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the DON JONES
INDEX… |
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GAINS
POSTED in GREEN LOSSES
POSTED in RED 12/4/23... 14,889.78 11/27/23... 14,884.45 |
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6/27/13… 15,000.00 |
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(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 12/4/23... 36,245.58; 11/27/23... 35,390.15; 6/27/13… 15,000.00) |
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LESSON for DECEMBER FOURTH, 2023 –
“THE EARTH THANKS DON JONES!”
Forty six million turkeys have been killed, roasted,
eaten and excreted... the harvest memorabilia, pilgrims and pumpkins joining the
scarecrows and skeletons in closets all across America and Black Friday is and
will be upon us for the next three weeks.
Technically, it’s Cyber Monday but, irregardless of the technology of
the transaction utilized, the message is the same... buy, spend, consume.
“Mass consumption has brought numerous
benefits: jobs and financial wealth, physical safety and security,” according
to Chip Colwell of the Guardian U.K.
“New ways of connecting, talking and thinking. Easy travel to nearly
anywhere in the world. Lights that keep the dark nights at bay. Music
constantly available.
But the costs have also been
staggering. Economic inequality and wars over non-renewable resources have
killed untold numbers. The steep increase in products in recent decades has accelerated
pollutant emissions, deforestation and climate breakdown. It has depleted water
supplies and contributed to the rapid extinction of animals. There are vast
“garbage patches” floating across the world’s oceans, with infinite bits of
microplastics working their way into food webs. Even if we accept the positives
of mass consumption to date, we must acknowledge that the situation is
unsustainable. And yet, we can’t seem to stop ourselves.” (November 28th, Attachment One)
Exhausted by endless shopping, and terrified by the possibility that
our over-consumption was destroying the planet, Conley, nonetheless, admitted
that “living without
things is impossible” because things can give us experiences of joy.
“Things connect us to each other, our pasts, our identities. Even if we loathe
some things for the destruction they bring, we love the things that make us who
we are. After all, humans have long depended on our things.”
Conley
carried on to ponder several options for the thinking, caring Briton (or American...
presumably of a leftish persuasion that reads the Guardian but holds down a job
and slaps down money for things, nonetheless. They range from the extreme to
the minimal... as in the thingly minimalists he noted in the article ranging
from the semi-demi-survivalists or off-the-grid sorts (who hold no truck with
trucks (or tanks or thumbtacks or anything on sale in a big or small retail
store) to the selective boycotters who, out of ideology or aesthetics condemn
paper or plastic, the re-users or recyclists
or rentiers cutting down on stuff –
seeking a “zero-waste lifestyle” through strategems such as “reusing items (such as cloth grocery bags), borrowing others’ items
(such as wine glasses from a neighbour for a party i.e. STEALING - DJ), and repurposing or “upcycling”
an item (such as turning wine corks into a countertop).
He also happened upon “a harsh but
hilarious screed against minimalism, written by Chelsea Fagan of the
Financial Diet blog. Fagan levels multiple arguments against all forms of
minimalism. She writes that it is classist, a fad for the rich, because people
in real poverty don’t have to worry about what not to buy... that the simple
aesthetic of decluttering equals moral worth, is a “faux spiritualism” and that
every form of minimalism, Fagan concludes, “is just another form of conspicuous
consumption, a way of saying to the world: ‘Look at me! Look at all of the
things I have refused to buy, and the incredibly expensive, sparse items I have
deemed worthy instead!’”
Look at me! Look at me!
Look at me!
Dozens, hundreds of intellectual
sorts descended upon Abu Dhabi city in the United Arab Emirates this
Thursday... there to see and to be seen at the COP28 conference as has been
generated to cater to the principle that there are too many people wanting,
making and consuming too much stuff... and the is the focus of this Lesson.
But before these Lessons, the Index and Don
Jones and the family rocket off to Christmas, let’s wrap up an unfinished
fillip of thankfulness – mindful of the community, nation and world as is under
attack as surely as the Palestinians, Israelis, Ukrainians and other, has been
for many years now and pessimists fear it will expire and drag all of its
two-legged, four-legged, winged, crawling and rooted inhabitants down to
perdition with it. Thursday’s opening of
the annual COP28 summit – which is not a
crusade by law enforcement to round up the drug dealers, child molesters, porch
pirates and shoplifters of America but, rather, a gathering of scientists,
journalists, diplomats and dipsomats from around the globe in the United Arab
Emirates (the last mentioned being careful to conceal their sinning from the prying
mullahs and police. COP28 stands for the
Conference of the Parties (“the” omitted) and will draw forth statistics and
speeches, progress reports and proposals from proposers, pronunciators and
political partisans to debate the state of the world, not as regards conflicts
between its oft-homicidal hominids, but the earth itself.
Specifically the climate and its changing for
the better or, as most believe (whilst often denying or ignoring) the worse.
A Q and A summary of COP28 has been attempted
by several media tapeworms; that which we choose to reproduce here as
Attachment Two derives from the Qatari dispatch (November 28th,
Attachment Two), inasmuch as Doha is hard by Dubai and things Islamic are of worldwide interest
at the moment.
“Reining in fossil fuels and carbon emissions
are expected to be topping the agenda of the 13-day summit (November 30 to
December 12). International funding to help countries adapt to climate change
will also be hotly debated as developing countries have been demanding more
contributions from the industrialised nations.”
World leaders agreed to the fund after COP27 last year, but they have
failed to reach consensus on the most important questions of all – which states
will pay into it and how much.
The Jazzies, accordingly, asked
and ansered...
What, when, where is COP28?
COP is the primary decision-making body of The United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), established in 1992.
Representatives of 197 countries
who have signed or are “parties” to the UNFCCC will participate primarily
through debates and
negotiations.
Why
is COP28 important?
“The conference comes weeks after a UN report said greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit a record high in
2022. Based on countries’ current climate plans, the report says, global carbon
emissions by 2030 will be cut by only two percent compared with 2019 levels,
far short of the 43 percent fall needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees
Celsius...” as proposed in the 2015 Paris Agreement,
subsequently torn up by the President of the Unitd States elected the following
year.
What
is the agenda and theme for COP28 in Dubai?
The yearly COPS summits is to
review and calibrate the implementation of the UNFCCC terms, Paris
Agreement (after its American restoration under President Joe Biden), and Kyoto
Protocol, a binding treaty agreed in 1997 for industrialised nations to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
The attending countries will face
compliance, failure or denial of the first Global Stocktake
(GST) – “a scorecard analysing countries’ progress towards the Paris
Agreement – so they can adapt their next climate action plans which are
due in 2025,” according to Olivia Rumble, director of Climate Legal in South
Africa – a lobby for increasing handouts to the poorer nations.
Who
will and will not attend COP28 in Dubai?
More than 140 heads of state,
senior government leaders and at least 70,000 participants are expected to
attend COP28.
Coming...
·
Britain’s
King Charles III, who will also deliver an address at the opening ceremony
·
Rishi Sunak,
prime minister of the United Kingdom
·
Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi.
US President Joe Biden is not expected to attend but the country will
be represented by top officials such as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
John Kerry.
