's energy supply by 2020, with a 10-fold increase in renewable energy production in Britain for example, and raise power bills by 10 to 15 percent. The European Commission said the measures were a vital step in the fight against global warming and other countries must now join the effort. "Europe and the rest of the world have to act fast, and act boldly, if we are to prevent this catastrophe," said EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas. The measures would also curb the bloc's rising dependency on imports of fossil fuels. "We do not want to be dependent on regimes that are not our friends and want to protect ourselves from them," Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the European Parliament in presenting the plan. The renewables targets would wean the 27-nation bloc off coal and oil, as would a decision that power generators must pay from 2013 for all permits to emit carbon dioxide, most of which they now get for free, likely to slash coal plant profits. German utility RWE said it called into question the future of coal -- "Coal is threatened in its economic viability," RWE's head of power generation, Ulrich Jobs, told Reuters. The measures implement an EU-wide target which EU leaders agreed last March to get a fifth of energy from renewable sources and curb greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020. They still need approval by EU leaders and the EU Parliament. Environmentalists urged the EU to cut emissions unilaterally by 30 percent by 2020. The head of the Nobel Prize-winning UN climate change panel said the EU plans may prove too lax. "I see no reason why some of these targets may not become stronger, may not become more stringent," Rajendra Pachauri told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
COST The UN panel last year warned that tough climate action required global greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2015 and detailed looming global warming threats including higher sea levels and more floods and droughts. The Commission's proposals included a major overhaul from 2013 of the EU's flagship Emissions Trading Scheme, which allocates a fixed quota of emissions permits to heavy industry. Airlines and oil refineries will have to pay for one-fifth of emissions permits in 2013, rising to 100 percent in 2020. But Brussels delayed until 2010 a key decision on which industries most vulnerable to global competition, such as steel, aluminium and cement, can get all their quota for free. "The conditions for companies to have access to free allowances ... are left uncertain until 2010," Europe's main industry lobby, BusinessEurope, complained in a statement. "Significant electricity price increases will result from this package," it warned. Industry leaders are worried 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. If there were no global deal to curb emissions, succeeding the Kyoto Protocol on climate change after 2012, the EU said it would also consider forcing importers to buy permits. Power bills for industry and households will rise as the bloc gets more energy from expensive clean technologies, and as the supply of CO2 permits to power generators shrinks from 2013 on. Utilities will pass the extra costs on to consumers. But Barroso dismissed cost concerns, 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, but the EU executive talked up potential business benefits. "(It) 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," said Dimas. Brussels tried to shore up the environmental credibility of a target to get one-tenth of transport fuels by 2020 from biofuels made from plants, setting detailed criteria to avoid unwanted side effects such as tropical deforestation. EU carbon prices fell nearly 10 percent earlier this week, mostly on falling oil prices, and slid further by 3 percent on Wednesday, closing at 19.70 euros. | 0 |
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has called for a meeting of her Awami League party's highest decision-making body ahead of her 10-day trip abroad. The Awami League presidium meeting is due to start at 7pm on Friday at Ganabhaban, her official residence, the party's deputy office secretary Mrinal Kanti Das told bdnews24.com. Awami League general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam urged the presidium members to attend the meeting on time, he said. It will be the third presidium meeting since the new Awami League Central Working Committee was formed on Jul 26, 2009. Hasina is due to set off for New York on Saturday to attend the United Nations General Assembly. She will attend a number of sessions including the special session on Millennium Development Goals, a high-profile meeting of developing countries, UNICEF child affair's session and a session on climate change. | 1 |
Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd resigned on Wednesday, saying he could no longer work with Prime Minister Julia Gillard, igniting a new and bitter leadership crisis for the struggling minority government. Gillard's government has sunk in popularity as Gillard and Rudd, whom she ousted in 2010, have waged a personal feud that has split their Labor Party and alienated voters. Labor insiders said that while Rudd was more popular with voters, Gillard had stronger support within the party and would easily win a leadership vote, which could come as early as next week. They differ little on policy, but the battle -- described by Rudd as a "soap opera" -- threatens to trigger an early election and a defeat for Labor's economic reform agenda, including major mining and climate change legislation. Senior ministers had in the past week urged Gillard to sack Rudd due to the leadership speculation and increasing animosity between the two camps. "The simple truth is I cannot continue to serve as foreign minister if I do not have Prime Minister Gillard's support," Rudd told a news conference in Washington. "The only honourable course of action is for me to resign." Rudd's supporters believe only he can stem haemorrhaging voter support to opposition leader Tony Abbott and his conservative coalition, which holds a strong lead in opinion polls. But a move back to Rudd risks losing the backing of independents who give the minority Labor government a one-seat majority. "I am disappointed that the concerns Mr Rudd has publicly expressed this evening were never personally raised with me, nor did he contact me to discuss his resignation prior to his decision," Gillard said in a brief statement. Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan was more critical, issuing a scathing attack on Rudd, accusing him of disloyalty and of undermining the government. "The party has given Kevin Rudd all the opportunities in the world and he wasted them with his dysfunctional decision making and his deeply demeaning attitude towards other people, including our caucus colleagues," Swan said. Analysts said a change of leader would cause upheaval in the caucus, including likely changes in key positions such as treasurer and defence minister, but have little impact on policy or the outcome of the election. "If Rudd were to wrest the leadership, I think we'd be headed certainly to a 2012 election," Australian National University Political analyst Norman Abjorensen told Reuters. "A Rudd government would look very different from a Gillard government, and would presumably be fairly short lived." Rudd, who will return at least temporarily to the backbenches after quitting cabinet, told the news conference he would return to Australia this week before deciding his future. "There is one overriding question for my caucus colleagues and that is who is best placed to defeat Tony Abbott at the next election," said Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat. "FACELESS MEN" Opposition to a 40 percent tax on mining profits introduced by Rudd contributed to his demise as prime minister. Gillard overthrew him in a party room coup and immediately cut the tax rate to 30 percent while excluding all but the country's most profitable iron ore and coal miners. Abbott has said that if he wins the next election, he will dump both the planned mining tax and plans to introduce a carbon price to combat climate change, both due to come into force on July 1. The instability was damaging the country and the government was unworthy of staying in power, he said on Wednesday. "Kevin Rudd has confirmed two things - that the faceless men are running the Labor Party and that the instability at the top of this government is damaging our country," Abbott said in a statement. Rudd's backers saying he remains more popular with voters and would help revive party support ahead of the next election, due in late 2013. But he is not as well liked within the Labor Party and he alienated may colleagues with his imperious style when he was prime minister. "The overwhelming support within the parliamentary party is for the prime minister, is for the government. It is overwhelming, it always has been," Environment Minister Tony Burke told Australian television. Weeks of leadership instability has undermined Labor's chances of holding power in the state of Queensland at a March 24 poll -- the resource-rich state is also crucial for the national government's re-election. "I think the dislike of the current government is quite deep. It goes beyond the leaders, which is part of their problem," said John Stirton from pollster AC Nielsen. "They would get a short-term boost from Rudd, but I don't think it is going to solve their problems." | 0 |
Dramatic improvements in air and water quality as coronavirus lockdowns have cut pollution have prompted calls for a low-carbon future, but the need to get millions back to work is clouding the environmental picture. With economies round the world shut down, wildlife has returned to city streets, with wolves, deer and kangaroos spotted on thoroughfares usually teeming with traffic. Fish have been seen in Venice canals no longer polluted by motor boats, while residents of some Indian cities have reported seeing the Himalayas for the first time in decades. Satellite imagery has shown significant air quality improvements across Europe and Asia, including China, where the coronavirus pandemic emerged. But residents in some of China's most smog-prone cities said they feared that blue skies would not last as the world's second biggest economy got back to work. "In the second half of the year, when the epidemic eases, the weather will slowly be worse after factories reopen," said Tang Zhiwei, 27, a resident of Shanghai. "Try your best to enjoy the blue sky now." TOGETHER Thunberg said action to tackle coronavirus did not mean the climate crisis had gone away. "Today is Earth Day and that reminds us that climate and the environmental emergency is still ongoing and we need to tackle both the corona pandemic ... at the same time as we tackle climate and environmental emergency, because we need to tackle two crises at once," she said. UN chief Antonio Guterres urged governments in an Earth Day message to use their economic responses to the pandemic to tackle the "even deeper emergency" of climate change. With global battle lines emerging between investors backing "green stimulus" measures and industry lobbyists aiming to weaken climate regulations, Guterres cautioned governments against bailing out heavily polluting industries. "On this Earth Day, all eyes are on the COVID-19 pandemic," Guterres said. "But there is another, even deeper emergency, the planet's unfolding environmental crisis." Peter Betts, a former lead climate negotiator for Britain and the European Union, said there was now pressure for coronavirus economic stimulus packages to be "low-carbon, climate-smart". "A risk, clearly, is that for some governments around the world there will be a huge premium on getting the economy moving, getting people back into jobs," Betts, now with the Chatham House think-tank in London, told Reuters Television. That is a priority for US President Donald Trump, who wants to get America, and in particular its oil and gas industry, back to work. "We will never let the great US Oil & Gas Industry down," Trump tweeted, calling for "a plan which will make funds available so that these very important companies and jobs will be secured long into the future!" HOTTEST ON RECORD The environmental stakes were rising even before the pandemic's economic shutdown raised hopes in some quarters of a low-carbon future. Last year was the hottest on record in Europe, extending a run of exceptionally warm years driven by unprecedented levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to a study released on Earth Day. Of Europe's 12 warmest years on record, 11 have occurred since 2000, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said. "This warming trend is now unequivocal anywhere on the planet. And as a consequence of that, the frequency of these record breaking events is going up," C3S director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters. The coronavirus pandemic is expected to drive carbon dioxide emissions down 6% this year, the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, in what would be the biggest yearly drop since World War Two. But that will not stop climate change, the WMO said. "COVID-19 may result in a temporary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but it is not a substitute for sustained climate action," the WMO said in an Earth Day statement. With millions staying home, air quality has improved in China. Shanghai saw emissions fall by nearly 20% in the first quarter, while in Wuhan, where the pandemic originated, monthly averages dropped more than a third. But experts worry the decline could give China leeway to turn a blind eye to pollution in order to stimulate the economy, which declined for the first time on record in the first quarter. | 0 |
A last-ditch attempt at passing a climate change bill begins in the US Senate this week with lawmakers mindful that time is running short and that approaches to the legislation still vary widely, according to sources. "We will present senators with a number of options when they get back from recess," said one Senate aide knowledgeable of the compromise legislation that is being developed. The goal is to reduce US emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists say threaten Earth. The options will be presented to three senators -- Democrat John Kerry, independent Joseph Lieberman and Republican Lindsey Graham -- who are leading the fight for a bill to battle global warming domestically. The aide said the Senate's drive for a bill got a boost last week with President Barack Obama's announcement of an $8.3 billion government loan guarantee to help start expanding the US nuclear power industry, a top Republican priority. "The administration is really putting their money where their mouth is," the aide said. The Senate trio's success or failure likely will have a profound impact on international efforts to reduce carbon emissions and prevent Earth's temperature from exceeding a possibly dangerous 2 degree Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) increase from pre-industrial times. For Wall Street, the Senate has the power to make or break the start-up of what eventually could be a $1 trillion market for power plant, oil refinery and factory pollution permits traded on a regulated exchange. U.S. congressional elections will be held on Nov. 2 and there is wide agreement that if the Senate cannot pass a climate bill by mid-year, already hard-edged political partisanship will become hyperactive, making it nearly impossible for Congress to move on much of anything. "We're getting to the point where I think we need to start seeing senators coalesce around an approach," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which wants comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions control. SKEPTICISM ABOUNDS There is plenty of skepticism about whether Kerry, who is spearheading the effort, can pull off passage of such a difficult bill in an election year since the bill would increase future energy prices. But supporters are not giving up as they draw parallels to the last major environmental fight. "In 1990, we had a midterm president, a Mideast war, a banking crisis following a real estate bubble and a recession, yet Congress still passed updates to the Clean Air Act by overwhelming margins," said Representative Edward Markey, the co-author of the Waxman-Markey climate bill that narrowly passed the House of Representatives last June. Tested over 20 years, those Clean Air Act updates are credited with effectively cutting "acid rain" air pollution through a cap-and-trade system that some now want to employ to reduce the carbon emissions blamed for global warming. Under cap and trade, companies need government permits to emit an ever-dwindling amount of pollution. Fuel-efficient firms that end up holding more permits than they need can sell them to companies that are bigger polluters. For carbon dioxide, cap and trade would eventually make the cost of using coal and other dirty-burning fossil fuels so high that cleaner, more expensive energy sources such as wind and solar power would emerge. In recent months, many conservatives who do not want the federal government to mandate pollution reductions, have seized upon newly discovered errors in scientific reports underpinning the link between human activity and climate problems such as drought, flooding and rising sea levels. Republican Senator James Inhofe, a leading critic, said the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had fallen victim to "outright fraud" and deceit. It is further evidence Congress should not rush legislation, he has argued. SIDE ISSUES Meanwhile, "so much political juice" is now being expended by US environmental groups on a side-issue to the climate bill, said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. He was referring to green groups' attempts to stop Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski from advancing her bill blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions, starting with vehicles. The Obama administration would prefer to let Congress set climate change policy. But if it is unable to, the White House wants the EPA as a fallback. Graham has talked about cobbling together a "hybrid system" for reducing carbon emissions. Claussen said, "If I was going to guess, it's probably cap and trade for electricity," which accounts for about 40 percent of carbon emissions, and maybe a separate oil industry tax or fee, with consumers being protected from price increases. Tackling carbon emissions from factories making steel, cement, paper, glass and other large manufacturers either could be put off "for much later" or they could be given options for participating, she said. Such an approach could gain the support of Midwestern senators who fear US factories could be put at a competitive disadvantage against foreign manufacturers under a cap-and-trade program. But it also has risks, others say, underscoring splits among Washington interest groups, politicians and others who want a climate change bill. Robert Shapiro, chairman of the Climate Task Force and an advocate of a carbon tax, said a dual system would not make economic sense and could make for more volatile energy prices. | 1 |
As of Sunday, President Jair Bolsonaro had authorised military operations in seven states to combat raging fires in the Amazon, responding to requests for assistance from their local governments, a spokeswoman for his office said. Reuters accompanied a firefighting brigade near the state capital of Porto Velho, where there were areas larger than football fields that had been charred, but active fires were contained to small areas of individual trees. The dozen or so yellow clad firefighters from environmental enforcement agency Ibama easily cleared brush from around a burning stump with a leaf blower, doused it with jets connected to water packs mounted on their backs and covered it in earth. A video posted by the Defence Ministry on Saturday evening showed a military plane pumping thousands of litres of water out of two giant jets as it passed through clouds of smoke close to the forest canopy. The response comes as leaders of countries in the Group of Seven (G7) nations currently meeting in France expressed grave concerns over the fires. French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday said the G7 was nearing a deal to provide "technical and financial help" to countries affected by the Amazon fires. Nearly 80,000 fires have been registered across Brazil through Aug. 24, the highest since at least 2013, according to space research agency INPE. Bolsonaro announced the military would be sent in on Friday after several days of criticism from the public and world leaders that Brazil's government was not doing anything to fight the fires. He also said on Twitter he had accepted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer of a plane and specialised support for the firefighting operations, following a call between the two leaders. But outside of Rondonia, the government had yet to provide any operational details for other states. The Defence Ministry said in a briefing on Saturday that 44,000 troops were available in Brazil's northern Amazon region but did not say how many would be used where and what they would do. Military personnel around Porto Velho appeared to be largely coordinating firefighting efforts, according to a Reuters witness. Asked for additional details, the Defence Ministry told Reuters in a statement that in all seven states that have asked for help, the military is planning operations to support firefighting initiatives already underway. Justice Minister Sergio Moro had also authorised a force of military police to assist in fighting the fires, with 30 set to be sent from Brasilia to Porto Velho. The president's office posted to Twitter a photo of police officers on a plane bound for Rondonia set to arrive at noon. Environment Minister Ricardo Salles posted a video showing a caravan of yellow fire prevention trucks and other government vehicles, saying they were on the ground responding in Rondonia. Colombian President Ivan Duque said on Sunday he would seek a conservation pact with other Amazonian countries - first in bi-lateral meetings in Peru this week and then at the United Nations General Assembly. "Colombia wants to lead a pact, a conservation pact, between the countries that have Amazon territory," Duque said after meeting with an indigenous community in the Amazonian city of Leticia in southern Colombia. "We must understand the protection of our Mother Earth and our Amazon is a duty, a moral duty." The Amazon is the world's largest tropical rain forest and is seen as vital to the fight against climate change because of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide that it absorbs. The Amazon, which provides 20% of the planet's oxygen, is home to an estimated one million indigenous people from up to 500 tribes as well some three million species of plants and animals, including jaguars, sloths, giant otters, river dolphins, howler monkeys, toucans, reptiles, frogs and insects. Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre said he worries if 20-25% of the ecosystem is destroyed that the Amazon could reach a tipping point, after which it would enter a self-sustaining period of dieback as the forest converts to savannah. Nobre warned that it is not far off with already 15-17% of the rain forest having been destroyed. | 0 |
That’s where the melting face emoji comes in. The face, fixed with a content half-smile even as it dissolves into a puddle, is one of 37 new emojis approved this year by the Unicode Consortium, the organization that maintains the standards for digital text. Other emojis that made the cut include saluting face, dotted line face and a disco ball. These new emojis will roll out over the course of the next year. But already the melting face has found fans on social media, who see it as a clear representation of the coronavirus pandemic’s vast psychological toll. “This melting smiley face is quite the pandemic mood,” one Twitter user said. Others viewed the new emoji as a visual proxy for climate anxiety. “Something tells me that in this climate change apocalypse era, we’re going to be using the new melting face emoji a lot,” another user wrote. The melting face was conceived in 2019 by Jennifer Daniel and Neil Cohn, who connected over their mutual appreciation for visual language. Daniel, who uses the pronouns they and them, is an emoji subcommittee chair for Unicode and a creative director at Google; Cohn, an associate professor of cognition and communication at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Cohn had published some work on representations of emotion in Japanese Visual Language that caught the eye of Daniel. In Cohn’s research was “paperification,” which, according to him, is “what happens in a manga sometimes when people become embarrassed, they will turn into a piece of paper and flutter away.” He and Daniel realised there wasn’t an existing emoji that evoked that visual convention, so they decided to pursue one and eventually landed on the melting face, which Daniel described as “more visceral” than turning into paper. The same idea is also sometimes depicted as a solid becoming liquid, they added. Many of the best face emojis “rely on conventions that already exist in other places in visual culture, and one of the main drivers of this is comics or manga,” said Cohn. He also noted that many of the face emojis from the original emoji set use expressions from manga. In 1999, the first emojis were created by a Japanese artist named Shigetaka Kurita, who found inspiration in manga. They were designed to facilitate text-based communication; NTT Docomo, a Japanese mobile phone company, had a 250-character limit on messages sent through its mobile internet service, so shorthand was key to getting one’s point across. The original set of 176 emojis designed by Kurita is now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Today, even without character restrictions, emojis can still communicate emotions with greater ease, speed and flexibility than words can. The melting face is no exception. On the more literal side, it can be a way of expressing, say, the sensation caused by a broken air conditioner. Figuratively, it can be used to convey how one feels after an embarrassing interaction with a crush, the exhaustion of living through a pandemic and, of course, sarcasm. “It evokes a metaphoric frame or metaphoric knowledge base that should be relatively accessible to people — the notion of melting,” Cohn said. That concept can then be applied to all kinds of emotions. All emojis “are usually designed with the intention that they can be used in flexible, multifaceted ways, in the same way that many words can be flexibly used,” Cohn added. And visual language, of course, can be even more elastic than words. “Illustration can do things that reality can’t,” Daniel said. Case in point: “melting face” and its myriad interpretations, many of them quite affecting. “Emojis aren’t inherently deep,” said Erik Carter, a graphic designer who created the sample image for the melting face. “It’s how people use them that makes them profound.” He offered a reading of his own. Many of us, Carter said, may feel hopeless because of things like climate change or “our government’s inaction.” “Sometimes,” he said, “it does feel as though the best we can do is smile as we melt away.” ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
The US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, after receiving Obama's veto message, immediately countered by announcing the Republican-led chamber would attempt to override it by March 3. That is unlikely. Despite their majority, Republicans are four votes short of being able to overturn Obama's veto. They have vowed to attach language approving the pipeline to a spending bill or other legislation later in the year that the president would find difficult to veto. The TransCanada Corp pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels a day of mostly Canadian oil sands crude to Nebraska en route to refineries and ports along the US Gulf. It has been pending for more than six years. Obama, who rejected the bill hours after it was sent to the White House, said the measure unwisely bypassed a State Department process that will determine whether the project would be beneficial to the United States. "Through this bill, the United States Congress attempts to circumvent longstanding and proven processes for determining whether or not building and operating a cross-border pipeline serves the national interest," he wrote in his veto message. Republicans, who support the project because of its job-creation potential, made passing a bill a top priority after the November election, when they gained control of the US Senate and strengthened their majority in the House of Representatives. The bill passed by 270-152 in the House earlier this month and cleared the Senate in January. Obama has played down Keystone XL's ability to create jobs and raised questions about its effects on climate change. Environmentalists, who made up part of the coalition that elected the president in 2008 and 2012, oppose the project because of carbon emissions involved in getting the oil it would carry out of Canadian tar sands. TransCanada Chief Executive Russ Girling said in a statement the company was “fully committed” to Keystone XL despite Obama’s veto and would work with the State Department to answer any questions it has about the project. Opponents of the pipeline praised Obama's move. "This veto, along with the president’s increasing public skepticism about Keystone XL ... makes us more confident than ever that (the) president will reject the permit itself once and for all," said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, another pipeline opponent. Republicans lambasted Obama. “The president’s veto of the Keystone jobs bill is a national embarrassment," said Republican House Speaker John Boehner. "The president is just too close to environmental extremists to stand up for America’s workers. He’s too invested in left-fringe politics to do what presidents are called on to do, and that’s put the national interest first." Obama will make a final decision on the project once the State Department finishes its review, expected in the coming weeks. But the issue is likely to remain central in Washington's political back-and-forth for some time. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Jason Chaffetz, sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday asking for all reports and documents received by the State Department from other government agencies about the project, according to an aide. | 0 |
Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former Wall Street banker who once held US citizenship, is guaranteed presidential immunity from prosecution until Congress formally accepts his resignation and Vice President Martin Vizcarra is sworn in to replace him. Luis Galarreta, the president of Congress, said that would probably happen on Friday. Kuczynski denies wrongdoing and has promised to cooperate with a graft probe into his connections to Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company that has acknowledged bribing officials across Latin America. The rightwing opposition party that controls Congress, Popular Force, first sought to force Kuczynski from office in December after revealing he failed to disclose payments Odebrecht made to his Flordia-based consulting firm while he held public office in a previous government. Kuczynski had vowed not to resign for months, blaming the rightwing opposition for constant scandals that he said had made it impossible for him to govern Peru, one of Latin America’s most stable markets and the world’s No. 2 producer of copper. But secret audio and video recordings released this week ensnared Kuczynski in vote-buying allegations that prompted even his staunchest supporters to demand he step down. Kuczynski said the material, in which his allies are heard offering access to lucrative public work contracts in exchange for political support, had been edited as part of a relentless campaign to malign him. But the hostile political climate had become untenable, he added. “I think what’s best for the country is for me to resign...I don’t want to be an obstacle for the nation’s search for a path to unity and harmony,” Kuczynski said in a pre-recorded video televised as he was driven from the presidential palace to his home in Lima’s financial district. MARKETS RALLY Kuczynski’s announcement marked a spectacular downfall for a man elected less than two years ago amid hopes he would turbocharge growth while cleaning up government corruption and modernizing the Andean nation of about 30 million people. Markets that had cheered Kuczynski’s rise to power in 2016 rallied on news of his departure on Wednesday, amid expectations it would end the political uncertainty that had loomed over the nearly $200-billion economy, just as higher copper prices were reviving investor interest. Peru’s sol currency gained 0.5 percent against the dollar on Wednesday, and stocks closed up 1 percent. But Kuczynski’s future looked less bright. Prosecutors in a special anti-corruption unit in the attorney general’s office told a judge Kuczynski should not be allowed to leave the country, the judiciary source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Kuczynski said as a candidate in 2016 that he had renounced his US citizenship in order to launch his bid. Last month, US Ambassador to Peru Krishna Urs declined to confirm that Kuczynski no longer had citizenship. Kuczynski’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. TRUMP TO HEAD TO PERU Peru has a history of jailing former presidents, and of presidents fleeing. Former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori fled Peru for his parents’ native Japan as his decade in power ended in a corruption scandal and protests. Last year, former president Ollanta Humala, Kuczynski’s predecessor, was ordered up to 18 months in pre-trial detention while prosecutors prepare charges related to Odebrecht. Kuczynski had been scheduled to welcome Donald Trump on the US president’s first visit to Latin America next month, when many regional leaders plan to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to pursue democratic reforms. Kuczynski, who called Maduro a “dictator” in an interview with Reuters last year, had led regional criticism of his government while opening the door to Venezuelan migrants fleeing the country’s economic crisis. A White House official, speaking on background, said Trump still plans to attend the summit and declined to comment on Peru’s domestic political situation. Instead of Kuczynski, Trump will meet Vizcarra at the Summit of the Americas that Peru will host on April 13 and 14. A former governor of a mining region, Vizcarra once helped broker Anglo American Plc secure community support for its copper project, Quellaveco, and has served as Peru’s ambassador to Canada since September. But Vizcarra will take office amid widespread demands for change after constant political crises and corruption scandals have eroded trust in institutions and political leaders. Vizcarra took to Twitter from Canada to call for unity. “I’m outraged by the current situation, like the majority of Peruvians,” Vizcarra said in his first public comments since Kuczynski announced his resignation. “But I’m convinced that together we can show that we can once more push forward.” In recent days, Vizcarra has received public assurances from opposition lawmakers that they will let him govern, something Kuczynski said he had been denied. “I’ve worked for nearly 60 years of my life with complete honesty,” Kuczynski added. “The opposition has tried to depict me as a corrupt person.” | 2 |
India hailed as "momentous" a global atomic cartel's decision on Saturday to lift a 34-year-old ban on nuclear trade with New Delhi, a crucial step to sealing a controversial U.S.-India civilian nuclear accord. "This is a forward-looking and momentous decision," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who spoke to U.S. President George W. Bush after the decision, said in a statement. "It marks the end of India's decades-long isolation from the nuclear mainstream and of the technology denial regime." The 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), meeting in Vienna, adopted a one-off waiver proposed by the United States, allowing atomic business with India even though it has not signed the non-proliferation treaty and has tested nuclear devices. This followed tough negotiations in which several small NSG states agreed under heavy U.S. pressure to weaker language than they had sought to ensure India does not test atom bombs again. "I thank the United States and other member countries of the Nuclear Suppliers Group for the role they have played in ensuring this outcome," Singh said. "The opening of full civil nuclear cooperation between India and the international community will be good for India and for the world." The U.S.-India deal still has one hurdle to clear. The U.S. Congress must ratify it before adjourning later this month for elections, or it will be left to an uncertain fate under a new U.S. administration. The fuel and technology deal would help India meet exploding energy demand in an environmentally sound way and open a nuclear market worth billions of dollars. A top Indian industry lobby welcomed the approval as "a resounding victory" for India. "It would enable India chase its dream of putting up a series of nuclear power plants, said Sajjan Jindal, head of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India. Singh said the NSG approval recognised India's impeccable non-proliferation record and its status as a state with advanced nuclear technology. "We look forward to establishing a mutually beneficial partnership with friendly countries in an area which is important both for global energy security and to meet the challenge of climate change." NSG critics and disarmament campaigners fear Indian access to nuclear material markets will let it tap into more of its limited indigenous resources, such as uranium fuel, to boost its nuclear arsenal, and spark an arms race in the region. The deal has also been criticised by Indian opposition parties as compromising the country's sovereignty and its right to carry out more nuclear tests. But a beaming foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters that the NSG waiver was a "unique development" that was in India's interests. "The final outcome fully meets our expectation and is consistent with government policy and the national consensus on disarmament and nonproliferation," he said. | 1 |
While African nations contribute less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the report by the World Meteorological Organisation and other agencies underscored the outsize impact that changes in the climate are having on the continent’s 1.3 billion people as floods grow worse, droughts last longer and temperatures continue to rise. “The rapid shrinking of the last remaining glaciers in eastern Africa, which are expected to melt entirely in the near future, signals the threat of imminent and irreversible change to the Earth system,” the World Meteorological Organisation’s secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, said in a foreword to the report. The climate in Africa in 2020 was characterised by “continued warming temperatures, accelerating sea-level rise, extreme weather and climate events, such as floods, landslides and droughts, and associated devastating impacts,” he added in the report presented in advance of the U.N. climate conference in Scotland starting on Oct. 31. The loss of the glaciers — icy holdouts high above the steamy tropics that have long been objects of wonder and fascination — is a physical manifestation of the change in Earth’s climate. Found on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Kenya in Kenya, and the Rwenzori Mountains bordering Uganda and Congo, the glaciers have been in retreat for years. The report paints a chilling picture of both the impacts to date and the consequences to come if urgent action is not taken. By 2030, up to 118 million people living on less than $1.90 a day “will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat in Africa if adequate response measures are not put in place,” it said. It warned that the daily struggle of families to find food would grow more difficult as the effects of protracted conflicts, political instability, climate variability, pest outbreaks and economic crises — exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic — were to converge. As David Beasley, head of the UN World Food Programme, said recently: “This is an area of the world that has contributed nothing to climate change, but now, they’re the ones paying the highest price.” In the East African island nation of Madagascar, for example, the United Nations has already warned that the world is witnessing its first “climate famine.” Thousands are currently experiencing catastrophic food shortages and more than 500,000 people are one step away from starvation, according to the global organisation. About 800,000 more are at risk of joining them. Around the world, climate-related disasters now force more than twice as many people from their homes as war and armed conflict do. In the first six months of 2020, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a nongovernmental data service, recorded 14.6 million new displacements across 127 countries and territories. Conflict and violence accounted for approximately 4.8 million, with disasters causing 9.8 million. East Africa, according to the report, accounted for some 12% of those displacements — with conflict forcing some 500,000 people from their homes and climate disasters affecting another 1.2 million. The melting of the African glaciers has echoed similar trends on ice-capped peaks in places as distant as Peru and Tibet, and it provides one of the clearest signs that a global warming trend in the last 50 years has exceeded typical climate shift. As the ice has melted, temperatures have continued to rise. “The 30-year warming trend for 1991-2020 was higher than for the 1961-1990 period in all African subregions and significantly higher than the trend for 1931-1960,” according to the report. “If this continues, it will lead to total deglaciation by the 2040s,” it warned. The glacier on Mount Kenya — where snow once blanketed the peak, some 17,000 feet above sea level — is expected to be gone a decade sooner, which would make it, the report said, “one of the first entire mountain ranges to lose glaciers due to human-induced climate change.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
The group, which includes Pimco, the world's biggest bond investor, and Britain's biggest asset manager, Legal & General Investment Management, said they wanted lenders to set 'enhanced' pledges to decarbonise their lending books. While a number of the world's biggest banks have already said they have an 'ambition' to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, many have yet to specify how they plan to do so and continue to fund heavy emitting activities. "The problem we face today is that too many banks are failing to consider climate harm when they make financing decisions, and too much money is being ploughed into carbon-intensive activities that we so desperately need to move away from," said Natasha Landell-Mills, Head of Stewardship at Sarasin & Partners. As the United States gears up to host the April 22-23 Leaders Summit on Climate, the investor group said it wanted banks to speed up their efforts, including by setting interim targets to get to net-zero emissions by mid-century or sooner. Bank remuneration committees should also ensure that variable pay is tied to hitting the targets, they added, while material climate risks should be included in the lenders' published accounts. A number of banks have already said they plan to increase investment in green energy and other activities that will help in the transition to a low-carbon economy, but the investor group said more was needed and the spend should not be considered as offsetting lending to dirtier projects. Crucially, the investors said banks also needed to set "explicit criteria" for the withdrawal of financing to "misaligned" activities that run counter to the net zero pathway of sectors and industries. The group of 35 investors, operating through the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, said it had opened talks with 27 of the world's largest banks and expected to expand the list over time. | 0 |
