Thunberg, Trump to offer conflicting visions at climate-focused Davos

Current Affairs
The distinctly contradicted dreams of US President Donald Trump and Swedish youngster dissident Greta Thunberg on environmental change will conflict in Davos on Tuesday as the World Economic Forum attempts to look up to the hazards of an Earth-wide temperature boost on its 50th gathering.
The four-day get-together of the world's top political and business pioneers in the Swiss Alps gets going looking to meet head-on the perils to both the earth and economy from the warming of the planet. Trump, who has more than once communicated incredulity about environmental change, is set to give the primary keynote address of Davos 2020 on Tuesday morning, on a similar day as his reprimand preliminary opens at the Senate in Washington.
Around a similar time, Thunberg will likewise go to a gathering at the discussion, where she is relied upon to underline the message that has motivated millions around the globe - that administrations are neglecting to wake up to the truth of environmental change. The gathering's very own Global Risks report distributed a week ago cautioned that "environmental change is striking harder and more quickly than many expected" with worldwide temperatures on track to increment by in any event three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) towards the century's end.
There are no desires that the two, who have traded thorns through Twitter, will really meet, yet the packed setting and exceptional timetable mean an opportunity experience can't be precluded. At the point when Trump and his company strolled through UN central station a year ago at the yearly General Assembly, a photograph of the adolescent gazing in clear wrath at the president from the sidelines turned into a web sensation.

Maintainability is the popular expression at the gathering, which started in 1971, with heel crampons gave out to members to urge them to stroll on the frigid avenues as opposed to utilize vehicles...Read More

10 things that reminded us in 2019 it was time we acted on climate change

Current Affairs
The year 2019 was punctuated by a series of deadly, devastating natural and man-made disasters. Starting with fires ravaging California, the year ended with fires in Australia. Amazon wildfire, cyclones, hurricanes, water crisis and rising pollution bore bad tidings. All the catastrophes pointed to the climate crisis. But 2019 was also the year in which millions of people were galvanised into action. Even as some world leaders like US President Donald Trump dismissed 'climate change' as a conspiracy theory, the year's scorching temperatures and other disasters pushed students, activists, scientists and politicians to act.
Here are 10 events in 2019 that indicated it was high time the world acted against climate change
Australia bushfire, koala About 8,000 koalas have died since the fires started, as the slow-moving animals are unable to escape the flames. Photo: Shutterstock
Australia's ongoing bushfire nightmare

Wildfires have turned southeast Australia into an apocalyptic nightmare and threatens to wipe out forests and species of animals. While bushfires are not new to Australia, the situation this time has been catastrophic because of record-breaking temperatures, extended drought and strong winds. The extreme heat follows the driest spring on record. On September 9, the historic getaway Binna Burra Lodge in Queensland was destroyed in the fire. On November 11, New South Wales issued a “catastrophic” fire danger rating for the first time in the decade. In December, thousands of residents and tourists were forced to evacuate southeastern Australia as bush fires razed scores of buildings....Read More

US, EU top carbon polluters, must pay 54% of climate action costs: Report

International News
Another report by in excess of 100 common society associations holds the United States and the 27-nation coalition European Union liable for 54% of the expense of environmental change adjustment and alleviation.
Featuring the issue of value, the report considers the US and the EU answerable for the bigger piece of authentic emanations.
The world is now over 1.1 deg C hotter than the pre-modern period and if the present patterns proceed, normal worldwide temperatures can be relied upon to ascend by 3.4-3.9 deg C by the turn of this century, as indicated by the United Nations (UN). The report comes as agents of nations around the globe meet at Spain's capital Madrid (December 2-9, 2019) for the yearly atmosphere talks, the 25th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP25).
The report is supported by associations, for example, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and ActionAid, and sets out how much obligation the rich nations must take for the overwhelming effects of rising worldwide temperatures. Called "Would climate be able to Change-Fuelled Loss and Damage Ever Be Fair?", the report prescribes prompt open atmosphere money dependent on the misfortune and harm previously caused as the initial step for affluent nations.
Sivan Kartha, a senior researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, built up the value investigation utilized in the report.
Ascertaining 'decent amount' of duty
A fourth of a century since the first environmental change meeting in quite a while, are progressively baffled with insufficient activity even as rising ocean levels compromise the presence of a few beach front and island nations.