Pope Francis, who was scheduled to
attend the summit, on Tuesday cancelled his participation as he recovers from
the flu and lung inflammation.
What
are (some of) the controversies around COP28?
Sultan al-Jaber, CEO of the Abu
Dhabi National Oil Co, (see below) has been tasked with changing the world’s
climate course “while the company he heads is one of the world’s largest oil
producers. The UAE is the world’s seventh-largest liquid fuel producer.”
Climate activists have also
contended that the UAE, like other oily nations, refrain from surveilling (and
suppressing) COP28 attendees and protesters.
This Conference of the Parties, as is
customary, also includes a lot of partying, hobnobbing and consumption among
the delegates and the academic, media and commercial parasites as accompany
them. In light of the international and
interreligious nature of the conference, prohibition of alcohol has been
suspended so as to facilitate meaningful discussions on carbon and jellyfish
over their cocktails and hummus.
The diplomats’ dance in the desert occurs as
America’s weather takes one of its occasional winter swings that draws
denialists out of the banks and their boondocks and the MAGAretreats, saying
“See! It’s freezing! That climate change
chaff is just a chimera dreamed up by the bureaucrats to scare us and tax us
and lock up anybody who says otherwise.”
Conditions at home have been magnified by what
has become the first serious snowfall in the Northeast... a “snow drought” (652) days in New
York’s Central Park (Washington Post, November 28th, Attachment
Three) which the toasty Post ghostwriters and researchers allege to be
“probable consequences of human-caused climate change.”
The Post posted other long epochs
of snowlessness, as included
·
Philadelphia:
667 days, the city’s longest on record
·
Baltimore:
668 days, four days short of the record
·
Lynchburg,
Va.: 680 days, second-longest
·
Richmond: 681
days, fourth-longest
·
Washington:
680 days, fifth-longest
Boston has gone 640 days without a
snowfall of more than three inches.
Pittsburgh has been snowless for 625 days.
The Post has credited (or blamed)
the ongoing El Niño climate pattern, “which tends to
increase winter moisture in the South and Mid-Atlantic” for the snowlessness.
Come summer, the climatologists and spin doctors
will try different tropes but the eco-villains (as the good people deem them)
will still insist upon eating their turkeys and gravy, turning up their
thermostats and then roaring out in their hot rods to the bad old big box
stores to stock up on stuff
The
really, really good people,
therefore, bite their nails and tear their hair out, despairing to the extent
that Positive News.com has had to publish an advice column advising the
tender-hearted souls to consider “(e)ight ways to stay
sane in the climate crisis,” and so avoid falling victims to the snakes of
“eco-anxiety” (November 23, Attachment Four) as include a
climactic variant of the old Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and
the wisdom to know the difference”, and taking “collective action” which, as “(c)limate dread expert Britt
Wray suggests” is “even better than going it alone.” Wray advocates getting involved in “rewilding
projects,” which are not to be construed as support for eco-terrorism.
Also,
in order to maintain a positive attitude about the world and your place in it,
don’t read newspapers or magazines or watch television programs imbued with “doomy headlines and images of
melting glaciers and ferocious blazes”... seeking, rather...
surprise!... Positive News as your guiding lamp. Finally, look after your mental health and (“get professional help or
support if you need it... and can afford it).
While, there may be mental issues involved,
but the clear and present danger of pollution-driven climate change is
physical, say the doctor-ish doctors and bureaucrats of the World Health
Organization
(Attachment Five, November 27th) specifically advise that it is imperative to “broaden the
focus to human health in global discussions, leaving no room for excuses, and
compelling negotiators to recognize that they bear the responsibility for the
well-being of our most invaluable asset: the health of populations worldwide.”
In advance of COP28, Dr Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General demanded that: “Leaders must deliver
in Dubai, providing the strong health outcomes their peoples expect and their
economies urgently need. We must change the conversation and demonstrate the
massive benefits of bolder climate action on our health and well-being.”
Ted’s talk cited an
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report as
contended that about 3.5 billion people – nearly half of humanity – live in
areas highly vulnerable to climate change. “Heat-related deaths among those
aged over 65 years have risen by 70% worldwide in two decades, according
to WHO’s figures. Only
a dramatic and dedicated effort to limit warming to 1.5 °C will prevent a future
much worse than what we see now.”
Tolling off a litany of doom and
disasters, WHO concludes:
“Climate change is not a distant threat; it is a present danger
affecting our health on multiple fronts... requiring “key interventions such as
vector control, epidemiological surveillance, and access to safe water and
sanitation... which measures may include “decarbonizing health systems,
digitalizing medicine and implementing sustainable practices in hospitals and
health-care facilities to significantly reduce the 5% global emissions
attributed to the health sector.”
WHO also called for
divesting subsidies for fossil fuels and redirect such revenues into supporting
health
systems in coping with climate change and, optimistically, expressed the belief
that the legacy of COP 28 “will be a commitment to a healthier planet, where
the health arguments for climate action are not just heard but lead to tangible
results.”
The enemies of life, therefore liberty and
happiness are legion. Carbon consumption
from fossil fuels is, of course, the leading bugagoo of denialists and
respiratorians worldwide – but there are also other inherent dangers, ranging
from cow farts to plastics – especially soft drink bottle caps, even the tiny
stickers on imported produce as noted below.
What they have in common are origins in fossil
fuels... particularly oil.
So when decision time rolled round, nobody
else stepped to the plate, but the absentee avatars of carbon restraint were
belatedly outraged.
Abu Dhabi!
That redoubt of nefarious oilies, baking in
the desert under the thumb of mastermind eco-criminal Al-Jaber!
It’s already too late to move the Particulars
to nicelandic places like Icelant (but watch out for the volcatnoes) or Norway
or New Zealand... the words and the wickedness commenced Thursday –already
under siege from environmental activists who decry its domiciling in Abu Dhabi
(capital of the United Arab Emirates) which, they contend (and rightfully so)
hosts some of the planet’s largest producer of fossil fuels and the host of the
convention, the otherwise genial (non-terrorist) Emir Jaber is, to their
thinking, a simple fiend with oil, instead of blood, on his hands. “It looks wrong,” one already stated, “... it
smells wrong, and it is wrong.”
Asking and answering why Abu Dhabi, the
WashPost (Attachment Six) interviewed the egregious (and, to some,
ingratiating) Emir - emoting for the benefit of the world beyond – as well as
others inputting input into the public memory.
Some of these included...
Why is an oil kingdom hosting COP28?
The United Nations rotates the
location of COPs each year through five regions: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eastern
Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe. This year, it was
the Asia-Pacific group’s turn to host, and the United Arab Emirates made an unopposed bid in May 2021.
Who will and won’t attend this
year?
“Scores of world leaders, with
varying climate records,” including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva and, from the U.K., Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles.
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will not
be attending the US’s veteran climate negotiator, John
Kerry,
will stand in for President Joe while
Xi will also send substitutes; according
to Bad Vlad Putin, Russia will be represented at a “decent level”.