Even those Britons who are sceptical about the effects of climate change and efforts to fight it are happy to pay more for their energy to help cut carbon emissions, according to a study published on Monday. The research, for British energy regulator Ofgem, shows that even those who do not think climate change is a big problem are willing to pay up to 15 pounds ($29.52) a year more on their bills to support carbon abatement programmes. Those worried about global warming and supportive of current programmes to reduce emissions are prepared to pay up to 100 pounds a year to do something about it. Although they said government and individuals had to do their bit in the climate change battle, both groups felt businesses and energy suppliers should still bear most of the costs involved in reducing the impact of carbon emissions on the environment. "Our research shows that there is a willingness from most consumers to help tackle carbon emissions, but there is confusion and pessimism about how effectively industry and government can fight climate change," Ofgem Chief Executive Alistair Buchanan said. "So the challenge is to convince consumers that the bill for reducing emissions is a fair reflection of the real cost of making those reductions and to communicate effectively how government and business are tackling the problem." Most of the 60 customers interviewed by an independent company for Ofgem's study, conducted in London, Bristol and Glasgow, were aware of simple things they can do to cut energy consumption but felt it was difficult to be energy efficient. The customers were given 10 days to study an information pack about climate change and programmes to cut emissions, followed by day-long sessions to further discuss their views. | 0 |
Big emerging countries urged rich nations on Sunday to set ambitious mid-term targets for reducing greenhouse gases, as both sides stressed the need for funds to help developing countries limit their emissions. Ministers and representatives from the Group of Eight advanced nations and major emerging countries are gathered in western Japan to try to build momentum for U.N.-led climate change talks, a key topic for a July leaders' summit. At least one delegate, though, was pessimistic over prospects for any breakthroughs in time for the July 7-9 summit in Hokkaido, northern Japan, where G8 leaders will be joined by big emerging economies such as China for climate change talks. "I think it is difficult. We have not enough time," Mexican Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada told reporters. "But climate change is not waiting for any of us." G8 leaders agreed last year in Germany to consider seriously a goal to halve emissions by 2050, a proposal favored by Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada. About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a successor treaty to the Kyoto pact, which binds 37 advanced nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. But wide gaps exist within the G8 and between rich and poorer nations over how to share the burden for fighting climate change, blamed for droughts, rising seas and more intense storms. TARGETS, FUNDS, TECHNOLOGY Developing countries are putting priority on growth and balking at targets, while complaining that the United States, which together with China is a top emitter, is not doing enough. Indonesia's deputy environment minister told reporters that G8 countries needed to set their own mid-term targets before asking developing countries make commitments. "First, they should do a mid-term target," said Masnellyarti Hilman. "Developed countries should take the lead and give their commitment to give transfer of technology, finances and capacity building to developing countries," she added. South Africa wants the G8 to set ambitious mid-term targets to cut emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and provide more funds to help developing nations adapt to climate change and limit emissions, Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in a prepared statement. "As developing countries, we are looking at the G8 for leadership. This is a key ingredient towards building trust," he said. The European Union has said the bloc aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, but the United States says only that it will halt the growth of its emissions by 2025 and expectations are low for bold moves until a new president takes office in January 2009. Japan, seeking to show leadership as G8 summit host, urged its rich country colleagues to set bold national targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by well over 50 percent by 2050. "It is also important for global emissions to peak out in the next 10 to 20 years to reach the long-term target, and I hope that a shared view will be come out of the (G8) summit," Japanese Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita added. Japan is currently debating its own national target, and domestic media have said it would announce in June a goal of reducing emissions by 60-80 percent by mid-century. Big emerging economies also want rich countries to help finance the clean energy technologies they need to cut emissions. Japan has pledged to pay $10 billion over five years to support developing countries' fight against climate change and intends to create a new multilateral fund with the United States and Britain. Now Washington and Tokyo want other donors to take part too. Mexico is pitching its own proposal for a "Green Fund", while the World Bank on Friday said that 40 developing and industrial nations would create two new investment funds to provide financing for developing countries to fight climate change. But the Bank specified no amounts and did not clarify the relationship to existing funding mechanisms. | 4 |
In the the first global analysis of genome variation in honeybees, new findings show a surprisingly high level of genetic diversity in them.Researchers found that honeybees seem to be derived from an ancient lineage of cavity-nesting bees that arrived from Asia around 300,000 years ago and rapidly spread across Europe and Africa.“The findings indicate that high levels of inbreeding are not a major cause of global colony losses”, explained Matthew Webster, a researcher from Uppsala University, Sweden.The researchers also identified specific mutations in genes important in adaptation to factors such as climate and pathogens, including those involved in morphology, behaviour and innate immunity.Hidden in the patterns of genome variation are signals that indicate large cyclical fluctuations in population size that mirror historical patterns of glaciation.“The evolutionary tree we constructed from genome sequences does not support an origin in Africa. This gives us new insight into how honeybees spread and became adapted to habitats across the world," Webster noted.This clearly indicates that climate change has strongly impacted honeybee populations historically, said the study that appeared in the journal Nature Genetics. | 0 |
Britain - which hosted the COP26 UN climate conference and will lead work through to the 2022 gathering in Egypt - must now team up with activists and green-minded businesses to shift plans and maintain pressure on laggard countries, they said. That could include everything from expanding a pioneering funding programme to help South Africa break its coal dependency to other nations, to dialling up political pressure on less-climate-ambitious countries from Australia to Russia and Brazil. For now, efforts to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius - a level scientists say gives the best chance of keeping people and nature safe - are "hanging by a thread", said Richard Black of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. "We don't need more pledges... That's not really credible anymore. We need actions, policies," Black, a senior associate with the UK nonprofit, said at a briefing on the COP26 outcome. The summit, which ended on Saturday, achieved some notable commitments, including to double financing for adaptation to climate impacts, "phase down" coal power, cut "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies and end deforestation by 2030. But campaign groups lamented it was far from enough to keep the world on a safe path, with Asad Rehman of the COP26 Coalition, a UK-based group of climate justice organisations, saying it showed "utter disregard of science and justice". Nations' emissions-cutting pledges for 2030 put the world on track for 2.4C of temperature rise, with projected emissions double what is needed to hold onto 1.5C, according to Climate Action Tracker researchers. David King, a former British chief scientist, said in his view "there was no real understanding in the (Glasgow) agreement of the extreme nature of the crisis". But the government of Bangladesh, current head of the Climate Vulnerable Forum of 55 countries, said the talks had nonetheless delivered "substantial progress". "The world has recognised the urgency of the situation here in Glasgow - now the hard work begins back home," it said in a statement after the meeting ended. Mark Watts, executive director of the C40 Cities network of large metropolises pushing climate action, said the top priority should be "big breakthroughs" in action on the ground. "As world leaders depart Glasgow, it is now up to others to pick up the torch," he said in a statement. RATCHETING UP ACTION The Glasgow Climate Pact asks countries to come back by the end of 2022 with more ambitious plans to cut their emissions by 2030 in a bid to hold onto the fast-fading 1.5C goal. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations were required to update their carbon-reducing plans only every five years. The new request for faster ratcheting - alongside pressure from climate activists and businesses eager for clearer market signals on how to drive green shifts - mean more leaders now feel "squeezed from both sides" to take action, said Chris Stark, head of Britain's independent Climate Change Committee. Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of Energy UK, an industry trade association, said the Glasgow deal's first-ever references to phasing down coal and fossil fuel subsidies amounted to "a really strong market signal" for business. That could drive shifts in private investment that will ultimately have a bigger influence on emissions than smaller amounts of government climate finance, the analysts said. But long-overdue rules governing carbon markets, finally agreed in Glasgow, leave open the possibility that companies and countries making net-zero pledges could rely too heavily on offsetting emissions rather than cutting them, Pinchbeck said. Whether carbon trading systems actually reduce global emissions is "a wait and see", she said during the online discussion. One significant shift at the COP26 talks, she noted, is that more leaders have grasped not just that climate change presents a genuine risk in their own countries but that demands for action are coming from a broader spectrum of society. "Countries understand the threat of climate change now physically but also in terms of social pressure and the pressure from businesses," she said. Amber Rudd, a former UK secretary of state for energy and climate change, said that with politicians weighing up what swifter emissions cuts might mean for their re-election chances, keeping up public pressure for climate action was crucial. Leaders are too often interested only in future climate action that is NIMTOO, or "not in my term of office", she added. "Politicians know what they need to do. They just don't know how to get re-elected after they've done it," she said - a worry that clear public support for climate action could alleviate. | 0 |
Climate experts agreed on a UN report on Friday that said fighting global warming is affordable and the technology available to slow the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and stave off climate chaos, a senior delegate said. "It's done," he told Reuters after five days of intense wrangling about how much the battle against climate change would cost and how to go about it. The talks in Bangkok ran into the early hours as scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries tried to resolve complex issues in the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report deals with ways to curb rapid growth in greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and forests, that scientists say are causing global warming. It also says current policies are inadequate. "With current climate-change-mitigation policies and related sustainable-development practices, global greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades," a revised draft of the report says. The formal report, yet to be published, does not set out policies. It reviews the latest science on the costs and ways to curb emissions growth and is designed to be a blueprint for governments. But it says there is a wide variety of technology already available to fight climate change at costs bearable by much of the developing world responsible for a lot of the current growth. They include as nuclear, solar and wind power, more energy-efficient buildings and lighting. Capturing and storing carbon dioxide spewed from coal-fired power stations and oil and gas rigs is also feasible. In some cases, such technologies could lead to substantial benefits, such as cutting health costs by tackling pollution. Even changing planting times for rice paddies or managing cattle and sheep flocks better could cut emissions of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, it says. The report is the third to be released this year by the UN panel, which draws on the work of 2,500 scientists. The previous two painted a grim future of human-induced global warming causing more hunger, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels which would drown low-lying islands. In Bangkok, China and Europe sparred about the costs and levels of greenhouse gas emissions which ought to be allowed. Delegates also debated the role of nuclear power. China, the world's number two emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States, wanted the IPCC report to exclude language which would promote stabilising emissions near current levels in part because of the limited economic studies available. The report says the steeper the emissions cuts, the more costly to the global economy. The amended draft says that in 2030 the costs for mitigating greenhouse gases at stabilisation levels of 445 and 710 ppm CO2-equivalent are estimated at between a 3 percent decrease of global GDP and a small increase. But it says regional costs might differ significantly from global averages. The senior delegate said focusing on 445 ppm (parts per million) was unrealistic given the rapid growth in emissions, particularly from the developing world. The European Union wants the lowest level possible to achieve its goal of a maximum two degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures, a level it says is a threshold for "dangerous" changes to the climate system. Greenhouse gas concentrations are now at about 430 ppm CO2-equivalent. | 0 |
Bill Clinton will take his philanthropic summit to Hong Kong next year, hoping that Asians will keep issues such as poverty, health and climate change on the agenda as economies from India to China grow rapidly. On Wednesday, the former US president kicks off his third annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York, rubbing shoulders with everyone from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie. And at a meeting that rates action over talk, he will push those attending to commit to do good, hoping to build on $10 billion of pledges made in the first two years of his summit. Ben Yarrow, a spokesman for Clinton, said next year's Hong Kong summit is "to spark the same spirit of philanthropy and engagement in the business community in Asia." "The idea is to have a truly global initiative," Yarrow told Reuters. "Given the explosion of growth in several Asian economies and the rapid pace of development in the region it made perfect sense to host a separate event in Asia." At this year's New York meeting, Yarrow said Clinton will unveil www.mycommitment.org, a database of about one million volunteer groups globally to help people find a way to do good in their own communities. Clinton will also target US university students in a discussion with rock star and activist Bono, comedian Chris Rock and singers Alicia Keys and Shakira, to be aired by MTV. This year's three-day brainstorming session is set to attract more than 1,200 people from 72 countries -- including 52 current and former heads of state, celebrities, aid workers and company chiefs. Born out of his frustration while president from 1993 to 2001 at attending conferences that were more talk than action, Clinton has described the initiative as matching "people with ideas and those who have the means to see them through." Last year British billionaire Richard Branson pledged to spend about $3 billion over 10 years fighting global warming. But a commitment unveiled by Clinton in 2006 to create a green fund to raise up to $1 billion that would be managed by former World Bank President James Wolfensohn to support renewable energy investments "did not get off the ground due to complications," Yarrow said. RESTORING AMERICA'S 'SOFT POWER' Despite leaving office six years ago, Clinton's successful humanitarian work, which has also included a role as the UN special envoy for the tsunami, saw him come in at No. 6 on Vanity Fair magazine's 2007 top 100 power rankings. Devin Stewart, director of Global Policy Innovations at the New York-based Carnegie Council, said the Clinton Global Initiative was helping restore America's "inspirational power," which he said was damaged by an overreaction from Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "It captures the America that people around the world respect, instead of the America that exports its own fear and paranoia after 9/11," Stewart said. "America will be admired if it tackles global issues and works for the greater good." Elliot Schrage, a senior fellow for Business and Foreign Policy, agreed that the initiative had highlighted the value of "soft power" and demonstrated the "engagement of America's civil society in solving global problems." "While government leaders will be bemoaning problems at the United Nations this week, representatives from governments, civil society, the private sector and policy experts will be working on creative new forms of collaboration to solve those same problems," he said. In his new book "Giving," Clinton said he hopes to continue the Global Initiative meetings for at least a decade. | 0 |
Spain plans to give people grants to make their homes more environmentally-friendly, the prime minister said on Monday, a sign the government wants to push the green issue ahead of March's general election. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Monday said the Socialist government would hand out 1 billion euros ($1.47 billion) in direct subsidies to renovate old, energy-inefficient homes in 2008-2012, 200 million euros more than previously announced. It will also offer another 2 billion euros in credit every year to help Spaniards make their homes between 35 and 60 percent more energy efficient. Homeowners will receive an energy certificate to show that would boost the property's value because energy bills would be cut, he said. Zapatero has vowed to make the environment a priority in the next legislature if the Socialists win what is expected to be a tight election early next year. "All the lights are flashing red. We are at the point of no return. I ask all citizens to act with urgency and to put this country at the forefront of the challenge to fight climate change," Zapatero told a news conference in Madrid. Zapatero said the cash injection would be enough to renovate 500,000 homes and mirrored an initiative by former U.S. President Bill Clinton to make old buildings more efficient. Despite being a world leader in wind and solar power, Spain's rapid economic expansion over the last 15 years has pushed it well wide of a Kyoto protocol target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The country's carbon dioxide output in 2006 was 48 percent higher than in 1990. Its target was to check the rise to no more than 15 percent. In July, Spain approved urgent measures to save the equivalent of 88 million tonnes of oil from 2008-2012 -- 60 percent of Spain's total primary energy consumption last year. Zapatero also said the government would release 200 million euros to improve energy efficiency in schools and public buildings in towns and cities of more than 50,000 people. | 0 |
China's State Councillor and Foreign Minister told US climate envoy John Kerry via video link on Wednesday that the two sides' joint efforts to combat global warming were an "oasis", according to a foreign ministry statement published late on Wednesday. "But surrounding the oasis is a desert, and the oasis could be desertified very soon," he said. "China-US climate cooperation cannot be separated from the wider environment of China-US relations." "We have shown our sincerity," Wang was quoted by state broadcaster CCTV as saying. "Everyone who met with you will have to spend two weeks in quarantine, but we're willing to pay that price, to discuss cooperation with the US on affairs of mutual concerns." Kerry told Wang that Washington remained committed to working with other nations to tackle the climate crisis, and encouraged China to do more to reduce emissions during the meeting, a State Department spokesperson said. "Secretary Kerry affirmed that the United States remains committed to cooperating with the world to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands, and encouraged the PRC to take additional steps to reduce emissions," the spokesperson said. The United States, which has resumed its role in global climate diplomacy after a four-year hiatus under President Donald Trump, has long hoped to keep climate issues separate from its wider disputes with China on issues such as trade, human rights and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kerry is in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin to hold face-to-face talks with Xie Zhenhua, China's special climate envoy, on the countries' joint response to the climate crisis. Climate watchers are hoping that the talks will lead to more ambitious pledges by both countries to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. "The G2 (China and the United States) need to realise that beyond their bilateral oasis and desert, the whole planet is at stake," said Li Shuo, senior climate adviser with the environmental group Greenpeace. "If they don't make joint climate progress fast enough, it is soon all going to be desert," he added. The meeting in Tianjin is the second to be held between Kerry and Xie, with the first taking place in Shanghai in April. Kerry has no remit to discuss anything apart from climate change issues. Though Wang warned that climate change could now be tied to other diplomatic issues, China has insisted that its efforts to curb its emissions and switch to cleaner forms of energy are a vital part of its own ambitious domestic policy agenda. "Chinese leaders have long said they are engaged in climate action not because of outside pressure, but because it benefits China and the world at large," said Alex Wang, climate expert and professor at UCLA. "If that is so, then US-China tensions should not slow Chinese climate action." | 1 |
More than half the countries at 192-nation UN climate talks in Copenhagen back far tougher goals for limiting global warming than those favored by rich nations, a group of small island states said on Monday. The group, which says rising sea levels could wipe them off the map, complained that a 5-meter (15ft) globe hanging in the Copenhagen conference center omits many island states such as in the Pacific or the Indian Ocean. Dessima Williams, head of the 43-member alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), said more than 100 nations had signed up for a goal of limiting rises in temperatures to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, up from 86 in August. "Half of the United Nations is calling for ambitious and specific targets," Williams, of Grenada, told a news conference at the December 7-18 meeting among 192 nations trying to work out a new treaty to succeed the U.N.s Kyoto Protocol. The least developed nations, mostly in Africa, and small island states all support the 1.5 Celsius goal that would require cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by rich nations of at least 45 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. Any deal in Copenhagen will have to be agreed by unanimity. The depth of greenhouse gas cuts by the rich and the amount of funds on offer to help the poor are among major obstacles to a deal in Copenhagen. Most developed nations and leading emerging economies, led by China and India, back a goal of limiting warming to a maximum 2 Celsius over pre-industrial times. Temperatures have already risen by 0.7 Celsius and are set to rise further. "We are living on the front lines of climate change," Williams said, adding that AOSIS wanted a legally binding treaty from Copenhagen rather than a mere political declaration favored by many developed nations. Even with current warming, she said many islands were suffering "significant damage, some are going under the sea, some are losing their fresh water supply." Some coral reefs were getting damaged by rising temperatures.
She dismissed suggestions of splits between the developing nations' group amid a dispute over a proposal by the Pacific Island state of Tuvalu for strong, legally binding pacts from Copenhagen for all nations. She said AOSIS members supported Tuvalu in principle but were still working out a common front. China and India favor legally binding cuts in greenhouse gases for rich nations in the Kyoto Protocol but less stringent obligations on the poor. "A fine sounding political declaration from Copenhagen without a legally binding outcome is like a shark without teeth," said Barry Coates, a spokesman for Oxfam.
Antonio Lima, of Cape Verde, the vice chair of AOSIS, said climate change was a looming disaster for the poor -- like the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago that buried the Roman city of Pompeii. "They did not know what they were facing. Now we know what is going to happen. It will be the planet Pompeii," he said. | 0 |
Brazil is the world's biggest producer of arabica, yet its production has stayed largely flat over the last five years. Meanwhile its output of cheaper robusta - generally grown at lower altitudes and viewed as of inferior quality - has leapt and is attracting more and more international buyers, new data shows. The expansion is challenging Vietnam's longstanding robusta dominance, while squeezing smaller players, increasingly leaving output concentrated in fewer regions and more vulnerable to price spikes if extreme weather occurs. It also promises to gradually alter the flavour of the world's coffee over the coming years as more of the harsher and more caffeine-charged robusta variety, widely used to make instant coffee, makes its way into the pricier ground blends currently dominated by arabica. Whatever your taste, Enrique Alves, a scientist specialising in coffee seed cultivation at Brazilian state agritech research centre Embrapa, said that it might ultimately be thanks to robusta that "our daily coffee will never be missing" as the globe warms. "It is much more robust and productive than arabica," he added. "For equivalent levels of technology, it produces almost twice as much." The two dominant varieties are contrasting. Arabica, which accounts for about 60 percent of the world's coffee, is generally sweeter with more variation in flavour, and can be worth more than twice as much as robusta coffee. Robusta might be less refined, but it offers much higher yields and more resistance to rising temperatures and is becoming an increasingly attractive option for farmers in Brazil, which overall produces 40 percent of the world's coffee. "The world will in the near future use a lot of Brazilian robusta, I'm sure of that," said Carlos Santana, Brazil-based head coffee trader for Eisa Interagricola, a unit of ECOM, one of the world's largest agricultural commodity traders. Roasters around the world are increasingly experimenting with adding more Brazilian robusta, known as conillon, to both their ground and instant coffee blends, he added. "It is gaining ground in the world blend." ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ROASTER Brazil has raised its robusta production by 20 percent to 20.2 million 60-kg bags over the past three seasons, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data shows. Meanwhile output of robusta in Vietnam has fallen 5 percent to 28 million bags. The Southeast Asian nation's position as the world's top robusta exporter is secure for now; it exported 23.6 million bags last season versus No. 2 robusta producer Brazil's 4.9 million. Yet things are changing on the international front for Brazil. The bulk of its robusta crop has traditionally been gulped down by strong domestic consumption of more than 13 million bags a year, but the country has now built up a healthy surplus for export. Up until this year, a lot of Brazilian beans ended up in warehouses certified by the ICE Futures Europe exchange, the market of last resort for excess coffee without international buyers. Data from Cecafe, Brazil's coffee export association, shows that in 2018, 2019, 2020, between 20-50% of Brazil's conillon exports went to the Netherlands, Belgium and Britain - home of nearly all of the exchange's robusta coffee stocks. By contrast, in the year to May, only 2 percent went there, with Mexico and South Africa among the countries which have been importing a lot more Brazilian robusta, bound for roasters who turn green beans into retail coffee blends. "Every day another roaster says I'm going to go for conillons," said a senior coffee trader at a Swiss-based global trade house. ARABICA HIT BY FREAK WEATHER Vietnam's robusta dominance has been based on much higher average yields than rivals, of around 2.5 tonnes a hectare. India, for example, has an average robusta yield of around 1.1 tonnes. But with Brazil having worked for some two decades on improving the quality, taste and resilience of its conillon while raising productivity levels by up to 300 percent, the country is competing aggressively. It has now a similar average yield to Vietnam, and farmers believe there is potential for further growth. Luiz Carlos Bastianello, a conillon farmer from Espirito Santo state, told Reuters that modern, mechanised farms in his state have achieved record yields as high as 12 tonnes per hectare. Espirito Santo also holds annual competitions to determine the best conillon quality. "We've been working on quality for 18 years," said Bastianello, who is also head of one of Espirito Santo's largest co-operatives, Cooabriel. There are several different varieties of conillon seedlings in Brazil, he added, all of which have been specially bred to increase their genetic resilience and efficiency and are particularly well suited to withstand warm, dry weather. In terms of arabica output, Brazilian farmers are being increasingly held back by extreme weather like the recent freak frost that devastated an estimated 11 percent of the country's arabica growing areas. Over the past four years, arabica output in Brazil, which has a biennial crop cycle, has risen just 6 percent in its two "off season" crops, while remaining flat in its two "on seasons", USDA data shows. VIETNAM'S DURIAN AND MACADAMIA Vicofa, Vietnam's coffee and cocoa producers' association told Reuters the country's robusta output could continue falling in coming seasons as farmers ramp up inter-cropping with fruits, nuts and vegetables. "There's no more land and durian and macadamia are more profitable," said Tran Dinh Trong, head farmer at Cong Bang Coffee Cooperative in Vietnam's Dak Lak province. Nguyen Quang Binh, an independent Vietnam-based industry analyst, said roasters, including Nestle, had replaced some Vietnamese robusta with conillon this season. Nestle, one of the world's leading coffee buyers, is spending $700 million in Mexico, an instant coffee export hub, to modernise and expand its coffee factories. Cecafe data shows Mexico has almost quadrupled its conillon imports from Brazil in the past three years. Nestle declined to comment about whether it is using the Brazilian crop at its Mexican plants. | 0 |
Biotechnology in agricultural will be key to feeding a growing world population and overcoming climate challenges like crop-killing droughts, according to a group of leading industry players. "It is critical we keep moving forward," said Thomas West, a director of biotechnology affairs at DuPont, interviewed on the sidelines of a biotechnology conference in San Diego. "We have to yield and produce our way out of this." DuPont believes it can increase corn and soybean yields by 40 percent over the next decade. Corn seeds that now average about 150 bushels per acre could be at well over 200 bushels an acre, for example, DuPont officials said. Crop shortages this year have sparked riots in some countries and steep price hikes in markets around the globe, and questions about how to address those issues were the subject of several meetings at the BIO International Convention being held this week. Despite persistent reluctance in many nations and from some consumer and environmental groups, genetically modified crops, -- and the fortunes of the companies that make them -- have been on the rise. Growing food and biofuel demands have been helping push growth. By using conventional and biotech genetic modification, crops can be made to yield more in optimum as well as harsh weather conditions, can be made healthier, and can be developed in ways that create more energy for use in ethanol production, according to the biotech proponents. "You can bring a number to tools to bear with biotechnology to solve problems," said Syngenta seeds executive industry relations head director Jack Bernens. "As food prices increase ... it certainly brings a more practical perspective to the debate." Syngenta is focusing on drought-resistant corn that it hopes to bring to market as early as 2014, as well as other traits to increase yields and protect plants from insect damage. Disease-resistant biotech wheat is also being developed. Syngenta and other industry players are also developing biotech crops that need less fertilizer, and corn that more efficiently can be turned into ethanol. Bayer CropScience, a unit of Germany's Bayer AG, has ongoing field trials with biotech canola that performs well even in drought conditions, said Bayer crop productivity group leader Michael Metzlaff. Water scarcity is a problem seen doubling in severity over the next three decades even as the world population explodes, and will only be exacerbated by global warming climate change, he said. With some 9 billion people expected to populate the planet by 2040 and 85 percent of the population seen in lesser developed countries, decreased land for agriculture and multiple demands on water use will come hand in hand with an expected doubling in food demand, said David Dennis CEO of Kingston, Ontario-based Performance Plants. Performance Plants is working with the Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International to develop and field test drought-tolerant white maize. "The biggest problem we have in crops is environmental stresses and the biggest stress is drought," said Dennis. Biotech crop opponents rebuke the idea that biotechnology is the answer, and say industry leaders continue to focus much of their efforts on plants that tolerate more chemicals even as they push up seed prices and make more farmers reliant on patented seed products that must be repurchased year after year. "I know they love to talk about drought tolerance but that is not what they are really focusing on," said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Washington-based Center for Food Safety. Freese said conventional breeding had the ability to address climate change and food needs, but funding cuts to public-sector crop breeders had reduced the ability of non-biotech groups to advance crop improvements. "The facts on the ground clearly show that biotech companies have developed mainly chemical-dependent GM crops that have increased pesticide use, reduced yields and have nothing to do with feeding the world," Freese said. "The world cannot wait for GM crops when so many existing solutions are being neglected." | 0 |
The government will distribute Al Gore's dramatic global warming film to all secondary schools in England in its fight to tackle the climate crisis, Environment Minister David Miliband said on Friday. The announcement came as a panel of the world's top scientists issued a new report blaming mankind for the crisis and predicting that average temperatures would rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century as a result. "The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over, as demonstrated by the publication of today's report," Miliband said. "I was struck by the visual evidence the film provides, making clear that the changing climate is already having an impact on our world today, from Mount Kilimanjaro to the Himalayan mountains," he added. 'An Inconvenient Truth', a film of the former US vice president's lecture tour illustrating the dramatic change to the environment due to human activities, has already been a box office hit. The film will be part of a global warming information pack distributed to schools as the government strongly pushes the message that everyone has a role to play. Gore, a dedicated climate crusader, has begun a programme of training what he calls climate ambassadors to travel the world. "As the film shows, there's no reason to feel helpless in the face of this challenge. Everyone can play a part along with government and business in making a positive contribution in helping to prevent climate change," Miliband said. The government is drafting a Climate Change Bill to set in law its own self-imposed target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050. But environmentalists have called for a far tougher target and on Friday the head of a cross-party parliamentary environment committee urged Miliband to raise the figure. "I will be asking David Miliband to scrap that target and instead introduce a formula which works towards a safe and sustainable concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which minimises the danger of catastrophic climate change," said Colin Challen. | 2 |
India and
neighbouring Pakistan have been suffering from extreme heat waves this year,
melting pavements, forcing school closures and triggering health and fire
alerts. Northwest
and central India recorded average maximum temperatures of 35.9 and 37.78
Celsius (96.6 and 100 Fahrenheit) respectively in April, the Director General
of the Indian Meteorological Department told reporters. Those were
the highest since it began keeping records 122 years ago, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra
added. More than a
billion people are at risk of heat-related impacts in the region, scientists
have warned, linking the early onset of an intense summer to climate change. For the
first time in decades, Pakistan went from winter to summer without the spring
season, Pakistan's Federal Minister for Climate Change, Sherry Rehman, said on
Saturday. | 0 |
President George W. Bush will treat French President Nicolas Sarkozy to a casual lunch of hamburgers and hot dogs at his family home in Maine on Saturday, signaling warmer US ties with France after strains over the Iraq war. It was a rare invitation. Only one other foreign leader has been invited by Bush to his family's seaside compound along the northeastern state's rocky coast -- Russian President Vladimir Putin in July to try and soothe escalating tensions over US missile defense plans in Europe. The lunch for Sarkozy and his wife Cecilia will be "traditional American picnic fare" that included hot dogs and hamburgers, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. Described by the White House as a casual, social, event, the lunch will also give Sarkozy an opportunity to meet the Bush family. Bush's parents, twin daughters Jenna and Barbara, brother Jeb and sister Doro were expected to attend. The United States hopes for improved ties with France under Sarkozy after relations chilled with his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who voiced opposition to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Bush usually invites foreign allies to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, to show a special relationship. The last head of state to visit the ranch was Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in August 2005. Perino said "geography" played a role in the Kennebunkport venue for the two leader meetings this summer -- Sarkozy has been on vacation in nearby New Hampshire and Putin was heading to Latin America. Sarkozy, who took office in May, was criticized in France for choosing the United States for his first vacation as president. He briefly interrupted his American holiday to fly back to France to attend the funeral of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger on Friday, but returned to visit Bush in Maine. Bush started a working vacation in this resort town to attend the wedding of a family friend. He has gone biking, and out on a boat with his father, former President George Bush, and brother Jeb, to do some fishing. The Bush invitation to Sarkozy was extended during the Group of Eight meeting in Germany in June. "It's a casual lunch," Perino said. "As when any world leader gets together with another, there's a possibility that they could discuss business," she said. "Obviously we're working very closely with France right now on a range of issues," Perino said, noting efforts at the U.N. Security Council on Lebanon, Sudan and Iran. A US climate change summit in September may also come up in conversation during the lunch, expected to last about 90 minutes, Perino said. A Portland Press Herald newspaper editorial on Friday exclaimed: "Bienvenue, President Nicolas Sarkozy!" and said the French leader should consider vacationing in Maine instead of New Hampshire. The editorial ended: "After all, a number of us speak French, and this is Vacationland. See you next summer?" | 0 |
Around 2009, multiple glaciers along a vast coastal expanse, measuring some 750 km in length, suddenly started to shed ice into the ocean. "To date, the glaciers added roughly 300 cubic km of water to the ocean. That's the equivalent of the volume of nearly 350,000 Empire State buildings combined," said lead study author Bert Wouters at the University of Bristol. The changes were observed using the CryoSat-2 satellite, a mission of the European Space Agency dedicated to remote-sensing of ice. The ice loss in the region is so large that it is causing small changes in the gravity field of the Earth. Such a change can be detected by another satellite mission, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). Ice shelves in the region have lost almost one-fifth of their thickness in the last two decades, thereby reducing the resisting force on the glaciers. "To pinpoint the cause of the changes, more data need to be collected. A detailed knowledge of the geometry of the local ice shelves, the ocean floor topography, ice sheet thickness and glacier flow speeds are crucial to tell how much longer the thinning will continue," Wouters concluded. The research was published in the journal Science. | 6 |
The anti-graft watchdog brought the accusations without mentioning names of the alleged offenders and the projects at a news conference on Wednesday. “We do not reveal names. We only highlight the irregularities to encourage the offenders to correct themselves,” said Dr Iftekharuzzaman, the Executive Director of TIB. TIB picked six ongoing projects of the BWDB for the research. All of them aim to combat effects of climate change. Out of the six, irregularities were found in four, said TIB executives at the conference titled 'United against Corruption'. A secretary has illegally made recommendations in one of the projects while another project has been manipulated by a central leader of the ruling Awami League, a relative of a former minister and a local MP, the TIB said. The two other projects were influenced by two local lawmakers, according to the organisation.
