These are some of todays news:
-
G-20 public finance for fossil fuel projects dwarfs green energy support
- 'Too early' to assess accomplishments of Cop26, warn experts
-
'Must-Read' Analysis Reveals Massive Global Gap Between Declared and Actual Emissions
-
COP26: Whom should developing countries bill for climate impacts?
-
Rainforests in the DRC: "a solution" for climate change
-
Climate change: Seven ways to spot businesses greenwashing
-
NAB pledge to limit funding for fossil fuels full of loopholes, activist investor group says
-
Obama implores world leaders to ‘step up now’ to avert climate disaster
-
Polluters Urged to 'Pay Up' for Climate Damage as Economic Devastation Awaits World's Poorest
-
COP26 show ‘Can I Live?’ is empowering the unheard voices of the climate movement
-
'Our Democracy Faces an Existential Threat': Progressives Warn of GOP Attack on 2022 Elections
-
A matter of life or death: At COP26, vulnerable countries tell developed nations it’s time to keep their promise on climate finance
-
COP26: why education for girls is crucial in the fight against climate change
-
The cow in the room: why is no one talking about farming at Cop26?
-
Flooding paradise: Island nations' climate threat
This Is An Open Thread
G-20 public finance for fossil fuel projects dwarfs green energy support
More than twice as much money went to bankroll oil, gas and coal projects than for renewable energy between 2018 and last year, according to an analysis of public finance released on Thursday (Oct 28) by two environmental groups.
Most of that money also went to projects in wealthier countries rather than to develop the energy needs of poorer nations, it found.
The Group of 20 (G-20) countries spent at least US$63 billion (S$85 billion) per year financing oil, gas and coal projects through their development finance institutions, export credit agencies and the multilateral development banks (MDBs) compared with about US$26 billion per year for renewables, the report by non-governmental organisations Friends of the Earth US and Oil Change International said.
'Too early' to assess accomplishments of Cop26, warn experts
It is too early to declare the United Nations (UN) climate change Cop26 summit a failure; there have already been real signs of progress, according to one of the world's foremost climate scientists.
Professor Michael E Mann, a climatologist, geophysicist and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, called for perspective, tweeting that negotiations at Cop26 are barely under way.
"It is way too early to assess what was and wasn't accomplished. We'll only know that in a week, but there is already some very real progress," he said.
Environmental activists locked out of the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow last week lamented the fact that the fossil fuel companies had a wide range of delegates in attendance at the 25,000-strong summit, which heard a number of pledges from world leaders on robust action to tackle climate change.
'Must-Read' Analysis Reveals Massive Global Gap Between Declared and Actual Emissions
A major new investigation from the Washington Post has found "a giant gap" between the greenhouse gas emissions nations are reporting to the United Nations and what their planet-heating emissions actually are.
Published Sunday, the investigation is being heralded as "a must-read story" based on "amazing" and "incredibly helpful" reporting.
The Post team assessed 196 countries' emissions data for 2019, plugging in information for the 45 countries that submitted reports to the U.N. that year and making projections for the others.
Comparing that data with independent global emissions measurements, the Post found there was at least 8.4 billion tons and as much as 13.3 billion tons in underreported emissions. Carbon dioxide made up the majority of the gap, with methane following. Nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases, sometimes known as f-gases, accounted for smaller portions of the gap.
COP26: Whom should developing countries bill for climate impacts?
As the world struggles to keep the planet from overheating, the issue of who pays for the fallout of climate change is one of the major sticking points in negotiations at the UN climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.
"Those who pollute are not being sanctioned," Molwyn Joseph, Minister of Health, Wellness and the Environment for the Caribbean nation Antigua and Barbuda, told DW. "Those who pollute do not appear to be empathetic to the disaster that is faced by small island developing states as a result of the pollution."
The effects of a hotter planet are already being felt today — droughts have wiped out entire harvests, flooding and supercharged hurricanes have destroyed people's livelihoods and even entire islands have disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Rainforests in the DRC: "a solution" for climate change
The Congo Basin is home to the world's second-largest rainforest after the Amazon. It covers 180 million hectares, two-thirds of which are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country as big as the whole of Western Europe.
Standing at a whopping 55 metres high, Yangambi's flux tower, CongoFlux, in the Congo Basin is one of the latest additions to the world's 1400 already existing flux towers. It was designed by the University of Ghent in Belgium and erected last year in the middle of the forest.
The site where it is located has once again become a place of experimentation where they are trying to fight global warming and restore biodiversity for the benefit of all.
Climate change: Seven ways to spot businesses greenwashing
Most of us are trying to be greener and for some that means seeking out brands and companies that are environmentally-friendly. But how can you check firms really are as green as they make out?
Greenwashing - branding something as eco-friendly, green or sustainable when this is not the case - misleads consumers into thinking they are helping the planet by choosing those products.
And businesses are being held to account on this in the way they advertise. But what do customers need to look out for to spot greenwashing?
NAB pledge to limit funding for fossil fuels full of loopholes, activist investor group says
A new commitment from NAB to limit funding for oil and gas projects is full of loopholes and will allow the bank to continue lending to fossil fuel businesses, environmental activists say.
The bank on Tuesday said it would cap its lending to oil and gas at US$2.4bn – a figure that NAB’s chief executive, Ross McEwan, said the bank was currently “a couple of hundred million below”.
NAB said it would reduce its exposure from 2026 in line with the International Energy Agency’s net zero by 2050 roadmap.
Obama implores world leaders to ‘step up now’ to avert climate disaster
Barack Obama has called on world leaders to “step up and step up now” to avert climate breakdown, singling out China and Russia for being foremost among countries that are failing to cut planet-heating emissions quickly enough.
