Climate Change: Colette Pichon Battle and the Global Impact on Climate Change. The Impact of Hurricane Ian on United States and the Gulf of Mexico

The weather during the closing of the Re:WIRED GREEN event showed the seriousness of addressing climate change.

While climate activist and lawyer Colette Pichon Battle spoke from a stage in blue-skied San Francisco, Hurricane Ian continued its destructive path across southwest Florida, underscoring her already-urgent call to action. “I just want to make sure that you’re paying attention to what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now,” Pichon Battle said. She told the audience to be aware of climate events around the world, from rain in Houston to floods in Pakistan and Cape Verde.

For Pichon Battle, individual steps like voting for politicians who care about the climate are all well and good—but must be accompanied by hard work on collective action that challenges existing economic and political systems. Access to clean water and healthy food, she said, should not depend on how much money a community has.

Because of the uncertainty in the field, it isn’t easy to transform research into feasible projects that will be put into immediate action. Using the computers we have access to, it can take three months to run one model, whereas high-performance computers can do it in one hour. Our research can be delayed due to the lack of supporting technologies.

What are your thoughts on the issue of climate change? What are the questions your friends, family and neighbors are asking? What points call for more clarity, or are particularly intriguing?

Multiple world leaders voiced their frustration that wealthy countries, including the United States, are not paying enough for the costs of climate change. At these talks, developing countries are pushing for compensation for the damages from extreme storms and rising seas, what’s known as “loss and damage.”

The planet faces an increasingly dire situation, according to the report. Climate change is disrupting lives all around the world. Extreme weather, including heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes, is killing and displacing people worldwide, and causing massive economic damage. And the amount of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere is still rising.

The UN Environment Programme’s executive director, Inger Andersen wrote in the report’s foreword that strong political will is needed to increase adaptation investments.

We need to get ahead of the game in order to not spend the coming decades in emergency response mode.

Climate Investment Funds – A Report on Climate Change Conference Expert Report (CaBes 2016), WFOR-Newton, Germany

The report was drafted by top climate scientists and reviewed by delegates from nearly 200 countries. The authors hope it will give crucial guidance to politicians around the world, who are trying to rein in climate change.

The climate conference is held each year to bring together the world to deal with the problem. World leaders sometimes make new commitments to curb their country’s greenhouse gas emissions or pen agreements with other heads of state to transition to clean energy and funnel money into building a more resilient world. More often advocates walk away disappointed with the progress they have made. There are a lot of people trying to get a handle on this year’s climate talks.

“It is important to raise the discourse considerably and the level of ambition so that we can continue to do what we are doing on mitigation even more, and also meet the adaptation needs,” says Mafalda Duarte, CEO of Climate Investment Funds.

The UN says that the world needs to invest more money in projects to reduce the hazard and exposure that are brought on by extreme weather. That could include building water reservoirs in areas at risk of drought, ensuring infrastructure is built to stand up to the impacts of a hotter climate, and providing communities with early warning systems to help people evacuate in emergencies.

The entire world is at risk if the money isn’t spent to limit and prepare for climate change. Those risks could include armed conflicts, refugee crises and disruptions in financial markets, analysts say.

“We have to change our mindset and the way we think, because, actually, when it comes to climate, you know, an investment across borders in other places is a domestic investment,” Duarte says.

The Livingston Award, IRE Award and others have been won by John D. Sutter who is a climate journalist and CNN contributor. The George Washington University has a Ted Turner Professor of Environmental Media. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more about it at CNN.

Vanuatu, a coastal island nation, needs to abandon fossil fuels if it is going to stop polluting the planet

It was an urgent question that had foresight. As global temperature increases contribute to rising sea levels worldwide, the territory of Vanuatu, in the Pacific Ocean, is in danger.

At the time, Vanuatu – on behalf of an alliance of small-island states – argued quite reasonably that polluters should pay for the costs of their pollution.

In addition, the failure to rein in fossil fuel interests could undermine the success of loss and damage negotiations, says a Christian Aid adviser. “More fossil fuels means more loss and damage.”