“Bangladesh Water Development Board approved these four projects because they were recommended by the influential figures,” said Golam Mohiuddin, Programme Manager, TIB. The research aims at finding out the challenges of funds management and recommending ways to overcome them. It was conducted to review the rules and regulations related to the management of projects that are being implemented with funds for climate change. “Developed countries question us while lending funds. If we follow the fair path, they will not question our integrity anymore,” said Dr Iftekharuzzaman. TIB selected 600 people—all residents of areas where the projects are on—through sampling for the survey. “The respondents said illegal recommendations were made for four projects. One secretary, one Awami League leader, relative of a former minister, and local MPs made these recommendations.” Substandard work has been reported from two projects, said Mohiuddin. “The contractors even engaged in clashes with locals when the low quality work was noticed.” Substandard materials were used in building a dam under one project. The dam has already caved in at some points, he said. “One contractor has dredged canal but used the mud at a brick kiln that he owns instead for strengthening the dam. He has cut 10-15 trees for a project but sold them at Tk 28,000 per piece and embezzled the money,” Mohiuddin said. The schedules of none of the projects have been made public, according to TIB. Mohiuddin further said: “Eighty-nine percent of the participants said they had no clue from where they could get information over the projects. Eight percent said BWDB refused to provide them any.” Among the participants, 92 percent said they did not know anything about the projects. “There is no information officer at the local offices of BWDB. No information boards are there for three projects. Two boards contain information about two projects but they were taken down before completion of the project,” Mohiuddin said citing responses gathered through the survey. “One project includes multiple areas but information board is available in only one office. That also has insufficient data.” The website of the BWDB contains a list of more than 700 ongoing and finished projects but lacks any separate list of projects related to climate change. To date, the BWDB has implemented 141 projects worth 40 percent of government’s fund to deal with climate change, he said while presenting the keynote paper. | 1 |
The thick ground, once frozen solid, is thawing. The village preschool, its blue paint peeling, sits precariously on wooden stilts in spongy marsh between a river and a creek. Storms are growing stronger. At high tide these days, water rises under the building, sometimes keeping out the children, ages 3 to 5. The shifting ground has warped the floor, making it hard to close the doors. Mould grows. “I love our building,” said Eliza Tunuchuk, one of the teachers. “At the same time, I want to move.” The village, where the median income is about $11,000 a year, sought help from the federal government to build a new school on dry land — one of dozens of buildings in Chefornak that must be relocated. But agency after agency offered variations on the same response: no. From Alaska to Florida, Native Americans are facing severe climate challenges, the newest threat in a history marked by centuries of distress and dislocation. While other communities struggle on a warming planet, Native tribes are experiencing an environmental peril exacerbated by policies — first imposed by white settlers and later the US government — that forced them onto the country’s least desirable lands. And now, climate change is quickly making that marginal land uninhabitable. The first Americans face the loss of home once again. In the Pacific Northwest, coastal erosion and storms are eating away at tribal land, forcing native communities to try to move inland. In the Southwest, severe drought means the Navajo Nation is running out of drinking water. At the edge of the Ozarks, heirloom crops are becoming harder to grow, threatening to disconnect the Cherokee from their heritage. Compounding the damage from its past decisions, the federal government has continued to neglect Native American communities, where substandard housing and infrastructure make it harder to cope with climate shocks. The federal government is also less likely to help Native communities recover from extreme weather or help protect them against future calamities, a New York Times review of government data shows. Interviews with officials, members and advisers at 15 federally recognised tribes portray a gathering climate crisis and a test of the country’s renewed focus on racial equity and environmental justice. Many tribes have been working to meet the challenges posed by the changing climate. And they have expressed hope that their concerns would be addressed by President Joe Biden, who has committed to repairing the relationship with tribal nations and appointed Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous Cabinet secretary, to run the Interior Department. But Biden has announced few specific policies or actions to directly reduce the climate risk facing Native communities, and Haaland’s office declined repeated requests for an interview. “The stakes are very, very high,” said Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “We’re running out of time.” Forced Off Their Land, Again The Quileute Nation is a collection of about 135 homes on a narrow slice of land at the edge of the Olympic Peninsula that juts into the Pacific, about 90 miles west of Seattle. As temperatures rise, the atmosphere holds more water, producing more frequent and intense storms. High winds now regularly knock out the electricity, while homes along the main street are vulnerable to flooding. The single road that connects the community to the outside world is often rendered impassable by water. “The village is 10 to 15 feet above sea level,” said Susan Devine, a project manager who is working with the Quileute. During major storms “those waves are bigger than you,” she said. Hundreds of years ago, the reservation was a fishing village, among many locations used by the Quileute as they moved according to the demands of the weather. That changed in 1855 when a treaty stripped the tribe of most of its land; President Grover Cleveland later issued an executive order confining the Quileute to a single square mile — all of it exposed to flooding. “No one chose to be in a seasonal fishing area year-round,” Devine said. The resulting vulnerability has pushed the tribe to pursue a solution that few nonnative towns in the United States have seriously considered: Retreating to higher ground. “Climate change has forced us to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave the village,” Doug Woodruff, chair of the Quileute Tribal Council, said in a December statement. “Without a cohesive national and international strategy to address climate change, there is little we can do to combat these impacts.” Through a spokesperson, Woodruff and other members of the council declined repeated requests to be interviewed. In 2012, Congress gave the tribe permission to relocate inside the adjacent Olympic National Park. But without a tax base to pay for its move, the tribe sought federal money. Progress has been slow: The Quileute received about $50 million in grants to build a new school farther from the coast, but the total cost to relocate homes and other facilities could be two or three times that much, according to Larry Burtness, who manages federal grant applications for the Quileute. Forty miles south, the Quinault tribe has been working on its own plan to retreat from Taholah, the reservation’s main town, for almost a decade. Tucked between a driftwood-strewn beach and a coastal rainforest, Taholah is exposed to storms, flooding and frequent power outages. That tribe has also struggled to get federal help. “There’s no single source of revenue, at a state level or congressionally, to undertake these kinds of projects,” said Sharp, who was president of Quinault Nation until March. A Struggle for Federal Aid The federal government offers help to communities coping with the effects of climate change. But Native Americans have often been less able to access that help than other Americans. “We’re the most disproportionately impacted by climate, but we’re the very least funded,” said Ann Marie Chischilly, executive director of the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals at Northern Arizona University. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is less likely to grant requests for aid from Native tribes recovering from disaster, compared to non-Native communities, according to FEMA data. Native Americans are also less likely to have flood insurance, making it harder to rebuild. Of 574 federally recognised tribes, fewer than 50 participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, according to a review of FEMA data. That is partly because the federal government has completed flood maps for just one-third of federally recognised tribes, compared with the vast majority of counties. Flood maps can help tribal leaders more precisely understand their flood risks and prompt residents to purchase flood insurance. But insurance premiums can be prohibitively expensive for Native Americans. Individual households on Native lands are also less likely to get federal help girding for disasters. Of the 59,303 properties that have received FEMA grants since 1998 to prepare for disasters, just 48 were on tribal lands, according to Carlos Martín, a researcher at the Urban Institute. FEMA said it is committed to improving tribal access to its programs. Chefornak’s efforts to relocate its preschool illustrate the current difficulties of dealing with the federal government. While FEMA offers grants to cope with climate hazards, replacing the school was not an eligible expense, according to Max Neale, a senior program manager at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, who helped Chefornak search for federal aid. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has a program to pay for infrastructure on tribal lands, but the maximum amount available was not enough for a new school, and the agency would not grant money until the village had found other ways to make up the difference, Neale said. HUD declined to comment on the record. Replacing the preschool would only begin to address Chefornak’s troubles. Some two dozen homes need to be relocated, potentially costing more than $10 million, according to Sean Baginski, an engineer working with the village. And Chefornak is just one of more than 100 Native villages in Alaska alone that are exposed to significant climate risks. “If the intent is for the government to find a way to fund this stuff,” Baginski said, “now would be a good time.” Living Without Water Twice a week, Vivienne Beyal climbs into her GMC Sierra in Window Rock, a northern Arizona town that is the capital of the Navajo Nation, and drives 45 minutes across the border into New Mexico. When she reaches the outskirts of Gallup, she joins something most Americans have never seen: a line for water. Beyal’s destination is a squat concrete building that looks like a utility shed, save for the hoses that extend from either side. Once there, she waits as much as half an hour for her turn at the pump, then fills the four 55-gallon plastic barrels in the back of her truck. The facility, which is run by the city of Gallup, works like an air pump at a gas station: Each quarter fed into the coin slot buys 17 gallons of water. Most of the people in line with Beyal are also Navajo residents, crossing into New Mexico for drinking water. “You can show up whenever you want,” she said. “As long as you can pay for it.” Beyal has lived in Window Rock for more than 30 years and once relied on the community well near her home. But after years of drought, the water steadily turned brown. Then last year, it ran dry. “It’s on us to get water now,” she said. Like much of the American West, the Navajo Nation, the largest tribe in the country, has been in a prolonged drought since the 1990s, according to Margaret Hiza Redsteer, a professor at the University of Washington. “As snowfall and rain levels have dropped, so have the sources of drinking water,” Redsteer said. “Surface streams have disappeared, and underground aquifers that feed wells are drying up. Conditions are just continuing to deteriorate.” But unlike nearby communities like Gallup and Flagstaff, the Navajo Nation lacks an adequate municipal water supply. About one-third of the tribe lives without running water. The federal government says the groundwater in the eastern section of the Navajo Nation that feeds its communal wells is “rapidly depleting.” “This is really textbook structural racism,” said George McGraw, CEO of DigDeep, a nonprofit group that delivers drinking water to homes that need it. The Navajo Nation has the greatest concentration of those households in the lower 48 states, he said. The federal government is working on a billion-dollar project to direct more water from the San Juan River to a portion of the reservation, but that work will not be finished until 2028. The drought is also changing the landscape. Reptiles and other animals are disappearing with the water, migrating to higher ground. And as vegetation dies, cattle and sheep have less to eat. Sand dunes once anchored by the plants become unmoored — cutting off roads, smothering junipers and even threatening to bury houses. “We’ve got to adapt to these conditions,” said Roland Tso, an official in the Many Farms area of the Navajo Nation, where high temperatures hovered near 100 degrees for much of June. “We’re seeing the weather going crazy.” New Administration, New Promises As a presidential candidate last year, Biden highlighted the connection between global warming and Native Americans, saying that climate change poses a particular threat to Indigenous people. But Biden’s most ambitious climate proposal, written into his $2 trillion infrastructure plan, included just two references to tribal lands: unspecified money for water projects and relocation of the most vulnerable tribes. A White House spokesperson, Vedant Patel, declined to comment on the record. Haaland’s role as interior secretary gives her vast authority over tribal nations. But the department declined to talk about plans to protect tribal nations from climate change. Instead, her agency provided a list of programs that already exist, including grants that started during the Obama administration. “At interior, we are already hard at work to address the climate crisis, restore balance on public lands, and waters, advance environmental justice, and invest in a clean energy future,” Haaland said in a statement. Heritage at Risk Beyond the threats to drinking water and other basic necessities, a warming planet is forcing changes in the ancient traditions. In Northern California, wildfires threaten burial sites and other sacred places. In Alaska, rising temperatures make it harder to engage in traditions like subsistence hunting and fishing. And on the Cherokee Nation land, at the northeastern corner of Oklahoma, changing precipitation and temperature patterns threaten the crops and medicinal plants that connect the tribe with its past. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the forced relocation of five tribes, including the notorious march of the Cherokee, from the Southeastern United States to Oklahoma, known as the Trail of Tears. Despite losing their land, the Cherokee retained part of their culture: Heirloom beans, corn, and squash, as well as a range of medicinal plants such as ginseng, which they continued to grow in the temperate highlands at the eastern tip of their reservation. “There was certainly a lot lost, but there was also a lot that was able to be maintained,” said Clint Carroll, a professor at the University of Colorado and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Now, drought and heat make it harder to grow the plants and crops of their ancestors. “It can be seen as another removal,” Carroll said. But this time, he said, “Cherokee people aren’t moving anywhere — it’s the environment that’s shifting.” In March, Pat Gwin, senior director for the Cherokee Nation’s environmental resources group, showed a visiting journalist the tribe’s heirloom garden in Tahlequah, an enclosed plot the size of a tennis court where traditional squash, tobacco, corn, beans and gourds grow. Seeds from the plants are distributed to Cherokee citizens once a year, a link to centuries of culture and existence that is dimming. “Our access to and use of the land is so tied up with identity,” said Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. “It’s who we are as a people.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Coping with the ravages of global warming will cost $50 billion a year, and the rich nations who caused most of the pollution must pay most of the bill, aid agency Oxfam said on Tuesday. The call, barely 10 days before a crucial Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany which has climate change at its core, is likely to make already tense negotiations even tougher. The United States, which Oxfam says must foot 44 percent of the annual $50 billion bill, is rejecting attempts by German G8 presidency Germany to set stiff targets and timetables for cutting carbon gas emissions and raising energy efficiency. "G8 countries face two obligations as they prepare for this year's summit in Germany -- to stop harming by cutting their emissions to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius and to start helping poor countries to cope," said Oxfam researcher Kate Raworth. "Developing countries cannot and should not be expected to foot the bill for the impact of rich countries' emissions," she said, echoing the position of the developing world. Scientists say average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport, causing floods and famine and putting millions of lives at risk. The United States is the world's biggest producer of carbon emissions -- although experts predict that boom economy China will probably overtake it within a year as it builds a coal-fired power station every four days to feed demand. Oxfam has created a global warming adaptation financing index based on the responsibility, equity and capability of each nation. It said after the United States, Japan owed 13 percent of the bill, followed by Germany on seven percent, Britain just over five percent, Italy, France and Canada between four and five percent and Spain, Australia and Korea three percent. Germany wants the leaders of the G8 along with India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa at their summit from June 6-8 to agree to limit the temperature rise to two degrees this century and to cut emissions by 50 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. But in a draft of the final communique to be presented to the leaders at the summit, Washington rejected these goals in decidedly undiplomatic terms. "We have tried to 'tread lightly' but there is only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position," the United States said in red ink comments at the start of a copy of the draft seen by Reuters on Friday. "The treatment of climate change runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple 'red lines' in terms of what we simply cannot agree to." The blunt language of the rejection sets the scene for a showdown at the summit. A source close to the negotiations described them as "very tense". | 0 |
Low-lying Bangladesh risks devastating impacts from rising world sea levels caused by climate change with risks that millions will be forced from their homes this century, foreign minister Dipu Moni said. She told Reuters that rich nations would have to help the densely populated country of 150 million people, possibly by opening their borders to environmental refugees. Bangladesh faces threats from cyclones from the Bay of Bengal and floods inland along the vast mouth of the Ganges River. "Bangladesh is going to be one of the worst affected countries as it is a low-lying delta," she said on the sidelines of a two-day conference on melting ice and the Arctic Council in Tromsoe, north Norway. "As one of the most densely populated in the world, (climate change) is going to be unbearable almost for the country, for the people. It's going to be devastating," she said. The government was working on a plan targeting better food security, social protection and health, disaster management, better infrastructure, research and a shift to greener technologies. But there were limits to Bangladesh's ability to cope with global warming stoked by emissions of greenhouse gases in other countries from factories, power plants and cars. "It's already a very densely populated country so moving people inland -- how many can you do? So...the world will have to come together and decide how should we accommodate these people who will be environmental refugees," she said. "Our people are known to be very hard working...they are already working as migrant workers all over the world and contributing to many economies of the world. Maybe the world will have to think about taking some of these people and relocating them?" she said. "This is not an official plan, but we have to be open in our thinking about how to accommodate these people. We are talking about huge numbers," she said. She added that the problem of climate refugees was also an issue for many other low-lying states and not the focus of government work. River deltas are hard to shore up against rising seas. The U.N. Climate Panel projected in 2007 world sea levels would rise by between 18 and 59 cms (7-23 inches) this century, but omitted risks of an accelerating melt of Greenland or Antarctica. The Panel listed Bangladesh among the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Millions of people live less than a metre above sea level. And from 1980 to 2000, 60 percent of 250,000 deaths worldwide from cyclones occurred in Bangladesh. Moni said that rising seas and storms would bring more salinity to farmland, affecting crops and changing the types of fish able to survive. "Climate change will give rise to more flooding, more cyclones, not just the frequency but the severity will be more. Bangladesh is already prone to natural calamities," she said. She said that Bangladesh had a fund for adapting to climate change worth $45 million and an international donor trust fund totalling $100 million. | 0 |
Djordjevic makes combustion engines for Daimler, one of Germany’s flagship carmakers. He has a salary of around 60,000 euros (about $70,000), eight weeks of vacation and a guarantee negotiated by the union that he cannot be fired until 2030. He owns a two-story house and that E-class 250 model Mercedes in his driveway. All of that is why Djordjevic polishes the star on his car. “The star is something stable and something strong: It stands for Made in Germany,” he said. But by 2030 there will be no more combustion engines at Daimler — or people making combustion engines. “I’m proud of what I do,” Djordjevic said. “It’s unsettling to know that in 10 years’ time my job will no longer exist.” Djordjevic is the picture of a new German pride and prosperity — and German anxiety. As Chancellor Angela Merkel prepares to leave office after 16 years, her country is among the richest in the world. A broad and contented middle class is one facet of Merkel’s Germany that has been central to her longevity and her ability to deliver on a core promise of stability. But her impact has been far greater. To travel the country she leaves behind is to see it profoundly transformed. There is the father taking paid parental leave in Catholic Bavaria. The married gay couple raising two children outside Berlin. The woman in a hijab teaching math in a high school near Frankfurt, where most students have German passports but few have German parents. There is the coal worker in the former communist East voting for a far-right party that did not exist when Merkel took office. And two young brothers on a North Sea island threatened by rising sea levels who do not remember a time when Merkel was not chancellor and cannot wait to see her gone. “She has known about the danger of climate change for longer than we’ve been alive,” one of the brothers told me while standing on the grassy dike that protects the small island, Pellworm, from flooding. “Why hasn’t she done anything about it?” As Merkel steered her country through successive crises and left others unattended, there was change that she led and change that she allowed. She decided to phase out nuclear power in Germany. She ended compulsory military service. She was the first chancellor to assert that Islam “belongs” to Germany. When it came to breaking down her country’s and party’s conservative family values, she was more timid but ultimately did not stand in the way. “She saw where the country was going and allowed it to go there,” said Roland Mittermayer, an architect who married his husband shortly after Merkel invited conservative lawmakers to pass a law permitting same-sex marriage, even though she herself voted against it. No other democratic leader in Europe has lasted longer. And Merkel is walking out of office as the most popular politician in Germany. Many of her postwar predecessors had strongly defined legacies. Konrad Adenauer anchored Germany in the West. Willy Brandt reached across the Iron Curtain. Helmut Kohl, her onetime mentor, became synonymous with German unity. Gerhard Schröder paved the way for the country’s economic success. Merkel’s legacy is less tangible but equally transformative. She changed Germany into a modern society — and a country less defined by its history. She may be remembered most for her decision to welcome more than 1 million refugees in 2015-16 when most other Western nations rejected them. It was a brief redemptive moment for the country that had committed the Holocaust and turned her into an icon of liberal democracy. “It was a sort of healing,” said Karin Marré-Harrak, headmaster of a high school in the multicultural city of Offenbach. “In a way we’ve become a more normal country.” Being called a normal country might seem underwhelming elsewhere. But for Germany, a nation haunted by its Nazi past and four decades of division between East and West, normal was what all postwar generations had aspired to. Almost everywhere, however, there was also a nagging sense that the new normal was being threatened by epic challenges, that things cannot go on as they are. THE GERMAN DREAM Djordjevic lives near Stuttgart, the capital of Germany’s powerful car industry. In 1886, Gottlieb Daimler invented one of the first cars in his garden here. These days the city is home to Daimler, Porsche and Bosch, the world’s biggest car-part maker. Arriving home after his shift one recent afternoon, Djordjevic was still wearing his factory uniform — and, beside the Mercedes logo, the hallmark red pin of the metal worker union. Most Daimler employees are unionized. Worker representatives take half of the seats on the company’s supervisory board. “The success story of German industry is also the story of strong worker representation,” he said. The security, the benefits, the opportunities to build skills — all of that underpins “the loyalty workers feel to the product and the company.” If the American dream is to get rich, the German dream is job security for life. Djordjevic, 38, always knew he wanted to work for Daimler. His father worked there until he died. “It was like an inheritance,” he said. When he got his first job at age 16, he thought he had arrived. “I thought, ‘That’s it,’” he recalled. “‘I’ll retire from here.’” Now he is less sure. Like other German carmakers, Daimler was late to start its transition to electric cars. Its first pure electric model was launched only this year. Daimler’s target is to phase out combustion engines by 2030. No one knows what exactly that means for jobs, but Djordjevic was doing the math. “There are 1,200 parts in a combustion engine,” he said. “There are only 200 in an electric car.” “Sustainable cars are great, but we also need sustainable jobs,” he said. Daimler is still growing. But much of the job growth is in China, said Michael Häberle, one of the worker representatives on the company board. Häberle, too, has been at the company all 35 years of his working life. He started as a mechanic and worked his way up to a business degree and eventually a seat on the board. Standing in one of the factories now churning out batteries for the new EQS line of electric cars, Häberle said he hoped company would not only survive this transformation but come out stronger on the other side. The main question, he said, is: Will Germany? There was a time when he took his country’s export prowess for granted. But now, he said, “Germany is in a defensive crouch.” A GERMAN HIJAB Germany’s car industry helped fuel the country’s postwar economic miracle. And immigrants fuelled the car industry. But they don’t really feature in that story. They were known as “guest workers” and were expected to come, work and leave. Until two decades ago, they had no regular path to citizenship. Among them were the grandparents of Ikbal Soysal, a young high school teacher in the city of Offenbach, near Frankfurt, whose father worked in a factory making parts for Mercedes. Soysal’s generation of immigrant Germans do feature in the story of Germany today. Not only do they have German passports, many have university degrees. They are doctors, entrepreneurs, journalists and teachers. Germany’s immigrant population has become the second largest in the world, behind the United States. When Merkel came into office in 2005, 18% of Germans had at least one parent who was born outside the country. By now it is 1 in 4. In Soysal’s school in Offenbach, 9 in 10 children have at least one parent who emigrated to Germany. Many of the teachers do, too. “When I started teaching here, all teachers were Germans with German roots,” the head teacher, Karin Marré-Harrak, said. “Now, nearly half of them have diverse roots.” Soysal, a Muslim, always wanted to be a teacher, but she knew it was a risk. There had never been a high school teacher with a headscarf in her state. So when she was invited for her first job interview, she called ahead to warn the school. It was 2018. The secretary consulted with the headmaster, who promptly reassured her, “What matters is what’s in your head, not what’s on your head.” She got that job and others since. It wasn’t always easy. “The students forget about the headscarf very quickly,” Soysal said. But some parents complained to the head teacher. Once, a student asked Soysal’s advice. The girl was wearing a headscarf but was unsure about it. “If it doesn’t feel right, you need to take it off,” Soysal told her. For her, that is what freedom of religion, enshrined in the German constitution, is all about. “The thing is, I am German,” she said, “so my headscarf is German, too.” THE ALTERNATIVE TO MERKEL Leaving Offenbach, the next stop is Hanau. It was here, in February last year, that a far-right gunman went into several bars and shot nine mostly young people who had migrant backgrounds. The backlash against the diversification and modernization that Merkel has overseen has turned increasingly violent. Germany suffered three far-right terrorist attacks in less than three years. The ideological breeding ground for that violence is in many ways embodied by a party that chose its name in opposition to the chancellor. Merkel often justified unpopular policies by calling them “alternativlos” — without alternative. The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, was founded in 2013 in opposition to the bailout of Greece that Merkel’s government engineered during Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis. When she welcomed more than 1 million refugees in 2015 and 2016, the party adopted a noisy anti-immigrant stance that catapulted it into Germany’s parliament. The AfD is marginalised in the country’s West. But it has become the second-strongest party in the former communist East, the place where Merkel grew up. Politically at least, Merkel’s Germany is more divided between East and West than at any other point since reunification. In Forst, a once-prosperous textile hub on the Polish border that lost thousands of jobs and one-third of its population after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the AfD came first in the last election. Downtown, shuttered factories and smoke stacks still dot the skyline. The lingering inequality between East and West three decades after reunification is still evident, even though taxpayers’ money has flowed east and things have gradually improved. With the government planning to phase out coal production by 2038, billions more in funding are promised to help compensate for the job losses. But as Mike Balzke, a worker at the nearby coal plant in Jänschwalde, put it: “We don’t want money — we want a future.” Balzke recalled his optimism when Merkel first became chancellor. Because she was an easterner and a scientist, he expected her to be an ambassador for the East — and for coal. Instead, his village lost one-quarter of its population during her chancellorship. A promised train line from Forst to Berlin was never built. The post office shut down. Balzke, 41, worries that the region will turn into a wasteland. That anxiety runs deep. And it deepened again with the arrival of refugees in 2015. TWO FATHERS AND TWO SONS Merkel’s decision to welcome the refugees was one reason Balzke stopped voting for her. But for plenty of other people, the opposite was true. Mathis Winkler, a development aid worker in Berlin, had never voted for Merkel’s party. As a gay man, he was appalled by its narrow conservative definition of family that until only a few years ago excluded him, his long-term partner and their two foster sons. But after Merkel became the target of far-right anger during the refugee crisis, he joined her party in solidarity. Merkel pushed her own base on several fronts. On her watch, legislation was passed that allows mothers and fathers to share 14 months of paid parental leave. The conservative wing of her party was up in arms, but only a decade later, it has become the new normal. Merkel never backed same-sex marriage outright, but she allowed lawmakers to vote for it, knowing that it would go through. Winkler left the party again in 2019 after Merkel’s successor as conservative leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, disparaged same-sex marriage. But he acknowledged his debt to the chancellor. On June 30, 2017, the day of the vote, he wrote her a letter. “It is a pity that you could not support opening marriage to same-sex couples,” he wrote. “Still, thank you that you ultimately made today’s decision possible.” Then he invited her to visit his family, “to see for yourself.” She never replied. But he and his family used to live just around the corner from Merkel, who never gave up her apartment in central Berlin. They would see her occasionally in the supermarket checkout line. “There she was with toilet paper in her basket, going shopping like everyone else,” Winkler’s partner, Roland Mittermayer, recalled. Even after 16 years, they are still trying to figure the chancellor out. “She is an enigma,” Winkler said. “She’s a bit like the queen — someone who has been around for a long time, but you never feel you really know her.” THE POST-MERKEL GENERATION Six hours northwest of Berlin, past endless green fields dotted with wind farms and a 40-minute ferry ride off the North Sea coast, lies Pellworm, a sleepy island where the Backsen family has been farming since 1703. Two years ago, they took Merkel’s government to court for abandoning its carbon-dioxide emission targets under the Paris climate accord. They lost, but then tried again, filing a complaint at the constitutional court. This time they won. “It’s about freedom,” said Sophie Backsen, 23, who would like to take over her father’s farm one day. Sophie’s younger brothers, Hannes, 19, and Paul, 21, will vote for the first time on Sunday. Like 42% of first-time voters, they will vote for the Greens. “If you look at how our generation votes, it’s the opposite of what you see in the polls,” Paul said. “The Greens would be running the country.” Pellworm is flush with the sea level and in parts even below it. Without a dike ringing the coastline, it would flood regularly. “When you have permanent rain for three weeks, the island fills up like a bath tub inside the dikes,” Hannes said. The prospect of rising sea levels is an existential threat here. “This is one of the most important elections,” Hannes said. “It’s the last chance really to get it right.” “If not even a country like Germany can manage this,” he added, “what chance do we stand?” ©2021 The New York Times Company | 1 |
This is what happens when the International Olympic Committee decides to bring the Winter Games to a place almost completely lacking in one of the main ingredients for winter sports: snow. What’s more, Beijing and its nearby mountains did not have that much water to make the artificial kind, either. Machine-made snow has played a major role in winter sports for decades, even in snowier places like Norway, Switzerland and Colorado. In Beijing’s version of the Winter Games, the competitions that began this weekend are for the first time taking place almost entirely on artificial snow, necessitating an Olympic snow-making and water-management operation of enormous scale, and foreshadowing the reality of snow sports everywhere as the planet warms. On the mountains where the Alpine competitions are taking place, which do not have any recreational skiing, narrow strips of white, visible from miles away, now cut through the brown. Beijing officials insist that snow production for the Games will not strain local water supplies, which have struggled to keep pace with the city’s demands. But China’s herculean investments in snow making are part of larger efforts to turn the arid mountains near Beijing into a permanent ski and snowboard hub, a project that could face challenges as climate change upends patterns of rainfall and drought. Worldwide, the environmentally unfriendly secret of skiing and snowboarding competitions is that, as natural snow becomes less reliable, they almost always take place on the artificial kind. As the planet continues to heat up, machine-made snow will play an ever-larger role in guaranteeing a consistent, high-caliber field of play. “You could not have winter sports now without man-made snow,” said Michael Mayr, the Asia manager of TechnoAlpin, the Italian company in charge of snow-making for the Beijing Games and at six previous Winter Olympics. What sets Beijing apart from many of those past venues are its tight supplies of water, whether for snow making or for anything else. Over the past few decades, rapid development has sapped Beijing’s groundwater. July and August often bring heavy rains, but the city and nearby mountains get only sprinkles of precipitation in the winter: less than 2.5 inches per season on average in recent decades, according to data from a weather station near the Olympic venues. In 2017, the last year for which international figures are available, Beijing had only about as much freshwater resources per resident — 36,000 gallons — as the western African nation of Niger, at the edge of the Sahara. Zhangjiakou, the city 100 miles northwest of the capital that is hosting some skiing and snowboarding events, had 83,000 gallons per resident, comparable to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. The United States, by contrast, had 2.3 million gallons per person. Countries with less than 260,000 gallons of freshwater resources per person are considered water-scarce. Florian Hajzeri, who has been in China for four years overseeing the snow-making project for TechnoAlpin, said he realised the magnitude of his task as soon as he saw the landscape of the Olympic competition areas. “There are trees and vegetation, but it is not like an Alpine forest: It is vegetation for a drier climate,” he said. “It snows, but it is not enough for the competitions.” Before TechnoAlpin could install pumps and build more than 40 miles of pipe, at a cost of nearly $60 million, Chinese officials first had to figure out how to deliver enough water to the mountains. How much water? Roughly 1 million cubic meters, according to TechnoAlpin, enough to fill 400 Olympic-size swimming pools. And that was just to start the Games. More snow, and more water, will likely be needed as the competitions take place. To gather it all, Chinese authorities have built pumping stations to carry water from reservoirs miles away. According to a state-run newspaper, Beijing has diverted water from the city’s Baihebao Reservoir to the Guishui River, which flows near the Olympic zone but had long been mostly dried up in winter. Previously, Baihebao had primarily supplied the Miyun Reservoir, one of the largest stores of clean water for Beijing households. Officials in Zhangjiakou — which is pronounced sort of like “jong jah coe” — have turned off irrigation across tens of thousands of acres to conserve groundwater, and resettled farmers who were living in what is now the Olympic competition area in high-rise apartments. Modern China is no stranger to monumental water projects. Its biggest effort to ease Beijing’s water troubles began well before the Olympics: a colossal series of waterways that is transferring trillions of gallons of water a year from the nation’s humid south to its thirsty north. Hundreds of thousands of villagers were relocated to make way for the canals. Water from the project accounted for a sixth of Beijing’s water supply in 2020. While the Chinese government has made progress on water issues in recent years, scientists and environmentalists say the capital cannot afford to rest on its laurels. “They still have to do more on water conservation, increasing water-use efficiency and ensuring social equity in water allocation,” said Ximing Cai, a professor of water resources engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. If the Olympics spur a burst of economic development in the hills near Beijing, he said, “the water use associated with that should be planned with caution.” But climate change could both deepen northern China’s need for water and affect southern China’s ability to provide it. Scientists have found that recent severe heat waves and floods in China were much more likely to occur because of human-caused climate change. “Under the backdrop of global warming, the risks to major infrastructure projects in China are increasing,” Zheng Guoguang, then the country’s top weather official, told a Communist Party journal in 2015, citing the South-North transfer project among others. Chinese officials say they are limiting the impact of snow-making, particularly because the snow that is made will be collected after it melts so it can be reused. But scientists who study snow-making have found that a portion of the water evaporates after it is blasted out of a cannon but before it can crystallise into a flake. Some of the flakes are blown away by wind. Some droplets do not fully freeze and end up draining into the ground. Two researchers in Switzerland, Thomas Grünewald and Fabian Wolfsperger, conducted experiments at a ski resort near Davos and found that as much as 35% of the water used for snow making was lost in these ways. (Water that seeps into the ground is not gone completely, of course. It helps replenish groundwater.) Still, Wolfsperger said, “It’s definitely not environmentally friendly” to build a ski hub near a water-scarce place like Beijing. “But winter sports have never been that in general.” Other research has found that artificial ski runs can erode the soil and degrade vegetation, regardless of the kind of snow they use. For skiers and snowboarders, competing entirely on machine-made snow changes everything about how they prepare for the Olympics, the biggest event of most of their lives, from the wax they use to increase speed, to training for the heightened risk of a slicker surface. In warmer weather, man-made snow surfaces tend to break down more quickly than those made of natural snow, athletes said. “This is not the first time we have been racing on artificial snow, and unfortunately it does not seem like it’s going to be the last,” said Jessie Diggins, a gold medalist in cross-country in 2018 who has become a climate change activist in recent years. “It’s harder and icier and transforms differently with different weather,” she said. “And because it is faster, some of the downhills ski much faster when you are rolling in. It can make the course — I don’t want to say dangerous — but more tricky in terms of figuring out how you are going to navigate corners.” Under certain conditions, though, such as the very cold temperatures expected in China, Alpine skiers sometimes prefer artificial snow, because technicians can produce wet flakes that freeze into the kind of smooth, rock-hard surface they prefer. “It is more dense,” said Travis Ganong, an American who specialises in speed events. “It doesn’t really form flakes, and when it is groomed it gets more packed. It just sits really well, and it becomes very uniform. It’s actually how we like it.” ©2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Biden, who has not announced whether he is running in the 2020 election, is the first choice for president of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers with 27 percent in the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll. Sanders, 77, got 25 percent. “If I’m Joe Biden sitting on the fence and I see this poll, this might make me want to jump in,” J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co, which conducted the poll, told the Des Moines Register. The newspaper’s Iowa poll has a long track record of relative accuracy in the state that kicks off the presidential nominating process. In this cycle, Iowa will hold the first contest in the Democratic race in February 2020. Nearly 65 percent of the voters said Biden, 76, who was also a US senator first elected in 1972, has more experience than any other candidate and should enter the race, while 31 percent said his time as a candidate has passed. Sanders, a progressive populist who held a rally in Iowa as the poll was being conducted last week, gained 6 percentage points from 19 percent in the group’s previous poll released in December. Biden fell 5 percentage points from 32 percent in the last poll. At least a dozen major candidates already have jumped into the Democratic contest to pick a nominee to challenge Republican President Donald Trump, and Democrats are still waiting for decisions in coming weeks from other big names such as Biden and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas. In most national polls of Democrats, Biden has a solid lead while Sanders, who lost the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, typically is in second. In those polls, Senator Kamala Harris of California has vaulted into third ahead of other senators including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey. In the Iowa poll, Warren was third with 9 percent of voters, and Harris was fourth with 7 percent. O’Rourke got 5 percent of voters, down 6 percentage points from December. It was the Register’s first Iowa poll since candidates began jumping into the race at the beginning of the year. The poll also surveyed support of likely Iowa caucus-goers on issues that have dominated the early discussion and drawn support from most of the Democratic presidential contenders. The Green New Deal, a proposal by Democrats in Congress to tackle climate change, was supported in full by 65 percent of the Democratic voters, partially by 26 percent, with 4 percent not supporting. The deal would fund government programs on clean energy and make buildings energy efficient while helping to address poverty. Support was also measured for Medicare-for-all, a plan first proposed by Sanders in 2017, to replace the current mix of private and government financed healthcare coverage with a universal coverage plan funded solely by the government. It was supported by 49 percent of the likely caucus-goers, partially by 35 percent, with 11 percent not supporting. | 0 |