This year notwithstanding COP, UN Secretary General António Guterres facilitated another atmosphere meeting in September, welcoming world pioneers with striking intends to take centrestage...Read More

World leaders come up short at UN summit as millions demand climate action

International News

Millions of people in 170 countries took to the streets to protest. World leaders lined up at the United Nations to pledge action. A 16-year-old girl, close to tears, shamed them for robbing her of a future.
The pressure to act on climate change is mounting. Titans of global business and politics gathered in New York this week for a series of events, including the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York, to acknowledge that more must be done -- but fell short of saying exactly what will be done.
“Time is running out in the court of public opinion, because time is running out to address climate change,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told heads of state and business chiefs at the Global Business Forum on Wednesday. “It’s right for them to hold our feet to the fire.”
The stakes have indeed never been higher. Temperatures have already risen 1 degree Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1880s. The world must limit that warming to no more than 2 degrees above Industrial Revolution levels, the UN has warned, to avoid the most catastrophic of droughts, floods, mass migrations and conflicts. “You can just feel the groundswell of popular sentiment, that the urgency of this is elevated,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive David Solomon said during the forum.
When asked whether there’s enough information out there to determine his own bank’s exposure to climate change, Solomon said, “We’re working on it. The answer is we’re working on it.” It was a response that underscored both the heightened awareness among leaders that they will be held responsible for global warming and the work that still lays ahead of them.

 The meetings were still “far too much a chance for people to beat their chests and say they’re making change,” said Brad Cornell, a business professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “But who is making real change?”....Read More

Amazon fires releasing CO2 stored in forests, impacting global climate: ESA

International News
New satellite images published on Monday by the European Space Agency show an increase in air pollution in the Brazilian Amazon while fires burned in the region last month.
Several maps showed more carbon monoxide and other pollutants in August than in the previous month, when there were fewer fires.
The agency said fires released carbon dioxide once stored in the Amazon forests back into the atmosphere, potentially having an impact on the global climate and health. Burning continues in the Amazon despite a 60-day ban on land-clearing fires that was announced last month by President Jair Bolsonaro.
Data from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research showed the number of fires in all of Brazil has surpassed 100,000 so far this year, up 45 per cent compared to the same period in 2018.
Renata Libonati, a professor in the department of meteorology at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University, said that aside from gases, the burning of forests also released particles into the atmosphere.
Health experts say studies show that air pollution, whether it is small particles or gases, leads to an increase in cardiovascular conditions and lung problems, especially among young children and the elderly.In Porto Velho, the capital of Brazil's Amazon state of Rondonia, lingering smoke has reportedly caused an increase in such respiratory problems.

 The number of people treated for respiratory issues increased sharply in August at the Cosme e Damia Children's hospital. But small particles can also be transported by winds in cities that are not immediately close to where the fires are taking place...Read More

Don't hold your breath: Amazon fires aren't depleting Earth's oxygen supply

Current Affairs

Fires in the Amazon rainforest have captured attention worldwide in recent days. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, pledged in his campaign to reduce environmental protection and increase agricultural development in the Amazon, and he appears to have followed through on that promise.
The resurgence of forest clearing in the Amazon, which had decreased more than 80% following a peak in 2004, is alarming for many reasons. Tropical forests harbor many species of plants and animals found nowhere else. They are important refuges for indigenous people, and contain enormous stores of carbon as wood and other organic matter that would otherwise contribute to the climate crisis.
Some media accounts have suggested that fires in the Amazon also threaten the atmospheric oxygen that we breathe. French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted on Aug. 22 that “the Amazon rain forest – the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen – is on fire.”
The oft-repeated claim that the Amazon rainforest produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen is based on a misunderstanding. In fact nearly all of Earth’s breathable oxygen originated in the oceans, and there is enough of it to last for millions of years. There are many reasons to be appalled by this year’s Amazon fires, but depleting Earth’s oxygen supply is not one of them.
Oxygen from plants

 As an atmospheric scientist, much of my work focuses on exchanges of various gases between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere. Many elements, including oxygen, constantly cycle between land-based ecosystems, the oceans and the atmosphere in ways that can be measured and quantified...Read More

Can environmental populism save the planet? It is difficult, but possible

Current Affairs

Populism and environmentalism are words seldom seen in the same sentence. One is associated predominantly with nationalists and charismatic leaders of “real people”, the other with broadly-based collective action to address the world’s single most pressing problem.
Differences don’t get much starker, it would seem. But we are increasingly seeing the two strands combine in countries around the world.Exhibit A in support of this thesis is the remarkable growth and impact of Extinction Rebellion, often known as XR.
When I finished writing a book on the possibility of environmental populism little more than six months ago, I’d never even heard of XR. Now it is a global phenomenon, beginning to be taken seriously by policymakers in some of the world’s more consequential democracies. Britain’s decision earlier this year to declare a climate emergency is attributed in part to 11 days of Extinction Rebellion protest that paralysed parts of London.
Greta Thunberg, the remarkable Swedish schoolgirl who has rapidly become one of the world’s leading climate activists, is another – rather inspiring – example of a rising tide of popular opinion demanding political leaders take action before it is too late. It is also a telling indictment of the quality and imagination of the current crop of international leaders that schoolchildren are taking the lead on an issue that will, for better or worse, define their future.