After decades of deflection, it’s overdue for high-polluting countries like the United States to take this question seriously. It is clear that we need to hold polluters accountable for the losses to territory, culture, life and property.

The world needs to abandon fossil fuels as quickly as possible. At COP 27, the world is well behind on its goal to hold warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, as another focal point of discussion. We are on course for about 2.5% of warming due to current policies but recent climate bills passed in the US are not enough.

Negative emissions techniques, like sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, could reduce warming. Indeed, the new report says these technologies will be necessary to bring temperatures down from an “overshoot.” They are not proven at the correct scale for making a difference in atmospheric carbon.

Climate change and international law: an urgent plea to protect the rights of small island states against lawsuits in the courts of law (after the New York Times)

Arguments against action have taken many forms over the decades. The most laughable, in retrospect, is that this was a problem for the future rather than the present.

It feels like a new phenomenon, but it has been around for a long time. Scientists linked a deadly 2003 heat wave in Europe, for example, to human-caused warming. 20,000 people died in that heat wave.

The impacts of the climate crisis are already being felt throughout the United States today, and they will continue to get more intense as long as planet-warming emissions rise, which is code for as long as we’re burning fossil fuels for heat and electricity, and chopping down forests.

“I am calling on all developed economies to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies. Those funds should be re – He directed in two different ways, one to countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis and the other to people struggling with rising food and energy prices.

The principle of polluter pays and its basis in environmental laws around the world makes the idea of reimbursement for loss and damage not aid. This financing “must be on the table — not to be pushed away with another puny promise of a fund that never materializes”, Narain writes in the 1–15 November issue.

The commission of small island states on climate change and international law was formed in 2021, by Tuvalu and other countries. The aim is to explore claims in international courts.

According to The New York Times, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda said that lawsuit was the only way they would be taken seriously. “We want to force them to respond in a court of law.”

The Future of the COPs: What Do They Mean? Climate Change Actions, Policy Options, and Expected Actions in the United States

This is a raging debate, even within the conference. “As it is, The COPs are not really working,” youth climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was a media sensation at last year’s conference, said during an event in London this week after announcing that she will not attend COP27 this year. “The COPs are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,” Thunberg said.

Pressure is still on countries to do more to prevent planet-heating pollution in the first place. The countries that agreed last year to “revisit and strengthen” their targets for 2030 are the ones that environmental groups are hoping to see more updated national commitments come out of.

The money is supposed to go toward new and improved infrastructure that might help keep people safe in a warming world. That might look like it’s intended to be better at beating the heat or less likely to be wiped out in a wildfire. Or it could mean expanded early warning systems that can warn people about a flood or storm headed their way. There’s a push this year to secure even more funding for these kinds of adaptation projects, particularly since adaptation costs in developing countries have been projected to reach upwards of $300 billion a year by the end of the decade. Advocates are also pushing for more locally led solutions since what it means to live with climate change looks different from place to place and the people most affected by climate disasters haven’t always been included at planning tables.

There have been some bright spots. Australia’s planned cut to 43 percent below 2005 levels was doubled by a newly progressive government. A handful of other countries, including Chile, which is working to enshrine the rights of nature into its constitution, have already promised more cuts or say they will soon. But most of those updates are from smaller polluters, or from those, like Australia, that are playing catch-up after previously submitting goals that were egregiously lacking in detail or ambition. The low-hanging fruit has already been picked.

Other wins have put emitters in a position to fulfill last year’s promises. Fransen points to the United States, where the recent Inflation Reduction Act represented a massive step toward meeting its pledge of a 50 percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels. The US isn’t on track to achieve that commitment. Further upping the ante on its goals this year would “strain credibility,” she says, given the nation’s political gridlock.

Fransen is one of the people who keeps track of emissions plans and whether or not they are sticking to them. Taking stock is difficult. measuring how much carbon nations emit is one thing. It also involves showing the effects those emissions will have on the climate 10, 20, or 100 years from now.

Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to determine how much CO2 humanity is producing—or to prove that nations are holding to their pledges. Gas is all over the atmosphere, making it difficult to tell the origin of a signal. Carbon is released from decaying vegetation and thawing permafrost, further complicating matters. Think of the situation like trying to find a leak in a swimming pool. If you see CO2 from space, it’s not always guaranteed that it came from the nearest humans, but researchers have tried to do that. “That’s why we need more sophisticated methods.” Climate Trace can use steam coming from power plants as a proxy for emissions. Some scientists are using the weather stations to monitor emissions.

Anopheles stephensi: What can be done to save millions? An update on vaccines, assessment, accountability, and COP27

More than a million lives could be saved if the vaccines were distributed more fairly. Plus, how to decarbonize the military and what to look out for at COP27.

The focus will be on evaluation, assessment and accountability. “We need to get a grip on whether the current ones are being carried out,” says climate-policy analyst David Waskow.

Insecticide-resistant mosquitoes have made their way from Asia to Africa, threatening progress there towards eradicating malaria. In a study in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia — the site of a malaria outbreak — Anopheles stephensi accounted for almost all adult mosquitos found near the homes of participants with the disease. The notorious species can breed in urban environments and persist through dry seasons. It could infect more than 100 million people in Africa if they are not protected by vaccines and other control measures. But “there is no silver bullet” for this fast-spreading vector, says molecular biologist Fitsum Tadesse.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03572-0

What is a hero? Explaining the elephant in the room at COP27 about the need for more than one billion people in Africa

Military carbon dioxide emissions are huge — per capita, US armed forces put out more CO2 than any nation in the world. The militaries are not subject to emissions reporting. The researchers said that they could hold the militaries to account.

Rose M. Mutiso wrote an article titled, “Imagine making a plan for the world but leaving out more than one billion people in Africa.” That is the troubling truth behind net-zero emissions proposals. She argues that we can’t we can’t engage meaningfully with the concept of net zero — at COP27 and in general — without Africa-specific data, appropriate models and African expertise.

Oliver Mller went to work at a company called Mountain View, but returned to school and has learned some valuable lessons. One of the most important: don’t be a hero. “If a task can be finished only through putting your mental health and even physical health at risk, you are effectively hiding flaws in the system.”

The leaders of some wealthy nations have been warned that there will be no backsliding on commitments they made at the last climate conference.

I am hoping that the engagement of African and Egyptian youth in COP27 is going to increase social awareness of climate change, and put pressure on decision makers to include Egyptian and African initiatives in climate action.

Egypt estimates that it needs to set aside 73 billion dollars for projects to mitigate climate change and adapt it’s infrastructure. But this number has now more than tripled to $246 billion, says environment minister Yasmine Fouad. “Most climate actions we have implemented have been from the national budget, which adds more burden and competes with our basic needs that have to be fulfilled.”

What can Africa learn from COP17? High-income countries should be careful about loss-and-damage finance, and how climate change can save them

Ian Mitchell with the Center for Global Development warned that if loss and damage became a deal-breaker at the meeting there could be unintended consequences. High-income countries could agree to the principle and absorb loss-and-damage finance, meaning it would not be new money.

Adil Najam, who studies international climate diplomacy at Boston University in Massachusetts, thinks it is unlikely that these issues will be resolved in Egypt, and says that the politics will probably get messy. He adds that loss-and-damage finance can no longer be avoided by the high-income countries, especially given that climate impacts in vulnerable countries are becoming much more visible and severe.

Fouad says that organizing this year’s COP in Africa has been transformative. “We are expecting more attention towards issues that are crucial and meaningful to us Africans and relevant to most developing countries, such as food security, desertification, natural disasters and water scarcity. This COP is a chance for more African youth, non-governmental and civil-society organizations to be heard.”

Another effect is that many countries, especially in Europe, are scrambling to develop new sources of natural gas to replace imports of Russian gas. In order to avoid the direst climate catastrophes in the future, nearly all new gas, coal and oil have to stay in the ground, experts say.