His visit to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay - three of the region's poorest and smallest countries - is Francis' first abroad since his landmark encyclical urging an end to man's degradation of the global environment. "I thank God for having allowed me to return to Latin America and to be here with you today in this beautiful land of Ecuador," the Argentine-born pontiff said in a speech on the runway after his 13-hour flight from Rome. When he emerged from the plane, a breeze whipped off his white zucchetto cap and swirled his robes, but the affable 78-year-old took it in his stride, smiling and laughing as he walked down steps to an embrace from President Rafael Correa. He was then greeted by a group of people dressed in indigenous clothing, including a white blouse with sharp red and orange colours and a large red skirt. One, 16-year-old Elizabeth Maldonado, said afterward that she had never dreamed she would hug the pope. "It was something so beautiful, marvellous, a positive energy, a huge blessing for us," she said. Tens of thousands lined the streets as Francis' motorcade drove into Quito, some pushing through a police line. Well-wishers threw gifts at the popemobile, including two live white doves. Francis stopped briefly to kiss the head of an elderly lady and a man who carried a baby in his arms. The pope visited Brazil for a youth festival in 2013 but that was to substitute for predecessor Benedict after his sudden resignation. Because he chose the three nations himself, Vatican aides say this is the real "homecoming" to his native continent. Moratorium on protests His first host, Ecuador, has for weeks been hit by anti-government demonstrations, with thousands on the streets to protest against tax changes and alleged state authoritarianism. Protest leaders have called a moratorium during the pope's visit out of respect for him, and in his arrival speech Francis stressed the need for dialogue and respecting differences. Celebrated by supporters as a champion of the poor but cast by critics as an autocrat, leftist leader Correa was elected in 2006 vowing to spread wealth more fairly and protect the country's natural riches. "Ecuador is the eco-centre of the world," Correa said in a welcome speech, noting the extraordinary biodiversity of his nation, which is thought to be home to more than one million species, or more than one-tenth of the world's total. Quito, a highland capital mixing colonial cobbled streets with modern high-rises, was plastered with posters and billboards welcoming Francis. A million extra people are expected in Quito and the coastal city of Guayaquil for masses. "He's a person who transmits love and peace for all humanity," said Andrea Ramirez, 25, a nun who took an eight-hour bus from Loja in the country's south to Quito last night. "He'll teach Ecuadoreans that Christ lives and is present here, despite all the conflicts and social problems. He'll bring peace and love to Ecuador," she added, outside a huge neo-gothic basilica overlooking Quito. Boasting some of the world's most extraordinary habitats - from the Amazon jungle to the Galapagos islands, yet heavily reliant on oil and mining, Ecuador in many ways illustrates the issues at the heart of Francis' recent exhortations on the environment. In his encyclical, the pope demanded swift action to save the planet from ruin and urged leaders to hear "the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor," whom he said were most affected by climate change. ‘Protect what is small and simple’ Francis cited Ecuador's natural beauty in his arrival words. "From the peak of Chimborazo (volcano) to the Pacific coast, from the Amazon rainforest to the Galapagos Islands, may you never lose the ability to thank God for what he has done and is doing for you," he said. "May you never lose the ability to protect what is small and simple, to care for your children and your elderly, to have confidence in the young, and to be constantly struck by the nobility of your people and the singular beauty of your country." On Monday, Francis will fly south to the coastal city of Guayaquil to deliver a mass before heading back to Quito to meet with Correa. On Tuesday he is to deliver a mass at Quito's Bicentenario Park, where some were already camped out to see him. On Wednesday, Francis moves on to Bolivia, where he is expected to defend the rights of indigenous people. In Bolivia, he will also visit the notoriously violent Palmasola prison. Landlocked Paraguay, the last stop, is notorious for contraband smuggling and illicit financing. Francis will meet several groups of social activists while he is there. While all three countries are between 82 percent and 93 percent Catholic, the Church in other parts of Latin America is losing followers to Protestant evangelical groups. Identification with Catholicism is declining throughout the region, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Centre. The pope, however, has felt more comfortable holding dialogues with these groups than his two immediate predecessors did. He had good relations with Protestant evangelical groups when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. | 0 |
Hours after the military council sought to calm public anger by promising a new civilian government, Defence Minister Awad Ibn Auf said in a televised speech he was quitting as head of the council. Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan Abdelrahman will be the new head of the council, Ibn Auf said. He also said Chief of Staff Kamal Abdelmarouf al-Mahi was relieved of his position as deputy head of the transitional military council. “In order to ensure the cohesion of the security system, and the armed forces in particular, from cracks and strife, and relying on God, let us begin this path of change,” Ibn Auf said. News of the change sparked joyful celebrations by many thousands in the streets of Khartoum as people chanted, “The second has fallen!” in reference to Bashir, witnesses said. “What happened is a step in the right direction and is a bow to the will of the masses, and we have become closer to victory,” Rashid Saeed, a spokesman for the main protest group, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), told Reuters. “We are committed to our demands that we submitted to the army,” he said. “We call on the masses to stay on the streets until all the demands are met.” The military council said earlier that it expected a pre-election transition to last two years at most or much less if chaos can be avoided. The head of the military council’s political committee, Omar Zain al-Abideen, said the council would hold a dialogue with political entities. The announcement of a future civilian government appeared aimed at reassuring demonstrators who had pressed for months for Bashir’s departure and quickly resumed protests against army rule after his ouster on Thursday, calling for quicker and more substantial change. In a clear challenge to Ibn Auf’s military council, several thousand protesters remained in front of the defence ministry compound, and in other parts of the capital, as a night time curfew Ibn Auf had announced went into effect. The SPA said the military council was “not capable of creating change.” In a statement, the group restated its demand for power to be handed immediately to “a transitional civilian government.” Bashir, 75, himself seized power in a 1989 military coup. He had faced 16 weeks of demonstrations sparked by rising food costs, high unemployment and increasing repression during his three decades of autocratic rule. Worshippers packed the streets around the Defence Ministry for Friday prayers, heeding a call by the SPA to challenge the military council. The numbers swelled in the afternoon, and a Reuters witness estimated hundreds of thousands of protesters thronged areas around the ministry, which was guarded by soldiers. At least 16 people were killed and 20 injured by stray bullets at protests and sit-ins on Thursday and Friday, a Sudanese police spokesman said in a statement on Saturday. Government buildings and private property were also attacked, spokesman Hashem Ali added. He asked citizens to help ensure safety and public order. “We do not reject a military council in principle, but we reject these people because they are from Bashir’s regime,” said Abdelhamid Ahmed, a 24-year-old doctor. Ibn Auf was Bashir’s vice president and defence minister and is among a handful of Sudanese commanders whom Washington imposed sanctions on over their alleged role during atrocities committed in the Darfur conflict that began in 2003. Announcing Bashir’s ouster on Thursday and the creation of the military council, Ibn Auf also announced a state of emergency, a nationwide ceasefire and the suspension of the constitution, as well as the night time curfew from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Those steps were criticised as heavy-handed by rights groups. Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman was the third most senior general in the Sudanese armed forces and is not known in public life. He was the head of Sudan’s ground forces, a role in which he oversaw Sudanese troops that fought in the Saudi-led Yemen war. INCLUSIVE POLITICAL PROCESS Sudan’s deputy UN ambassador, Yasir Abdalla Abdelsalam Ahmed, told the UN Security Council on Friday that any democratic process in the country required time, and he urged the international community to support a peaceful transition. “No party will be excluded from the political process, including armed groups,” he told the council during a meeting on Abyei, a contested border region claimed by Sudan and South Sudan. The 15-member council convened later on Friday behind closed doors to be briefed on the latest developments in Sudan. “Moreover, the suspension of the constitution could be lifted at any point and the transitional period could be shortened depending on developments on the ground and agreements reached between stakeholders,” the Sudanese envoy said. World powers, including the United States and Britain, said they supported a peaceful and democratic transition sooner than two years. China said it would continue to seek cooperation with Sudan regardless of the political situation. Zain al-Abideen said the military council would not interfere with a civilian government. However, he said the defence and interior ministries would be under its control. Burhan, the new head of the transitional military council, was the inspector general of the Sudanese armed forces and its third most senior general. He is little known in public life. He was the head of Sudan’s ground forces, a role in which he oversaw Sudanese troops who fought in the Saudi-led Yemen war. He has close ties to senior Gulf military officials as he was responsible for coordinating Sudan’s military involvement in the war. “NOT GREEDY FOR POWER” Zain al-Abideen said the military council itself had no solutions to Sudan’s crisis and these would come from the protesters. “We are not greedy for power,” he said. “We will not dictate anything to the people. We want to create an atmosphere to manage a peaceful dialogue”. He said the council was to meet on Friday with political entities to prepare a “climate for dialogue,” but that was later postponed. The council said it did not invite Bashir’s National Congress Party to join the dialogue because “it is responsible for what happened.” It warned protesters that the army would not tolerate unrest. Ibn Auf said on Thursday that Bashir was being detained in a “safe place.” Sudanese sources told Reuters he was at the presidential residence under heavy guard. The council said on Friday it would not extradite Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Bashir is facing an arrest warrant over accusations of genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region during an insurgency that began in 2003 and led to the death of an estimated 300,000 people. He denies the allegations. | 5 |
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro addressed the island's parliament for the first time in four years on Saturday and appealed to world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, to avoid a nuclear war. The return of the veteran 83-year-old Cuban revolutionary to the National Assembly, transmitted live by Cuban state television, crowned a spate of recent public appearances after a long period of seclusion due to illness. Castro, dressed in a long-sleeved green military shirt without rank insignias, used it to expound again his recent warnings that U.S. pressure against Iran could trigger a nuclear conflagration that would destroy the world. It was the first time that the historic leader of Cuba's revolution had participated in a public government meeting since 2006, when he fell ill and underwent intestinal surgery. In 2008, he formally handed over the presidency of communist-ruled Cuba to his younger brother Raul Castro. Helped to walk in by aides, the bearded leader was greeted in the parliament by a standing ovation and shouts of "Viva Fidel." Castro opened the special assembly session, which had been requested by him, by delivering a 12-minute prepared speech in a firm, clear, but sometimes halting voice. He urged world leaders to persuade Obama not to unleash a nuclear strike against Iran, which he said could occur if Tehran resisted U.S. and Israeli efforts to enforce international sanctions against it for its nuclear activities. "Obama wouldn't give the order if we persuade him ... we're making a contribution to this positive effort," he said. He said he was sure that China and "the Soviets" -- an apparent reference to Russia, the former Soviet Union -- did not want a world nuclear war and would work to avoid it. Castro also referred to the case of one of five convicted Cuban spies jailed in the United States, Gerardo Hernandez, saying he hoped his wife would be allowed to visit him or that he could even be released. President Raul Castro also attended the assembly session, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt. Deputies made observations on Castro's speech, congratulating him and agreeing with him. But Castro later appeared to tire after exchanging views with the deputies, and Cuban parliament head Ricardo Alarcon suggested ending the session after 1-1/2 hours. "That's what I have to say, comrades, nothing more, I hope we can meet again at another time," Castro said in brief closing remarks in which he asked whether the parliamentarians had obtained copies of his new book, "The Strategic Victory," on the guerrilla war that brought him to power in 1959. The session finished with applause. INTENSE SPECULATION "He's been relatively absent. Having him here with us today is something surprising ... it's a rebirth. It'll give us strength to continue the struggle," Graciela Biscet, 43, an assembly deputy from Santiago de Cuba, told reporters. Following his 2006 illness, Fidel Castro disappeared from public view and was only seen occasionally in photographs and videos. But since July 7, he has emerged from four years of seclusion and has made several public appearances. This has ignited widespread speculation that Castro wants to be more active again in the day-to-day life of Cuba. Analysts and Cuba-watchers have given varied interpretations of what the recent spate of Fidel Castro appearances might mean. Some say the legendary comandante's influence has remained strong on the Cuban leadership, and that this has put a brake on more liberalizing reforms of Cuba's socialist system, or on any attempts to improve relations with the United States, which maintains a trade embargo against the island. But others argue his appearances are intended to show support for his younger brother Raul as the latter tries to revive the stagnated economy with cautious reforms and steer Cuba out of a severe economic crisis. Others say the veteran statesman may just want to get back into the limelight. Fidel Castro, who has also predicted a U.S. clash with North Korea, urged Obama on Wednesday to avoid a nuclear confrontation, which he described as "now virtually inevitable." The former president has met Cuban diplomats, economists and intellectuals over the last month, as well as visiting the national aquarium and launching his new book. But Fidel Castro has remained mute, at least in public, on the cautious domestic reform policies of his younger brother, which included a recent announcement that more self-employed workers would be allowed in the state-dominated economy. He has, however, kept up regular commentaries since 2007 on international affairs, published by state media. These focus especially on his favorite subjects, such as his views on the threat to humanity posed by U.S.-led capitalism and by global warming and climate change. | 0 |
The strike began to unfold Wednesday evening as workers at the national railway SNCF walked off the job. The walkout threatens to paralyse France for several days or more, with teachers, students, hospital staff, police officers, garbage collectors, truck drivers and airline workers all expected to join. By Wednesday night, the streets of Paris were uncharacteristically quiet, with people wary of being caught without transportation options home. Parts of the Paris subway system had come to a halt, and buses had signs in their windows that they were returning to their depots. The fresh round of social unrest is once again calling into question Macron’s top-down management style, a big factor in last year’s protest over stagnating wages and dwindling living standards. He promised then to bring more voices into his decision-making but has wound up dictating another overhaul that has created deep unease in France. There is also now concern at the top at the reaction from the street, with one senior official at the Élysée Palace, the French presidency, acknowledging that the pension overhaul had the potential to galvanise disparate parts of the opposition. “Pension reforms create anxiety. It’s not an easy sell,” said the official, who could only be quoted anonymously under French rules. The Yellow Vests say they will join the new protest — unlike the unions, they have been successful at extracting concessions from the government — as will Macron’s opponents, right and left, and a wide spectrum of unions, though not the centrist French Democratic Confederation of Labor. Publicly, government officials have been busy assuring journalists and others that they are not afraid of the strike action, which has come to be called “the Dec. 5 wall.” But the walkout and the underlying social discontent call into question Macron’s apparent triumph over the Yellow Vest movement, seen up until now as a crucial moment of his reformist presidency. Unions are predicting a huge turnout on Thursday. Jean Garrigues, a political historian at the University of Orléans, said, “The victory doesn’t seem to have rehabilitated Macron.” This week’s protest is “the reflection of a crisis in French society, one that can explode at any moment,” he added. “There’s real anxiety over the future.” Macron’s hasty $19 billion check to bolster purchasing power in the form of tax cuts and income supplements for low earners did help tamp down the Yellow Vest demonstrations. But some analysts, like economist Daniel Cohen of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, have pointed out that the cash did not settle underlying French social dislocation linked to globalisation. The senior Élysée official acknowledged that citizens were in effect saying that they had not seen enough improvement to their daily lives. The strike has been called to protest Macron’s proposed overhaul of the Byzantine French pension system, one of the world’s most complicated and generous, which is currently headed for a deficit of about $19 billion. Some railway workers, for instance, can retire at 52, and average retirement ages are among the lowest in the industrialised world. The official retirement age is 62, but many retire before. Pensions as a percentage of working-age salaries are among the world’s highest, hovering at around 70%, and often even higher for state workers. Retirements tend to be long in France, and public leisure facilities — concerts, museums, theatres — are often full of vigorous retirees with lots of time on their hands. The results of this complex system of 42 different pension plans are remarkable: France has among the world’s lowest old-age poverty rates, and average incomes of those over 65 are slightly higher than incomes under that age, a global rarity. The train workers have their own retirement plan, as do the opera workers, the workers at the Comédie-Française — the national theatre company — and the workers at the Port of Bordeaux, among others. Most workers are under the private-sector pension plan, in which the state is also heavily involved. The French are fiercely protective of their world-beating pension arrangements, and indeed, the government does not dare tinker with the basics: It is not proposing to spend less on pensions or to make people retire later. Instead, Macron’s idea is to merge all these disparate systems, public and private, into one state-managed system in which workers accumulate points over the course of a working life and then cash them in. His instinct is always to rationalise and he says his system will be fairer, though there are concerns that his changes will mean less for some. Hervé Boulhol, a pensions specialist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that, as things stand, “We’ve got a panorama that’s extremely disparate, with lots of different rules.” Macron is proposing “a very ambitious reform,” Boulhol said. “We’re changing the way of calculating pension rights.” But although many in France worship the rational, it is also a country that loves street protest and hates change, particularly in a moment full of fear over globalisation and climate change. Previous governments have foundered on the third rail of French politics, the pensions system. “It’s not right that you do the same work, and your neighbour retires earlier, the calculation is different,” Macron said at a public meeting in Rodez in central France this fall. “So this has created suspicion in regard to our pension system, so today people find that it is more or less unfair, and more and more, people have doubts about it.” But they appear to have even more doubts about Macron’s changes. “The amount of pension, for everybody, is going to go down,” said Benoît Martin, a senior official with the General Confederation of Labor, a left-leaning union that is leading the charge on Thursday. He added, “The number of retirees is going to go up, but they’re not talking about spending more on pensions.” © 2019 The New York Times Company | 0 |
This chilling prospect is described in a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, a respected academic journal, that shows the effects of climate change across a broad spectrum of problems, including heat waves, wildfires, sea level rise, hurricanes, flooding, drought and shortages of clean water. Such problems are already coming in combination, said the lead author, Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He noted that Florida had recently experienced extreme drought, record high temperatures and wildfires — and also Hurricane Michael, the powerful Category 4 storm that slammed into the Panhandle this summer. Similarly, California is suffering through the worst wildfires the state has ever seen, as well as drought, extreme heat waves and degraded air quality that threatens the health of residents.
File Photo: A woman cleans debris around a home in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, in Mexico Beach, Fla., Oct. 13, 2018. By the end of this century, some parts of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at the same time, researchers have concluded. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)
Things will get worse, the authors wrote. The paper projects future trends and suggests that, by 2100, unless humanity takes forceful action to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, some tropical coastal areas of the planet could be hit by as many as six such crises at a time. File Photo: A woman cleans debris around a home in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, in Mexico Beach, Fla., Oct. 13, 2018. By the end of this century, some parts of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at the same time, researchers have concluded. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times) That prospect is “like a terror movie that is real,” Mora said. The authors include a list of caveats about the research: Since it is a review of papers, it will reflect some of the potential biases of science in this area, which include the possibility that scientists might focus on negative effects more than positive ones; also, the authors cite the ongoing margin of uncertainty involved in discerning the imprint of climate change from natural variability. The paper explores the ways that climate change intensifies hazards and describes the interconnected nature of such crises. Greenhouse gas emissions, by warming the atmosphere, can enhance drought in places that are normally dry, “ripening conditions for wildfires and heat waves,” the researchers say. In wetter areas, a warmer atmosphere retains more moisture and strengthens downpours, while higher sea levels increase storm surge and warmer ocean waters can contribute to the overall destructiveness of storms. © 2018 New York Times News Service | 0 |
Durban, Dec 10 (bdnews24.com/Reuters)- UN climate talks stalled after a rebellion by developing states most at risk from global warming, forcing host South Africa to push the conference into extra time on Saturday in an effort to prevent the negotiations collapsing. Deliberations were due to resume around midday after haggling in the South African port city of Durban continued into the early hours. South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane suspended the meeting late on Friday after a coalition of island nations, developing states and the European Union objected to a text they said lacked ambition. Island states risk being swept away by the rising sea levels and extreme weather systems linked to global warming, which scientists say is the result of heat-trapping greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by human activity. Frustration has grown with hosts South Africa, which holds the annual presidency of the UN process, with many delegates complaining it has failed to do enough to broker a deal that better protects the poor countries it pledged to help. Delegates accused South Africa of leaving too many contentious issues unresolved until the final hours and failed to show the leadership needed to push through settlements. "They have let agreements slip through their fingers. If we do reach any outcome that advances the process, it will not be because of South Africa's leadership. It will be despite South Africa," said one envoy. The European Union has been rallying support for its plan to set a date of 2015 at the latest for a new climate deal that would impose binding cuts on the world's biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases. Any deal could then 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. A new draft changed the language to "legal instrument", which implies a more binding commitment, and says a working group should draw up a regime of emissions curbs by 2015. It also turns up pressure on countries to act more quickly to come up with plans for reducing domestic emissions. Another issue is how deep emission cuts would be under a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the globe's only legally binding emissions treaty. The changes should appeal to poor states, small island nations and the European Union, but may be hard to swallow 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 debate 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. UNDER PRESSURE The EU strategy has been to forge a coalition of the willing to try to pressure the world's top carbon emitters -- China, the United States and India -- to sign up to binding cuts. None of the big three is bound by the Kyoto Protocol. EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said a "small number of states" had yet to sign up to the EU plan and there was little time remaining 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 highly complex climate talks, bringing together nearly 200 nations, will at best produce a weak political agreement, with states promising to start debate on a new regime of binding cuts in greenhouse gases. At worst, the talks could collapse, putting off agreement on the core issues until May next year. Failure in Durban would be a repeat of the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, which fell short of delivering a meaningful global deal to follow on after a first set of Kyoto carbon cuts. UN negotiators regrouped in 2010 in Cancun, where a more modest programme of action and a set of voluntary pledges to curb carbon emissions were drawn up. Scientists say those promises are not yet enough to limit global warming to the two degrees Celsius judged necessary to stave off the most devastating effects of climate change. UN reports released in the last month show time is running out. A warming planet has already intensified droughts and floods, increased crop failures and sea levels could rise to levels that would submerge several small island nations. The protracted talks have angered delegates from small islands and African states, who joined a protest by green groups on Friday 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. | 0 |
Environment ministers began meeting in Kenya on Monday to study whether booming global trade can be modified to help save the planet, days after the toughest warning yet that mankind is to blame for global warming. Governments are under pressure to act on the findings of the IPCC, the UN body assessing climate change, which forecast more storms, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels "most likely" caused by burning fossil fuels and other activities. Achim Steiner -- head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) which hosts the week-long talks attended by nearly 100 nations -- said globalisation was running down the world's resources while not delivering the benefits expected of it. But there are many examples of sustainable management, from the certification of resources like timber and fish to avoid illegal exploitation to "creative" financial mechanisms such as the rapidly expanding carbon market, Steiner added. "We need to harness the power of the consumer, match calls for international regulation from the private sector and set realistic standards and norms for the globalised markets," he said in a statement before the meeting. Ringing in delegates' ears was the warning of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said there was a more than 90 percent chance humans were behind most of the warming in the past 50 years. UN officials hope the report will spur governments --particularly the United States, the biggest emitter -- and companies to do more to cut greenhouse gases, released mainly by power plants, factories and cars fuelling modern lifestyles. As well as globalisation, this week's UNEP Governing Council talks in Nairobi will focus on the growing threat from mercury pollution, the rising demand for biofuels and UN reforms. For the first time, they draw top officials from other agencies, including World Trade Organisation boss Pascal Lamy. "I believe (his) presence shows there is no longer one-way traffic in respect to trade and the environment," Steiner said. | 0 |
African cotton farmers battling Washington over trade policies they say keep them poor have a new enemy: the shrinking rainy season. Known as "white gold" to peasant farmers whose living depends on it, cotton has long been one of the few cash crops they can cultivate without irrigation across West Africa's arid Sahel, bringing much-needed funds into poor villages. But these days farmers complain the rains don't last long enough to grow a full crop. "We will have to adapt to these climatic conditions if they stay like this with time," Messan Ewovor, director general of Togo's cotton company Sotoco, told Reuters during an industry workshop convened in Togo last week to address the problem. It isn't so much the volume of rain -- torrential downpours have caused flash flooding across much of West Africa in recent weeks, sweeping away villages and transforming hitherto dry river beds into raging torrents. The real problem is the rainy season, during which crops are traditionally grown, is getting shorter. Fears among some industry players at last week's conference that the growing season is shrinking from six months to as little as three may well prove alarmist, but experts are increasingly accepting climate change in the region as a fact. "In the Sahelian region of Africa, warmer and drier conditions have led to a reduced length of growing season with detrimental effects on crops," experts said in an April report to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "The area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and yield potential, particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas, are expected to decrease," they said. "This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition in the continent. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020."
That could spell disaster for millions of farmers across West Africa who already blame Washington's subsidies to US farmers for depressing world market prices. Many farmers in places like Mali, West Africa's second biggest producer, already run at a technical loss, and things could get worse if they find they have less cotton to sell. "It's in the interests of researchers and cotton farmers to select seeds that would withstand a shorter growing season," said Yves Mado Nagou, Togo's farms minister. Such solutions may help, but could take time and more investment in research capacity and technical back-up than the industry has on the ground in Africa. Another option may be to turn to organic production, said Celestin Tiendrebeogo, president of the Association Cotton Association (ACA) which convened last week's workshop. Appealing to such premium market segments could even help turn some competitive disadvantages -- African farmers tend to do everything by hand, unlike their highly mechanised counterparts in the southern United States -- into advantages. However, given the industry's heavy reliance on chemical nitrate-based fertiliser and pest control, organic production could be a tall order for many farmers in the region. "We have been thinking about organic cotton for some time, but the technology is expensive and requires training for researchers and farmers," Sotoco's Ewovor said. In any case, upgrading to premium quality can only work if there are customers prepared to pay a premium price. Senegal's national cotton company SODEFITEX, which is operated by French company Dagris, registered as a Fair Trade producer several years ago, but as Commercial Director Moustapha Diop said earlier this year, "We've got to find someone to buy it". He said a tiny fraction of the company's projected 2006/07 output would be sold as Fair Trade cotton. "You see the whole thing is problematic," Ewover said. | 0 |
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent - Analysis L'AQUILA, Italy July 12 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A G8 summit made scant progress toward a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in December with some nations back-pedaling on promises of new action even before the end of a meeting in Italy. "This hasn't given me a huge rush of adrenalin," said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official, of climate decisions by the G8 summit and a 17-member climate forum of major emitters including China and India. "Generally this is careful but useful step forward toward Copenhagen...I'm still confident that the deal can be done," he said of the U.N. pact due to be agreed in mid-December. Among disappointments, the G8 failed to persuade China and India and other developing nations to sign up for a goal of halving world emissions by 2050. Among progress, rich and poor nations acknowledged that temperature rises should be limited to 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) -- a goal that would force deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions if followed through. And G8 nations set a new goal of cutting their overall emissions by 80 percent by 2050. "Enough was not achieved...but a new guidance post was inserted," said Jennifer Morgan of the London-based E3G think-tank, referring to the 2 Celsius target. She said the 2 Celsius goal implied a need for a shift to "action rather than just dithering and avoiding decisions." But the focus of talks on a new U.N. deal is on 2020 cuts in emissions by developed nations and ways to raise tens of billions of dollars in new funds to help poor nations combat droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels. De Boer said he understood a refusal by developing nations to sign up for the G8 goal to halve world emissions by 2050. Asking for action before the rich came up with funding plans and set goals for their own 2020 emissions cuts "was like jumping out of a plane and being assured that you are going to get a parachute on the way down," he said. And cracks appeared even in the G8 deal to seek cuts of 80 percent by developed nations by 2050. A Russian official said the 80 percent goal was unachievable for Russia. And Canada's Environment Minister Jim Prentice said the goal was aspirational and fit Canada's target of cutting emissions by 60 to 70 percent below 2006 levels by 2080. GOOD START The arrival of President Barack Obama at the White House, promising more action than President George W. Bush, has helped the atmosphere. "We made a good start, but I am the first one to acknowledge that progress on this issue will not be easy," Obama said, adding that recession was a complicating factor. "And I think that one of the things we're going to have to do is fight the temptation toward cynicism, to feel that the problem is so immense that somehow we cannot make significant strides," he said. "This is an important step," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said of the 2 Celsius goal. She added: "We still have a lot to do." In Washington, Obama's push for quick action by Congress on climate change legislation suffered a setback on Thursday when the U.S. Senate committee leading the drive delayed work on the bill until September. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer said, however, that the delay from a previous self-imposed deadline of early August for finishing writing a bill did not mean that legislation would not be possible in 2009. Environmentalists expressed concern that time was running out for a Copenhagen deal. "I'm worried that we have negotiations that are very complex -- it will be difficult to reach the final agreement before Copenhagen. But I think we do have time," said Kim Carstensen of WWF International. The biggest events planned are two summits in September -- one at U.N. headquarters in New York and a G20 summit in Pittsburgh. Obama said that finance ministers would look into climate financing and report back to Pittsburgh. "Obama's announcement (of a report by finance ministers)....is quite significant," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. And apart from summits, there are three rounds of U.N. negotiations among senior officials before Copenhagen -- in Bonn in August, Bangkok in late September and Barcelona in November. | 0 |
The mantle below the earth's crust in Antarctica is flowing much faster than expected owing to ice melting at a greater speed on the surface, research has shown.“Seeing this sort of deformation of the earth at such a rate is unprecedented in Antarctica. What is particularly interesting here is that we can actually see the impact that glacier thinning is having on the rocks 400 km down,” explained Peter Clarke, a professor of geophysical geodesy at Newcastle University.At the surface, Antarctica appears to be a motionless and frozen landscape.The new study explains for the first time why the upward motion of the earth's crust in the Northern Antarctic Peninsula is currently taking place so quickly.The GPS data collected by an international research team has revealed that the land in this region is actually rising at a phenomenal rate of 15mm a year - much greater than can be accounted for by the present-day elastic response alone.This means it can flow more easily and so responds much more quickly to the lightening load hundreds of miles above it, changing the shape of the land.“You would expect this rebound to happen over thousands of years and instead we have been able to measure it in just over a decade. You can almost see it happening which is just incredible,” informed lead researcher Grace Nield from Newcastle University.“At the moment we have only studied the vertical deformation so the next step is to look at horizontal motion caused by the ice unloading to get more of a 3D picture of how the earth is deforming,” Nield added.Since 1995, several ice shelves in the Northern Antarctic Peninsula have collapsed and triggered ice-mass unloading, causing the solid earth to 'bounce back'.Because the mantle is 'runnier' below the Northern Antarctic Peninsula, it responds much more quickly to what is happening on the surface.So as the glaciers thin and the load in that localised area reduces, the mantle pushes up the crust, said the research published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. | 0 |
Israel's security cabinet met on Wednesday to consider easing the Gaza blockade, officials said, in the face of world pressure for change since a deadly raid on an aid flotilla to the territory last month. Ministers may approve a plan to expand a list of more than 100 goods Israel permits the Hamas-ruled territory to import across its border, in coordination with Tony Blair, an official said. The former British prime minister is the envoy for the Quartet of international powers -- the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia -- seeking peace in the region. Blair, who held talks last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Monday that Israel had agreed in principle to begin easing the blockade "in days". Israeli cabinet minister Isaac Herzog, who has called for the lifting of the blockade, told Army Radio on Wednesday: "We must understand that the blockade implemented until this time is outdated, and no longer applicable in the current international and diplomatic climate." Herzog said on Tuesday that Israel had informed Blair, who briefed EU foreign ministers on Monday, that it intends to "permit an easier passage of goods" to the Gaza Strip. Israel imposed the blockade soon after Hamas, which has rejected Western calls to recognise the Jewish state's right to exist, won legislative elections in 2006. Restrictions were tightened after Hamas seized power in Gaza the following year. The EU wants Israel to move from a policy of banning the entry of many commercial goods into Gaza, except a few designated items, to accepting all products and prohibiting only those proscribed on a list. Israel has said it wants to prevent the Iranian-backed Hamas from smuggling in any weapons, and officials say Israel would continue to ban the import of building materials to Gaza it says may be used to support military infrastructure. Pressure had built on Israel to end the blockade since its troops shot and killed nine people on board a Turkish-backed vessel of an aid flotilla on May 31, while enforcing its naval blockade on Gaza. | 1 |
ZURICH, Mon Jan 26, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Political leaders and central bankers will dominate this week's annual Davos forum as a chastened business elite is sidelined in the drive to reboot the world economy, improve global security and slow climate change. More than 40 heads of state and government -- almost double the number last year -- will be joined by 36 finance ministers and central bankers, including the central bank chiefs of all the G8 group of rich countries except the United States. About 1,400 business executives will also be in Davos but fewer top bankers and captains of industry are expected as they struggle to keep their businesses afloat -- and themselves in a job, mindful of the event's glitzy image in more austere times. "The pendulum is swinging back to governments now we're grappling with recession," said Thomas Mayer, Deutsche Bank economist. "We're going into a period where more government involvement will mean lower growth and higher inflation." Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will open the four-day meeting on Wednesday in the Swiss Alpine resort that is being organized under the title "Shaping the Post-Crisis world." Also present will be Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as well as Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to new U.S. President Barack Obama. It is the first time world leaders will get together to discuss the deepening crisis since a meeting of the G20 group of big and emerging countries in Washington in November. The G20 meets again in April ahead of a G8 summit in July and before that, finance ministers from the Group of Seven nations gather in Rome in mid-February. The World Economic Forum was set up in 1971 as a business and academic think tank whose motto is "entrepreneurship in the global public interest." Its annual Davos meeting has grown into a huge event that has become a focus of anti-capitalist anger. The Financial Times newspaper predicted this year's meeting would be characterized by "sobriety and self-recrimination" with fewer glitzy cocktail parties and corporate skiing jaunts. Instead, participants are invited to an event that simulates life in a refugee camp and asks them to navigate a mine field, while non-profit groups will hand out awards "for outstanding achievements in social and environmental irresponsibility." GLOBAL RISKS ON AGENDA A WEF report ahead of the meeting said the main risks facing the world included deteriorating government finances, a slowing Chinese economy and threats to food and health from climate change, along with a lack of global coordination to tackle them. Worries about protectionism as a response to the downturn are also growing. Around 20 trade ministers meet on Saturday on the sidelines in Davos to discuss long-running Doha trade round talks to open up commerce. "We have not yet seen the same protectionism in trade with beggar thy neighbor policies of the '30s. And I will fight hard to ensure we do not," Britain's Brown, who will chair the April G20 summit, said on Monday. "But we also need to ensure we do not exercise a new form of financial mercantilism of retreat into domestic lending and domestic financial markets," he said. G20 leaders called in November for an outline trade deal by the end of 2008 to help counter the economic crisis. But late last year, World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy decided political differences were still too wide to invite ministers to Geneva to seek a breakthrough. While the focus will clearly be on the world economy, security challenges like ongoing tensions the Middle East will also be on the agenda, as will climate change, with about 30 energy and environment ministers in attendance. Klaus Schwab, the forum's founder and chairman, said the meeting would be a chance for leaders to think about the kind of world they wanted to see emerge when the crisis is over. "What we are experiencing is the birth of a new era, a wake-up call to overhaul our institutions, our systems and, above all, our way of thinking," he said. While this year's meeting illustrates a shift in the balance of power toward governments, political leaders in Davos are likely to get a reminder that the crisis also threatens their own positions after recent civil unrest in several countries. While activists have been kept away from Davos itself after a demonstration turned violent in 2000, protestors have warned of trouble in Geneva after an anti-capitalist march planned for Saturday to coincide with Davos was banned. "The WEF is a symbol of the neoliberal policies of the last 20 years that have caused this crisis. We have no confidence that the same people who caused the crisis can solve it," said Laurent Tettamenti, an organizer of the Geneva protest. | 0 |
When Italian political rivals start being polite to each other, something is up -- especially when one of them is Silvio Berlusconi, who in the last election campaign did not shy from talking of communists eating babies. With only a month to go to the vote and the gloves still on, speculation grows that the twice former prime minister and his centre-left rival Walter Veltroni may form a "Grand Coalition" if April's result is too close, despite Veltroni's denials. Suspicious smaller rivals fear a right-left collaboration that would last just long enough to push through electoral reforms to create a two-party system, freezing them out. "I fear that round the corner is some shady deal, rather than a 'Grand Coalition'," said Christian Democrat leader Pier Ferdinando Casini, a centrist who, like the far left, has been spurned by allies who used to rely on him to stay in power. "After April 13 Berlusconi and Veltroni will divide up power for their own convenience," said Casini, complaining that former ally Berlusconi was now reserving his "venomous" jibes for him. Berlusconi, a 71-year-old media tycoon who finds outrageous quips irresistible, has promised he "won't attack any rival" in this campaign. Probably the rudest he has been about Veltroni is to accuse him of "scrounging meals" as he tours Italy, accepting invitations to try "Grandma Gina's lasagna" in photo calls. While dismissing a post-electoral coalition with Berlusconi as "impossible", Veltroni says that if he wins with a "slender majority in the Senate" he will ask the opposition to "create a civil climate" to discuss political reforms before a new vote. He and Berlusconi had just begun talks when Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition collapsed in January, forcing him to quit as prime minister after 20 months and call an early election. Berlusconi, sensing an opportunity for a third term as prime minister, pulled out of the reform talks and vetoed bids for an interim government to overhaul voting rules. Introduced by his last government, these rules make it impossible to get a strong majority in the upper house or Senate, as Prodi discovered. "The same people who didn't want this now say the election is likely to produce a tie and the Senate will be ungovernable," said Veltroni, referring to Berlusconi without naming him.