The liberal GUK also wondered whether
Participants (let alone a skeptical world) would trust an oily fellow like
Jaber – who is also chief
executive of the UAE national oil company, Adnoc, with an obvious conflict of
interests but, at least, he did
talk to them ans promised a “robust roadmap” of cuts in greenhouse gas
emissions by 2030 that would meet scientific advice and that he could use his
influence on other oilies such as the frequently obstructive Saudis.
Arguing
that he has “levers and the traction” to host a viable convention, Jaber said; “Getting back on track, and
ensuring that the world accepts a robust understanding of a roadmap to 2030
that will keep [a temperature rise above pre-industrial levels of] 1.5C (2.7F)
within reach is my only goal.”
Time (November 29th, Attachment
Eight) cited “alarm bells” indicating that the Sultan was “using the climate platform to
disguise a dirty, polluting agenda.”
Correspondent Justin Worland, who has previously interviewed Jaber, recalls the COP26 in
Glasgow, when then-COP president Alok Sharma, who had served as U.K. Secretary
of State for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, made a decision in the
final hours of COP to replace language referring to a “phase out” of coal to
language referring to a “phase down” at the insistence of China and India.
“Other countries were not given a chance to respond before the deal was
gavelled in, and Sharma was left to apologize,” as noted: “through tears” for
the way the change occurred.
“If you don't want to believe me,”
the Sultan told Worland, “all they have to do is just wait until the COP
happens. And only then I will show them.” The opportunity to make good on that
is now upon us.”
But he will have to “show them”
without the ecumenical assistance of Pope Frank, who cancelled his trip to the
United Arab Emirates for a United Nations climate summit on doctors’ orders as
he recovers from the flu and lung inflammation, the Vatican told Al Jazeera
(November 28th, Attachment Nine)
He had been enlisted to address the Conference
of the Parties on Saturday, becoming the first pontiff to
address
a UN climate conference, then inaugurating a “faith pavilion” on Sunday on the
sidelines of the event.
When asked about his health in a
recent interview, Francis responded in what has become his standard line:
“Still alive, you know.”
In his place, according to the Guardian’s
comprehensive timeline of occurrances (Attachment “A”), he sent the Vatican’s
secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in his place with a missive, which
Parolin read out...
“I
am with you because now more than ever, the future of us all depends on the
present that we now choose,” he said.
“I
am with you because the destruction of the environment is an offence against
God, a sin that is not only personal but also structural, one that greatly
endangers all human beings, especially the most vulnerable in our midst and
threatens to unleash a conflict between generations.
“I
am with you because climate change is a global social issue and one intimately
related to the dignity of human life. I am with you to raise the question which
we must answer now: Are we working for a culture of life or a culture of death?
“To
all of you I make this heartfelt appeal: Let us choose life. Let us choose the
future. May we be attentive to the cry of the earth, may we hear the plea of
the poor, may we be sensitive to the hopes of the young and the dreams of children.
We have a grave responsibility: to ensure that they not be denied their
future.”
On Saturday, GUK reported that the Vatican has published a full
transcript of the speech which can be found as Attachment Ten.
Now as to the issues... with an “international swarm” of 70,000 delegates and
other guests from
197 nations descending upon Abu Dhabi, Time (November 30th,
Attachment Eleven) adjudicated the Top Three Issues as being...
The
great global stock-taking
Every
five years, the United Nations climate conference
does just that, evaluating where the world stands in relation to the goal established by the
2015 Paris Accords of keeping global warming no higher than
2°C above pre-industrial levels.
This year, the news is grim.
Greenhouse gas emissions will have to decline by a “head-snapping” 43% to have
any hope of keeping temperature rise to the more ambitious 1.5°C goal by 2030.
Farewell
to fossil fuels?
An aspirational goal, to say the
least but, Time reported, the European Parliament voted by a whopping 462 to
134 (with 30 abstentions) to phase out all direct and indirect fossil
fuel subsidies “as soon as possible and by 2025 at the latest.”
On the other hand, the U.A.E.,
United States, Australia and China... among others... are not on board. Xi’s chief climate envoy Xie Zhenhua
recently dubbed the elimination of fossil
fuels “unrealistic.”
Loss
and damage fund
Realistically, many of the poorer
countries who tightened their belt to send a delegate or, even, a delegation to
COP28 are looking for handouts.
At COP27 last year, nations agreed
to create a “loss and damage fund”; (a)head of this year’s summit, during a
Sept. 1 meeting in the Dominican Republic, delegates made progress on that,
calling on one another to establish funding sources
to “help the developing world prepare in advance for climate disasters.”
“It is one thing to have a
well-structured fund,” said
Al Jaber,
addressing the September gathering. “But [it] will only be fully operational if
it is actually funded. COP28 … is the place to deliver
and operationalize the fund.”
Four hours later, a separate Time
address by Peter Thompson, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy
for the Ocean and co-chair of Friends of Ocean Action at the World Economic
Forum, defied the doomsters – waxing almost gleeful at the “positive wave of
ocean action (which) has been sweeping the planet.” (Attachment Twelve)
Emphasizing the importance of
oceanic health to the planet’s health, Thompson reported upon a “surge of
engagement in ocean conservation and the development of a truly sustainable
ocean economy” that recognizes the reality that the ocean and climate change
are “inextricably entwined.” Corporations and banks now see the wisdom of being
in on the action,” Thompson contends.
“Ocean-related start-ups and innovation are
flourishing. The ongoing work of philanthropies, NGOs, and civil society is
compounding.”
(COP28 occurs some years after the
screening of a film by Lina Wertmuller, otherwise known for her iconic “Seven
Beauties”. This lesser-known political
rom-com, “Summer Night” features the confrontation and conjunction between a
Sardinian bandit chief and a then-fictitious corporate recycling ocean waste… a
strange and interesting dialectic for its time.)
Some years after the fact, the
fiction is nearing reality (without, however the sex but at least some of the
politics)... at the U.N. Ocean Conference in Lisbon, “Secretary-General
António Guterres deeply apologized to the youth of the world for the
dystopian future our generation has been preparing for them, and promised to
spend his remaining years working in partnership with young people to work
towards the 1.5°C warming goal.”
He has since conveyed throughout
the U.N. system that “henceforth youth and early career ocean professionals
must not be at the periphery of our meetings, but rather at the meeting tables,
helping to negotiate the future they will inherit...
“There can be no fulfillment of
the Paris Agreement without the ocean.”
GUK’s screed on consumption
(Attachment One, above) also considers the impact of consumer stuff...
primarily plastics. There, we were also introduced to one Marcus Ericksen who,
after witnessing the death of albatrosses consuming toxic plastic encircling
the Midway Atoll, west of Hawaii, created, built, then sunk a “raft” named
Junk, “constructed of a Cessna airplane fuselage sitting atop ply board and
strapped to 15,000 plastic bottles.
Surviving to continue his jihad
against the plastic people of the universe, Eriksen carried the cross of the
albatross to the Great Pacific garbage
patch – a collection of human debris bigger
than Peru trapped in a circular ocean current which he termed a thick soup of
fragmented plastics, or as he would write, “a kaleidoscope of microplastics,
like sprinkles on cupcakes”.