But there have been positive developments as well. Renewable energy, such as wind and solar, is growing rapidly. The International Energy Agency thinks that global demand for fossil fuels will peak around the mid-20th century.

China and India plan to increase emissions until the year 2030. They’ve argued that their growing economies need the support of fossil fuels, as other wealthier countries have historically done.

That kind of extreme warming would spell disaster for billions of people, as well as critical ecosystems, and would lead to irreversible sea level rise and mass extinction of plants and animals.

But it is still possible to change course, the report states. Some of the consequences of climate change can be avoided if humans are able to limit warming to no more than two degrees Celsius. The sea levels would not go up as much. Heat waves and storms would be less deadly. Many of the land and ocean ecosystems would recover, as well as adapt.

The Economic Implications of the Fifth-Term United Nations Plan to Address Climate Hazards for the Poorest and Most Disagreeing Countries

They argue that wealthier nations should pay for the problems they caused, including the cultural losses that happen when towns and villages must relocate. So far, wealthier countries have agreed to keep discussing it, but haven’t committed to providing new funding.

It’s going to require huge investments. There’s no getting around it. There are a lot of money to be made removing emissions from the global economy. And experts say the cost of not dealing with this problem could be ruinous.

The United States needs to reduce its emissions by about 6% per year in order to reach net-zero by the year 2050. US emissions fell just 12% over the course of nearly two decades between 2007 and 2019.

Experts say making good on that promise is crucial to keep poorer nations on board with efforts to cut emissions. The developing world will need more money than the $100 billion they say is just a fraction.

The findings can help inform the implementation of strategies that help countries cope with heavy rain or extreme heat. The economic impact of the five hottest days in the year on the whole year has really outsized effects. It could deliver big economic returns if the investments were focused on avoiding heat extremes in the hottest parts of the year.

The need for rich countries to pay their share has been emphasized by the study, says a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “Given the unequal burden and the share of historical emissions … the global north needs to support the global south in terms of coping with these adverse effects.”

He said that they were racing forward to do their part to avert the climate hell that the U.N. secretary general warned about.

He referred to the fact that the global population is expected to hit 8 billion during this meeting. “How will we answer when baby 8-billion is old enough to ask ‘What did you do for our world, and for our planet, when you had the chance?’” Guterres asked a room full of world leaders.

There’s a new United Nations plan to warn people around the world about climate-related hazards like extreme storms and floods. It’s called Early Warning for All.

The new plan calls for $3.1 billion to set up early-warning systems over the next five years in places that don’t already have them, beginning with the poorest and most vulnerable countries and regions. More money will be needed to maintain the warning systems longer-term.

Climate Change and the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FACEP): A Framework for Fighting Climate Change in the United States and Other Nearby Regions

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, went one step further in her opening speech to fellow leaders. She called out corporations that profit in our fossil-fuel intensive economy, including oil and gas companies themselves.

Those corporations should help pay for the costs associated with sea level rise, stronger hurricanes, heat waves and droughts around the world, she argued, and especially in places like her nation that are extremely vulnerable to climate change and don’t have the money to protect themselves.

AT&T and the U.S. government are working to give away free access to data about the country’s future climate risks. Community leaders can better understand and prepare for local dangers from more extreme weather.

The Climate Risk and Resilience Portal will initially provide information about temperature, precipitation, wind and drought conditions. Additional risks such as wildfire and flooding will be added in the coming months.

More than two dozen countries say they’ll work together to stop and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030 in order to fight climate change.

The European Union and 26 other countries make up the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership, which accounts for more than one third of the world’s forests.

More than 140 countries agreed at last year’sCOP 26 in Glasgow to protect forests and other habitats. The U.N. said that there isn’t enough money being spent to save forests that capture and store carbon.

That’s one of the benefits of the National Climate Assessment, a new draft of which was released this week ahead of President Joe Biden’s trip to the UN’s climate summit in Egypt.