PHOTO FINISH? As Italy stumbles towards yet another vote, after seeing its 61st government since World War Two crumble, Berlusconi has made no secret of his concern that although he leads the polls, there is a serious risk of a dead heat in the Senate. Most polls see Berlusconi's People of Freedom party beating the Democratic Party by about 7 points in the lower house. Polls on voting intentions for the Senate are done rarely since the house is elected on a regional basis, not a national basis like the lower house. So polling has to be done in each of Italy's 20 regions, making it a much more difficult exercise. "What we are probably going to see is a rather unstable Senate which will create, once again, the kind of difficulty ruling that Prodi's government faced," said politics professor Franco Pavoncello at John Cabot University in Rome. "If the Senate is unmanageable again I think we might have a couple of years of Grand Coalition," he told Reuters. His colleague James Walston at the American University in Rome, on the other hand, believes a German-style cross-party alliance is unlikely in Italy, telling Reuters that Berlusconi and Veltroni's "own supporters would skin them alive". But he does expect narrower coalition building after the vote -- "that's one reason why they are being rather polite". The tone could change if Berlusconi's lead narrows further and there is much scope for movement either way, with a quarter to a third of voters still undecided, according to polls. Berlusconi, greeted around Italy by the song "Thank goodness for Silvio!" which even a showman like him calls "embarrassing", is targeting such voters and has fielded an unabashed fascist in Lazio region to steal votes from a splinter right-wing group. While Berlusconi's former centrist allies accuse him of moving to the right, Prodi's old leftist allies, spurned by his dauphin Veltroni, accuse the Democratic Party of abandoning the centre-left by fielding a Venetian industrialist as candidate. | 1 |
Forty nations held unprecedented talks about ways to slow global warming without derailing world economic growth on the margins of UN climate talks in Bali on Monday. Deputy finance ministers met on the margins of Dec. 3-14 UN climate talks where more than 10,000 delegates are trying to lay the groundwork for a broader treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol global warming pact beyond to 2012. "Having this meeting...having the finance ministers meeting..itself is a breakthrough," Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said. The meeting will prepare for talks by about 20 finance ministers in Bali on Tuesday. Trade ministers also met at the weekend, the first time the annual UN climate talks have expanded beyond environment ministers. The trade ministers failed to ease splits between Brazil and the United States over green exports.
"The role of the finance ministers is to lead this discussion so that we have wider policy options," Indrawati said, referring to taxes or incentives for green technologies such as wind, solar power or "clean coal". The UN Climate Panel, which will collect the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday in Oslo along former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, has said that the strictest measures to offset warming will slow annual world growth by 0.12 percentage point at most.
The panel says the impacts of climate change, such as more storms, droughts, mudslides and rising seas, could be far more damaging unless nations make deep emissions cuts to stabilise the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the air. "We'll talk about the theoretical basis but I don't think we will decide on measures during this finance ministers' meeting," Gabriel Kuehne, deputy director of the German Finance Ministry, said of the two-day talks ending on Tuesday. BILLIONS
A UN study projected that net annual investments of $200-$210 billion by 2030 were needed in cleaner areas, such as renewable energies, in a gigantic shift from dirtier fossil fuels.
The 190-nation climate talks are seeking to agree on the ground rules for launching two years of negotiations on a broader climate change pact involving all nations to succeed or replace the Kyoto Protocol from Jan. 1, 2013. Kyoto only binds 36 industrialised countries to emissions curbs between 2008-2012. But outsider the United States has no binding goals under Kyoto nor do developing nations led by China and India. The talks will also try to set a timetable for an accord by the end of 2009. "This is the week the world has been waiting for," said Jennifer Morgan of the London-based climate E3G think-tank. In return for committing to slowing the growth of emissions, developing nations want aid to help them adapt to the rising impacts of climate change. Building protective barriers against sea level rise around 50 of the coral islands making up the Maldives in the Indian Ocean alone could cost $1.5 billion, according to Angus Friday, head of a group representing small island states. In one promise of help, Norway said it would provide up to 3 billion crowns ($540 million) a year to slow deforestation in tropical nations. The economist shaping climate policy for Australia's new Labor government said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would not be expected to commit to any interim 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target in Bali. Rudd arrives on Tuesday. "That's there for consideration, but no-one expects this meeting in Bali to reach agreement on anything like that," Professor Ross Garnaut said, describing a UN draft demand for emissions cuts of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 as a guide. | 0 |
BONN, Germany Aug 14, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - UN talks on a new climate treaty due to be agreed in December risk failure unless negotiations accelerate, a senior UN official said on Friday after a sluggish week-long session among 180 nations. Negotiators made scant progress at the Aug 10-14 talks towards breaking deadlock on a shareout of curbs on greenhouse gases among rich and poor, or raising funds to help developing nations adapt to climate changes. "If we continue at this rate we're not going to make it," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference of the Aug. 10-14 meeting in Bonn. He said that only "selective progress" has been made in Bonn, one of a series of talks meant to end with agreement on a new UN treaty in Copenhagen in December. De Boer said that there were 15 days of negotiations left before Copenhagen, at meetings in Bangkok in September-October and in Barcelona in November. "It is clear that there is quite a significant uphill battle if we are going to get there," said Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation. But he said there were some signs of movement. CHINA FOCUSED ON POVERTY "You absolutely can get there," he said. Developing nations accused the rich of failing to take the lead in making deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and of trying to get poor to take on too much of the burden. China and India want the rich, for instance, to make cuts in greenhouse gases of at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst of climate change such as floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels. They say they need billions of dollars in aid and clean technology to help cope. "We still have the same problems that have been hindering us," China's climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters of the rich-poor deadlock. He said that China was keen to see it emissions peak but that fighting poverty had to remain an overriding priority. Many delegates said that a meeting of world leaders at the United Nations in New York and a meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 in Pittsburgh, both in September, could help give guidance and break the deadlock. The European Union also said that offers on the table by developed nations fell far short of a goal of limiting global warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. "When we sum them up we find they are gravely insufficient," said Anders Turesson, the chief negotiator of Sweden which holds the EU presidency. "They would lead us into a three degree world," he said. The EU has promised cuts of 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, or 30 percent if other rich nations also make similar cuts. He also said that developing nations had to show "more engagement". | 0 |
On Friday, Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou flew home to China from Canada after reaching an agreement with US prosecutors to end the bank fraud case against her, a point of tension between China and the United States. Within hours of the news of the deal, the two Canadians who were arrested shortly after Meng was taken into custody were released from Chinese jails and were on their way back to Canada. Beijing had denied that their arrests were linked. When asked if the White House was involved in brokering a "prisoner swap," White House press secretary Jen Psaki rejected the premise. The deferred prosecution agreement with Meng was "an action by the Department of Justice, which is an independent Department of Justice. This is a law enforcement matter," she said, adding, "There is no link." But Psaki also confirmed that in a call on Sept 9, two weeks before the announcements, China's leader Xi Jinping brought up Meng's case and US President Joe Biden pressed for the release of the two Canadians, businessman Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who had been held in China for more than 1,000 days. "These two leaders raised the cases of these individuals but there was no negotiation about it," Psaki said. Psaki said she had no information on whether Biden knew about the status of the negotiations between Meng's lawyers and the Justice Department. Meng had been arrested at Vancouver International Airport in Canada on a US warrant, and was indicted on bank and wire fraud charges for allegedly misleading HSBC in 2013 about the telecommunications equipment giant's business dealings in Iran. The years-long extradition drama had been a central source of discord in increasingly rocky ties between Beijing and Washington, with Chinese officials signalling that the case needed to be dropped to help end a diplomatic stalemate. Psaki emphasised the deal announced on Friday did not indicate a softening of US concerns about Chinese behaviour. "Our policy has not changed, our policy toward China," Psaki said. "We are not seeking conflict. It is a relationship of competition and we are going to continue to hold the PRC to account for its unfair economic practices, its coercive actions around the world and its human rights abuses," she said, using the acronym for the People's Republic of China. BALL IN THE US COURT Earlier in September, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Biden's climate envoy John Kerry in a virtual meeting that Washington needed to take practical steps to improve relations by responding to a list of demands, which included dropping the case against Meng. "Right now, the ball is in the United States' court," Wang told Kerry, according to a Chinese statement. But US officials have rebutted any suggestion that Kerry or other administration officials had negotiated Meng's release with China for other concessions. Earlier in the week, Xi announced at the United Nations that China would not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, a pledge Kerry had been pressuring Beijing to make to help the world stay on course to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement. "We were not involved in their internal decision-making on it in any way, shape, or form," a White House official told Reuters of the Justice Department's process. "The movement on coal, number one, is, frankly, China acting in its own interest," the official said. "I think they realised that they weren't going to get anything for it. They weren't going to be able to use it as leverage." Meng arrived to a hero's welcomed in China, and official media there suggested that her release could be a chance to reboot fraught US-China ties. While some Republican senators criticised the Biden administration for giving in to Beijing's demands, analysts said that didn't add up. "I believe that the deal that the PRC made to get Meng released was on the table during the Trump administration. She had to acknowledge wrongdoing and ultimately that is what she did. I don't see capitulation," said Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank. The Justice Department says it is still preparing for trial against Huawei. | 2 |
Now the government is preparing to double down on the pain with a belt-tightening budget of tax hikes and spending cuts required to release a $1 billion tranche of International Monetary Fund bailout cash. "I never thought it would become so difficult to survive," said Sibte Hasan, a 43-year-old construction supervisor from Pakistan's second-biggest city Lahore. As consumer price inflation has accelerated into double digits, with staples like flour, sugar, oil and rice doubling in price over recent months, the Pakistani rupee has fallen around 14 percent since May to reach a historic low. Government officials are expected to release official figures this week when it presents a special supplementary budget to cabinet. But already it is clear that a raft of sales tax exemptions will be scrapped and new levies will be raised on fuel as well as some imported goods. The IMF agreed last month to revive a stalled $6 billion funding programme launched in 2019 but demanded further fiscal measures as part of a broader structural reforms package covering areas from the power sector debt to corporate governance, climate change and trade policy. Last month the central bank also tightened the screws, raising its key interest rate by 150 basis points to 8.75 percent to try to stem surging inflation, a slide in the Pakistani rupee and a current account deficit that has widened to $5.2 billion (July-Oct), and trade deficit to $20.59 billion (July-Nov). Government officials have put a brave face on the situation, saying that the impact on the poorest will be softened by welfare cushions and pointing to progress in addressing Pakistan's chronic tax collection problem. "Prudent fiscal reforms have helped in improving the tax-to-GDP ratio and improving revenue generation," Finance Adviser Shaukat Tarin told a conference last week. The government has also had some relief from the immediate pressure on public finances with a $3 billion loan from Saudi Arabia that arrived this month. FALLING PRODUCTION However, whether the fiscal measures will be enough to stabilise public finances sufficiently to allow the government to address Pakistan's underlying economic problems remains unclear. While consumers have faced higher household bills, the impact has also been felt in the business sector through high energy prices and raw materials costs as well as the recent sharp rise in interest rates. "Our production is falling rapidly," said textile mill owner Sheikh Muhammad Akbar. "My unit is not generating its targeted production because of expensive raw materials and high production costs," he told Reuters. Pakistan's debt-bound economy has long been hobbled by problems ranging from a wasteful and inefficient power sector to weak tax collection, poor productivity and minimal value added exports. But loose monetary policy and an over valued exchange rate papered over some of the problems, helping the economy rebound from the coronavirus slowdown to grow 3.9 percent last year, even while the fiscal and current account deficits widened, threatening the stability of public finances. | 0 |
"China will continue to increase investment in the least developed countries, aiming to increase its total to $12 billion by 2030," Xi told a sustainable development summit of world leaders at the United Nations in New York. "China will exempt the debt of outstanding intergovernmental interest-free loans due by the end of 2015 owed by the relevant least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries," he added. The 193-member United Nations General Assembly on Friday adopted the most far-reaching agenda ever of global goals to combat poverty, inequality and climate change, capping years of debate. Described by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as "a to-do list for people and planet," the 17 Sustainable Development Goals are to be implemented over the next 15 years with a big global push to win public and political support. "Looking to the future, China will continue to take a right approach to justice and interests by putting justice before interests and join the other countries in the concerted efforts to realize the post-2015 development agenda," Xi said. During Xi's first state visit to the United States, he and US President Barack Obama also unveiled on Friday new steps they will take to deliver on pledges they made then to slash their greenhouse gas emissions. One of the steps announce by Xi was that China would channel 20 billion RMB ($3.1 billion) to help developing countries combat and adapt to climate change, a significant financial pledge from an emerging economy. On Saturday at the United Nations, Xi also said China would establish a development knowledge center to allow countries to share best practices. "China will propose discussion on establishing a global energy internet to facilitate efforts to meet the global power demand with clean and green alternatives," Xi said. | 0 |
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the symbolic Clock forward by 30 seconds, to two minutes to midnight, reflecting the scientists’ view of the main global dangers. They say much of the blame rests with the administration of President Donald Trump. The only other time the clock, revised annually, has been set so close to catastrophe was 65 years ago, in 1953, after the US and the Soviet Union exploded their first thermonuclear bombs. Rachel Bronson, the bulletin’s president and CEO, said in a statement: “Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions. Weapons more usable “Across the globe, nuclear weapons are poised to become more rather than less usable because of nations’ investments in their nuclear arsenals.” The Center for Climate & Security (CCS) is a US non-partisan policy institute of security and military experts. In November 2017 it said climate change and nuclear threats are closely linked and must be tackled together. The bulletin’s authors, from its science and security board, say they are disturbed by the rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, the increasing emphasis and expenditure on nuclear weapons by major powers, the absence of arms control negotiations around the world, and the wavering political will to combat climate change. They repeatedly single out the Trump administration as a major factor behind the increased risks, citing what they describe as the president’s volatility; the inconsistency of the administration’s foreign policy; and its apparent disdain for science, including senior appointments of climate change deniers. One board member, Sharon Squassoni, of George Washington University’s Institute for International Science and Technology Policy, said Russia was also responsible for raising tensions, for example by deploying ground-launched cruise missiles in 2017 in breach of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. Some experts argue that a comparison with the height of the cold war exaggerates the current dangers, and not all agree that the global risks of nuclear weapons are as severe now as they were then. Vipin Narang, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tweeted: “Today, the risk of single use may be higher, but it’s unlikely to threaten global destruction.” On climate change, the bulletin scientists say it is worsening: after flattening out for some years, global greenhouse gas emissions have resumed their rise, and the levels of the polar ice caps are at new lows. They say the administration is making “an insufficient response” to climate change and is turning its back on reality: “In its rush to dismantle rational climate and energy policy, the administration has ignored scientific fact and well-founded economic analyses. Heartening response “Here in the US, the incoming President Trump promptly appointed a cadre of avowed climate denialists and quickly started reversing existing climate measures,” said Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute. But he was encouraged by the global response to Mr Trump’s actions. Thankfully, Dr Kartha said, the White House had met “a reassuring and affirming resistance…Other countries reaffirmed their commitment to climate action. And within the United States, there’s been this huge We Are Still In movement of states, cities, business, faith-based communities, reaffirming their commitment to climate action and global cooperation.” President Trump was also criticised for downgrading the science in his administration. Lawrence Krauss, the chair of the bulletin’s board of sponsors, said that 2017 was the first year since the position was created more than half a century ago with no presidential science adviser. “The White House office of science and technology policy is essentially not staffed,” Krauss said. “The official mechanisms to tie public policy to reality are currently absent.” | 0 |
The standing committee
of China's National People's Congress voted to adopt "the proposal to
review and ratify the Paris Agreement" at the closing meeting of a
week-long session, the news agency said. The announcement came
as leaders from the world's 20 biggest economies, the Group of 20 (G20), began
to arrive in the Chinese city of Hangzhou for a summit on Sunday and Monday. The G20 nations are
responsible for about 80 percent of global carbon emissions. The United States, the
second biggest emitter, is also set to ratify the agreement in a bid to put the
deal into legal force before the end of the year. Nearly 200 countries
agreed in Paris in December on a binding global compact to slash greenhouse gas
emissions and keep global temperature increases to "well below" 2
degrees Celsius. Experts have said the
temperature target is already in danger of being breached, with the U.N.
weather agency saying that 2016 is on course to be the warmest since records
began, overtaking last year. While 180 countries have
now signed the agreement, 55 nations - covering at least 55 percent of global
emissions - need to formally ratify the treaty to put it into legal effect. Before China, 23
nations had ratified it - including North Korea - but they collectively accounted
for just 1.08 percent of global emissions, according to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change. China is responsible
for just over 20 percent of global emissions while the United States covers
another 17.9 percent. Russia accounts for 7.5 percent, with India pushing out
4.1 percent.
Countries that ratify the deal will have to wait
for three years after it has gone into legal force before they can begin the
process of withdrawing from it, according to the agreement signed in Paris last
year. | 0 |
By Stephen Brown ROME July 7 (bdnews24/Reuters) - China, Russia and Brazil will use this week's G8 summit in Italy to push their view that the world needs to start seeking a new global reserve currency as an alternative to the dollar, officials said on Tuesday. As leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations and the major developing powers travelled to Italy for a three-day summit starting on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely the currency debate would get a specific mention in summit documents. But both G8 member Russia and emerging power Brazil -- which like China and India is a member of the "G5" that joins the second day of the summit on Thursday -- echoed China's calls for the currency debate to be taken up by world leaders. Top Kremlin economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich said China and Russia would "state their stance that the global currency system needs smooth evolutionary development. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva said he was keen to explore "the possibility of new trade relations not dependent on the dollar" and India has also said it is open to the debate. But G8 members Germany, France and Canada played down talk of the summit including a detailed currency discussion. A source at President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said the G8 was "generally not the forum ... for discussing currency exchange rates." German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said on Monday the dollar was likely to remain the global reserve currency but the Chinese yuan and the euro would slowly gain in significance. The debate is highly sensitive in financial markets, which are wary of risks to U.S. asset values. China and other nations promoting the debate take care to avoid undermining the dollar, with Lula saying it would be vital "for decades" to come. China, which has up to 70 percent of its $1.95 trillion in official currency reserves in the dollar, underlines that the dollar is still the most important reserve currency. But it believes over-reliance on the dollar has exacerbated the financial crisis and sees the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights (SDRs), based on a basket of currencies, as a viable alternative for the future. G8 URGED TO ACT ON POVERTY With Italy keen to avoid a repeat of the riots and police brutality that marred the 2001 G8 in Genoa, security was tight around the earthquake-stricken mountain town of L'Aquila, where world leaders will sleep in an austere police training school. But police in L'Aquila arrested five French citizens found with clubs and sticks in their vehicle and small groups of student protesters clashed with police in nearby Rome. "We want to once again demonstrate against what the G8 represents," said a student giving her name as Maria Teresa. Pope Benedict issued a document to coincide with the G8, urging leaders to impose tough rules on the financial system. In the encylical, he called for "a true world political authority ... to manage the global economy" and avoid more "abuse" of the free market. With nine African leaders attending the summit, the United States could pledge $3-4 billion for agricultural development in poor nations, which it wants matched by its partners for a total commitment of $15 billion, according to a G8 draft declaration. PROGRESS ON CLIMATE, TRADE The G8 talks open with discussion of the economic crisis. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is eager to transmit optimism, though his credibility as host is undermined by a prostitution scandal, a poor record on aid and his reputation for diplomatic gaffes. However, it did look possible that the L'Aquila summit could produce breakthroughs on climate change and trade. A draft communique suggested the G8 and G5 would agree to conclude the stalled Doha round of trade talks in 2010. Launched in 2001 to help poor countries prosper through trade, Doha has stumbled on proposals to cut tariffs and subsidies. With an eye on December's U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen seeing a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto pact, leaders will also try to narrow differences over cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and funding for low carbon technology. They are likely to agree to a goal to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times and strengthen last year's vague "vision" of halving global carbon emissions by 2050. If also adopted by the 17-member Major Economies Forum talks chaired on Thursday by U.S. President Barack Obama at his first G8 summit, this would be major progress as India and China have so far refused to accept the 2050 target. | 0 |
India is likely to suffer more than most countries as a result of climate change, with poor agricultural output, more natural disasters and increased deaths due to higher occurance of diseases, the author of an acclaimed report on global warning said on Wednesday. Former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern's report on the economic impact of climate change said unchecked greenhouse gas emissions would see global temperatures rise by 2-3 degrees centrigrade in the next 50 years. Speaking to Indian businessmen, Stern said the annual June-September monsoon rains, which India is heavily dependent on for its crop production, would impact the economy. "There could be more variable starting dates (for the monsoon). There could be periods of much greater intensity and there could be quite extended periods of no rain. But it is likely to be disrupted," he said. "It's clear India will suffer like the rest of the world, perhaps more that the rest of the world." Experts estimate a temperature rise of between 2 and 3.5 degrees centigrade, would cost India a loss of between nine and 25 percent of total agricultural revenue. Agriculture makes up around 22 percent of India's gross domestic product. Stern said temperature rises would also mean vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever spreading to higher altitude regions known for being free of mosquitoes. As a result, there was a likelihood of more deaths that would result in lower productivity, he said. The head of Britain's Economic Service said the melting of Himalayan glaciers would mean neighbouring Bangladesh could experience serious floods as a result of rising sea levels, sparking mass migration across the border into India. He said the flow of water from the glaciers would be curtailed during India's dry season and would have "serious consequences". Experts say melting glaciers will affect one-sixth of the world's population residing mainly in the Indian subcontinent. India's Ganga river receives 70 percent of its summer water flow from the Himalayan glaciers and sustains over 500 million people. Stern said India was making progress in adapting to the challenges faced in curbing emissions and investing in clean development mechanisms. But climate change was an inequitable process in which rich nations had to take the burden of responsibility, he said. "This is a doubly inequitable process as it's the rich countries who are responsible for 75 percent of the greenhouse gases that are up there and it's the poor countries that will be hit earliest and hardest," he said. "All countries must be involved, but equity demands that the rich countries bear the big majority of the cost." | 0 |
In an address near his home in Wilmington, Biden made the argument that racial justice is central to his overall policy vision in areas like housing, infrastructure and support for small businesses, while aiming to draw a stark contrast with a president who has regularly inflamed racial tensions. “This election is not just about voting against Donald Trump,” Biden said, standing before four American flags in a community center gym. “It’s about rising to this moment of crisis, understanding people’s struggles and building a future worthy of their courage and their ambition to overcome.” Biden’s plan is the fourth piece of his “Build Back Better” proposal, an economic agenda that also encompasses manufacturing, climate and infrastructure, and caregiving plans, and takes aim at Trump’s stewardship of the economy and his effect on working families, a potential vulnerability that has emerged during the coronavirus crisis. The speech Tuesday came with just under 100 days until Election Day, amid a searing national debate over racism in American society. Biden continues to hold a substantial lead over Trump in national polls, and with each successive economic rollout, he has been trying to counter one of Trump’s enduring sources of voter support. The plan fell short of some of the most ambitious proposals promoted by the left wing of the Democratic Party. Biden, for instance, did not embrace reparations for slavery or endorse “baby bonds,” a government-run savings program for children championed during the primary by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey. Campaign officials said Biden had not ruled out eventually accepting such a plan, and that he was not opposed to a study of reparations. But the proposal he released on Tuesday did emphasise the importance of closing the racial wealth gap, and outlined multiple prescriptions for doing so. Biden laid out plans for a small-business opportunity fund to help make capital available to minority business owners, and he proposed to triple the goal for awarding federal contracts to small disadvantaged businesses, to at least 15% of the money doled out from 5%. The plan also seeks to improve the opportunity zone program that was created as part of the 2017 tax overhaul. “In good times, communities of color still lag,” Biden said. “In bad times, they get hit first, and the hardest. And in recovery, they take the longest to bounce back. This is about justice.” In recent months, as the country has grappled with devastating public health and economic problems and a growing outcry over racial injustice, Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has increasingly called for ambitious measures to address the nation’s challenges. He has sometimes gone far beyond the instincts toward relatively incremental change that guided him in the primary campaign, at least compared with many of his Democratic opponents. As he seeks to unite and energize his party around his candidacy, he has sought input from a broad range of experts and officials, including from a series of task forces assembled with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, his liberal primary rival. But Biden, the former vice president, continues to confront a lack of enthusiasm from some progressive voters, and while he won the primary with strong support from African American voters — in particular, older ones — he faces challenges generating excitement among some younger voters of color. In the primary campaign, he was not the choice of many liberal activists of color, and he still faces skepticism from some of them about whether he can sufficiently address their concerns. Trump has sought to portray Biden as hostage to an extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, whose extravagant spending would wreck the nation’s economy. The plan Biden unveiled touched on a wide range of economic issues. It emphasises support for small-business owners of color, promising that he will “leverage more than $150 billion in new capital and opportunities for small businesses that have been structurally excluded for generations,” including by increasing access to venture capital and low-interest business loans. Biden, who has long faced anger from some voters over his leading role in the 1994 crime bill, which many experts link to mass incarceration, also addressed some criminal justice matters in the plan. He would aim to help states improve their criminal justice data infrastructure so they can automatically seal criminal records for certain nonviolent offenders. The plan also said that he would try to amend the Federal Reserve Act “to require the Fed to regularly report on current data and trends in racial economic gaps — and what actions the Fed is taking through its monetary and regulatory policies to close these gaps.” The Fed, which influences the speed of economic growth and the unemployment rate with its interest rate policies, already regularly discusses racial and ethnic economic outcomes in its reports and testimonies. It has shied away from targeting any specific group’s unemployment rate when setting monetary policy, despite a growing chorus suggesting that it ought to consider targeting the Black jobless rate, which has historically remained higher for longer. The Rev Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, called Biden’s overarching proposal promising, but said he wanted to see Biden call for more far-reaching proposals to ensure that Black Americans frequently do business with the government. “It’s the right direction,” he said. “I just want to see more, and I intend to push for more.” Aimee Allison, the founder of She the People, a political advocacy group focused on women of color, said that the Biden campaign was taking encouraging steps on issues of economic, racial and gender “justice,” as she put it. “Progressives, we had other candidates in the primary that we would look at as carrying some of these messages,” said Allison, who was often a Biden critic in the primary and said there are still issues he must address. “Now, the Biden campaign has showed an openness and willingness.” A number of the policies highlighted in Biden’s proposal were already announced as part of other plans, like a housing proposal that would provide a tax credit of up to $15,000 for first-time homebuyers, and a goal that disadvantaged communities receive 40% of the benefits of spending on clean energy infrastructure. In contrast to the previous economic plans Biden outlined, which focused on major, transformational changes to certain sectors of the American economy, the proposal he unveiled on Tuesday was a broader effort seeking to emphasise the idea that racial justice is integral to his policy vision. He began his address by invoking two icons of the civil rights era who recently died, Rep John Lewis, D-Ga, and the Rev CT Vivian. Biden recounted the time he walked over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, with Lewis, and a conversation the two men had before Lewis died. “He asked that we stay focused on the work left undone to heal this nation,” Biden said. “To remain undaunted by the public health crisis and the economic crisis that’s taken the blinders off in this crisis and showed the systemic racism for what it is that plagues this nation.” In his speech and in a subsequent question-and-answer session with reporters, Biden repeatedly lashed out at his opponent’s stewardship of the crises facing the country. He also forcefully rebuffed Trump’s attempts to cast him as soft on law enforcement, as protesters clash with federal agents in Portland, Oregon. Peaceful protesters, Biden said, “should be protected and arsonists and anarchists should be prosecuted, and local law enforcement can do that.” And Biden accused Trump of “trying to scare the hell out of the suburbs” by suggesting that Obama-era policies were “causing you to end up, by implication, having those Black neighbors next to you.” “That’s supposed to scare people,” Biden said. Asked about his vice-presidential selection process, Biden revealed little, saying he would have a choice in the first week in August. But handwritten notes that Biden held at the event — which were captured by an Associated Press photographer — touched on the subject in more detail. They included talking points about Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who is considered a top-tier vice-presidential contender. “Do not hold grudges,” the notes said. A few lines down, they read, “Great respect for her.” © 2020 New York Times News Service | 2 |
Australia's prime minister, facing a tough re-election fight and under pressure over his climate credentials, has pledged new "clean energy" targets in a move environment groups said would not sway green-leaning voters. By 2020, John Howard said, 15 percent of Australia's energy would come from "clean" sources including solar, wind, nuclear or clean coal, reversing his coalition government's previous reluctance to lift its renewable energy target from 2 percent. The promise also dropped "renewable" from the government's agenda, paving the way for a controversial switch to nuclear energy, backed by Howard as a greenhouse-friendly alternative. "It will drive additional investment in renewable energy and other low-emissions electricity generation. This will reduce costs for business, and ultimately for households," Howard said, promising to roll state and national schemes into one. But environment group Greenpeace said the target only streamlined existing state-based schemes, leaving sunny Australia lagging behind renewable energy leaders such as Germany and Spain, which are harnessing solar and wind power. "The coalition's clean energy target is a missed opportunity to drive the growth of Australia's renewable energy industry and cut greenhouse pollution," Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham said. Howard, 68, is expected to call a national election within weeks and is polling well behind the opposition Labor Party, whose leader Kevin Rudd has pledged to sign the Kyoto Protocol capping greenhouse gas emissions in 35 developed nations. A long-running drought in much of Australia and warnings by international scientists about the impact of global warming have spooked voters and elevated climate change to an election-turning issue. A Galaxy poll on Monday had Labor 12 points in front of the government, 56 to 44, which would hand a landslide election victory to the youthful Rudd. Rudd, who is this week tipped to unveil a renewable energy target of 20 percent, also won backing at the weekend from former US vice-president and climate change campaigner Al Gore. To win over voters Howard has promised a carbon emissions trading system, banned incandescent light bulbs and pledged A$200 million ($173 million) to combat forest clearing in Asia. Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne said Howard's clean target of 30,000 gigawatt hours each year did not add up and was just 9 percent of demand projected by the government's official commodities forecaster to reach 342,000 GWh in 2019. "Around the world, the renewable energy industry is booming. In Australia, where we have tremendous resources and world-leading researchers, our industry is stalling," Milne said. ($1=A$1.15) | 0 |
Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide were now far above pre-industrial levels, with no sign of a reversal of the upward trend, the Guardian quoted the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) report as saying. "The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5m years ago, when the temperature was 2-3C warmer and sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now," WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas SAID. "The science is clear. Without rapid cuts in CO2 and other greenhouse gases, climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible impacts on life on Earth. The window of opportunity for action is almost closed." Levels of CO2 rose to a global average of 405.5 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2017 - two-and-a-half times higher than before the industrial revolution. Levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas responsible for about 17 per cent of global warming are now 3.5 times higher than pre-industrial times owing to emissions from cattle, rice paddies and leaks from oil and gas wells. Nitrous oxide, which also warms the planet and destroys the Earth's protective ozone layer, was now at more than double pre-industrial levels, according to the WMO report. About 40 per cent of N2O comes from human activities including soil degradation, fertiliser use and industry. Efforts to cut emissions were increasing and on Wednesday the UN's climate change body published a report on the commitments made in 2018. It found 9,000 cities in 128 countries were taking action, along with 240 states and regions in 40 countries and more than 6,000 businesses in 120 countries. | 0 |
The report lists the population explosion along the coast lines, overfishing, the pollution of coastal areas, global warming and invasive species among the main reasons that have put Caribbean coral reefs in danger of extinction.The report was prepared in cooperation between the UNEP, Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).It is the result of the work of 90 experts who studied corals, seaweeds, grazing sea urchins and fish.The experts agreed that 50 percent of the Caribbean sea coral cover has disappeared since the 1960's."The rate at which the Caribbean corals have been declining is truly alarming," said Carl Gustaf Lundin, Director of IUCN's Global Marine and Polar Programme."But this study brings some very encouraging news: The fate of Caribbean corals is not beyond our control and there are some very concrete steps that we can take to help them recover," he added.According to the report published in the UNEP website, "restoring parrotfish populations and improving other management strategies such as protection from overfishing and excessive coastal pollution could help the reefs recover and make them more resilient to future climate change impacts."Parrotfish were brought to the brink of extinction due to overfishing throughout the 20th century, something which the experts find as a reason which led to coral decline in the region.The disappearance of parrotfish broke the natural balance of coral reefs when algae, the species' food, were allowed to smother the reefs.It is necessary to take action to address overfishing and pollution, with the aim of contributing to the restoration of these reefs and making them more able to adapt to climate change caused by the high temperature of the sea water, said the report.Climate change is the most prominent threat to coral reefs, as it raises the level of acidic ocean waters that cause coral bleaching.The report is based on an analysis of 35,000 surveys taken from 90 different locations in the Caribbean.The study concluded that the corals which have suffered the most tragic declines are those in Jamaica, along the shores of the US state of Florida, as well as the US Virgin Islands.The Caribbean region is home to nine percent of the world's coral reefs, which can be found in the waters of 38 countries, generating vital revenues for local economies. | 0 |
LONDON,Fri Jul 13,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown denied on Friday a shift in foreign policy away from the United States after one of his ministers told an audience there that a country's strength depended on alliances not military might. International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, in a speech in Washington on Thursday, said while Britain stood beside the United States in fighting terrorism, isolationism did not work in an interdependent world. "In the 20th century a country's might was too often measured in what they could destroy. In the 21st, strength should be measured by what we can build together," Alexander said, in comments interpreted by British media as signaling a change in the British government's relationship with Washington. A spokesman for Brown denied the speech marked any turnaround in policy and said the interpretation put on Alexander's words by the media was "quite extraordinary". Brown told BBC radio he would continue to work closely with the US administration. "We'll not allow people to separate us from the United States of America in dealing with the common challenges we face around the world," he said, when asked about Alexander's words. Washington has been watching Brown's new government for signs of any policy change after years of close ties under his predecessor Tony Blair. Brown took over last month with promises of change to woo back voters after 10 years of his Labour Party's rule and in particular to draw a line under the unpopular Iraq war. Blair's closeness to Washington was unpopular with many Britons. NEW ALLIANCES Alexander said in the speech at the Council of Foreign Relations that nations must form new alliances "not just to protect us from the world but ones which reach out to the world." He later told BBC radio Britain's relationship with Washington was important, as part of a wider framework. "Gordon Brown has made very clear that he regards a strong relationship with the U.S. as being one of the fundamental bases of his foreign policy," he said. "But he also wants to see strong relationships with our partners within the European Union, and indeed growing and strong relationships with China and India, emerging powers in Asia," Alexander said. Brown will visit Berlin on Monday and plans to visit Paris and Washington in the coming weeks, his spokesman said. While few analysts expect Brown to announce an immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, there is speculation the withdrawal may accelerate. Britain has been reducing troop numbers in Iraq and now has about 5,500 in the south. Additional impetus is coming from the United States, where the House of Representatives voted for the third time on Thursday to bring combat troops out of Iraq. Two previous efforts to set a timetable either died in the Senate or were vetoed by President George W Bush. Alexander said in his speech while there were few global challenges that did not require Washington's engagement, countries should work together through organizations like the United Nations to seek shared solutions to the world's problems. "We need to demonstrate by our word and our actions that we are internationalist not isolationist; multilateralist not unilateralist," he said. "There is no security or prosperity at home unless we deal with the global challenges of security, globalization, climate change, disease and poverty. We must recognize these challenges and champion an internationalist approach." | 0 |
Floods, storms and drought also killed and displaced
millions of people across some of the world's poorest regions, highlighting the
rising injustice of impacts as the planet warms, humanitarian charity Christian
Aid said in a report. "The costs of climate change have been grave this
year," said Kat Kramer, climate policy lead at Christian Aid and author of
"Counting the cost 2021: a year of climate breakdown". "While it was good to see some progress made at the
(UN) COP26 summit, it is clear (we are) not on track to ensure a safe and
prosperous world," she added. The report identified 15 of the most destructive climate
disasters of the year, including 10 that each caused $1.5bn or more in losses,
with damage wrought by wild weather felt everywhere from Australia to India,
South Sudan and Canada. The financial and human costs of climate change are expected
to keep soaring unless governments step up efforts to cut emissions and rein in
global warming, the report said. Growing calls from at-risk nations to establish a new fund
to help cover climate-linked "loss and damage" in a hotter world must
be a "global priority" in 2022, said Nushrat Chowdhury, Christian
Aid's climate justice advisor in Bangladesh. Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a
Nairobi-based think-tank, noted Africa had borne the brunt of some of the most
devastating - if not the most expensive - impacts this year, from flooding to
drought. "(2022) needs to be the year we provide real financial
support for those on the frontline of the crisis," he added. Here are some facts about the most costly disasters of 2021: Source: Christian Aid, "Counting the cost 2021: a year
of climate breakdown" | 0 |
British leader Tony Blair flew to Libya for talks with Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday as BP sealed a big energy deal with Tripoli in a further boost to the West's ties with the once-isolated north African state. Blair, making the second trip of his prime ministership to Libya, arrived in Gaddafi's home town of Sirte and was due to meet the Libyan leader in a tent in the desert, officials said. Blair was also due to meet representatives of families of hundreds of HIV-infected children at the centre of a case in which five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor have been sentenced to death by a Libyan court. In a sign of a developing economic relationship between Britain and Libya that Blair's spokesman called "hugely important", BP negotiated an agreement to explore for natural gas in Libya, according to a Libyan official. "There is a natural gas exploration deal worth $900 million," Shokri Ghanem, the chairman of state owned National Oil Corporation (NOC), told reporters. The Libya visit marks the start of Blair's last tour of Africa before he resigns as prime minister on June 27 after a decade in power, handing over to finance minister Gordon Brown. Blair will also travel to Sierra Leone and South Africa in preparation for a summit of the Group of Eight industrialised countries in Germany next week, when Africa and climate change will top the agenda, and to push for a global free trade deal. Blair first visited Libya in 2004, sealing Tripoli's return to the international fold after it abandoned efforts to acquire banned weapons and agreed to pay damages for a 1988 airliner bombing over Scotland. Gaddafi complained in a BBC interview in March that Libya had not been properly compensated for renouncing nuclear weapons and said that as a result countries like Iran and North Korea would not follow his lead.