 It is striking that so many prominent figures in international politics are not just buffoonish, self-obsessed and ludicrously underqualified for the positions they hold, but are also rather old.I speak as an ageing baby boomer myself, and a childless one at that. My rather ageist point is that I simply don’t have the same stake in the future that young people do, who have perhaps 70 or 80 years yet to live...Read More

In 'climate apartheid', rich will save themselves while poor suffer: UN

Company News

The world is on course for “climate apartheid”, where the rich buy their way out of the worst effects of global warming while the poor bear the brunt, a UN human rights report said on Tuesday.
The report, submitted to the UN Human Rights Council by its special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, said business was supposed to play a vital role in coping with climate change, but could not be relied on to look after the poor.
“An over-reliance on the private sector could lead to a climate apartheid scenario in which the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict, while the rest of the world is left to suffer,” he wrote.
He cited vulnerable New Yorkers being stranded without power or healthcare when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, while “the Goldman Sachs headquarters was protected by tens of thousands of its own sandbags and power from its generator”.
Relying exclusively on the private sector to protect against extreme weather and rising seas “would almost guarantee massive human rights violations, with the wealthy catered to and the poorest left behind”, he wrote.
“Even under the best-case scenario, hundreds of millions will face food insecurity, forced migration, disease, and death.”
His report criticized governments for doing little more than sending officials to conferences to make “sombre speeches”, even though scientists and climate activists have been ringing alarm bells since the 1970s.

 “Thirty years of conventions appear to have done very little. From Toronto to Noordwijk to Rio to Kyoto to Paris, the language has been remarkably similar as States continue to kick the can down the road,” Alston wrote.

Climate change is causing mass 'die-offs' in seabirds such as puffins

International News

Changes in seabird numbers are probably the best way to monitor the quality of the marine environment. And things are looking bad. In the past 50 years, the world population of marine birds has more than halved. What’s worse is that few people have noticed.
Puffins, guillemots, penguins and albatrosses are all in decline. How do we know this? There are three main ways of checking on numbers. First and best are long-term population studies: counts of individuals or pairs at their breeding colonies made in a systematic, rigorous way each year at established “study plots”. For instance, I have studied the same population of guillemots on Skomer Island in Wales since 1972. Consistent, careful methodology is the key here, but it is labour intensive.
Second, are one-off counts made every ten years or so over larger areas. This has occurred in the UK, starting with the census known as “Operation Seafarer” in 1969-70, and with the most recent survey last year. This method provides estimates of the size of the overall population of different species but is less good at detecting small changes in numbers.
The third way is by counting the bodies of seabirds washed up on the shoreline – usually referred to as beached bird surveys. Regular, systematic counts along set lengths of shoreline provide background levels of mortality. Occasionally, numbers spike in what in seabird parlance is known as a “wreck”, as occurred in 2014 when more than 50,000 seabirds, mainly guillemots and puffins, were washed up on the west coast of Britain and France.
Seabird wrecks have been known about for a long time, but they are becoming more common. Wrecked seabirds are usually emaciated,

 having usually starved to death, indicating a catastrophic failure in their food supply.

Clogged Jakarta: Does Indonesia need a new capital?

International News
Even as he awaits official confirmation of his election to a second term, Indonesian President Joko Widodo appears to be thinking about his legacy. He’s proposing a $33 billion plan to relocate the capital far away from clogged Jakarta. The idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. That doesn’t mean it’ll work.
Jokowi, as the Indonesian leader is known, is right to question Jakarta’s long-term viability as a capital city. The population has swollen to 30 million people and, while a new subway system offers some relief at the margins, Jakarta’s roads are plagued by chronic congestion and flooding. Indonesia’s planning minister has even warned about the potential for a pandemic, given poor sanitation. That’s not to mention the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis that periodically beset the country.

The president’s team is also correct that as a member of the G-20, Indonesia should have an administrative capital that functions well and can accommodate the country’s predicted rise as a major economic player. Building one from scratch would help boost Jokowi’s plans to increase infrastructure spending. The government also wants to spread development beyond Java, the island on which Jakarta is located and the source of about 60 percent of gross domestic product.
Other countries — from Malaysia to Australia, Pakistan, Myanmar, South Korea and Brazil — have created new, purpose-built centers for the machinery of government. Their example, though, illustrates the pitfalls Jokowi needs to fear.


 It’s one thing to build a more efficient capital. (The plan is for the executive branch, legislature and ministries to shift; Bank Indonesia and investment functions will remain in Jakarta.) It’s another to construct monuments to national vanity...Read More