“In 2014, after 24 expeditions,
Eriksen and a team of scientists would be the first to estimate the total
weight of plastics in the world’s oceans: around 250,000 tonnes.” The sum has since turned out to be wildly conservative...
the US Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans threw out
nearly 51m tonnes of plastic in 2021, or about 140kg (or 300 lbs, about the
weight of the average NFL offensive lineman) per person.
And it is essential to move the
needle. Plastic waste threatens ecosystem health, biodiversity and efforts to
address climate change, and it is also a health concern and
environmental-justice issue. Microplastics have been found in breast milk and in our blood. Around the world, up to 60 percent of all
recycled plastic is collected by waste pickers, often members of poor and
marginalized communities, who suffer from inhaling caustic fumes from burning
plastic and drinking water heavily contaminated with microplastics. (Washington Post, November 27th,
Attachment Thirteen)
Of late, there has even been
concern that PLU (the tiny Product Look Up labels affixed to raw fruits and
vegetables) will survive for hundreds of years in landfills. (Time, November 28th, Attachment
Fourteen)
Approximately 40% of all plastic
produced is designed for single-use purposes, and
little of it is easily recycled. Like the PLU sticker, it is used just once and
then thrown away. Yet the long-term consequences are enormous: The production
of plastic, 98% of which is sourced from fossil fuels, is the cause of some 10% of all global
greenhouse-gas emissions.
Among the more ambitious proposals is for global production of
virgin plastic to be slashed, largely through a reduction in single use
products. Treaty negotiations are scheduled to conclude at the end of 2024.
A complete ban would not be enough
to end the plastic scourge, but it’s a start. With
problems. France tried banning all non-compostable
PLU tags in 2022 but global outrage escalated to the
point that... inasmuch as “one
country’s ban on plastic PLU tags only really works when every other country
opts to do the same”...
And the future of such plastics,
as well as the role of bioplastics in the global economy, is under negotiation.
In November, representatives from 162 nations converged in Nairobi, Kenya, for
INC-3, the third of five planned sessions for the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee to develop a global treaty
to end plastic pollution, a kind of Paris Climate Accords for plastic.
“Among the more ambitious proposals is for global production of
virgin plastic to be slashed, largely through a reduction in single use products.
Treaty negotiations are scheduled to conclude at the end of 2024, according to
Timester Aryn Baker (November 28th, Attachment Fourteen)
“The alternative plastic world is
a minefield, cloaked in sustainability marketing that at best is aspirational,
and at worst causes as many problems as the products it is trying to replace. A
ban on single-use plastics could level the playing field, allowing products
that are better for the climate, for the environment, and for human health to
rise to prominence.
Among the more ambitious proposals is for global production of virgin
plastic to be slashed, largely through a reduction in single use products.
Treaty negotiations are scheduled to conclude at the end of 2024.
“A complete ban would not be
enough to end the plastic scourge, but it’s a start....” but the truth is, Time
admits, “the alternative plastic world is a minefield, cloaked in
sustainability marketing that at best is aspirational, and at worst causes as
many problems as the products it is trying to replace 'carbon is carbon'.
Yet another aspect of the fossil
fuel glut being debated at COP28 after burning oil and creating plastic is the
infiltration of the stuff into our diets.
Sara Calvosa Olson, an “Indigenous
Cook profiled in the Daily Climate (November 28th, Attachment
Fifteen) has been an advocate of “natural” foods for many years, and has now
composed a cookbook that not only promotes health,
but “decolonizes” the palates of oppressor diners, whose meals attack physical
and mental health.
Her recipes range from “creative
takes on familiar foods—blackberry-braised smoked salmon and elk chili beans—to
dishes that will be entirely new to many readers, such as nettle tortillas,
miner’s lettuce salad, and spruce-tip syrup. And it includes recipes for nearly
a dozen foods made with acorns, including crackers, muffins, crepes, and hand
pies, as well as a rustic acorn bread that calls for one cup of acorn flour and
two cups of wheat flour.”
“We are all colonized, our palates
are colonized,” the author told The Daily Climate. “And it’s kind of impossible
to raise children who don’t love Fruit Snacks and other processed foods. But I
really wanted them to develop a love for foods that are bitter or fishy—those
types of things that we shy away from in Western culture.
“We are all suffering from
diet-related diseases. It’s terrible!”
The American oppressors, Calvosa
Olson maintains, deserve to be punished for the waywardness of their ways and
the crimes of their ancestors, but not with the death penalty she believes
derives from a diet of processed American foods (although the prospect of
cultural assimilation and expropriation in converting to a healthy diet is
troublesome).
There are non-Native people out
there who run foraging classes and you have the choice to either pay them or
you can call or email tribal peoples or tribal entities and say, “Listen, I’m
interested in learning more about this. And I can pay non-Native foragers, but
I would prefer to put my resources with you. I want to center your knowledge.
Do you offer any classes to the public for gathering or know of anybody willing
to show us how to gather?”
At perhaps the polar opposite end
of the spectrum, COP28 is also trying to reach out to the business and
corporate community by balancing the threat of government intervention with the
carrot of higher profits. Justin Worland of Time (November 30,
Attachment Sixteen) contends that theParis Agreement has become a key benchmark
for climate-concerned investors and companies. “CEOs refer to “Paris alignment”
to explain their decarbonization progress. There are now funding systems that
act as investment vehicles designed specifically to support companies working
towards the Paris targets. And some, if not enough, deals are reached or
rejected because of these priorities. Laurence Tubiana, the head of the
European Climate Foundation and a key framer of the deal, described this to me
as “a transformation of the mindset.” “The Paris Agreement [became] the norm,
the reference for everybody to know where to go,” she told me in
2020.
Or, as goes the Happy Eco News
Manifesto (Attachment Seventeen)
·People must have a reason for
hope; the news must sometimes be good.
·The news must sometimes be good to
learn and stay informed and, most importantly, take action.
·It is impossible to love something
you do not understand or have not yet experienced. People must spend time in
nature.
·Therefore,
protection of the environment lies with people spending time in nature and
feeling hope for the future. People, young and old, all need encouragement to
undertake the effort required to fix the problems we face.
But the apostles of bigness (i.e. money – and
not just the oil that goes into plastics and cars and factory farms) have their
stake in the game, too.
Some simply prefer to deny.
Others are trying accommodation – either to
fend off government intrusion, or because they are concerned about their own
children and grandchildren. Or... they
see the opportunities in green living, as in dollars.
As Ms. Melangelo’s “Summer Night” character
explains... “we make money” by saving the earth.
Before wading further into the commerce and
wrongness, however, let’s take a last and passing look at Thanksgiving as is
applicable to Don Jones, America and the world at large. Believe it or don’t. there were a few positive
ecological and climatological developments in 2023 and... although the balance
was heavily stacked towards the rich, white Western nations with the time
(howsoever running out as the bioclock ticks towards the final extinction) and
the wealth to wonder about the world and even do things about it... the
virtuous lads and lassies at Euronews reminded the
benighted and bewildered that there was still hope to eclips the coming eve of destruction, if a dawn of correction is applicable and
applied without prejudice. (Euronews
Attachment “A”) Spake the self-designated
sane...