Blair's spokesman said the prime minister would discuss the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region with Libyan officials. "Libya has played a useful role in the African Union and has been playing a useful role in regard to Sudan," the spokesman said. "We will want to hear their assessment of where we are." The U.N. Security Council endorsed plans last Friday for an African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force for Darfur, where some 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million made homeless since 2003. Blair has pushed for tough action over Darfur and his spokesman welcomed President George W. Bush's decision to impose new U.S. sanctions on Sudan over Darfur. In Sierra Leone, Blair is expected to win praise for sending British troops to the country in 2000 to help shore up the United Nations peacekeeping operation there and hasten the end of a civil war marked by atrocities against civilians. Sierra Leone has scheduled presidential and legislative elections for July 28, although the poll may be delayed. In South Africa later this week, Blair is expected to discuss Zimbabwe with President Thabo Mbeki, his spokesman said. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, 83, has vowed to seek another presidential term in 2008, dismissing calls to step down despite his country's economic crisis, which critics blame on his policies. Mugabe blames former colonial power Britain. | 1 |
The major obstacle to a three-way deal was immigration, according to Merkel, who was forced into negotiations after bleeding support in the Sept 24 election to the far right in a backlash at her 2015 decision to let in over 1 million migrants. The failure of exploratory coalition talks involving her conservative bloc, the liberal pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens raises the prospect of a new election and casts doubt about her future after 12 years in power. Merkel, 63, said she was sceptical about ruling in a minority government, telling ARD television: "My point of view is that new elections would be the better path." Her plans did not include being chancellor in a minority government, she said after meeting President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Steinmeier said Germany was facing the worst governing crisis in the 68-year history of its post-World War Two democracy and pressed all parties in parliament "to serve our country" and try to form a government. His remarks appeared aimed at the FDP and the Social Democrats (SPD), who on Monday ruled out renewing their "grand coalition" with the conservatives. "Inside our country, but also outside, in particular in our European neighbourhood, there would be concern and a lack of understanding if politicians in the biggest and economically strongest country (in Europe) did not live up to their responsibilities," read a statement from Steinmeier, a former foreign minister who has been thrust centre-stage after taking on the usually largely ceremonial head of state role in March. Steinmeier's intervention suggests he regards a new election - desired by half of Germany's voters according to a poll - as a last resort. The SPD has so far stuck to a pledge after heavy losses in the September election not to go back into a Merkel-led broad coalition of centre-left and centre-right. Merkel urged the SPD to reconsider. "I would hope that they consider very intensively if they should take on the responsibility" of governing, she told broadcaster ZDF, adding she saw no reason to resign and her conservative bloc would enter any new election more unified than before. "If new elections happened, then ... we have to accept that. I'm afraid of nothing," she said. Business leaders also called for a swift return to talks. With German leadership seen as crucial for a European Union grappling with governance reform and Britain's impending exit, FDP leader Christian Lindner's announcement that he was pulling out spooked investors and sent the euro falling in the morning. Both the euro and European shares later recovered from early selling, while German bond yields steadied near 1-1/2 week lows, as confidence about the outlook for the euro zone economy helped investors brush off worries about the risk of Germany going to the polls again soon. Fear of far-right gains Earlier, Merkel got the strong backing of her CDU leadership. Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of Germany weekly Die Zeit said she could rely on CDU support for now, but added: "I will not bet on her serving out her entire four-year term." The main parties fear another election so soon would let the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party add to the 13 percent of votes it secured in September, when it entered parliament for the first time. Polls suggest a repeat election would return a similarly fragmented parliament. A poll published on Monday showed a new election would bring roughly the same result as the September election, with the Greens set to see the biggest gains. If Germans voted next Sunday, Merkel's conservatives would get 31 percent, the SPD 21 percent, the Greens and the AfD both 12 percent, the FDP 10 percent and the Left party 9 percent, the Forsa survey for RTL television showed. This compares with the election result of 32.9 percent for the conservatives, 20.5 percent for the SPD, 12.6 percent for AfD, 10.7 percent for FDP, 9.2 percent for the Left party and 8.9 percent for the Greens. The failure of coalition talks is unprecedented in Germany's post-war history, and was likened by newsmagazine Der Spiegel to the shock election of U.S. President Donald Trump or Britain's referendum vote to leave the EU - moments when countries cast aside reputations for stability built up over decades. Any outcome in Germany is, however, likely to be more consensus driven. "The problem is stagnation and immobility, not instability as in Italy," said Joffe. The unravelling of the German talks came as a surprise since the main sticking points - immigration and climate policy - were not seen as FDP signature issues. Responding to criticism from the Greens, FDP vice chairman Wolfgang Kubicki said a tie-up would have been short-lived. "Nothing would be worse than to get into a relationship about which we know that it will end in a dirty divorce," he said. Even if the SPD or the FDP revisit their decisions, the price for either party to change its mind could be the departure of Merkel, who since 2005 has been a symbol of German stability, leading Europe through the euro zone crisis. The inability to form a government caused disquiet elsewhere in Europe, not least because of the implications for the euro zone reforms championed by French President Emmanuel Macron. Germany's political impasse could also complicate and potentially delay the Brexit negotiations - Britain has just over a year to strike a divorce deal with the EU ahead of an exit planned for March 29, 2019. "It's not in our interests that the process freezes up," Macron told reporters in Paris, adding he had spoken with Merkel shortly after the failure of talks. | 0 |
NEW DELHI, Dec 29, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - India and Japan agreed on Tuesday to ease visa rules within a year to boost trade between two of Asia's biggest economies that are also trying to broaden cooperation in defence and nuclear energy. Japan is among India's biggest aid donors and bilateral trade has only begun picking up in recent years with Tokyo easing sanctions it imposed after India tested a nuclear device in 1998. Both countries are working on a comprehensive trade agreement but procedural issues such as restrictive visa rules have slowed progress, officials said. As Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama wrapped up his three-day visit on Tuesday, the issue of visas came up in his meeting with Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh. "I requested Prime Minister Hatoyama to ensure that Japanese visa system becomes more liberal to enable faster growth of trade, investment and people to people contact," Singh told a joint press conference in New Delhi. Singh said the Japanese prime minister had mentioned "restrictive features" in the Indian visa system and that he had promised to look into it. Growing trade has added a new dimension to the India-Japan relationship, which traditionally many in New Delhi have viewed as only a counterweight against common rival China. The two sides have targeted $20 billion in trade by next year from more than $12 billion in 2008-09. But that is only a small slice of Japan's overseas trade. Japan's two-way trade with China was worth $266.8 billion in 2008. The two prime ministers also discussed cooperation in renewable energy, including nuclear energy, infrastructure projects, security and climate change. Japan and India already hold regular joint military exercises. | 0 |
(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - How do carbon trading schemes work, and why do some critics object to them? WHAT'S THE AIM OF CARBON TRADING? Carbon dioxide, produced mainly by burning fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum or through deforestation, is the main greenhouse gas that scientists say is heating up the atmosphere, causing seas to rise and greater extremes of weather. Putting a price on every tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by industry and transport or saved from being emitted by being more efficient or locking away carbon by growing trees provides a cash incentive to curb carbon pollution. HOW DOES IT WORK? Under cap-and-trade schemes, companies must have a permit for every tonne of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, they emit. The more they emit, the more permits they must have. A government issues a set quantity of emission permits for polluting companies, and has an overall cap on the number of permits they will allow to be sold. At the end of each year, firms surrender permits equivalent to their emissions. Companies can buy or trade emissions by buying allowances from other polluters, or from a government auction. Over time the cap is tightened by decreasing the number of permits or decreasing the number of free permits to big emitters. As the carbon permit price rises, companies are forced to become more efficient and invest in cleaner technology. Under the only current global climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, 37 industrialised nations already face greenhouse gas limits, creating a multi-billion dollar market in offsets from clean-energy projects in developing countries. For a FACTBOX on existing carbon schemes, click [ID:nLC685579] HOW MUCH MONEY MIGHT THE NEW CARBON MARKETS ATTRACT? Globally, carbon trading could be worth $2 trillion by 2020, from $125 billion last year, some market players say. Europe's scheme is the largest, and only domestic, cap-and-trade system operating. Launched in 2005, its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is mandatory for all 27 member states, and covers nearly half all EU carbon emissions. HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH A separate Kyoto scheme, called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), is currently worth about $6.5 billion. Some companies have opted for an unregulated voluntary market, which operates outside the CDM and the EU's ETS. About 123 million tonnes of carbon credits, valued at $705 million, were transacted in the global voluntary carbon market in 2008, according to industry estimates. This is a fraction of the $125 billion global carbon market. HOW WOULD AUSTRALIA'S SCHEME WORK A fixed carbon price of about $9.25 (A$10)/tonne would be set from July 2011. A fully open market would operate from mid-2012. The scheme aims to cover 1,000 of Australia's biggest polluters and 75 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions. AND WHY IS EMISSIONS TRADING CONTROVERSIAL? Carbon market mechanisms such as cap-and-trade are often seen as more politically acceptable and attractive to industry than carbon taxes. Opinion polls show most Australians support action on climate change, but are wary of the electricity and fuel cost hikes emissions trading would bring. Critics of the schemes range from climate change sceptics, who do not believe carbon emissions are human-created or warrant controls, to green groups who dislike the market-led approach. Some environmentalists say turning carbon dioxide into a commodity by pricing it, and giving compensation to companies who participate in carbon markets, amounts to an undeserved subsidy for polluters, and sends the wrong signal about the kind of action needed to the challenge. The extent to which the schemes will actually reduce emissions is also hotly debated. | 0 |
She mocked the toxic masculinity of users imagining themselves as Dong Cunrui, a textbook war hero who, according to Chinese Communist Party lore, died valiantly during the civil war that brought the party to power in 1949. For that passing reference, the woman, 27 and identified in court only by her last name, Xu, was sentenced last month to seven months in prison. Her crime: violating a newly amended criminal code that punishes the slander of China’s martyrs and heroes. Since it went into effect in March, the statute has been enforced with a revolutionary zeal, part of an intensified campaign under China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to sanctify the Communist Party’s version of history — and his vision for the country’s future. The Cyberspace Administration of China, which polices the country’s internet, has created telephone and online hotlines to encourage citizens to report violations. It has even published a list of 10 “rumours” that are forbidden to discuss. Was Mao Zedong’s Long March really not so long? Did the Red Army skirt heavy fighting against the Japanese during World War II to save its strength for the civil war against the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek? Was Mao’s son, Mao Anying, killed by a US airstrike during the Korean War because he lit a stove to make fried rice? Asking those very questions risks arrest and, now, prosecution. “It is a sign of the establishment of an absolute political totalitarianism,” said Wu Qiang, an outspoken political analyst in Beijing. China’s Communist Party has long policed dissent, severely restricting public discussion of topics it deems to be politically incorrect, from Tibet to the Tiananmen Square protests. The new law goes further. It has criminalised as slander topics that were once subjects of historical debate and research, including Mao’s rule itself up to a point. Since March, the law has been used at least 15 times to punish slights to party history. The campaign reflects an ambition by Xi to solidify a moral foundation for the Communist Party’s supremacy, a theme the Chinese leader often evokes in speeches and articles. The party once could rely on the financial inducements of a booming economy and coercive control of the security state to cement its rule, but now appears to be using political and historical orthodoxy as a foundation, said Adam Ni, a director of the China Policy Centre in Australia and editor of China Story. “There are limits to these tools,” he said of the economy and security state. “They need the moral — the moral legitimacy to maintain their rule.” A version of the slander law was first adopted in 2018, but an amendment to the country’s criminal code that took effect March 1 allowed prosecutors to seek criminal punishment, including prison sentences of up to three years. In April, a 19-year-old man in Nanjing was charged for disparaging the victims of the Japanese massacre there in 1937. A 63-year-old man in Beijing was charged for mocking a Navy fighter pilot, Lt Cmdr Wang Wei, who crashed in the South China Sea after colliding with a US surveillance aircraft in 2001. At least three people were detained in May for derisive comments after the death of Yuan Longping, a scientist who developed high-yield hybrid strains of rice. Last month, authorities arrested a man in Nanchang after he posted an irreverent comment about the legend surrounding the death of Mao’s son in 1950. “That fried rice was the best thing to come out of the whole Korean War,” he wrote. Officials have defended the law as a necessary tool to fight what one director with the Cyberspace Administration of China, Wen Youhua, called “historical nihilism,” which officials often use to describe deviant views. “These people may be trying to gain clicks or eyeballs, but these behaviours obviously touch moral and legal bottom lines,” Li Liang, a law professor in Beijing, told The People’s Daily in April. Xi, preparing for what is likely to be a third term as Communist Party leader beginning next year, will use a gathering of the party elite in Beijing next week to adopt a new resolution on the party’s history — an official summation of the past and its lessons. Among Chinese leaders, only Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping have enacted such decisions, underscoring the ambition of Xi’s campaign. “We need to educate and guide the whole party to vigorously carry forward the red tradition,” Xi said this year. The tougher slander law took effect shortly after the disclosure by the government in February that four Chinese soldiers had died during a clash with Indian troops along the disputed border in June 2020. Within days, at least seven people were charged for questioning the official version of the death toll, which was reportedly much higher. They included Qiu Ziming, a prominent blogger with 2.5 million followers on Weibo, the country’s Twitter-like social media platform. Although he and the others were arrested under a long-standing article in the criminal code called “picking quarrels and provoking troubles,” Qiu, 38, was prosecuted under the new law, even though the changes went into effect 10 days after he made his comments. In May, after being shown confessing on state television, he was sentenced to eight months in prison. The campaign has inspired vigilantism, with internet users calling out potential violations. The Jiangsu branch of China Unicom, a state-owned telecommunications company, came under investigation after a public uproar started when its Weibo account posted a recipe for fried rice on what was Mao Anying’s birthday. It is not clear whether the company faces criminal charges, but its account was suspended. Some of the cases involved historical events that historians in China have previously debated and studied, at least until now. Last month, a former journalist, Luo Changping, was detained in Hainan after he wrote a blog questioning the rationale for China’s intervention in the Korean War — and the catastrophic cost for those “volunteers” sent to fight and die in it. He was responding to a new movie blockbuster that depicts a major Chinese attack known as “The Battle at Lake Changjin.” The movie, which runs 2 hours and 56 minutes, brims with maudlin patriotism for the selfless sacrifice of soldiers who defeated the US-led forces. “Half a century later, few Chinese people have reflected on the justifiability of the war,” Luo wrote on Weibo, before referring specifically to a doomed Chinese military unit “that did not doubt the ‘wise decision’ of the top.” Made with government backing and heavily promoted in state media, it has become the second-highest grossing film in the country’s history, earning the equivalent of $855 million in the month it has been showing, according to Maoyan, the ticketing service. When the film opened, Ni, the researcher, noted on Twitter that the battle it depicts had not previously been a focus of the Communist Party’s propaganda before because it had been seen as a costly strategic blunder, not the resounding victory portrayed on the screen. Now it has become part of a new and unassailable version of history. John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul and author of a forthcoming book about the war, said that even within the limits of political censorship, Chinese scholars have done “a lot of great work” on the war and other historical events since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. With the shifting political climate, that may no longer be safe. “With this, obviously, everyone is going to have to stop what they’re doing,” he said. © 2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
As the silver waters of the Kishanganga rush through this north Kashmir valley, Indian labourers are hard at work on a hydropower project that will dam the river just before it flows across one of the world's most heavily militarised borders into Pakistan. The hum of excavators echoes through the pine-covered valley, clearing masses of soil and boulders, while army trucks crawl through the steep Himalayan mountain passes. The 330-MW dam is a symbol of India's growing focus on hydropower but also highlights how water is a growing source of tension with downstream Pakistan, which depends on the snow-fed Himalayan rivers for everything from drinking water to agriculture. Islamabad has complained to an international court that the dam in the Gurez valley, one of dozens planned by India, will affect river flows and is illegal. The court has halted any permanent work on the river for the moment, although India can still continue tunnelling and other associated projects. In the years since their partition from British India in 1947, land disputes have led the two nuclear-armed neighbours to two of their three wars. Water could well be the next flashpoint. "There is definitely potential for conflict based on water, particularly if we are looking to the year 2050, when there could be considerable water scarcity in India and Pakistan," says Michael Kugelman, South Asia Associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. "Populations will continue to grow. There will be more pressure on supply. Factor in climate change and faster glacial melt ... That means much more will be at stake. So you could have a perfect storm which conceivably could be some sort of trigger." It's not just South Asia -- water disputes are a global phenomenon, sparked by growing populations, rapid urbanisation, increased irrigation and a rising demand for alternative power such as hydroelectricity. Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq quarrel over the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Jordan river divides Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and the West Bank. Ten African countries begrudgingly share the Nile. In Southeast Asia, China and Laos are building dams over the mighty Mekong, raising tensions with downstream nations. A US intelligence report in February warned fresh water supplies are unlikely to keep up with global demand by 2040, increasing political instability, hobbling economic growth and endangering world food markets. A "water war" is unlikely in the next decade, it said, but beyond that rising demand and scarcities due to climate change and poor management will increase the risk of conflict. Major Threat That threat is possibly nowhere more apparent than in South Asia, home to a fifth of humanity and rife with historical tensions, mistrust and regional rivalries. The region's three major river systems - the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra - sustain India and Pakistan's breadbasket states and many of their major cities including New Delhi and Islamabad, as well as Bangladesh. "South Asia is symbolic of what we are seeing in terms of water stress and tensions across the world," says B G Verghese, author and analyst at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research. The region is one of the world's most water-stressed, yet the population is adding an extra 25 million people a year - South Asia's per capita water availability has dropped by 70 percent since 1950, says the Asian Development Bank. The effect of climate change on glaciers and rainfall patterns may be crucial. "Most of the water that is used in Pakistan comes from glacial melt or the monsoon," says Rafay Alam, an environmental lawyer and coordinator of the water programme at Lahore University of Management Sciences. The dry months of June-July offer a snapshot of the extreme water crisis in the region. Hospitals in New Delhi this year cancelled surgeries because they had no water to sterilise instruments, clean operating theatres or even wash hands. Swanky malls selling luxury brands were forced to switch off air conditioners and shut toilets. In Pakistan, the port town of Gwadar ran out of water entirely, forcing the government to send two naval water tankers. Some government flats in the garrison city of Rawalpindi have not had water for weeks, said the local press. India, as both an upper and lower riparian nation, finds itself at the centre of water disputes with its eastern and western downstream neighbours – Bangladesh and Pakistan – which accuse New Delhi of monopolising water flows. To the north and northeast, India fears the same of upstream China, with which it fought a brief border war in 1962. Beijing plans a series of dams over the Tsangpo river, called the Brahmaputra as it flows into eastern India. Dam Disputes For India, damming its Himalayan rivers is key to generating electricity, as well as managing irrigation and flood control. Hydropower is a critical part of India's energy security strategy and New Delhi plans to use part of it to reach about 40 percent of people who are currently off the grid. A severe power shortage is hitting factory output and rolling outages are routine, further stifling an economy which is growing at its slowest in years. India's plans have riled Bangladesh, which it helped gain freedom from Pakistan in 1971. Relations cooled partly over the construction of the Farakka Barrage (dam) on the Ganges River which Dhaka complained to the United Nations about in 1976. The issue remains a sore point even now. More recently, Bangladesh has opposed India's plans to dam the Teesta and Barak rivers in its remote northeast. But India's hydropower plans are most worrying for Pakistan. Water has long been a source of stress between the two countries. The line that divided them in 1947 also cleaved the province of Punjab, literally the land of five rivers - the Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum, all tributaries of the Indus - breaking up millenniums-old irrigation systems. India's latest hydro plans have fanned new tensions. "Pakistan is extremely worried that India is planning to build a whole sequence of projects on both the Chenab and Jhelum rivers ... and the extent to which India then becomes capable of controlling water flows," says Feisal Naqvi, a lawyer who works on water issues. In recent years, political rhetoric over water has been on the rise in Islamabad, and militant groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba have sought to use the issue to whip up anti-India sentiments - accusing New Delhi of "stealing water". India brushes off such fears as paranoia and argues the dams won't consume or store water but just delay flows, in line with a 1960 treaty that governs the sharing of Indus waters between the two countries. Sink or Swim South Asia's water woes may have little to do with cross-border disputes, however. Shortages appear to be rooted in wasteful and inefficient water management practices, with India and Pakistan the worst culprits, experts say. "All these countries are badly managing their water resources, yet they are experts in blaming other countries outside," says Sundeep Waslekar, president of Strategic Foresight Group, a Mumbai-based think-tank. "It would be more constructive if they looked at what they are doing at home, than across their borders." Their water infrastructure systems, such as canals and pipes used to irrigate farm lands, are falling apart from neglect. Millions of gallons of water are lost to leakages every day. The strain on groundwater is the most disturbing. In India, more than 60 percent of irrigated agriculture and 85 percent of drinking water depend on it, says the World Bank. Yet in 20 years, most of its aquifers will be in a critical condition. Countries must improve water management, say experts, and share information such as river flows as well as joint ventures on dam projects such as those India is doing with Bhutan. "Populations are growing, demand is increasing, climate change is taking its toll and we are getting into deeper and deeper waters," says Verghese, author of 'Waters of Hope: Himalayan-Ganga cooperation for a billion people'. "You can't wait and watch. You have to get savvy and do something about it. Why get locked into rhetoric? We need to cooperate. Unless you learn to swim, you are dead." This report is part of a special multimedia report on water produced by AlertNet, a global humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation. For more information visit water.trust.org | 0 |
The world's top greenhouse polluter hosts week-long UN climate talks from Monday aimed at sealing a broader pact to fight global warming and helping poorer nations with money and clean-energy technology. The meeting in the northern port city of Tianjin will be the first time China has hosted the tortuous UN talks over what succeeds the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in late 2012. The United Nations says rich and poor countries need to agree on a tougher pact that curbs fossil fuel emissions blamed for heating up the planet. Scientists say the world is on track for temperatures to rise well beyond 2 degrees Celsius, risking greater weather extremes like this year's floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia. "There is much at stake going into next week's Tianjin meeting and later in the year," wrote Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute, a US environmental group. "Many people are wondering how governments are going to overcome their differences and ensure that progress is made in 2010," Morgan wrote in a commentary on Tianjin. Negotiators from nearly 200 governments failed to agree last year on a new legally binding treaty. A meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009 ended in rancor between rich and developing countries, especially China, and produced a non-binding political accord with many gaps. Officials in Tianjin hope to foster stronger agreement on specifics. These include pledges to curb emissions and how to measure such actions internationally, transfers of adaptation funds and green technology to poorer countries, and over support for carbon-absorbing forests in Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere. More broadly, they hope to dispel some of the distrust that hobbled talks in 2009 and festered after Copenhagen. TRUST If governments fail to score even modest advances, that will cloud chances of solid progress at the next big U.N. climate meeting, in Cancun, Mexico, late this year, and that would make reaching a legally binding treaty in 2011 all the more difficult. That would leave less time for the world to figure out how to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and would add to uncertainties weighing on companies unsure where climate policy and carbon markets are headed after 2012. "The expectations going into Tianjin are to lay a foundation for Cancun, to create an atmosphere of trust," Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based group, said in a conference call with reporters this week. A key worry is the United States, which never ratified Kyoto, will not follow through on the Obama administration's emissions cut pledge after Congress failed to pass a climate bill. "We hope that Tianjin will further advance some consensus on these issues so that the Cancun meeting can reach a preliminary summary that is settled on," said Yang Fuqiang, WWF director of Global Climate Solutions. "If we have such long negotiations and can't advance even one small step, I fear that the gulf of distrust between developed and developing countries will be even bigger," Yang, a former energy official, told Reuters. Although China will be hosting the conference, it does not set the agenda in Tianjin, where negotiators will be focused on a draft treaty put together by the UN climate change body. But China is a crucial presence at the negotiating table, as both the biggest developing economy and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity. Its emissions have more than doubled since 2000 and have outstripped the United States'. China's emissions grew to 7. But China maintains that it and other poorer countries must be given more space to grow their economies and, inevitably, their total emissions for years to come. Beijing has instead vowed to reduce "carbon intensity" -- the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each dollar of economic activity -- by 40-45 percent by 2020 compared to 2005. The United States, European Union and other governments want China, India and other big emerging economies to take on firmer commitments to control and eventually cut emissions, and to subject them to more international monitoring. China and like-minded governments say wealthy economies need to give firmer commitments for economic and technological help against global warming, and to commit to bigger emissions cuts. | 0 |
To answer that question, a team of Princeton researchers, working with a large network of local collaborators, spent three years driving around sub-Saharan Africa collecting the eggs of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which are responsible for Zika, yellow fever and dengue. There are two subspecies of Aedes aegypti: one that prefers humans and one that prefers animals; most populations are a genetic mix. After sending the eggs to New Jersey to grow new colonies, and then tempting the insects with the sweet smells of human and of rodent, the researchers found that the more human-loving mosquitoes tended to come from areas with a dry climate and dense human population. That, in turn, is because humans provide the water mosquitoes need to breed. “There had been quite a bit of speculation in the literature that the original reason this species evolved to be a human specialist had to do with its use of human water,” said Lindy McBride, a Princeton neuroscientist and an author on the study. “It’s easy to come up with hypotheses, but what was incredibly surprising was that you could actually see evidence for that.” Like all mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti lays its eggs on water, so the project began by setting out thousands of ovitraps, little plastic cups lined with seed paper and filled with water and dirty leaves to simulate the ideal breeding environment. (For cups, the team employed the kind that casinos give out to hold poker chips.) The ovitraps were placed in big cities and in rural areas, in an effort to span environmentally diverse locations, said Noah Rose, a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton and co-author of the study published Thursday in Current Biology. A few days later, someone came back and checked for eggs. Not all of the expeditions were successful. “Sometimes you’d spend weeks in a place and just didn’t get any eggs,” Rose said. But in all, the team collected eggs from 27 locations. Once dried, the eggs were akin to seeds; they could lie dormant for six months or a year before being hatched, and so were brought back from all across Africa to the Princeton lab to be bred. After new colonies were established, the next step was figuring out why some populations evolved to become generalists and some to become so-called human specialists. This required deploying an olfactometer: a big plastic box full of mosquitoes, with two removable tubes in it, one containing a guinea pig (or, occasionally, a quail ordered from a farm) and the other holding part of a human. “I was just sitting with my arm in the tube doing this trial over and over again,” Rose said. He spent “a couple months of my life” as mosquito bait, repeating the experiment hundreds of times while listening to audiobooks. (A favourite was Anna Burns’ “Milkman,” about The Troubles in Ireland. Screens kept him and the guinea pig from being bitten.) Within minutes, mosquitoes, attracted to either the human or the nonhuman scent, would pick a tube and enter it. Later, the tubes were removed to count the mosquitoes and figure out how many preferred Rose. The resulting data revealed that mosquitoes that originally came from very dense areas — more than 5,000 people per square mile — liked humans more. (They also had more ancestry from the human-preferring subspecies.) A bigger factor, however, was the climate. Specifically, mosquitoes that came from places that had a rainy season followed by a long, hot, dry season greatly preferred humans. Why? The scientists proposed an explanation that Brian Lazzaro, a professor of entomology at Cornell University who was not involved with the study, called “pretty convincing.” Mosquitoes flourish during the rainy season but then must find a way to survive the dry season. Standing water, critical for mosquitoes to breed, is hard to come by in extremely arid environments. But it can be found around humans, who store water to live, and so mosquito populations from arid regions evolved to take advantage of the situation. Lazzaro also praised the team for sequencing the mosquitoes. That procedure revealed that the human-loving mosquitoes were genetically distinct from the animal-loving ones and found that the preference for humans developed at one location and then spread across Africa. “They really see a single origin of these human-feeding mosquitoes,” he said. “That is a little surprising to me,” he added, because there plausibly could have been multiple instances of genetic adaptation. The Current Biology paper focused on evolutionary history, but its findings might have implications for public health. The results, combined with climate and population data from the United Nations, suggest that there will be more human-biting mosquitoes in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, caused mostly by urbanization. “I think it’s counterintuitive, because people know the climate is changing rapidly, so that should be the driving force,” McBride said. “But the features of the climate that we found to be important for this mosquito aren’t predicted to change in strong and clear ways that would affect the mosquito.” Urbanisation, in contrast, is occurring very quickly. “You could easily imagine that having an effect on disease transmission in big cities,” McBride said. The new paper is a “major achievement,” said Niels Verhulst, an entomologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who was not involved in the study. In 2003, Verhulst gathered for review many different papers on mosquito host preference; he quickly found that they all used different methodologies that made them hard to compare. That the current study investigated so many different sites was therefore impressive, he said. And it underscored how important it is for cities to proactively remove possible mosquito breeding sites. Rose said that the team planned to conduct follow-ups in other sites in Africa and to study the brains of the human-specialist mosquitoes to figure out the specific mechanisms that make them love our odour so much. When it comes to mosquitoes, there’s much more to learn. “Their history is intertwined with our history,” he said. “And mosquitoes are one of the most interesting ways to understand how human and nature are linked together in the contemporary world.” c.2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