The federal report paints a dire picture of what life is now like in America amid the climate crisis, and the incredible changes in store in the future. And it outlines some painful truths about global warming we must confront, but so far have not.

The country experienced an average of one billion dollars in extreme weather events every four months during the 1980s, the draft report states. “Now, there is one every three weeks, on average.”

“These frontline communities experience harmful climate impacts first and worst, yet are often the least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change … Historical discriminatory policies such as redlining and displacement of Indigenous peoples forced communities of color into the least-valuable, often low-lying areas that are now more vulnerable to flooding, extreme heat, and air pollution from fossil fuel facilities and industry.”

The rampant burning of fossil fuels is contributing to a worsening US water crisis. The report lays out how droughts will continue to become more intense and more frequent, “most notably in the Southwest.”

The report’s authors highlight the threat to the country’s aquifers — massive reservoirs of underground water built up over thousands of years — which are “particularly vulnerable to over-pumping.”

Climate Implications for the Future: U.N. Climate Summit Against Climate Offset Measures in Egypt and the Case of an Egyptian Dissident

The report states that there are factors which lead to future migration in the US, such as wildfires in California and rising seas in Florida.

The new climate law in the United States will encourage progress in batteries, hydrogen and other technology and will bring about a cycle of innovation that will benefit the world, according to Mr. Biden. Making the switch to a low-carbon future more affordable for everyone is something we are going to do.

The Democrats may retain control of Congress thanks to a surprisingly strong showing in Tuesday’s elections by Mr. Biden and his party.

Wanjira Mathai is an environmentalist from Africa and stated there is more than enough money in the economy. $17 trillion showed up when Covid happened, so there was plenty of it. There is money. We have a crisis in empathy.”

Paul Bledsoe, a climate adviser under President Bill Clinton who now lectures at American University, said there was no way Mr. Biden would embrace the idea of loss and damage payments.

“America is culturally incapable of meaningful reparations,” he said. “Having not made them to Native Americans or African Americans, there is little to no chance they will be seriously considered regarding climate impacts to foreign nations. It’s a complete nonstarter when it comes to domestic politics.

John Kerry has proposed that corporations invest in renewable-energy projects in developing countries that would allow them to claim the cuts in greenhouse gases against their own climate goals. Those so-called carbon offset initiatives are viewed skeptically by many climate scientists and activists, who see them as simply allowing companies to continue polluting.

Before addressing the gathering, Mr. Biden is scheduled to meet with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and is expected to raise the case of Alaa Abd El Fattah, an Egyptian dissident whose hunger strike in prison has loomed over the summit. Mr. El Fattah said last Sunday that he would no longer drink water at the beginning of the summit. There are representatives of nongovernmental groups that will walk out of the conference if he dies.

The U.N. Climate Summit has been calm all week due to restrictions imposed by Mr. Sisi’s government. On Friday morning about 100 people from Fridays for Future, a youth led and organizedclimate movement, as well as protesters urging a vegan diet and activists opposed to oil and gas drilling in Africa, made their presence known inside the area that is under the control of the United.

LMICs would prefer that high emitters accept liability for the damage they have caused and pay compensation for it. This third option is by far the most contentious for high-income countries. They argue that climate damage in one country can not be attributed to specific emissions from another. It could lead to trillions of dollars in claims, that is what they fear. As a compromise, the COP agenda item agreed ahead of the meeting explicitly excludes questions of liability and compensation. However some LMICs will fight hard to have them discussed.

It will fall to conference hosts Egypt to help find a way forward. Pakistan (one-third of which was under water in September because of flooding) also has a pivotal, although tricky, role: it holds this year’s presidency of the G77, the largest group of LMICs, which also includes China. This group is not yet aligned on one model.