“Eco-anxiety,
climate doom, environmental existential dread - as green journalists, we see these
terms used a lot - and often feel them ourselves.
“While there's a lot to be
worried about when it comes to the climate and nature crises, we must not lose
hope - because hopelessness breeds apathy.
“The media has an important role
to play in combatting climate doom. It's our job to be truthful and accurate in
our reporting, not trying to downplay or greenwash the situation. But it's also
our job to show that there is hope.
“In 2022 (updated to
2023), as part of our ongoing effort to tackle eco-anxiety (both that of
our readers and our own), we kept track of all the positive environmental
news throughout the year - racking up over 100 stories of eco-innovation,
green breakthroughs and climate wins.
“In
2023 (hopefully updated to 2024), we're confident the good news will
keep on coming, as renewable power soars,
vulnerable ecosystems gain rights,
and climate protocols start to pay dividends.”
Well, that’s what they said. And, before COP28 begins, proving them right,
wrong or right and wrong (with asterisks),
let’s scroll through a few more instances of denial-denial, actions and
reactions for which this old tattered, battered planet has cause to thank Don
Jones.
Even
older climate nuggets from back in the day, NPR (October 30th,
Attachment Eighteen) complained that news about climate change “can be
overwhelming”: as NPR's climate solutions reporter Julia Simon shared: "I
talk with people about climate change — I often hear hopelessness.
“But
humans are driving global warming, (so) that means we humans can change our
trajectory."
That
some folks already have; there is the good news. “But these moments of joy can
often get lost in a sea of headlines.”
So the gumment media people assuaged our fears by citing...
...one of the
largest pink salmon runs in Puget Sound in the past decade,
...nearly 19 billion native seeds as
part of efforts to restore land along the Klamath River that is currently
dammed,
... a new, more sustainable variety of avocado,
... Tesla is building a drive-in movie theater EV charging
station in Los Angles,
...a Wyoming
food forest that added a “medicinal garden” consisting
of over 100 plants with spiritual, medicinal or nutritional significance to the
Northern Cheyenne Tribe...
And
more: coral spawning, baby glaciers, scuba Girl Scouts, “Garbage Humans”
cleaning parks in Austin, Texas and “Old Ladies Against Underwater
Garbage” cleaning ponds in Cape Cod, a “Soil Your Undies” project in Montana,
“natural burials” with decomposable burial boxes instead of coffins, and on and
on and on.
Happy News from Mongabay (November 28th,
Attachment Ninteen) includes takeaways on Mexican deep-sea mining moratoria,
sightings of an egg-laying mammal in Papua, a sperm whale reserve in Dominica,
rhino surrogate births, discovery of a blue tarantula and more...
“Researchers have described a new
electric-blue species of tarantula from Thailand. The vibrant tarantula
(Chilobrachys natanicharum) was known from the pet trade but hadn’t been seen
in nature by scientists.…’
And six “bits of positive climate news” were
brought forth by the Huffington Post (Attachment Twenty) including world (if
not always American) compliance with the Paris climate accord; nontoxic Coca
Cola bottle caps, Chinese “special sponges” (Spongebobs?) that eat plastic and
polls showing a majority of Britons (if not Americans) support carbon labeling.
...and six more from One Tree Planted
(11/23/23) including wildfire fighting and recovery via AI tech, senior
biologist at
the California Academy of Sciences, Tim Wong, who “single-handedly saved a
struggling butterfly species in his home city of San Francisco,” and the annual
Yosemite trash pickup.
“As
the holiday season draws near, let's celebrate some positive environmental news
that happened in November –– and keep the impact coming as the year draws to a
close!”
We ran the four days’ GUK timeline of COP28
(with far, far more to come) as Attachment “A”, and then there was the even
larger list of positive environmental takeaways from the Euros at Euronews...
(Attachment “B”), with over a hundred stories about attempts to comply with or
even exceed the parameters of the Paris talks and referrals to anecdotes about
some of the nice things in life.
“Eco-anxiety, climate doom, environmental
existential dread - as green journalists, we see these terms used a lot - and often
feel them ourselves,” the Euros contend, advising that “we must not lose hope -
because hopelessness breeds apathy.”
“In 2023 (and, soon enough, 2024
one would hope), we're confident the good news will keep on coming,
as renewable power soars, vulnerable ecosystems
gain rights, and climate protocols start to
pay dividends.”
Counting back downward from
October, Euronews’ “Green Country of the Month” selected Wales, for positive
ventures including closing coal mines, as the month’s winner.
September’s
champion was Estonia, for harnassing Baltic Sea winds; August highlighted a
drop in reliance of fossil fuels over 2022 and, in July, promotion of solar
rail passenger service was reported upon in Germany.
June
saw Austria as winning Green Country of the Month for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions, May’s champion was Iceland for its dependence upon geothermal energy
to heat homes and tourist traps, and Denmark took the crown in April for having
“the
highest share of renewables in its electricity mix out of 78 different
countries.”
The surprise winner for March was
the once-bleak Communist dystopia of Albania, which has “done the right thing
for one of its most precious natural features.”
(What feature, you may ask?
You’ll have to join the Eurogang to find out!) In February, the first Chinese pangolin was
born at a Prague zoo... there still being no confirmation that eating the li’l
beasts was the cause of Covid. And the
year began with wind and solar power producing more of the EU’s electricity
than fossil gas for the first time.
Euronews reported Bill Gates’ war
on cow burps, “kangaroo poo” infusions to inhibit cow farts and the return of
beavers to London and wolves to France
And finally, three codas to last week’s lessons
of thanksgiving. Against the sunset of
direness and despair, a few Joneses still managed to enjoy their holiday,
humbly or opulently. While many
politicians, princes and celebrities were loathe to publicize their holiday
plans – given the recent trend of attacks upon elites, whether for cause or
coin – a barrel of Hollywood monkeys, insiders and infliencers did let loose
their lips on their Thanksgiving circus hijinks – the better to fascinate and
enviate us all.
