These are todays stories:
- How has Cop26 shifted the dial on the climate crisis? A visual guide
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Over 84 Million People Forcibly Displaced by Climate Emergency, Insecurity, and Violence
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Why Climate Change Could Put New Conservation Areas in Jeopardy
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Activists Slam 'Weasel Words' in New COP26 Text as Negotiators Water Down Climate Deal
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Despite GOP Gains in Virginia, the State’s Landmark Clean Energy Law Will Be Hard to Derail
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Enormous impact of Canada's carbon stores on global climate change
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Northeast utilities are spending billions on resilience, and the investments are paying off
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Biden's pledge to slash methane emissions will have outsized impact on Texas oil and gas industry
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At COP26, Youth Activists From Around the World Call Out Decades of Delay
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Maine bird species may become extinct in our lifetime as climate warms
This Is An Open Thread
How has Cop26 shifted the dial on the climate crisis? A visual guide
Cop26 will close without even one major economy aligned with keeping global heating to 1.5C, according to the world’s most respected climate analysis coalition.
A study of 36 countries by Climate Action Tracker shows progress has been made at Glasgow, though not nearly enough to keep the world from dangerous levels of heating.
Major emitters such as Europe, the US and China have increased their ambition compared with two years ago, but their emissions-cutting pledges remain insufficient to reach the Paris agreement’s target.
Over 84 Million People Forcibly Displaced by Climate Emergency, Insecurity, and Violence
A United Nations agency revealed Thursday that a rising number of people worldwide are fleeing violence, insecurity, and the effects of the climate emergency, with over 84 million relocating within and beyond their home countries during the first half of this year.
"It is the communities and countries with the fewest resources that continue to shoulder the greatest burden in protecting and caring for the forcibly displaced."
The new U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, report—released at the tail end of a global climate summit—says that "durable solutions for forcibly displaced populations remained in short supply due to unresolved and escalating conflicts in many countries of origin, as well as the continuing restrictions on movement in response to Covid-19."
Why Climate Change Could Put New Conservation Areas in Jeopardy
Last month, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity met virtually to set global conservation goals for the next decade. Although the 196 signatories to the treaty did not meet the goals they set a decade ago, they nevertheless are moving to expand on those goals, most notably with a proposal to place 30 percent of the earth’s continents and oceans in protected areas by 2030. This “30 by 30” plan has been the subject of fierce argument, with some critics calling it an environmentalist pipe dream and a neocolonialist land grab that, by restricting the activities allowed in newly protected areas, could negatively affect as many as 300 million people, including many of the world’s poorest.
But many scientists also are concerned about what is perhaps a deeper problem, for both new and existing protected areas: As the planet continues to warm, many protected areas will become less and less suited to the types of organisms and ecosystems they were created to protect. “The idea of national parks as a place where you could draw a line around an area and not do much of anything but protect it from external threats, that biodiversity would persist there — that’s no longer an accurate portrayal,” says independent ecologist Carlos Carroll.
Activists Slam 'Weasel Words' in New COP26 Text as Negotiators Water Down Climate Deal
Climate advocates warned Friday that "the fingerprints of the fossil fuel industry" are all over a COP26 draft decision text released in the waning hours of the summit in Glasgow, Scotland, where campaigners and scientists have implored world leaders to take ambitious steps to curb planet-warming emissions.
The new text—released on the last official day of a conference swarming with oil and gas lobbyists—dampened lingering hopes of a firm international commitment to phase out the use of fossil fuels, the primary driver of the global climate emergency.
"Pledges will not stop the planet from warming. Only immediate and drastic action will pull us back from the abyss."
Earlier this week, activists offered cautious praise following the release of a draft document that mentioned fossil fuels for the first time in more than two decades of United Nations climate talks.
Despite GOP Gains in Virginia, the State’s Landmark Clean Energy Law Will Be Hard to Derail
Twenty months ago, Virginia became the first state in the South to pass a comprehensive clean energy law designed to transform and boost its economy and take on climate change.
Then, on Nov. 2, the state’s voters elected a new governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, who during the campaign said he never would have signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, saying it was too costly and “puts our entire energy grid at risk.”
Voters also flipped control of the 100-member House of Delegates from Democrats to Republicans; there were no elections in the state Senate, which remains run by a narrow Democratic majority.
The election brings a measure of uncertainty to Virginia’s energy policy over the next four years. But even with those Republican gains, energy experts said that Youngkin will have a hard time significantly weakening, or slowing down, the law, given its ongoing support in the Senate and the staggered board terms at two key regulatory agencies.
Enormous impact of Canada's carbon stores on global climate change
New data from McMaster researchers shows, for the first time, how much carbon is stored in Canada's landscapes, and reveals how these carbon-rich areas, if disturbed, could have enormous ramifications for global climate change.
Findings from McMaster's Remote Sensing Laboratory show 405 billion tons of carbon is stored in ecosystems across the country, according to a study led by World Wildlife Canada (WWF-Canada). And, as global temperatures rise and that land decomposes, or is disturbed by human intervention, that carbon could then be released into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change.
The impact could be massive. The total amount of carbon mapped by the researchers is the equivalent to about 30 years of human-caused global greenhouse gas emissions (at 2019 emission levels).
Northeast utilities are spending billions on resilience, and the investments are paying off
Each region of the United States is facing its own mix of climate-related grid reliability challenges, but arguably the Northeast must deal with the most diverse batch of threats. Summer heat waves can stretch resources, hurricanes destroy grid equipment, wind and winter storms snap power lines, and flooding is a flip-side challenge of undergrounding equipment.
And the impacts of these threats on utilities are getting more severe.
Take Consolidated Edison (ConEd), for instance, which delivers electricity to more than 3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County. Prior to 2011, no storm had ever caused 200,000 outages on the utility's grid.
Biden's pledge to slash methane emissions will have outsized impact on Texas oil and gas industry
With the two-week, world climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland scheduled to end Friday, world leaders continue to negotiate ways to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gasses.
“This is all part of our new methane strategy which focuses on reducing the largest source of methane emissions while putting thousands of skilled workers on the job all across the United States,” Biden said during his trip to Glasgow.
At COP26, Youth Activists From Around the World Call Out Decades of Delay
Jon Bonifacio was on his way to becoming a doctor when the urgency and seriousness of the climate crisis began to sink in. The Philippines, where the 24-year-old was in medical school, was already feeling global warming’s effects, with more intense cyclones striking the low-lying archipelago. Projections of sea level rise indicated that even the hospital he expected to intern in would be underwater by 2050.
“The reality of it really makes you want to do something,” he said.
What he did was to drop out of medical school earlier this year to devote himself full-time to addressing climate change. Last week, he headed for the climate meetings in Glasgow, representing Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines, an organization he founded in 2019 with a small group of friends and that now counts hundreds of members all over the country.
Maine bird species may become extinct in our lifetime as climate warms
On a small salt marsh, near the mouth of the Presumpscot River, Doug Hitchcox kneels and spreads apart some of the coarse marsh grass.
He’s a naturalist with Maine Audubon and is showing us where the small Saltmarsh sparrows build nests, and why their future in Maine may be bleak because of a changing climate.
“I always love saying why should we care about the Saltmarsh sparrow,” Hitchcox said.
The answer always pleases people because these sparrows love to eat greenhead flies, which often annoy humans with their nasty bites.
The writers in Climate Brief work to keep the Daily Kos community informed and engaged with breaking news about the climate crisis around the world while providing inspiring stories of environmental heroes, opportunities for direct engagement, and perspectives on the intersection of climate activism with spirituality, politics, and the arts.