It would be interesting to look at the experience of negotiators on the UN convention. The biodiversity delegates are more willing to talk about liability and compensation than those working on the climate convention. Take a biodiversity agreement called the Cartagena Protocol, which concerns the international transport of genetically modified (GM) organisms, signed in 2000 after a multi-year negotiation. African countries, led by Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, head of the Ethiopian environment agency, were determined to include a provision for liability and compensation if these organisms caused harm. The United States led other high-income countries in opposing the idea of GM organisms because there was no evidence that they were harmful. The provision risked endangering the whole treaty and so it was not included. However, all parties promised to continue discussions, and liability and compensation rules were adopted by UN biodiversity-convention member states in 2010.

Fatima said that who is most responsible is fundamental to the problem. “There’s a solidarity issue here that’s only going to become bigger as the crisis grows. Now is the time to support that idea.

“The United States is acting. Everyone needs to act, said Mr. Biden. “It’s a duty and responsibility of global leadership. Countries that are in a position to help should be supporting developing countries so they can make decisive climate decisions.”

He said he would give $11.4 billion annually in the next 18 years to help developing countries transition to wind, solar and other renewable energy. The money was promised by the wealthy nations under the Paris agreement. Mr. Biden had just $1 billion to get to that goal from Congress.

Identifying Climate Change Action Plans to Minimize Sesame-Level Rise and Severe Sea-level Rise in the Nile Delta

For the first time, Mr. Biden announced, the U.S. government will require domestic oil and gas producers to detect and fix leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide does in the short run. Methane emissions in the US are caused by the fossil fuel industry, which leaks odorless gas from pipes into the air. Scientists say stopping methane from escaping from the atmosphere is critical to slowing global warming.

As the conference enters its second week, Nature spoke to four climate scientists from the host country about their research, the challenges they encounter and their hopes for COP27.

At my research institute, we work on projects to mitigate the sea-level rise in the Nile Delta, and study its impact on farmers and people living in the surrounding area.

My colleagues are attending COP27 and delivering a presentation on the Water Day, 14 November. We cannot change policies while doing research. We would like to hear about an agreement to reduce emissions by the end of the COP and to see actions not just words. We have heard enough promises in previous COP meetings.

My research focuses on finding ways to diminish the effects of climate change on the Nile Valley. I collaborate with plant-breeding scientists at the University of Florida to find plant genotypes that can tolerate droughts and a high level of salinity.

This is no small achievement for what is, at its core, a network of hundreds of researchers working in the early or late hours for no payment. They read and summarize thousands of research papers to answer questions such as how much the planet has warmed; what the future projections are for Earth’s climate; what the impacts of warming are; how to mitigate climate change; and how the world can better prepare for a warmer future.

Even though our research proposes solutions, I feel that it is not up to the scientists to translate the output of their studies into effective adaptation projects. I hope that withCOP27, we will be able to initiate the implementation of such projects before it is too late.

I gave a talk about my start-up in another session at the Youth and Future Generations Day, which was held on 10 November.

Recyclizer collects plastic waste from the street and recycles it into mulch that can be used to cover the soil and reduce the amount of water needed for irrigation.

Summary of COP27 Conference in Cairo: “We’re all going to hell,” said Mbambi, a scientist in a developing country

In my academic research, I focused on how the decision-making process in the public and private sectors affects the implementation of sustainability and development goals and tackling climate change in Egypt.

Lack of data or poor access to data has been my greatest challenge. Paying for access to multiple international journals is an issue as a researcher in a developing country.

The summary document that was concluded on 20 November says that to prevent global warming from reaching 1.5 C above the pre-industrial levels, there needs to be rapid, deep and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

But calls to phase out fossil fuels were blocked by oil-producing states, and some delegates struggled to find reasons to be cheerful about the glacial pace of decarbonization. The lack of progress on fossil fuels is blamed for the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A record 45,000 people registered to attend COP27, leading some to question whether such a format is appropriate to tackling a planetary emergency. An environment research organization in New Delhi, the Centre for Science and Environment, has stated that the negotiations are completely devoid of reality.

There is some value in bringing people together to share ideas but she fears that the main purpose of the meeting is lost. I’ve never seen anything like this before. We’ve reduced the whole thing into a grand spectacle,” she says.