There
were also plenty of inspirational postings, tweets, proclamations and
distractions... Country Living taking the victory by volume in serving up 82
happy hippy trips (Attachment Old.1) and gushing accounts of celebrity
Thanksgivings like Mindy Kaling from US magazine (Attachment Old.2) or Ivanka
Trump from HOLA (Attachment Old.3)
But,
again, the happiest... tho’ briefest... manifestation of Thanksgiving occurred
with the rescue of Little Abi. And what
will the world give Don Jones for Christmas?
|
Our
Lesson: November 27th through December 4th, 2023 |
|
|
|
Monday, November 27, 2023 Dow:
35,333.47 |
A three
day celebration of the life of Roslyn Carter, the wife of (very) Ol’ 39 Jimmy
and “virtuous woman” hailed by friends, relatives and well-wishers. Prior to the present Presidential passage
to Plains, First Lady Jill invited assorted youngsters to watch and help
decorate the White House Christmas tree, saying the festivities helped adults
“feel like kids again”. Some media
carper-ers responded that they were sick and tired of Congressthings,
Senators and other dopey influence peddlers acting like kids, but expressed relief that Washington was and
would be shut down for another week as they enjoyed their taxpayer-paid paid
vacations. More mercenary (and tech-savvy) Joneses
broke out their devices and busted their bank accounts and credit celebrating
Cyber Monday as it was encorporated into and engulfed by a Black Friday that
stretched from a few days before Thanksgiving up to and probably a bit beyond
the purported birth of Jesus in his manger (without an i-Pad or even a space
heater for comfort and joy), Toters
toting up receipts and credit statements confirmed that Black Friday (only)
sales just missed hitting the ten billion dollar mark (a record, but still onlt 6% of the wealth of Elon
Musk, 10% of Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. At least they were four times as lucrative
as Donald Trump’s net worth, Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims
and most infidels and atheists also welcomed the Qatari-brokered Hamas
hostage release and four-day cease fire in Gaza, even as Iranian-backed bad
actors in Yemen and ol’ “Don’t forget ME”
Mad Vlad continued launching the rockets and drones. |
|
|
Tuesday, November 28, 2023 Dow:
35,416.31 |
It was
Travel Tuesday (or, some prefer) Giving Tuesday. Travel homeward after the holiday was
adjudged not bad as feared except for a few unlucky destinations haunted by
wicked weather or TSA, air traffic and airlines personnel shortages. Fares were coming down... a $480 round-trip
jaunt from L.A. to Rome... and gas prices kept falling (to the delight of
drivers and the cries of climate activists, as noted above). New York enjoyed (or endured) its six
hundred something-ist day without measurable rain, but the winds picked up
and cold arctic air, anticipated a transition directly into snow. In Gotham, the quickening winds blew over
the National Christmas Tree in Washington (hopefully not a premonition of
forthcoming disaster). While shoppers, public and private were
stocking up on cyberthings, the FBI was looking into suspected Iranian
cyberterrorism on utilities in a small Pennsylvania town – believing it to be
a hacking test to refine further and more dangerous acts of war. Illness forced Pope Frank to zoom in his
COP28 greeting, but 99 year old Jimmy got into his wheelchair and motorcaded
to the Carter Center in Atlanta for a public tribute (well, at least for the
invited) attended by dignitaries including former Presidents Clinton, Obama
and all surviving First Ladies: Hillary, Michelle and Republicans Laura Bush
and... Melania Trump! But bad luck
followed Ol’ 45... the influential and wealthy Charlie Koch endorsed Nikki
Haley and promised to dump oodles and dollops of dark money into her... uh.
Treasure?... chest. |
|
|
Wednesday, November 29, 2023 Dow: 35,430.42 |
Jimmy
and the family then motored down to his and Roslyn’s beloved Aramantha
Baptist Church in Plains for the funeral as a pianist plunked out strains of John
Lennon’s “Imagine”, followed by burial at the Carter lakeside home
(reportedly because, after a post-Presidential career of good works for
mental health and caregiving, she wanted to keep tourists coming and support
the local economy). The fortunate mourners
just escaping the rain, snow and freezing temperatures screaming east and
south in to Texas and Louisiana. Another even older, even more controversial icon... the Right
mocked and hated on Carter during his four years in power but eased up in his
and Roslyn’s afterlife... 100 year old Henry Kissinger also died. This time his defenders were largely
Republican, the detractors Democrats (blaming him for the Vietnam, Nixon and
the imperialist installment of dictators in Africa, Asia and Latin America). Newer, older icons (or knickknacks) of
legal legendermain surfaced... Speaker Johnson mounting a defense of George
Santos, the ubiquitous, iniquitous Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to 27 years
for defrauding his housekeeper’s family (over and above the two life
sentences for murder he is now contesting) and Djonald’s four criminal, one
civil and more lining up as The Law greenlighted lawsuits by those injured or
perturbed by the Nine Eleven. And the iconic Kraft Mac and Cheese people
announced that they would be removing the cheese from their beloved (and
expensive) meal and replacing it with... something. |
|
|
Thursday, November 30, 2023 Dow:
35,950.89 |
Hamas gunmen shoot 19 at Jerusalem bus stop, killing three and also
probably killing any further hostage exchange negotioations. No Americans are among the last of the
released Israeli hostages. But the FBI
foils what might have become another in the world’s multifronted wars and
skirmishes by arresting a hitman commissioned by “sources” in India (Modi?)
targeting a Sikh exile in the U.S.A. As diplomacy heads to the
showers, Henry Kissinger is remembered – as a criminal by some, but also as a
deal maker who brokered the American exit from Vietnam and arranged Nixon’s
visit to Mao as the USA/China alliance against Russia flourished, then
floundered. Many strong arms push New
York City’s Christmas tree upright where, under heavy police guard, it is
decorated and lit. Tree farms are doing
a brisk business, but the trees are more expensive and some of them are
infested with praying mantises. “Not
to worry,” say brokers, “they prey on other bugs.” Chocolate haters say that
Mars exploits 5 year old African children to pick its cocoa beans for
Snickers. In other foodie news, Rand
Paul (Ky) saves Joni Ernst (Ia) from jo... er, choking, swine tremble as
Christmas ham season supplants Thanksgiving and South Korean farmers threaten
to release two million Snoopys in protest of dog meat ban. |
|
|
Friday, December 1, 2023 Dow:
36,245.50 |
The House voted Friday to expel indicted
New York GOP Rep. George Santos over ethics violations, making him only the
sixth lawmaker ever to be ousted from the chamber. The resolution passed 311
to 114, with 105 Republicans voting in favor of expulsion. All four top House
GOP leaders voted to keep Santos in Congress and pachyderm paws are being
pointed. As
Hamas and Israel return to post-ceasefire shelling and strafing, Israeli
intelligence is accused of ignoring a report that, essentially, predicted the
massacres of 11/7. The so-called
“Jericho Wall” plot to invade Israel and kill civilians was dismissed as
“aspirational” by authorities; now the fingers are being pointed. In Atlanta a pro-Hamas protester sets
herself on fire. In
what is probably more useless political news, Djonald UnTalking says he will
skip the next debate in Alabama while Ron DeSantis, desperate for publicity,
debates California Governor Gavin Newsome who concludes by smirking that
neither of them would be on the ballot in November 2024.
President Joe gets more good news – the Dow cracks the 36,000 barrier
based on lessening inflation and likelihood of no more Fed rate hikes. |
|
|
Saturday, November 18, 2023 Dow:
Closed |
Capitol janitors remove Santos’ nameplate and change the locks on the office
as the expellee storms out, saying “to Hell with this place” and threatening
to rat out all of the other hypocrites.