To put my feelings in image form: It’s like Lady Liberty was walking across Fifth Avenue on Nov 3 when out of nowhere a crazy guy driving a bus ran the red light. Lady Liberty leapt out of the way barely in time, and she’s now sitting on the curb, her heart pounding, just glad to be alive. But she knows — she knows — how narrowly she escaped, that this reckless driver never stops at red lights and is still out there, and, oh my God, lots of his passengers are still applauding the thrilling ride, even though deep down many know he’s a menace to the whole city. Let’s unpack all of this. Stop for a second and think about how awesome this election was. In the middle of an accelerating pandemic substantially more Americans voted than ever before in our history — Republicans, Democrats and independents. And it was their fellow citizens who operated the polling stations and conducted the count — many of them older Americans who volunteered for that duty knowing they could contract the coronavirus, as some did. That’s why this was our greatest expression of American democratic vitality since Abraham Lincoln defeated Gen George B McClellan in 1864 — in the midst of a civil war. And that’s why Donald Trump’s efforts to soil this election, with his fraudulent claims of voting fraud, are so vile. If Trump and his enablers had resisted for only a day or two, OK, no big deal. But the fact that they continue to do so, flailing for ways to overturn the will of the people, egged on by their media toadies — Lou Dobbs actually said on Fox Business that the GOP should refuse to accept the election results that deny Trump “what is rightfully his” — raises this question: How do you trust this version of the Republican Party to ever hold the White House again? Its members have sat mute while Trump, rather than using the federal bureaucracy to launch a war against our surging pandemic, has launched a war against his perceived enemies inside that federal bureaucracy — including the defense secretary, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration and, on Tuesday, the most senior cybersecurity official responsible for protecting the presidential election — weakening it when we need it most. Engineering Trump’s internal purge is 30-year-old Johnny McEntee, “a former college quarterback who was hustled out of the White House two years ago after a security clearance check turned up a prolific habit for online gambling,” but Trump later welcomed him back and installed him as personnel director for the entire US government, The Washington Post reported. A political party that will not speak up against such a reckless leader is not a party any longer. It is some kind of populist cult of personality. That’s been obvious ever since this GOP was the first party to conclude its presidential nominating convention without offering any platform. It declared that its platform was whatever its Dear Leader said it was. That is cultlike. Are we just supposed to forget this GOP’s behaviour as soon as Trump leaves and let its leaders say: “Hey fellow Americans, Trump tried to overturn the election with baseless claims — and we went along for the ride — but he’s gone now, so you can trust us to do the right things again.” That is why we are so very lucky that this election broke for Joe Biden. If this is how this Republican Party behaves when Trump loses, imagine how willing to tolerate his excesses it would have been had he won? Trump wouldn’t have stopped at any red lights ever again. And the people who understood that best were democrats all over the world — particularly in Europe. Because they’ve watched Trump-like, right-wing populists in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Belarus, as well as the Philippines, get themselves elected and then take control of their courts, media, internet and security institutions and use them to try to cripple their opponents and lock themselves into office indefinitely. Democrats abroad feared that this same political virus would overtake America if Trump were reelected and have a devastating effect. They feared that the core democratic concept that America gifted to the world in 1800 — when John Adams lost his election to Thomas Jefferson and peacefully handed over the reins of power — was going to wither, undermining democracy movements across the globe. Every autocrat would have been emboldened to ignore red lights. Seeing an American president actually try to undermine the results of a free and fair election “is a warning to democrats all over the world: Don’t play lightly with populists, they will not leave power easily the way Adams did when he lost to Jefferson,” the French foreign policy expert Dominique Moïsi remarked to me. That is why Biden’s mission — and the mission of all decent conservatives — is not just to repair America. It is to marginalise this Trumpian version of the GOP and help to nurture a healthy conservative party — one that brings conservative approaches to economic growth, infrastructure, social policy, education, regulation and climate change, but also cares about governing and therefore accepts compromises. Democrats can’t summon a principled conservative party. That requires courageous conservatives. But Democrats do need to ask themselves why Trump remains so strong among white working-class voters without college degrees, and, in this last election, drew greater support from Black, Latino and white women voters. There is a warning light flashing for Democrats from this election: They can’t rely on demographics. They need to make sure that every voter believes that the Democratic Party is a “both/and” party, not an “either/or” party. And they need to do it before a smarter, less crude Trump comes along to advance Trumpism. They need every American to believe that Democrats are for BOTH redividing the pie AND growing the pie, for both reforming police departments and strengthening law and order, for both saving lives in a pandemic and saving jobs, for both demanding equity in education and demanding excellence, for both strengthening safety nets and strengthening capitalism, for both celebrating diversity and celebrating patriotism, for both making college cheaper and making the work of noncollege-educated Americans more respected, for both building a high border wall and incorporating a big gate, for both high-fiving the people who start companies and supporting the people who regulate them. And they need to demand less political correctness and offer more tolerance for those who want to change with the times but need to get there their own ways — without feeling shamed into it. We need our next presidential election to be fought between a principled center-right Republican Party and a “both/and” Democratic Party. Great countries are led from a healthy centre. Weak countries don’t have one. c.2020 The New York Times Company | 0 |
The national opinion poll of 4,423 adults from April 12-16 found that 55% approved of Biden’s performance in office, while 40% disapproved and the rest were not sure. Biden received the highest marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with 65% supporting his response. In January, 38% approved of Trump's handling of the health crisis. Ninety-percent of Democrats, 61% of independents and 39% of Republicans said they approved of Biden's response, the poll showed. Fifty-two percent of Americans also said they liked Biden’s handling of the economy and 53% said the same about his impact on US jobs, which in both cases were a few percentage points higher than Trump’s marks on jobs and the economy during his final month in office. But Biden received his strongest criticism on immigration, as his administration continues to grapple with a surge of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border: 42% approved of the president’s border policy, while 49% disapproved. More than half gave Biden strong marks for bipartisanship, though Democrats were much more likely than others to credit Biden for unifying the deeply divided electorate. Fifty-six percent approved of Biden’s efforts, including 88% of Democrats, 23% of Republicans and 48% of independents. Americans were also generally supportive of Biden’s stance on the environment and racial inequality, with 54% and 51% approving of his record so far, respectively. Biden is benefiting somewhat from circumstances that are beyond his control. He had months to prepare his pandemic response before becoming president, and some coronavirus vaccines were already in use before his Jan. 20 inauguration. Biden’s economy also has the advantage of being compared against the 2020 pandemic recession, when employers shed millions of jobs as COVID-19 shuttered businesses and schools. Still, Biden’s approval numbers reflect popular support for his ambitious agenda, including a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package and should help him pursue other initiatives, said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University. Biden is now pushing for a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that many Republicans oppose, and he is expected to propose tax hikes on the wealthy to raise money for childcare and other programs for American workers. His popularity will help Biden keep his party together, Zelizer said, blunting malcontents on both the progressive and moderate wings of the party, and possibly tempering opposition from some Republicans, especially those in politically competitive states. Lyna Sandau, a 75-year-old Republican from New York City, said she admires how Biden has aggressively supplied the United States with vaccines. Sandau voted for Trump last year, but if the election were held again, she would probably back Biden. “What can I say, he seems to be trying,” she said. BROAD SUPPORT IN SPLIT AMERICA Republicans largely oppose Biden, with only about 20% supporting the president, but those numbers have not changed much over the past year. Biden so far has been able to counter that with near-unanimous approval among Democrats and strong support among independents. About 90% of Democrats approve of Biden, while 8% disapprove. Among independents, 51% approve and 39% disapprove. Most presidents enjoy at least a brief period of elevated popularity, and Trump’s favourability numbers also rose when he entered office four years ago. But they declined a few weeks later as he pushed to ban travel from Muslim countries. Biden’s popularity, meanwhile, has grown over the past year among a broad cross-section of the American population, not only among the white college graduates who helped put him in the White House, but also among the traditionally conservative non-college whites who still dominate the electorate in many places. According to the April poll, 61% of white college graduates and 46% of whites who did not get a degree said they have a favourable view of the president, which is up 7 points and 6 points, respectively, from a year ago. Biden also has become more popular over the past year among racial minorities, with 68% of Hispanics expressing a favourable view of Biden, up 12 points from last April. The latest poll also shows more Americans – 40% - think the country is headed in the right direction than at any other time in the last decade. That is about as good as a Democrat should expect in such a hyper-partisan political environment, said Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist and political scientist at the University of Southern California. Republicans will likely continue to oppose Biden en masse, Shrum said. But Democrats could counter by pushing for policy initiatives that are popular among conservatives too, such as rebuilding roads and expanding internet access. “It is very useful to have Republicans who may not give you a high job rating out in the country agree with some of or many of the steps that you want to take,” Shrum said. | 0 |
President Robert Mugabe's party said Zimbabwe would go ahead with a general election next year with or without constitutional reforms seen by many as critical to a free and fair vote. Mugabe, who was forced into a unity government with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) after a disputed 2008 poll, sees no need to extend the life of the coalition. He wants a referendum on a new constitution early next year and a general election by mid-2011, even if the referendum is not held. The election would normally be held in 2013. The next election will be the eighth major vote in Zimbabwe since 2000 and critics say a rushed election without political reforms, including a new constitution guaranteeing basic rights, would only favour Mugabe and ZANU-PF, who have held power since independence from Britain in 1980. ZANU-PF chief spokesman Rugare Gumbo told state media that a Wednesday meeting of the party's politburo (inner cabinet) chaired by Mugabe had endorsed his drive for early elections, and received a report suggesting that international donors were withholding cash to delay the last stages of the constitutional reforms. "However, that is neither here nor there. As a party we will find ways around it, but we are very clear that elections will be held," Gumbo said. "If they cannot help us write a new constitution we will find ways, but elections will be held before June next year," he added. Tsvangirai's MDC is trying to mobilise regional pressure on Mugabe to deliver on outstanding reforms under the power-sharing agreement, while a small MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara says Zimbabwe must continue with a coalition government for at least another two years to complete reforms and to allow economic recovery. On Tuesday, the British ambassador in Harare, Mark Canning, said the political climate in Zimbabwe was not yet conducive to a free and fair general election. The southern African country needed time to work on political reforms, including repealing repressive legislation, opening up the media, introducing new electoral laws, and updating the voter register, Canning said. Gumbo said ZANU-PF was happy that its supporters had turned up in large numbers to give their views on a new constitution, and the party was now discussing ways to overcome what it calls illegal sanctions imposed on the party by Western powers. ZANU-PF is set to officially endorse Mugabe, 86, as its presidential candidate at an annual party conference set for mid December. | 2 |
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday Tibet was a challenge to the world's conscience and called for an international probe to clear the Dalai Lama's name in the violent protests this month. Pelosi said the free world will have lost its moral authority to speak about human rights if it did not speak up against Chinese oppression in Tibet. "The situation in Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world," Pelosi told a gathering of about 2000 Tibetans after meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, the seat of his government-in-exile. China's crackdown on anti-government protests in Tibet -- which it says were orchestrated by the Dalai Lama -- has drawn sharp international criticism and clouded preparations for the Beijing Olympics. The Tibetan spiritual leader has denied encouraging the violent protests in Tibet, the largest in almost 20 years, and has even offered to resign as Tibetan leader if violence worsens. Pelosi described the Tibetan leader as the "embodiment of non-violence" and said China's allegation that he was behind the violent protests did not make sense. Nonetheless, she called for "an independent, outside investigation" to clear the Dalai Lama's name. The Tibetan government-in-exile, based in the north Indian town of Dharamsala, says at least 99 protesters had been killed since the demonstrations started in Tibet on March 10. Pelosi said she was not surprised "about the use of violence on the part of the Chinese government". "If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against Chinese oppression and China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world," Pelosi said. "Perhaps it is our karma, perhaps it is our fate that we be with you at the time," she said to a huge round of applause from the crowd. Pelosi, in India leading a US delegation on climate change talks, walked hand-in-hand with the Dalai Lama after their meeting. The Tibetan leader presented her with an orange ceremonial scarf. The Dalai Lama espouses a middle path of greater autonomy for Tibet rather than independence, a stance that many Tibetans, particularly the younger generation hungry for complete freedom, do not endorse. He has said he was willing to speak to Chinese leaders for a solution once the protests died down. | 0 |
Prime Minister Gordon Brown will face the leaders of the two biggest opposition parties in Britain's first live televised election debates in the run-up to polls next year, the government said on Monday. While such debates have been a familiar feature in the United States and many other countries for years, they have yet to play a part in any British general election campaign. Critics say live TV debates turn elections into "beauty contests" that promote personalities at the expense of policies. Brown, trailing the centre-right Conservatives in opinion polls before an election that must be held by June 2010, said he looked forward to debating issues such as the economy. "The country needs to debate whether we lock in the recovery or whether we choke it off," he said in a statement. Most polls have given Conservative leader David Cameron, regarded as more media-friendly than Brown, enough of a lead to win a workable majority in parliament next year, ending 13 years of continuous centre-left Labour rule. However, some surveys in the last few weeks suggest Brown has chipped away at Cameron's lead and the result could be a lot closer than previously expected. THREE DEBATES Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said the three debates would expose Cameron, a former public relations executive, as a "relatively shallow" politician. "He (Cameron) may have the good lines, but his plans will amount to something quite dangerous for Britain, for our economy and for our public services," Miliband told Channel 4 News. Cameron said the debates would be a "step forward for our democracy" after a year marred by a scandal over politicians' expenses claims. "It is something that, in such a bad year for politics and parliament, we can proudly celebrate," he said. "We have joined the 21st century." Although Brown is often seen as a weaker media performer than Cameron, analysts say the Labour leader has tended to fare better during recent, weekly question and answer sessions in parliament. Aides hope he can translate that into convincing on-screen performances. The peak-time election debates, to be shown on the BBC, ITV and Sky television networks, will last for up to 90 minutes and will also give voters a chance to scrutinise the third main party, the Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg. | 0 |
Washington rejected stiff 2020 targets for greenhouse gas cuts by rich nations at UN talks in Bali on Monday as part of a "roadmap" to work out a new global pact to fight climate change by 2009. "It's prejudging what the outcome should be," chief negotiator Harlan Watson said of a draft suggesting that rich nations should aim to axe emissions of heat-trapping gases by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. He said that Washington wanted the Dec. 3-14 talks, of 190 nations with more than 10,000 delegates, to end on Friday with an accord to start two years of negotiations on a new global climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. A draft final text by Indonesia, South Africa and Australia says evidence by the UN climate panel demands cuts of 25-40 percent by rich nations to avoid the worst impacts of climate change such as more droughts, floods and rising seas. "We don't want to start out with numbers," Watson told a news conference, adding that the 25-40 percent range was based on "many uncertainties" and a small number of scientific studies by the UN Climate Panel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Other countries such as Japan are also opposed, fearing such stiff goals would choke economic growth. The Bali talks are trying to agree the principles for a successor to Kyoto, which binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by five percent below 1990 by 2008-12. "Our opinion about Kyoto has not changed," Watson said. President George W Bush opposes Kyoto, saying it would damage the US economy and wrongly excludes 2012 goals for developed nations, such as China, India and Brazil. Bush says he will join a new global pact. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN climate secretariat said that the 25-40 percent range would be "critical issue" at the talks. He said he considered the figure an important signpost to show where the world should be heading in curbing warming. De Boer also said that all industrialised nations agreed on the need to agree a Kyoto successor at UN talks in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. Developing nations, wary of any commitments that might hit their drive to fight poverty, are undecided. Environmentalists urged action. "This is the week the world has been waiting for," said Jennifer Morgan of the London-based climate E3G think-tank. On the margins of the main talks, about 40 deputy finance ministers held unprecedented talks about ways to ensure that efforts to slow climate change do not derail the world economy. "Having the finance ministers meeting...itself is a breakthrough," Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said. The meeting will prepare for talks by about 20 finance ministers in Bali on Tuesday. "The role of the finance ministers is to lead this discussion so that we have wider policy options," Indrawati said, referring to taxes or incentives for green technologies such as wind, solar power or "clean coal". Trade ministers also met at the weekend, the first time the annual UN climate talks have expanded beyond environment ministers. The trade ministers failed to ease splits between Brazil and the United States over green exports. The UN Climate Panel, which will collect the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday in Oslo with former US Vice President Al Gore, has said that the strictest measures to offset warming will slow annual world growth by 0.12 percentage point at most. -- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ | 0 |
Democrats on Wednesday completed a sweep of the two US Senate seats up for grabs in runoff elections in Georgia, giving the party control of the chamber and boosting the prospects for President-elect Joe Biden's legislative agenda. Raphael Warnock, a Baptist preacher from Martin Luther King Jr.'s former church, beat Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler to become the first Black senator in the deep South state's history while Democrat Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmaker who at 33 will be the Senate's youngest member, beat Republican David Perdue. The Georgia results are a last-minute repudiation of outgoing President Donald Trump, who stands to be the first US president since 1932 to lose the White House and both chambers of Congress in a single term. Democrats now have narrow control of both chambers of Congress, making it easier to appoint liberal-leaning judges and advance legislative priorities from coronavirus relief to climate change when Biden takes office on Jan. 20. "Georgia's voters delivered a resounding message yesterday: they want action on the crises we face and they want it right now," Biden said in a statement. He said he would work with both parties to confirm key administration officials quickly.
US President-elect Joe Biden points to Democratic US Senate candidates from Georgia Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, as he campaigns on their behalf ahead of their January 5 run-off elections, during a drive-in campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, US, January 4, 2021. Reuters
Trump held rallies for both Republican candidates, but overshadowed the campaign with false accusations that his own loss in the November presidential election in Georgia was tainted by fraud, repeatedly attacking Republican officials in the state. US President-elect Joe Biden points to Democratic US Senate candidates from Georgia Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, as he campaigns on their behalf ahead of their January 5 run-off elections, during a drive-in campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, US, January 4, 2021. Reuters Hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington on Wednesday in a dramatic attempt to force Congress to undo Trump's election loss. With 98% of the vote counted, Warnock led Loeffler by 1.5 percentage points and Ossoff led Perdue by 0.6 percentage points, according to Edison Research. Both are expected to win beyond the margin that would require a recount. Winning both contests hands Democrats narrow control of the Senate by creating a 50-50 split and giving Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote from Jan. 20. The party already has a thin majority in the US House of Representatives. The campaign's final days were overshadowed by Trump's attempts to pressure Republican Georgia officials to "find" enough votes to overturn Biden's win in the state, as well as his unfounded fraud accusations. He has yet to admit defeat. "We will never give up, we will never concede," Trump told thousands of supporters at a rally. 'NOT A GREAT WAY TO TURN OUT YOUR VOTERS' Some Republicans blamed Trump for the Georgia losses. "It turns out that telling the voters that the election is rigged is not a great way to turn out your voters," Senator Mitt Romney, one of Trump's few Republican critics in Congress, told reporters.
Democratic US Senate candidates Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are seen in a combination of file photographs as they campaign on election day in Georgia's US Senate runoff election, in Marietta and Atlanta, Georgia, US, January 5, 2021. Pictures taken January 5, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Segar, Brian Snyder
The election signaled a shift in the politics of Georgia. At least 4.5 million voters participated, smashing earlier turnout figures for runoff races. Democrats have worked hard to increase turnout among Black voters, their most reliable supporters in the region. Democratic US Senate candidates Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are seen in a combination of file photographs as they campaign on election day in Georgia's US Senate runoff election, in Marietta and Atlanta, Georgia, US, January 5, 2021. Pictures taken January 5, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Segar, Brian Snyder More than 129,000 voters in the runoffs did not vote in November, according to state data. Most of them were Democrats, Gabriel Sterling, a Republican state election official, told a news conference: “While Republicans were busy attacking the governor and my boss, Democrats were knocking on doors and getting out the vote.” In a video message, Warnock, whose Ebenezer Baptist Church is legendary in Georgia because of its role in the civil rights movement under King, recalled his humble upbringing as one of 12 children of a woman who worked in cotton fields. "Because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator," he said. Declaring victory, Ossoff said he looked forward "to serving you in the United States Senate with integrity, with humility, with honor". Both Republican senators, following Trump's lead, vowed to fight on. "We will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots are counted," Perdue said in a statement. During the campaign, Republicans had painted Ossoff and Warnock as radicals who would pursue a hard-left agenda. That message failed to resonate with many white suburbanites who have increasingly abandoned the Republican party under Trump. Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to throw out election results in states he narrowly lost when he presides over the counting of electoral votes to certify Biden's victory. Pence has no authority to do so. The joint session of Congress was disrupted by Trump supporters and it is unclear when it will be completed. | 0 |
The Canadian government is not very interested in implementing a national a carbon tax, despite a decision by its third largest province to adopt one, federal Environment Minister John Baird said on Wednesday. British Columbia's plan, unveiled on Tuesday, is the first of its kind in North America and its supporters say is among the world's most comprehensive tax programs aimed at curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, blamed for climate change. Baird said British Columbia had the right to pursue its own strategy, but the federal government has a different approach. He added he will not criticize the Western Canadian province's plan to impose a tax based on carbon content that will cover nearly all fossil fuels used by industry and individuals. "We have a different focus, our approach is on industrial regulation," Baird said told Reuters. "There are a lot of different approaches. The good news is that they are taking action on climate change." The federal Conservative government, which has abandoned Canada's commitments under the Kyoto climate change protocol, announced last year that it planned to cut emissions by up to 65 percent from 2006 levels by 2050. But a panel appointed by the government warned in January that Ottawa would not be able to meet its targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases without enacting a carbon tax quickly. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been cool to the idea of carbon taxes and hard caps on industrial carbon emissions on the grounds they would hurt the economy. British Columbia said global warming was too important to wait around for the federal government and other provinces to to reach consensus on what to do. The province of Quebec adopted a limited carbon tax last year. The Liberal government of British Columbia also broke with Ottawa last year when it said it would work with U.S. states and the province of Manitoba to develop a carbon trading system as part of a pledge to cut emissions by 33 percent by 2020. The province said the key to its new plan is that it will be "revenue neutral", with the carbon tax offset by other tax reductions, allowing companies and individuals to save money if they reduce emissions and cut energy use. The tax plan will be phased in over five years, starting at C$10 per tonne and increasing by C$5 a tonne in each of the next four years. Environmentalists have widely praised the plan, and said Ottawa should follow suit. Pierre Alvarez, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said his industry's greatest concern is that provincial plans should be harmonized with any federal efforts. "The ship is sailing. How do we keep the fleet kind of in order," Alvarez said. | 0 |
The United States will help Libya develop a civilian nuclear power programme under an accord to be signed shortly, Libya's official news agency Jana said on Monday. The agreement will include building a nuclear power plant, helping develop Libya's water desalination capacity, setting up joint research and technical projects and training Libyan technicians in the United States, the agency said. "The General People's Committee authorized on Sunday the General People's Committee for Liaison and International Cooperation to sign the agreement related to Libyan-American cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy," Jana said, referring to Libya's equivalent of a cabinet and foreign ministry respectively. In 2003 Libya promised to give up nuclear, chemical and biological arms, but Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi said at the time that he still hoped to develop a nuclear programme for peaceful means. In the same year, Libya cast off more than a decade of international ostracism by accepting responsibility and starting to pay compensation for the bombing of airliners over Scotland and Niger in 1988 and 1989. Fears over finite oil and gas supplies and climate change have also pushed nuclear power into the limelight as a way of producing energy and cutting emissions of carbon dioxide, blamed for global warming. Washington has voiced hopes that Iran and North Korea will follow Libya's example. Libya announced in February it would work with French nuclear giant Areva to explore for and mine uranium, but did not say if it would be used at home or exported. Libya has proven oil reserves of 39 billion barrels, enough for 60 years at current production rates. Its largely unexploited gas reserves are estimated at 53 trillion cubic feet. | 0 |
Kompasu, with maximum sustained winds of 100 kilometres (62 miles) per hour, had absorbed remnants of an earlier cyclone before making landfall in the Philippines on Monday evening. Nearly 1,600 people were evacuated. The disaster agency said it was verifying information from its regional units that reported four people killed in landslides in northern Benguet province and five killed in flash floods in Palawan, an island province in the country's southwest. Authorities were conducting search and rescue operations for 11 people missing mostly after landslides. The Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands is hit by about 20 storms or typhoons annually, bringing heavy rains that trigger deadly landslides. President Rodrigo Duterte was monitoring the government's disaster response, his spokesperson, Harry Roque said on Tuesday. Rescue personnel were at the scene, while power and water restoration and road clearing was ongoing, he added. Kompasu, the 13th tropical storm to enter the Philippines, is expected to leave its territory on Tuesday, the state weather agency said. | 1 |
A stalagmite which occurs annually in a cave shrine deep in the Himalayas is melting fast, officials said on Friday, disappointing Hindu pilgrims who worship it as a symbol of Lord Shiva. Every year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims trek through treacherous mountains in revolt-torn Kashmir, along icy streams, glacier-fed lakes and frozen passes, to reach the Amarnath cave, located at an altitude of 3,800 metres (12,700 feet). The phallus-shaped stalagmite is believed to be a symbol of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and regeneration. The pilgrimage, one of Hinduism's holiest, is due to begin officially this year on Saturday, although thousands have already visited the shrine. "It is melting very fast," N K Raina, director of the Amarnath Shrine Board, told reporters, adding that when the stalagmite was last measured on May 25 it was 12 feet (3.5 metres) tall and its circumference was 8 feet (2.5 metres). "Now, it has reduced to almost one-tenth of its original size," he said, without elaborating on the reasons. Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a glaciologist at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research, blamed it on a combination of factors. "One is, the number of pilgrims have increased dramatically, generating more heat. Also, atmospheric temperatures attributable to climate change have also gone up in recent years," he said. BAD OMEN The size of the stalagmite has varied in previous years depending on the weather. Last year, pilgrims were outraged when authorities reportedly used snow to create a stalagmite as the natural ice formation failed to show up at the start of the pilgrimage. Many Hindus consider the melting as a bad omen. "Last year, it did not appear, and this year there are reports it is melting fast. I think Lord Shiva is angry with us," said Rajni Goswami, a 55-year-old housewife, who is due to start for Amarnath on Saturday. "I will still travel to the holy cave and pray for peace in Kashmir." Shiv Kumar, a pilgrim from the northern Indian city of Lucknow who visited the cave this week, said he was "deeply saddened" by the "very small size" of the stalagmite. The pilgrimage has been targeted several times by Islamist separatist militants fighting against New Delhi's rule in India's only Muslim-majority state. Last year, over a dozen pilgrims were wounded in attacks. Security, as a result, has been stepped up over the years and thousands of troops guard the 330-km (200-mile) route taken by pilgrims. Officials say more than 42,000 people have been killed in Kashmir in the insurgency since it first erupted in 1989. Human rights groups put the toll at about 60,000. | 0 |
While some in Western capitals argue that
Russia's actions should mean it is excluded from global meetings altogether,
that is not a view shared by others in the Group of 20 big economies, including
notably China and Indonesia, which is chairing the group this year. Moscow confirmed on Tuesday Finance Minister
Anton Siluanov would lead Russia's delegation at the talks despite repeated
protestations by Western diplomats that they could not go ahead as usual during
a war in which thousands of civilians have died in bombardments by Russian
troops. "During and after the meeting we will be
certain to send a strong message and we will not be alone in doing so," a
German government source said, accusing Russia of starting a conflict that has
also sent world food and energy prices spiraling. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plans to
avoid G20 sessions joined by Russian officials on the sidelines of International
Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings. But Yellen will attend an opening
session on the Ukraine war regardless of Russian participation, a US Treasury
official said. British finance minister Rishi Sunak also will
not attend certain G20 sessions, a British government source told Reuters. And a French finance ministry official
meanwhile expected some ministers from Group of Seven nations to leave their
seats when their Russian peer was due to speak. 'UNRAVELING' RISK The divisions widened by the Ukraine war raise
questions over the G20's future as the world's premier economic policy forum. Conceived as a platform for the biggest
wealthy and developing economies to cooperate on recovery efforts during the
2008-2009 global financial crisis, the G20 has since broached everything from
global tax reform to pandemic debt relief and the fight against climate change,
with a patchy record of success. "The G20 is at risk of unraveling and
this week is incredibly important," said Josh Lipsky, director of the
Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center and a former IMF adviser. Should Western democracies allow the group to
wither in favor of the G7 or other groupings, it would cede significant
economic influence to China, Lipsky said. "Russia can align with China and I think
that's a good outcome from Russia's perspective and actually gives them more
influence than they have in a body like the G20," he said. Both the French and the German official said
there would be no agreed communique at the end of a meeting which had been
originally due to discuss the state of the global economy and coordinating
vaccine and other pandemic efforts. Apart from the G7 nations - the United States,
Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy - the G20 also incorporates
emerging economies including China, India and Brazil that have starkly
different views on how the global economy should work. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the fact
that some G20 nations have chosen not to follow Western sanctions on Russia is
only the latest challenge to efforts to construct a global set of rules for
trade and finance. The United States and China have long traded
accusations of protectionism, while the fact that world trade is growing more
slowly than the global economy as a whole has prompted questions about the
future of globalisation. Ahead of the G20 meeting, a top IMF official
warned of the risk of a fragmenting global economy. "One scenario is one where we have
divided blocs that are not trading much with each other, that are on different
standards, and that would be a disaster for the global economy," IMF chief
economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters. Separately, the Fund slashed its forecast for
global economic growth by nearly a full percentage point, citing Russia's war
in Ukraine, and warning inflation was a "clear and present danger"
for many countries. | 0 |
“At the moment we would like to ask them to end their strike,” said Quader, also general secretary of Awami League. “There is no point in causing suffering to the people.” Quader made the statement in response to a question from the media after meeting with the EU ambassador to Bangladesh at the Setu Bhaban in Dhaka on Sunday. “There’s no scope to change the law at the moment,” he said. “It’s not possible. They must wait until the next parliament.” The road transport minister called on the transport workers to be patient. “If there are any legitimate concerns they can be addressed through dialogue.” The Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation has declared a 48-hour strike since Sunday morning to press for eight demands and changes to the recently revised road transport law. The strike has halted long-haul bus and freight services nationwide. Commuters are also facing great difficulties due to halts to metropolitan bus service in large cities like Dhaka and Chattogram. The demands include making all accidents under the Road Transport Act ‘bailable’, the cancellation of the provision that allows a worker to be fined Tk 500,000 for involvement in a road crash, lowering minimum educational qualification required for obtaining driving licences from class VIII to class V, for transport worker representation on investigation committees on cases under section 302, an end to harassment by police, to set fines according to the wage scale and to require certification from a Workers Federation representative when vehicles are registered and penalties are overturned. Transport leaders have threatened to go on indefinite strike from Oct 30 if their demands are not met. Quader also discussed the current political climate after his discussion with the EU ambassador. He said that the demands put forward by the Jatiya Oikya Front composed of Kamal Hossain and the BNP leaders were also impossible to meet at the moment. “The Oikya Front is complaining. It is typical for the opposition to be a bit critical. After all, the purpose of the opposition is to criticise. They have made a list of seven demands. Even if we wanted to meet these demands we would have to change the constitution. It is impossible.” “If they strike over the issue, if they are not prepared to be flexible, it could cause some unrest.” The Jatiya Oikya Front has called for the reformation of the Election Commission, the dissolution of parliament, the freeing of jailed BNP leader Khaleda Zia and for elections to be held under an ‘impartial’ government. Oikya Front leader Kamal Hossain has threatened to bring the government to justice if it does not meet these demands. | 5 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's central government will cut its emissions of climate-warming carbon by 10 percent in the next 12 months, while speeding up the wider move to a low-carbon economy, the new UK Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday. "I don't want to hear warm words about the environment. I want to see real action. I want this to be the greenest government ever," the Conservative leader of Britain's first coalition government since 1945 told staff at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). "If we do this, we'll cut the government's energy bills by hundreds of millions of pounds ... In fact, we've made a good start. Someone pointed out when you mix blue with yellow - you get green." The environment was a key part of the yellow-flagged Liberal Democrat election campaign, and the Conservative-led government announced several carbon cutting plans on Wednesday. The new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Liberal Democrat MP Chris Huhne, said on Thursday his party had agreed not to vote against new nuclear power stations as part of its compromise to do a deal with the blue flag waving Tories. "The benefits of the low carbon economy are agreed between both parties, this is a priority agenda common to both manifestos," Huhne said. "I intend to make decisions put off for too long to fundamentally change how we supply and use energy in Britain ... To give the power industry the confidence it needs to invest in low carbon energy projects." UK energy regulator Ofgem said in February Britain's energy markets needed to be radically redesigned to spur hundreds of billions of pounds of investment in low-carbon technologies, from wind and solar to nuclear, a view shared by utilities. Most of Britain's ageing nuclear power plants are scheduled to shut over the next decade and the previous Labour government has been pushing private companies to build new ones as part of a low carbon power generation mix -- a policy supported by the Conservatives but not the Lib Dems. Europe's biggest utilities have been lining up to build the plants, paying hundreds of millions of pounds for farmland to build them on, but want higher long-term charges on rival gas and coal fired power plants to support their multi-billion pound investments. The coalition said on Wednesday it would introduce a minimum charge for emitting carbon but it remains unclear whether it will be high enough to have a significant impact on the economics of building a nuclear power plant. | 0 |