Polluters Urged to 'Pay Up' for Climate Damage as Economic Devastation Awaits World's Poorest
As global leaders marked "Adaptation, Loss, and Damage Day" at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland Monday, a new study detailed the vast scope of economic damage that awaits the world's most vulnerable economies if the Global North continues burning climate-heating fossil fuels while offering only "paltry" support for poor nations.
Commissioned by Christian Aid and authored by Marina Andrijevic, a researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin,
"Lost and Damaged" details "the likely extent of economic damage to the world's poorest and most vulnerable nations in two possible futures"—one in which governments succeed in constraining fossil fuel emissions and limiting global heating to 1.5°C by 2100, and one in which they fail.
In the latter scenario, the planet is expected to heat up by nearly 3°C by the end of the century, which would result in plummeting gross domestic product (GDP) for the 65 most vulnerable countries by an average of 20% in the next three decades.
COP26 show ‘Can I Live?’ is empowering the unheard voices of the climate movement
The COP26 Summit is underway in Glasgow, opening up urgent conversations on the climate emergency - but what about those that feel excluded? Those who have been most impacted by climate change, yet their experiences are not reflected in discussions?
A new filmed performance, Can I Live?, aims to address the lack of diversity at the heart of the British climate movement in particular, and will be screened as part of COP26’s official programme.
Written and performed by actor and activist Fehinti Balogun (I May Destroy You, Walden), and directed by Daniel Bailey, with co-direction by Simon McBurney, the film energetically combines hip-hop, theatre and spoken word to unravel Fehinti’s personal journey into climate activism, empowering previously underrepresented audiences.
'Our Democracy Faces an Existential Threat': Progressives Warn of GOP Attack on 2022 Elections
Citing "unprecedented and coordinated" Republican efforts to undermine public trust in the U.S. electoral system, nearly 60 advocacy groups warned Monday of the need defend democracy ahead of the 2022 midterm elections—including by passing the Freedom to Vote Act.
"We have already seen tragic consequences in the form of a violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6."
"Our democracy faces an existential threat—the very real possibility that the outcome of an election could be ignored and the will of the people overturned by hyperpartisan actors," 58 groups including MoveOn.org, Protect Democracy, Public Citizen, SEIU, and the Sierra Club assert in an open letter.
"Since the 2020 election, we have seen unprecedented and coordinated efforts to cast doubt on the U.S. election system," the letter states.
A matter of life or death: At COP26, vulnerable countries tell developed nations it’s time to keep their promise on climate finance
Their main call: developed countries must uphold their promise of finance and support to the small states that are at risk of losing so much to the combat against climate change.
“From the ocean came forth life, peace and comfort, a world not known to most but that was one with my people…We will remember a time when our homes stood proud and tall, for today they stand no more. That place is now taken by the ocean”.
The eighth day of the UN Climate Conference began with a poem recited by an activist from Papua New Guinea, an island nation that lies in the South-western Pacific. Her words resonated throughout the meeting room in the Blue Zone, while tears appeared to be rolling down her cheeks.
“We will never know when the tide raises and swallows our homes. Our cultures, our languages and our traditions will be taken by the ocean. When you say by 2030 to 2050, how can you see deadlines 9 to 29 years away when my people have proved that we must act now and not waste any more time,” she said, explaining that the ocean that once gave her people life, now has become an “executioner”.
COP26: why education for girls is crucial in the fight against climate change
The Glasgow climate change conference is in its second week, with Tuesday November 9 dedicated to recognising gender equality, and the empowerment of women and girls in climate policy and action.
Gender inequality means women and girls will experience climate change in unique and different ways. They are more likely to die in extreme weather events than men. And as climate change brings about forced migration, loss of housing and income, they are vulnerable to gender-based violence.
Child marriage is a common coping mechanism for many families facing climate stress. For example, in 2016 a 15-year-old girl in Mozambique was married in exchange for 2,000 Mozambican Metical (approximately A$42) to forestall her family’s climate-induced poverty.
The cow in the room: why is no one talking about farming at Cop26?
“The cow in the room is being ignored at this Cop,” says Carl Le Blanc of Climate Healers. “Animal agriculture has been taken off the agenda and put on the menu.”
Le Blanc was one of a number of campaigners who joined climate marches on Saturday in Glasgow to demand action for a new sustainable food system. They fought strong gales to make their point with four giant inflatable animals tethered on ropes above their heads or strapped to the ground. Each symbolised a different problem of the livestock industry: a 40ft cow for methane, a chicken for Covid and health, a fish for microplastics, and a pig for obesity.
Many industry representatives and campaigners feel not enough attention has been paid to food and farming at Cop26, despite it being one of the keys to cutting emissions over the next few decades. Food served at the canteen has been criticised – nearly 60% of dishes contain meat or dairy, which campaign group Animal Rebellion described as the equivalent of “serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference”.
Flooding paradise: Island nations' climate threat
By the time many of the pledges made in Glasgow this week are met (or not), some of the participating countries may no longer exist.
Driving the news: The world’s 40-some small island states have used COP26 to plead for more urgent action — while there's still time — and to confront world powers like the U.S. and China with the devastation their emissions have caused.
- “Our country is paradise, there’s no doubt about it,” Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne tells Axios. “But they are, unfortunately, destroying our pristine environment.”
- “Not only are they destroying lives, they’re destroying livelihoods,” he says. “And if the situation continues, the ultimate situation is losing our lives and losing our civilizations in the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Oceans.”
- By “they,” does Browne mean, say, the United States? “Oh, absolutely.”
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.