Cop26 protesters’ anger and frustration tinged with optimism
On Tuesday morning, activists dressed in the red jumpsuits familiar to viewers of the dystopian Netflix series Squid Game strike posed for the assembled media on the south bank of the Clyde, directly opposite the Cop26 conference centre.Across the river and further into the city centre later on Tuesday, Anne Thoday was squatting on the pavement on St Vincent Street next to her surdo drum as a thick line of police prevented Extinction Rebellion protesters from moving towards the conference centre.
“I think there are a lot of grandparents involved,” said the 59-year-old social worker, who arrived from Derbyshire on Sunday. “This Cop really does feel like the last chance to turn things around. I’m not feeling very hopeful but I still felt compelled to come here.”
TV tonight: how the climate crisis is turning our weather wild
this link has a schedule of programs
The Climate Summit is Mostly Banal--With Moments So Deep You Walk Away In Tears
like all the climate summits before it—resembles nothing so much as a shoe convention or a furniture convention. Not an auto show, because those are glamorous (though there is one electric racecar on display in the middle of the Glasgow conclave).
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All of this somehow relates to the fight to save the planet, but it’s always depressingly clear that it’s also become a routine, an industry, an ongoing enterprise largely divorced from the scientists and activists who forced this process into existence.
On its fringes, however, there are occasionally events that take your breath away.
IIndigenous languages project urges Cop26 leaders to rethink ties to the land
Western leaders at the Cop26 climate summit have been urged to embrace a far more holistic view of humanity’s place in the natural world by an art project celebrating indigenous minority languages.
The Living Language Land project has identified 25 words from minority languages and dialects around the world – including Native American Lakota, Murui, a native language of Colombian and Peru, and Scots Gaelic – that highlight each culture’s ties to their land.
Those words, streamed online with films and indigenous visual art, include a Namibian bushman’s word for magical journey; one from the Philippines to denote a forest within a forest and an indigenous Chilean word for the tangible and intangible parts of life.
Beware Industry-Backed 'Nature-Based Solutions' Scam, Warns Global Climate Coalition
As a global climate summit continued in Glasgow, Scotland on Tuesday, an international coalition of advocacy groups warned world leaders that corporate polluters are pushing for "nature-based solutions" to capture planet-heating emissions so they can "keep burning fossil fuels, mine more of the planet, and increase industrial meat and dairy production."
"The purported solutions will result in 'nature-based dispossessions.'"
The coalition announced that a sign-on statement on the issue—which is open for signature through the end of 2021—has so far been endorsed by 257 groups and 78 individuals from 61 countries.
"What corporations and big conservation groups call 'nature-based solutions' is a dangerous distraction," the statement says, blasting companies from Microsoft and Nestlé to Shell, Total, and Unilever for "peddling a dangerous scam" that "is dressed up with unproven and flawed data."
Russia at the forefront of climate change as desert expands in Kalmykia
Europe's landscape is under threat as the climate crisis worsens, with desertification sweeping across the driest and hottest parts of Russia.
In the southern republic of Kalmykia, sand has replaced the steppe.
Severe drought and overgrazing have combined to destroy what was once fertile landscape.
The worsening climate crisis has only been exacerbated as temperatures in parts of Russia rise to twice the global average.
"The problem of desertification is really big because the past couple of years have been very dry," said Alexander Kladiev, a desertification expert.
COP26 Climate Justice For the 46 Least Developed Countries Kaossara Sani 2 November 2021
My name is Kaossara Sani. I am a peace and climate activist from Togo – a small country in West Africa, and one of the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs).
More than a billion people spread across Africa, the Asia-Pacific region and the Caribbean are suffering disproportionately from the ever-increasing impacts of climate change, despite historically having contributed the least to the global warming that causes it. I am one of those people.
More than a decade ago, in 2009, the wealthy nations promised to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance for developing countries by the end of 2020. In 2015, they agreed to continue with that yearly provision of $100 billion from 2020 to 2025.
You Can’t Run From Climate Change, but That’s Not a Bad Thing
A few weeks ago I had a difficult talk with my parents about climate change. Not the kind born from denial, but the kind born from utter desperation. With a sullen look across their faces, they sat me down and asked: “Where can we go where climate change won’t be so bad?”
My parents are just two of the millions of people affected by wildfire and drought in California. This year alone, almost two million acres of the state have burned. Communities like that of my parents’ are plagued by constant threats of evacuation orders and dangerously poor air quality. It was more than understandable they’d be asking this question.
As someone who studied the environment for four years at the University of California Santa Barbara and is now a candidate for a master’s in climate science at Columbia University, I think they were hoping I would have a concrete answer for them—some knowledge of a thriving green utopia where they could pack up and move to as a respite from the dire situation in California. But as I sat there, taking longer and longer to formulate an answer, all hope of calming their fears disappeared into the air like wildfire smoke.
Water shortages caused by global warming threaten global stability