India resumes defence contacts with China frozen for a year when an Indian military delegation visits on Sunday, though few expect any breakthrough with Beijing pursuing its "all-weather friendship" with arch-rival Pakistan. But analysts say the visit, which ends a suspension of such contacts following a visa row last year, is a step forward in keeping a balance in ties between the emerging rivals for global influence and resources. New Delhi feels Beijing is trying to encircle and pin India down to South Asia with a string of military bases on the Indian Ocean rim. China is Pakistan's biggest arms supplier and the only major power not to have publicly criticised Islamabad over the discovery of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in that country. While trade and diplomatic ties between the Asian powers are booming, the lack of defence exchanges is an aberration analysts say must be remedied for the world's fastest growing economies to achieve lasting peace. "It is symbolic and I cautiously welcome it. It does not represent any breakthrough in solving the disputes," said Uday Bhaskar, director of New-Delhi based think-tank National Maritime Foundation. "The mistrust is (over) the deep anxiety over military cooperation (between Pakistan and China) and how Pakistan is using that for furthering its agenda of terrorism." While a war between India and China is highly unlikely, any flare up will only add to tensions in a dangerous neighbourhood, complicating efforts by Washington to stabilise a region filled with nuclear weapons and Islamic militants. "(Not having) talks on the defence level is a symbol of mistrust. It breeds more suspicions if they are not talking," said Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of Chinese studies at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. TWISTED BORDERS, TORTURED HISTORY Military meetings were suspended last year after China refused a visa to a general based in Kashmir. New Delhi bristles at any hint that the disputed region, where a separatist movement has raged for two decades, is not part of India. An eight-member team headed by a two-star general heads on Sunday to Beijing and the western city of Urumqi for five days. India and China have been at peace with each other since a brief war in 1962, where the Indian army's weaknesses were exposed. The humiliation still rankles in India, which has beefed up its military to take on any threat from the north. The conflict began as a disagreement over the unmarked 3,500-km (2,200-mile) Himalayan frontier between the countries. It intensified when New Delhi in 1959 welcomed the Dalai Lama, who had fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. "India has had its experience of 1962. We haven't got over it and we are the subaltern in the relationship," Bhaskar said. The long shadow of the war manifests itself vividly in commerce. Chinese firms are seen as entering India to put out of business Indian manufacturers with their cheap wares. Telecoms gear makers like Huawei face an uphill task in selling products on fears the equipment could be used to spy on India. The Reserve Bank of India has spoken out against the yuan's undervaluation and officials complain of the huge trade deficit India runs with China as it sells raw materials and buys finished goods. Despite those suspicions, China is India's largest trade partner and the two nations have cooperated on issues ranging from global financial reform to climate change. Most recently, India and China, along with Brazil, Russia and South Africa, protested against Europe's lock on the top job at the International Monetary Fund. Sunday's visit will lay the ground for the annual scheduled defence secretary talks between India and China. "Major generals in India do not decide policy," Bhaskar said. "That can happen only at the political level. But with this engagement you create space for political rapprochement." | 0 |
"Every year we say that time is running out. We have to act NOW to slash greenhouse gas emissions if we are to have a chance to keep the increase in temperatures to manageable levels," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement. His annual plea for the world to do whatever it can to cut greenhouse gas emissions - which come mainly from burning fossil fuels and from agriculture, cement production and deforestation - comes weeks before negotiators from over 190 states convene in Paris to try to agree a new UN climate deal. Graphs issued by the WMO, a UN agency, showed levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, climbing steadily towards the 400-parts-per-million (ppm) level, having hit a new record every year since reliable records began in 1984. Carbon dioxide levels averaged 397.7 ppm in 2014 but briefly breached the 400-ppm threshold in the northern hemisphere in early 2014, and again globally in early 2015. "Next year we will be reporting much higher concentrations because of El Nino," WMO atmospheric research chief Oksana Tarasova told Reuters, referring to the Pacific Ocean warming phenomenon. Soon 400 ppm will be a permanent reality, Jarraud said. "It means hotter global temperatures, more extreme weather events like heat waves and floods, melting ice, rising sea levels and increased acidity of the oceans. This is happening now and we are moving into uncharted territory at a frightening speed." The rise in carbon dioxide levels is being amplified by higher levels of water vapor, which are in turn rising because of carbon dioxide emissions, the WMO said. Levels of the other two major man-made greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, also continued a unrelenting annual rise in 2014, reaching 1,833 parts per billion (ppb) and 327.1 ppb, respectively. Both rose at the fastest rate for a decade. For the Paris conference later this month, more than 150 countries, led by top greenhouse gas emitters China and the United States, have issued plans to limit emissions beyond 2020. But the plans revealed so far will not curb emissions enough to meet a target agreed in 2010 to limit global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) of pre-industrial levels. "Two degrees will be bad enough but it will be better than three degrees," said Jarraud. "Of course it would have been better to have 1 degree... But 1 degree is not possible any longer. It's just not feasible. Too late." | 0 |
Global warming has made ice a hot topic, and one sizzling center of inquiry is in a warehouse-like complex in New England, where melting polar shores and shrinking glaciers are issues of urgent study. In vast deep-freeze rooms at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, parka-clad scientists examine samples taken from Greenland and Antarctica, some of them icy, some made up of old, close-packed snow known as firn. Another building creates cold-weather road surfaces and lets vehicles drive across them. Elsewhere on the base, researchers set up supermarket-size models of rivers and seashores to check the impact of ice and cold. Recently, it has become a practical laboratory to monitor the effects of climate change in the Arctic, notably a way to keep ice and newly open water from eroding seaside communities. "We've never had a shore protection system for the Arctic," said Leonard Zabilansky, a research civil engineer at the lab. "We've never had to." Now this protection is needed. Because the lab is part of the US Army Corps of Engineers, it focuses on both military and civilian consequences from climate change. "Military tactical plans will need to reflect changes in seasonal extents of snow, ice and navigable weather and ground conditions," Jacqueline Richter-Menge, project manager at the lab, wrote in a statement at http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/. "Civilian agencies planning new infrastructure need to know how these changes affect their projects, and whether extreme events will have greater impacts over time." Less Arctic ice could mean big changes in shipping, trade, ecosystems and security, and it has already prompted lab tests to keep marauding ocean ice from eroding Barrow, Alaska. "The ice used to hold everything in place," said Zabilansky. Now much of the ice that used to shield coastal settlements year-round is seasonal and it is up to Zabilansky and other experts to try to solve the practical problems caused when polar ice disappears. Temperatures in Barrow -- a US outpost some 340 miles (547.2 km) north of the Arctic circle -- are frequently below zero F (-17.77C), so you'd think keeping ice frozen would be easy, but that is not always the case. "The problem is that due to global warming, the volume of sea ice (in the Arctic Ocean) has decreased and it doesn't last from one season to the next," Zabilansky said, speaking at the lab and in a subsequent telephone interview. When this seasonal ice melts in the summer, it creates an open-water pathway for ice further out on the ocean to gather speed and move toward shore, Zabilansky said. This ocean ice can be extremely destructive when it hits land. "There's wind-driven ice that has room to accelerate," Zabilansky said. "We have to de-accelerate it before it gets to downtown." So at a test basin at the lab, researchers built a large hump made of coarse gravel meant to block incoming ice before it reached shore. The ice picked up the stones and went over the top of the hump in simulations, Zabilansky said. The next step is to bring in boulders nearly 6 feet (1.829 metres) in diameter in a test for a shoreline protection system for Barrow. If this works, there will be at least one more challenge: these big rocks are relatively easy to get in New Hampshire, but they will have to be sent by barge from Nome if tests show they will be effective for Barrow. This design might prove adaptable to other Arctic sites, Zabilansky added. | 0 |
But it’s not the swimmer whose life is at risk. It’s the jellyfish. A bump from the swimmer could mean a death sentence. In a rare marine lake on a hatchet-shaped atoll in Indonesia, four species of jellyfish have evolved in isolation and lost their ability to sting humans. There are believed to be millions of these benign jellyfish in Kakaban Lake, which has become a popular spot for tourists intrepid enough to reach the remote archipelago known as the Derawan Islands. But it’s a fragile ecosystem, and these animals are vulnerable both to climate change and the growing numbers of visitors who casually invade their space. Colliding with one of these delicate, easily injured jellyfish can spell its doom, as a wounded one is far more susceptible to being nibbled to death by small fish also inhabiting the lake. For that reason, swimmers here are not allowed to use flippers and are urged to swim as slowly and gently as they can. But the jellyfish are so numerous, it can be hard to avoid harming them. And as more tourists arrive, the dangers to the jellyfish are escalating. At times, the wooden dock at Kakaban Lake gets so crowded with divers in their black wetsuits that they resemble the sea lions basking in the sun at San Francisco’s Pier 39. Not all of the divers arrive with an environmentally sensitive mindset, either. A group of more than 80 employees of the Indonesian tax collector’s office recently came to the lake on a team-building exercise, traveling from the city of Tarakan in North Kalimantan province, about three hours away by boat. The tax workers, many of them wearing life jackets, formed a giant circle in the lake, kicking and treading water, oblivious to the creatures around them. Their leader shouted instructions over a bullhorn, and someone unfurled a banner that floated on the water. A drone snapped their picture. A dive guide who watched the scene unfold figured the photo cost the lives of hundreds of jellyfish. There are about 200 marine lakes in the world, part saltwater and part freshwater, and stingless jellyfish have evolved in several of them. Without any ocean predators, jellyfish no longer needed their natural defence system, and their sting evolved into one so weak that people don’t feel it. For scientists, these lakes serve as proxies to explore what may come as ocean waters heat up because of climate change. “The lakes have environmental conditions that are warmer, more acidic and less oxygenated — in a way, a projection of our future climate,” said Intan Suci Nurhati, a climate and ocean researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. Many thousands of years ago, Kakaban Lake was a lagoon connected to the sea. But the island was elevated during a period of geologic uplift, creating a 92-acre lake that today is surrounded by a ridge over 130 feet high. The lake, a mix of saltwater and rainwater and noticeably warmer than the surrounding sea, is still connected to the ocean through underground fissures, but the openings are too small for an exchange of any but the smallest life-forms. Kakaban Lake is the main attraction of Kakaban Island, one of about 30 islands, nearly all uninhabited, in the Derawan archipelago, which lies some 35 miles off Borneo. The archipelago, located in the Sulawesi Sea, is known as one of the world’s best diving spots, offering crystal-clear waters, manta rays, sea turtles and whale sharks. The world’s best-known jellyfish lake, in the nation of Palau, suffered a dramatic population crash in 2016, most likely because of drought and increased salinity caused by an El Niño weather condition. The deaths underscored how vulnerable the animals are to fluctuations in their environment. While the jellyfish continue to thrive on Kakaban, the island has just two human inhabitants: Suari, 28, and his uncle, Jumadi, 48. Their extended family owns the strip of land where visitors can dock and hike over a wooden walkway to the lake. On some days, hundreds of tourists arrive. But after they leave, life on Kakaban is lonely. “It is really quiet here,” Suari said. About 4,000 people, mostly Muslim, live on nearby Maratua, the largest of the Derawan islands. Most are Bajau people, renowned as deep-sea divers, whose ancestors arrived here from the Philippines eight generations ago. Darmansyah, a former chief of the Bohesilian village on Maratua, said residents of the atoll were still mainly fishermen. “Bajau people are not interested in farming,” he said. “We always run to the sea.” But he is no longer fishing for a living, he said. Instead, like most other residents, he is happy to see a growing investment in tourism, including the recent construction of an airport and several new dive resorts. Residents are building dozens of homestay units — holiday lodging in a family’s home — in anticipation of a tourist boom. Darmansyah, 60, has built two such units. Maratua has at least two marine lakes. One, Haji Buang, once had jellyfish to rival Kakaban Lake. But about five years ago, its owner, Hartono, thought he could make some quick cash by raising more than 30 hawksbill sea turtles in the lake. Only after he put the turtles in the water did he discover that it would be illegal to sell their shells because the species is critically endangered. The hawksbills, which feed on jellyfish, have nearly exterminated the lake’s population. “Now I regret it,” said Hartono, 62. “There used to be more jellyfish than in Kakaban Lake, but we didn’t realise this could be a tourist area.” Hartono said he wanted to catch the turtles so he could return them to the sea — with the hope that the jellyfish population would recover. The local tourism agency at Haji Buang is spending over $40,000 to build facilities there, including a wooden bridge, dock and covered seating area. Hartono said he had no interest in preserving nature for nature’s sake but appreciated the government’s investment in his property. He said he would abide by the wishes of tourism officials and not cut down trees or build houses on the lake’s edge. “I would rather build and develop this,” he said as he tossed his cigarette butt into the lake. “If you leave it like this, it will only stay like this.” © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
Last year was the world's second hottest behind 1998 in a temperature record dating back to 1850, the director of research at Britain's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Phil Jones said on Wednesday. Jones' unit, compiling data with the Met Office Hadley Centre, is one of three main groups worldwide tracking global warming. Last week the other two, based in the United States, said 2010 was tied for the hottest on record. The data showed that all but one year in the past decade were among the 10 hottest on record, underlining a warming trend linked to human emissions of greenhouse gases, Jones told Reuters. "All the years from 2001 to 2010, except 2008, were in the top ten," he said. The global fight against climate change suffered a setback in the wake of the financial crisis, slowing finance for renewable energy projects and knocking momentum from efforts to agree a new climate deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2013. The new data appeared to bolster evidence for manmade climate change, after leaked e-mails, including from the CRU, showed climate scientists in 2009 sniping at sceptics. Errors made by a UN climate panel also exaggerated the pace of melt of glaciers in the Himalayas. Last year was 0.498 degrees Celsius (0.9 Fahrenheit) above the 1961-1990 average, the CRU and Hadley data showed, compared with 1998's 0.517 degree. The nearest year to 2010 was 2005, at 0.474 degree warmer than the long-term average. The US National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) reported similar findings last week. They found that 2010 was tied for the hottest year with 2005. The three groups use similar observations but in slightly different ways. For example, GISS takes greater account of Arctic weather stations, where warming has been fastest. All the warmest years are separated by only a few fractions of a degree. | 0 |
Australian Prime Minister John Howard vowed to keep Australian troops in Iraq despite mounting pressure at home to withdraw, as annual Asia-Pacific meetings began in Sydney. "Our commitment to Iraq remains. This is not the time for any proposals of a scaling down of Australian forces," Howard told a joint news conference with US President George W. Bush, pointing to next week's crucial progress report to the US Congress on the American troop surge in Iraq. "It's historic work, Mr Prime Minister, and it's important work, and I appreciate the contribution that the Australians have made," Bush replied to the veteran Australian leader, whose support for the war in Iraq is clouding his re-election hopes. The two men then clambered aboard a luxury yacht, and accompanied by a dozen zodiac boats packed with heavily armed, black-clad security personnel, sped across Sydney harbour to join several hundred Australian troops and sailors for lunch at the Garden Island naval base. "I"m looking forward to you buying me lunch today. I'm a meat guy," Bush joked to Howard, who has been prime minister since 1996. It was genuine camaraderie between two old friends whose popularity has suffered over the four-year war in Iraq. Australia has about 1,500 troops in and around Iraq, while the United States has 160,000 soldiers there. Bush rewarded Howard for his loyalty by signing a treaty with him on Wednesday giving Canberra improved access to top-secret US military technology and intelligence. Australia had long complained of US restrictions on weapons technology and information because of Washington's concerns about espionage. BIGGEST SECURITY OPERATION Bush arrived early for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this weekend in order to prepare for next week's report to Congress on the Iraq war. Australia has launched the country's biggest ever security operation, including erecting a 2.8 metre (9 feet) security fence that has virtually cut Sydney centre in two, and which has put residents in a grumpy mood. Australia has never experienced a terrorist attack within its borders. Anti-war activists plan mass weekend protests, expected to draw up to 20,000 people onto the streets against Bush's visit and the Iraq war. "I have absolutely no doubt that minority groups will engage in a level of violence not previously experienced in Sydney," police chief superintendent Steve Cullen said. But at an anti-Bush rally at Sydney Railway Station on Tuesday ahead of the President's arrival, media outnumbered the noisy but peaceful protesters. Trade liberalisation and climate change top the agenda at the APEC meetings, and Bush wants the group's 21 economies to agree to a strongly worded pledge to reinvigorate the Doha round of world trade talks. Bush and Howard also talked about the rise of China, whose President Hu Jintao is also in Australia and was expected in Sydney for APEC later on Wednesday. Hu visited a farm near the Australian capital, Canberra, to watch sheep being shorn. China is Australia's biggest wool export destination and resource market, and -- in contrast to Bush -- Hu has received a warm public reception in Australia. Ice sculptures of Bush's and Howard's face were placed by protesters near Sydney's famous Harbour Bridge to slowly melt in the sun, symbolising the refusal of the United States and Australia to sign the Kyoto climate pact. About 40 trade and foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, gathered at Sydney's main convention centre on Darling Harbour to hammer out a declaration for their leaders to consider at a weekend summit. A draft of that declaration, obtained by Reuters, says the 21 APEC members will try to develop a more robust approach to strengthening food and product safety standards in the region. APEC has begun work on a recovery programme to revive trade in the event of a terrorist attack and a set of principles "to help protect the food supply against deliberate contamination", the draft declaration said. On trade, APEC will focus this year on "behind the border issues", competition policy, strengthening capital markets, combating corruption, promoting good governance, and a more certain legal and regulatory climate. The draft declaration, however, gives short shrift to a US-backed Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific. | 0 |
His wife, Sherry, said the cause was brain cancer. Out in the wild, knowing how to treat a venomous snakebite or a gangrenous infection can mean the difference between life and death. In the 1970s, however, the specialised field of health care known as wilderness medicine was still in its infancy. Then Auerbach showed up. A medical student at Duke University at the time, he went to work in 1975 with the Indian Health Service on a Native American reservation in Montana, and the experience was revelatory. “We saw all kinds of cases that I would have never seen at Duke or frankly anywhere else except on the reservation,” Auerbach said in a recent interview given to Stanford University, where he worked for many years. “Snakebites. Drowning. Lightning strike.” “And I just thoroughly enjoyed it,” he continued. “Taking care of people with very limited resources.” Back at Duke, he tried to learn more about outdoor medicine, but he struggled to find resource material. “I kept going back to literature to read, but there was no literature,” he said. “If I wanted to read about snakebites, I was all over the place. If I wanted to read about heat illness, I was all over the place. So I thought, ‘Huh, maybe I’ll do a book on wilderness medicine.’” Auerbach started researching material for the book in 1978, when he began his medical residency at UCLA, finding the time to do so despite gruelling 12-hour hospital shifts. He collected information about how to treat burn wounds, hypothermia, frostbite and lighting injuries. He interviewed hikers, skiers and divers. And he assigned chapters to doctors who were passionate about the outdoors. The resulting book, “Management of Wilderness and Environmental Emergencies,” which he edited with a colleague, Edward Geehr, was published in 1983 and is widely considered the definitive textbook in the field, with sections such as “Protection From Blood-Feeding Arthropods” and “Aerospace Medicine: The Vertical Frontier.” Updated by Auerbach over 30 years, it is in its seventh edition and now titled “Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine.” “Paul literally conceived of this subspecialty of medicine,” said Dr Andra Blomkalns, chair of emergency medicine at Stanford. “At the time, there wasn’t a recognition that things happen when you’re out doing things. He developed this notion of ‘Things happen to people all the time.’ Which is now a big part of our identity in emergency medicine.” In the early 1980s, hearing from doctors and nurses with similar interests in outdoor medicine, Auerbach founded the Wilderness Medical Society with Geehr and Dr Ken Kizer. The group is now the largest-membership organisation in its field and has hosted events such as a trek to a Mount Everest base camp and a trip to a station in the Utah desert that simulates life on Mars. Auerbach joined Stanford as chief of its emergency medicine division in 1991. He left the university four years later to work in the private health care sector before returning to the university in 2005 and remaining there until his retirement this year. He became an elder statesman in his field. He spoke at conferences around the world, in one case describing how the erectile-dysfunction pill Viagra can be used to treat high-altitude pulmonary edema because it reduces artery pressure. At Stanford, Auerbach encouraged his students, foremost, to respect the outdoors. “When house staff and residents and young doctors say, ‘How do I learn wilderness medicine?’ My very first answer to them always is, ‘Learn the wilderness first,'” he said in the Stanford interview. “Because you can’t help anybody if you’re just scrambling to keep yourself alive.” In 2010, when an earthquake devastated Haiti, Auerbach travelled to the country with a team of emergency medical workers, and despite his years of experience, he found the trip harrowing. A few years later, when an earthquake hit Nepal, he went there to assist with emergency care and later helped establish a hospital there. Auerbach said it was imperative never to get too comfortable when dealing with the whims of nature. “You have to be afraid when you go into work,” he said. “You have to stay humble.” Paul Stuart Auerbach was born Jan 4, 1951, in Plainfield, New Jersey. His father, Victor, was a patents manager for Union Carbide. His mother, Leona (Fishkin) Auerbach, was a teacher. Paul was on his high school wrestling team and grew up spending summers on the Jersey Shore. He graduated from Duke in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in religion and then enrolled in Duke’s medical school. He met Sherry Steindorf at UCLA, and they were married in 1982. (In the 1980s, he worked part time as a sportswear model.) Auerbach studied at Stanford’s business school shortly before joining the university’s medical faculty in 1991. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Brian and Daniel; a daughter, Lauren Auerbach Dixon; his mother; a brother, Burt; and a sister, Jan Sherman. As he grew older, Auerbach became increasingly devoted to expanding the field of wilderness medicine to account for the uncertainties of a new world. In revising his textbook, he added sections about handling environmental disasters, and, with Jay Lemery, he wrote “Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health” (2017). Last year, shortly before he received his cancer diagnosis, the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, and Auerbach decided to act. “The minute it all first happened, he started working on disaster response,” his wife said. “Hospitals were running out of [personal protective equipment]. He was calling this person and that person to learn as much as he could. He wanted to find out how to design better masks and better ventilators. He never stopped.” © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Coal's contribution to electricity generation in India fell for the second straight year in 2020, marking a departure from decades of growth in coal-fired power. Still, the fuel accounts for nearly three-fourths of India's annual power output. Environmental activists have long rallied against India adding new coal-fired capacity. Solar and wind energy prices are falling to record lows, which would help the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter cut emissions. US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry this month said India was "getting the job done on climate, pushing the curve," as he began talks with government leaders aimed at cutting carbon emissions faster to slow global warming. But a 28-page February draft of the National Electricity Policy (NEP) 2021 - which has not been made public - showed India may add new coal-fired capacity, though it recommended tighter technology standards to reduce pollution. "While India is committed to add more capacity through non-fossil sources of generation, coal-based generation capacity may still be required to be added in the country as it continues to be the cheapest source of generation," the NEP draft read. All future coal-based plants should only deploy so-called "ultra super critical" less polluting technologies "or other more efficient technology", it added.
A worker carries coal in a basket in an industrial area in Mumbai, India May 31, 2017. REUTERS
State-run NTPC Ltd, India's top electricity producer, said in September it will not acquire land for new coal-fired projects. Private firms and many run by states across the country have not invested in new coal-fired plants for years saying they were not economically viable. A worker carries coal in a basket in an industrial area in Mumbai, India May 31, 2017. REUTERS A source with direct knowledge said a government panel of various power sector experts and officials will discuss the draft and could make changes before seeking cabinet approval. India's power ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday. The draft document also proposed trade of renewable energy in day-ahead markets, creating separate tariffs for electric vehicle charging stations and privatizing electricity distribution companies. ALTERNATE POWER SOURCES The NEP 2021 is India's first attempt at revising its electricity policy enacted in 2005, when the country produced negligible renewable energy. Experts say phasing in renewable energy sources and phasing out conventional sources such as coal and natural gas rapidly could lead to instability in the electricity grid, potentially causing blackouts. While suggesting flexible use of coal-fired and natural gas-fired power to ensure grid stability in the coming years, the draft policy lists promoting clean power as its primary objective. The policy draft suggested expediting adoption of "cost effective" pumped hydro storage to support the electricity grid, adding that only 4.8 gigawatts (GW) of a potential 96.5 GW of pumped storage capacity has been developed so far. The policy also recommends compensating natural gas-fired plants for operating at reduced efficiency to ensure grid stability, and for suffering higher wear and tear due to fluctuations in generation. | 0 |
The United States together with its allies and a Syrian opposition group all urged the UN Security Council on Monday to end its "neglect" of the violence raging in Syria and rapidly endorse an Arab League plan for a political transition there. "We have seen the consequences of neglect and inaction by this council over the course of the last 10 months, not because the majority of the council isn't eager to act - it has been," said Washington's UN Ambassador Susan Rice. "But there have been a couple of very powerful members who have not been willing to see that action take place," she told reporters. "That may yet still be the case." Western officials were discussing the issue on the eve of a meeting by the 15-nation Security Council to consider the Arab plan in the face of reluctance by Russia, an ally of the Syrian government and a veto-holder on the council, which has demanded changes to the proposed resolution. Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby and Qatar's prime minister are due to plead with the council on Tuesday to back the plan for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to transfer powers to his deputy to prepare for elections. Western countries are deploying their big guns to try to overcome Russian objections, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe due to attend the session. Rice's complaint about some countries reluctance to act referred to Russia and China, which vetoed a Security Council resolution in October that would have condemned Syria for its bloody crackdown on anti-government protests and threatened it with possible sanctions. Rice added that there was no need for "an extended negotiation" on the new European-Arab draft resolution endorsing the Arab plan aimed at ending the crisis, which has led to thousands of civilian deaths. Clinton also urged the council to act swiftly. "The Security Council must act and make clear to the Syrian regime that the world community views its actions as a threat to peace and security," she said in a statement. "The violence must end, so that a new period of democratic transition can begin." In Paris, a French diplomatic source said what Juppe wanted "is that this visit at least speeds up negotiations." LAVROV NOT ANSWERING PHONE The head of the opposition Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, said he had met with Russian officials in New York and would meet with Rice later on Monday. Germany's U.N. mission said Ghalioun also met with Ambassador Peter Wittig in New York. "Clearly the Russians are not happy with our position asking for Assad to step down before any negotiation, but our position is based on the will of the Syrian people," he said. Ghalioun also urged the council to support the European-Arab draft, saying it was high time for it to act. "The inaction of the international community has only encouraged the Assad regime to continue killing innocent protesters," he said. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said last week that he was willing to engage on the European-Arab draft, which Morocco submitted to the council. But while he did not explicitly threaten to use his veto, he said the text was unacceptable in its current form. Diplomats said Elaraby would be meeting with Churkin in New York to explain to him that vetoing the draft resolution would be tantamount to vetoing the Arab world. A vote on the draft resolution is unlikely before Thursday or Friday, Western diplomats said on condition of anonymity. Russia sought on Monday to avert a swift council vote, saying it wanted to study recommendations from Arab observers in Syria before discussing the league's plan. Russia also said Damascus had agreed to take part in talks in Moscow, but a senior figure in the Syrian opposition said it would not attend. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Clinton had been trying unsuccessfully to connect with Lavrov. "The secretary, frankly, has been trying to get Foreign Minister Lavrov on the phone for about 24 hours," she said in Washington. "That's proven difficult." As street battles rage in Syria, Nuland said the suspension of an Arab League monitoring mission over the weekend due to the worsening security climate may have negative consequences. "We are gravely concerned that as these Arab League monitors have pulled out, the Syrian regime has taken this as an excuse to just let loose in horrific ways against innocents," she said. Rice said the resolution was "quite straightforward" and made no reference to the use or threat of force. Russia has said NATO countries distorted a March 2011 council resolution on Libya to help rebels topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi. While few expect Russia to support the Syria resolution, Western officials said they were hopeful Moscow might be persuaded to abstain, allowing it to pass. The question was what changes would be needed in the text to secure that outcome. | 2 |
Biden, 78, will become the oldest US president in history at a scaled-back ceremony in Washington that has been largely stripped of its usual pomp and circumstance, due both to the coronavirus as well as security concerns following the Jan 6 assault on the US Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump. With only a small number of attendees present, the Democrat will take the oath of office before US Chief Justice John Roberts just after noon (1700 GMT), placing his hand on an heirloom Bible that has been in the Biden family for more than a century. His running mate, Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, will become the first Black person, first woman and first Asian American to serve as vice president after she is sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina member. The ceremony will unfold in front of a heavily fortified US Capitol, where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building two weeks ago, enraged by his false claims that November’s election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The violence prompted the Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives to impeach Trump last week for an unprecedented second time. Thousands of National Guard troops were called into the city after the siege, which left five people dead and briefly forced lawmakers into hiding. Instead of a throng of supporters, the National Mall will be covered by nearly 200,000 flags and 56 pillars of light meant to represent people from US states and territories. Biden, who has vowed to “restore the soul of America,” will call for American unity at a time of crisis in his inaugural address, according to advisers. He will waste little time trying to turn the page on the Trump era, advisers said, signing a raft of 15 executive actions on his first day in office on issues ranging from the pandemic to the economy to climate change. The orders will include mandating masks on federal property, rejoining the Paris climate accord and ending Trump’s travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries. In an early sign of his plan to reach across the political aisle, Biden has invited top congressional leaders, including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, to join him at church on Wednesday morning. Biden’s global leadership ambitions complicated by US Capitol riotIn a break with more than a century and a half of political tradition, Trump plans to depart the White House ahead of the inauguration, declining to meet with his successor and affirm the peaceful transfer of power. Vice President Mike Pence, former US Presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and both McCarthy and McConnell are all expected to attend Biden’s inauguration ceremony. Trump, who has grown increasingly isolated in the waning days of his tenure, has still not formally conceded the Nov 3 election. He will hold a sendoff event at Joint Air Force Base Andrews in the morning, although top Republicans, including Pence, are not expected to attend. GRIM MILESTONES For Biden, who long harboured presidential ambitions, the inauguration is the zenith of a five-decade career in public service that included more than three decades in the US Senate and two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama. But he will confront a set of overlapping crises that would challenge even someone of his political experience. The novel coronavirus reached a pair of grim milestones on Trump’s final full day in office on Tuesday, reaching 400,000 US deaths and 24 million infections - the highest of any country. Millions of Americans are out of work because of pandemic-related shutdowns and restrictions. Biden has vowed to bring the full weight of the federal government to bear on the crisis, including a more robust testing and tracing program and a massive vaccination drive. His top priority is a $1.9 trillion plan that would enhance jobless benefits and provide direct cash payments to households. It will require approval from a deeply divided Congress, where Democrats will hold slim advantages in both the House and Senate. Wednesday’s executive actions, by contrast, are intended to advance Biden’s priorities without the need for legislation. The president will establish a new White House office coordinating the coronavirus response, revoke the permit granted to the contentious Keystone XL oil pipeline and end Trump’s emergency declaration that helped fund a Mexico border wall, among other orders. Jen Psaki, the incoming White House press secretary, said Biden plans additional executive orders in the coming weeks, including eliminating Trump’s restrictions on transgender troops and reversing a policy blocking US funds for overseas programmes linked to abortion. Although Biden has laid out an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days, including delivering 100 million COVID-19 vaccinations, the Senate could be consumed by Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial, which will move ahead even though he has left office. The trial could serve as an early test of Biden’s promise to foster a renewed sense of bipartisanship in Washington. | 0 |
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