A special election is likely to be set in three months, which will
likely flip the seat to Democrats, weakening Crusader Mike’s majority. Trump and DeSantis (not
Santos) are working Iowa and the Exile’s lawyers contend that the Georgia
election fraud is invalid because the First Amendment greenlightint of
political speech occurred when he was still President when it happened (authorities
claim he had been downgraded back to a candidate). The D.A. wants a trial August 24th,
in the middle of the campaign. Also, another judge rules that Djonald can be
sued in civil court for injuries to the Capitol police on One Six. Saint Ron, meanwhile, garners endorsements
from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelist Bob van der Platt who preaches
that candidates should fear God, not claim to be God. The New York Times and FAA
expose incidents of drunkenness and debauchery among Air Traffic Controllers
that have led to 23 close calls this year.
Defenders say that the Controllers are short-staffed, overworked and
stressed out. The Golden Bachelor chooses
his Golden Oldie Mate – they exchange kisses and rings and disappear into
history, hopefully never to be seen again. |
|
|
Sunday, November 19, 2023 Dow: Closed |
With the cease fire obliterated, Israel
returns to obliterating Gaza and Hamas, the Israelis. 700 civilians killed. DefSec Lloyd Austin says the killing of so many
civilians is likely to result in a “tactical victory” for Netanyahu, but a
“strategic defeat” in the long run as the children not killed will grow up to
join Hamas or whatever succudes it in 2040.
Donald Trump has little to say about the MidEast, nor the primaries...
except that he will skip Alabama next week because of “other
commitments”. What he does say is that
the One Six riot convicts are “hostages” and that he is calling for volunteer
vigilantes to “guard” polling places in November, 2024. His supporters denounce the swarm of
migrants now crossing the Arizona border and DHS defunds its asylum
processing to pour more money into enforcement, Sen. Lankford (R-Ok) says that all funding
for Israel, Ukraine or Taiwan will be approved without a border enforcement
deal acceptable to Republicans. But
Sen. Tuberville (R-Al.) hints he might modify his holdup of military
promotions although Speaker Mike says his number one priority is Biden’s
impeachment.
Johnson’s other problem, expelled ex-Rep Santos, is launching revenge
accusations and calls for investigations of many of his former colleagues,
but TV lawyers say these are likely to be tossed out. Democrats compare Georgie and his lies to
Trump while Capitol janitors remove his nameplate and former GOParty animal
Reince Priebus calls him “almost a comedian”.
Can we expect him to get his own reality show? |
|
|
With Thanksgiving over,
thanksgivings (and curses) handed out on many fronts, Don Jones turns towards
Christmas and the month-long Black Friday with, at least, a few more dollars
at hand if he has investments. The Dow
Jones set a record, based on realization of the “soft landing” that has
caused the Fed to back away from more rate hikes and may even start resulting
in lower rates in 2024. Otherwise, tryptopanic indices showed lack
of panic – the small gain for the week almost equaling last week’s small
loss. We received substantial
feedback and blowback from last week’s weekly summary, so here it is again... What is the measure of a
healthy society and/or good v. bad times.
Is it the numbers... the cold hard facts of life as might be good or
bad, fleeting or long lasting? Or is
it what the hippies and zippies used to call the “vibes”... an abundance, not
of caution, but of celebration occasioned by personal fortune, a collective
or nation interstice of celebration (like Thanksgiving, this week, or
Christmas coming up). Even those might
be hated on by some... Native Americans, the former, infidel atheists,
Islamicists and, to a lesser extent, non-Jihadist Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus
and other assorted faiths and unfaiths who believe that Jesus was a villain,
at worst, or a myth, at best. The Dow, too, might be expressed as a
function ot “vibes” inasmuch as most investors buy or sell depending on the
own gut relationships with thiw or that stock, According to the numbers, Don Jones had a
very, very bad week. Unemployment is
skyrocketing... despite the abumdance of Christmas-related jobs available. Maybe not good jobs, maybe not even subsistence
jobs – but jobs nonetheless. And for
the good jobs, there is the problem of the requirements of education, which
either takes time or requires an investment in what may be a lifetime of
debt. Better to watch the games and
the parade on TV, gripe on social media or take drugs. This week, numerous Thanksgiving private
and public celebrations took place – and without the terror and disasters
predicted by the Don and Debbie Downers.
Turkeys were killed and eaten, balloons floated and, if air and road
traffic was heavy, most everybody got to where they were going, sooner or
later. And then there was the social/global
news... one four year old American hostage was released by the scrofulous
Hamas terrorists in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners: some,
no doubt, terrorists who will strike again, others just loudmouths about the
crises of 1974 and 1948 and actions therewithin that leave Israel an apartheid state, though it
is not popular to say so excpt for billions of Muslims and even some rich,
white over-educated victim lovers marching and chanting around their elite
universities that America’s underclasses and working classes would give their
security to join. But the numbers – the rising rate of
unemployment in the face of a need for workers – and the collapsing real
estate market (which will have to collapse for a few more years until working
Americans can affort a place to live. Vibes or numbers? As ever, Joneses... based on their own
experience and outlook... will choose. |
|
|
|
CHART of CATEGORIES
w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000 (REFLECTING…
approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013) Negative/harmful indices
in RED.
See a further explanation of categories here… ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)
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SOCIAL
INDICES (40%) |
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|
ACTS of MAN |
12% |
|
|
||||||||
|
World Affairs |
3% |
450 |
10/9/23 |
-0.2% |
12/11/23 |
459.29 |
458.37 |
After the initial outrage over the Hamas killings,
world opinion is slowly turning against Israel which blames it on historic
anti-Semitism. Conditions worsen in Latin
America, impelling more migrants to try to break into the U.S.A. Peso fails in Argentina, far-right
governments elected in Netherlands and New Zealand |
|||
|
War and terrorism |
2% |
300 |
11/21/23 |
-0.2% |
12/11/23 |
296.64 |
296.05 |
Yemen joins the war as an Iranian surrogate,
launching drones against warships sent to punish pirates. Iranian hackers accused of sabotaging
sewers in small Pennsylvania town. Is
it a test run, or desperation? The
wars roll on in Ukraine and Gaza, street protests with anti-Jewish
intimations are escalating and pro-Hamas killers strike in Paris. |
|||
|
Politics |
3% |
450 |
11/21/23 |
+0.2% |
12/11/23 |
480.92 |
481.88 |
U.S. and world leaders remember Roslyn Carter,
RIP. Henry Kissinger too... tho’ not all
do so fondly. Dark money billionaire
Charles Koch now regards Nikki Haley fondly as
St. Ron falters and Mark Cuban, quitting Shark Tank and selling his NBA team
ponders run for Presidency. Speaker
Johnson defends George Santos (he needs the vote) but George is gone anyway
as will be more than three dozen Congressthings not running in 2024. |
|||
|
Economics |
3% |
450 |
11/21/23 |
+0.5% |
12/11/23 |
430.88 |
433.93 |
Cyber Monday begins with deals, scams and rougher
return policies as final Black Friday revenues just miss ten billion
(musk/bez). Giving Tuesday charity
donations up from 3.1 to 3.45B. UAW, fresh
from strike victory against American Big Three, takes on foreign
carmakers. Soaring economy indulges in
record Dow and falling gas prices. Joe
takes credit for “soft landing”, turns left and blames inflation on corporate
gouging. Communist! |
|||
|
Crime |
1% |
150 |
11/21/23 |
-0.2% |
12/11/23 |
245.27 |
244.78 |
Gun violence chronicleeers chronical 1,500 American
children murdered so far in 2023; the toll surpassing car crashes as the top
kid kiler. Mass killers strike from coast
(family of four in Far Rockaway) to coast (homeless stabber arrested in
L.A.) Pedo-atrician accused of casting
his patients in child porn videos.