Government negotiators spent days going back and forth with single words in a document, as activists and researchers at the talks described for the first time.

“I am just, quite simply shocked about the [negotiating] process I have seen,” says Blutus Mbambi, program coordinator at the Centre for Climate Change Action and Advocacy in Lusaka, Zambia. “But we will keep on advocating. We will keep on pushing.”

The LMICs and China were confident that a new climate fund would be added to the agenda of the beginning of the conference.

COP27 saw little by way of new dedicated funding for food systems from governments. By contrast, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, pledged to spend $1.4 billion over four years to help smallholder farmers address the immediate and long-term impacts of climate change. ” Every time the world delays action, more people suffer, and the solutions become more complex and costly, the foundation’s CEO said in a statement.

The United States was also skeptical at first but eventually changed its stance, which put more pressure on the European Union. The fine print — including how much will go into the fund and who will contribute — will have to be discussed at next year’s conference.

It’s taken three decades to get to this point, at least in part because of arguments between richer and poorer countries on a whole raft of issues. The range of these include a lack of agreed definitions on climate finance and a fear by richer countries that they could end up being liable for trillions of dollars in losses and damage.

Although the negotiations received a boost from a separate deal announced at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in which wealthy countries agreed to provide $20 billion to help Indonesia wean itself off coal, much of the attention at COP27 was on the European rush for natural gas.

Germany and Egypt have signed a deal in order for Germany to export green hydrogen as well as liquified natural gas to other countries.

European leaders insist that these measures are short-term fixes that won’t detract from their long-term commitments, but the optics are very bad, says Narain. She says that before the crisis, the rhetoric from higher-income countries was that there would be no funding for fossil-fuel projects in lower-income countries. Everybody is asking for more supply.

These tensions had tangible impacts on the negotiations at COP27. Language calling for a phase out of fossil fuels was not in the final text and a new proposal was added to justify further natural-gas development.

Mohamed Salem Nashwan, who studies construction engineering at the Arab Academy of Science, Technology and Maritime Transport in Cairo, is not confident that there will be much progress on fossil fuels at COP28, which is due to be held in Dubai next year. He claims that the host is connected to the fossil-fuel industries.

The IPCC and the food crisis: where does it come from? What is the scope of climate finance in low- and middle-income countries?

The new additions are welcome, says Claudia Sadoff, executive director of CGIAR, a global network of agricultural research centres, but she adds that “the text on the food crisis is not supported by actions that need to be taken”.

Absent from the text is any reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s estimate that food systems are responsible for between 21% and 37% of global emissions. “The opportunities for ‘carbon farming’ and land-use change to make a contribution to [climate] mitigation are ignored,” says von Braun.

Arguments over money resurface at every COP. Doubtless they will return at COP28, which is due to be held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in a year’s time. The size of the loss-and-damage fund, who will contribute, and which countries will benefit are all still being discussed.

The IPCC’s creation was an inventive response by researchers to the challenge of communicating climate science to decision makers. More than 10 million people have had knowledge of the latest climate science. It was pivotal to the creation of international climate agreements after it was confirmed that there was a human fingerprint in global warming. In an unusual move for its time, scientists in low- and middle-income countries were invited to join the leadership of the writing groups. Nonetheless, the IPCC has struggled to properly represent female researchers, scientists from lower- and middle-income countries, and Indigenous people.

For example, if donors promise money for investment in flood defences, then they count it. Low- and middle-income countries are fond of only counting money received by projects on the ground. Donors also count loans — which account for the lion’s share of climate finance — whereas LMICs would prefer to count only grants or other money that does not have to be repaid. The question is of scope. If a new housing development in an area of high temperatures is fitted with special cool roofs, say, some would like to count the whole development as climate finance, whereas others would say just the roof part qualifies.

The Day of 8 Billion: Examples of How the World Has Changed Since 2001 – A Shortcut to the Independence of the Cold War and the Impact on the Environment

On November 15, the 8 billionth person was born. Well, more or less. The UN demographers chose this date because it was the time when the world crossed its latest population milestone. There are more humans today than there were 11 years ago, and the exact date is probably incorrect.

I hadn’t been paying close attention to the Day of 8 Billion. Milestones make good headlines, but concentrating on a few big numbers can obscure more revealing trends that really explain how the world has changed since there were just 7 billion of us. Here are two examples. Over the last decade, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has gone down. Only 9 percent of people live on less than $2 a day, whereas in 2010 only 16.3% of the world did. GDP per capita and life expectancy have increased despite population growth in India and China. More people are living better lives in today’s world than at any other point in human history.

We need to tread carefully when we talk about population and climate change. It is easy to conclude that there is too many people on the planet. Who do we mean when we say that there is overpopulation? Someone living in the United States is responsible for about 15 metric tons of CO2  emissions per year. In the eight countries where the majority of population growth will be concentrated, per capita emissions are not much higher than in the US. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is projected to grow by more than 120 million in the next 20 years, each person produces just 30 kilograms of CO2  each year. Emissions are a consequence of consumption, not just population.

The world’s richest people are responsible for most of it’s pollution. One study from the World Inequality Lab found that as emissions have fallen for the middle class in rich countries, those from the top 0.001 percent have risen by 107 percent. We can not have more rich people on the planet because we don’t have the capacity to, according to a psychologist at the University of Bath. Reducing consumption in the developed world, where populations are stagnant makes sense if we really want to reduce emissions.

Four and a half years before, she began yelling outside of Swedish parliament, with a single sign. She was 15. In just a few months, she had made her mark at the United Nations climate conference in Poland: “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is,” she told the assembled diplomats and negotiators, “even that burden you leave to us children.”

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (SIPBES) is a network of researchers that are similar to the International Panelon on Climate Change. The studies were set up in 2012 and were involved in the Kunming–Montreal Global biodiversity Framework, which was signed last year. But when it comes to other great global challenges, which are embodied by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals — inequality, say, or water or food security — there’s no advisory research body on a similar scale or with comparable impact, and none on the immediate horizon. This is not for anyone who wants to try. Why is the model difficult to replicate?

Scientists who were working for the governments were one of the original people of the world’s largest scientific organization. These were the employees of official weather-data centres, or meteorological offices. They were among the first researchers to have access to the kind of computing power needed for climate simulation studies — which governments tended to have. This meant that it wasn’t much of a stretch to include more of them on assessment teams working with researchers at universities.

Many of these government scientists also had strong links to departments for defence — for which accurate weather forecasting is a must — and, through that, had access to some of the most senior people in government. In the United Kingdom, for example, the IPCC’s first assessment report (in 1990) was presented in a special seminar to then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Some scientific networks don’t have the same degree of access. Even if they did, such involvement would be more complicated to navigate now than in the 1980s. Government representatives, mainly from oil-rich states, interfered in the discussions of the scientists at the meetings.

The report says there is a chance to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”

The choices include a quick solution to the problem of renewable electricity and a halt to new oil and gas drilling. It is possible that one day research could lead to technology allowing it to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.

Building a Better World: The Most Vulnerable Regions Around the World are Protected from Floods, Drought and Storms

The hope is that the new report will provide a framework for those negotiations as well as a menu of solutions available to world leaders.

“When we talk about climate change it can be easy to forget about the bad outcomes and the really scary things that are taking place,” says Solomon Hsiang, who has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The report notes that investing in a low-carbon public transit system, designing communities to support walking or biking, building homes and other buildings to be resilient, and building cleaner power plants can reduce air pollution, save lives in low-lying and low-income neighborhoods that are currently suffering disproportionate

The authors say that “between 2010 and 2020 human mortality from floods, drought and storms was 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions compared to regions with low vulnerability.”

The most vulnerable communities include people who live in low-income countries, low-lying areas and island nations, and Indigenous groups around the world, according to the report.