Cops warn that strangers entering schools might be terrorists. Serial killer stalks LA, purging the homeless
until arrested... copycat inVegas shoots five. |
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|
ACTS of GOD |
(6%) |
|
|
||||||||
|
Environment/Weather |
3% |
450 |
11/21/23 |
-0.2% |
12/11/23 |
396.61 |
395.82 |
Post-holiday storms bedevil air and road travelers returning
home from Granma’s or just going back to work. Heavy rain floods Mountain West, but
peaceful skies blanket the rest of America.
Aurora Borealist slides south, dazzles the Dakotas/ |
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|
Disasters |
3% |
450 |
11/21/23 |
+0.1% |
12/11/23 |
419.18 |
419.60 |
Forty one construction workers rescued from
collapsed tunnel in India. Massive
Eurosnows stall trains and planes under mountains of ice. |
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|
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX |
(15%) |
|
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|
Science, Tech, Educ. |
4% |
600 |
11/21/23 |
-0.1% |
12/11/23 |
637.30 |
636.67 |
Bipartisan politicians seek stronger regulations
against AI polluting young minds and stealing jobs – First Amerndment issues
arise. More businesses pull ads from
Elon’s X. Google’s A.I. child abuse
apps snaring too many innocent parents. |
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|
Equality (econ/social) |
4% |
600 |
11/21/23 |
-0.3% |
12/11/23 |
637.46 |
635.55 |
Beating the deadline, New Yorkers file sex abuse
lawsuits that snare and snaggle celebrities like Mayor Adams. Russia cracks down on gays, Tennessee town
makes homosexuality illegal. |
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|
Health |
4% |
600 |
11/21/23 |
-0.1% |
12/11/23 |
472.50 |
472.93 |
TV doctors say anti-fat drugs like Ozempic may also cure
alcoholism, advise Don Jones to eat more tomatoes and say that new plagues in
China are just good ol’ plagues, Kraft
removes the cheese from its mac n’cheese. |
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|
Freedom and Justice |
3% |
450 |
11/21/23 |
nc |
12/11/23 |
471.51 |
471.51 |
Massive Cigna/Humana merger draws attention from the
courts. Federal court in Montana
overturns ban on TikTok, citing First Amendment. And the old, cold cases roll on. |
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|
MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX |
(7%) |
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
Cultural incidents |
3% |
450 |
11/21/23 |
+0.1% |
12/11/23 |
515.20 |
515.72 |
Grit award for blacks honor Eddie Murphy, Jennifer
Hudson and Steve Harvey’s moustache.
Macauley Culkin gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Sir Paul plays surprise concert in Brazil.
Golden Bachelor chooses Teresa. It’s a
banner week for Death! RIP: Kissinger,
Supreme court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, singers Jean (Mr. Big Stuff)
Knight, amd Shane MacGowan (“Pogues”), philanthropist Michael Latt in home
invasion murder,
billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire VIP Charlie Mungen, actors Evan
Elkington, Frances Burlington (“Cheers”), Pogue Shane MacGowan |
|||
|
Misc. incidents |
4% |
450 |
11/21/23 |
-0.2% |
12/11/23 |
498.95 |
497.95 |
International caviar market
rife with fraud. Red Lobster raises
price on it’s all you can eat shrimp buffet. |
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The Don Jones Index for the week of November 27th through December 3rd,
2023 was UP 5.33 points
The Don Jones Index
is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and
Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian
Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies,
emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers
(including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin
Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works,
“Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best,
mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective
legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.
Comments,
complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.
ATTACHMENT ONE – From the GUARDIAN U.K.
TOO MUCH
STUFF: CAN WE SOLVE OUR ADDICTION TO CONSUMERISM?
Alarmed by the rising tide of waste
we are all creating, my family and I decided to try to make do with much less.
But while individual behaviour is important, real change will require action on
a far bigger scale
by Chip
Colwell Tue
28 Nov 2023 00.00 EST
One
freezing cold morning, I drove past the outer edge of Denver, Colorado, past
Buckley air force base, past the suburban neighbourhoods huddled at the edge of
the Great Plains. I saw rising from the prairie several low bumps, lifting from
the horizon like icebergs. As I got close to them, I saw they were encircled by
barbed wire and knew I had reached my destination.
I pulled into the Denver Arapahoe
Disposal Site, cutely known as Dads. I was part of a tour, arranged by a local
reporter. Ten people gathered around our guide, Doc Nyiro, a Dads manager, middle-aged, with a
studious, geeky demeanour. Nyiro began by telling us that Dads is open 24 hours
a day, six days a week. Every day, 800 trucks arrive, culminating in about 2m
tonnes of refuse a year. We watched the trucks pulling into the weigh station.
“It just doesn’t slow down,” Nyiro said. “Truck after truck.”
Climbing into a van, Nyiro took us
to an area where a new cell was being constructed: the foundation for a new
mountain of trash. It was 10 hectares in size and lined with clay and crushed
glass to prevent the liquid that would gather as the rubbish breaks down from
leaking into the groundwater. Once completed, the cell will be filled with
waste, and would reach 90 metres high within two years.
Next, Nyiro took us to an active
landfill area. We joined the line of traffic, driving a steep, rough dirt road
to the top of a hill. We watched as a line of trucks stopped around us to empty
out everything imaginable. “It looks like they just took all the contents of my
apartment and dumped it here,” a man on the tour said, not joking. The wind
whipped trash into the air like snow as 100-tonne tractors compressed couches
and cookie boxes and everything in between into thick strata that contain the
full record of modern life. The result: a dry tomb of waste that will endure
for millennia.
Nyiro then led us to a tragically small
area of Dads dedicated to gathering recyclable and compostable materials. At
the final stop, we visited an electricity plant, with old train motors powered
by methane released from decomposing trash. The plant produces enough
electricity to power 2,500 homes a year.
By the tour’s end, I couldn’t help
but admire the landfill’s efficiency, the engineering that goes into managing
so much waste. Dads enables the endless cycle of consumption of my city to go
on uninterrupted while reducing the chances of immediate environmental harm.
But not every place has the resources to manage such monumental waste. Ghana,
for instance, imports around 15m items of secondhand clothing
from countries including the UK, US and China every week. Many of these
garments end up in informal dumps, which, after seasonal rains, wash out
millions of rotting, tangled pieces of clothing on to local beaches.
While grateful for the work of
Nyiro and his colleagues, I also felt nauseated. It is hard to stomach seeing
what actually comes of our collective consumption – the waste that makes
literal mountains, not to mention the waste of resources that are spent on
dealing with it. Just this one dump was a perpetual-motion machine to manage a
ceaseless flow of abandoned things, like trying to manage the ocean’s tide.
Mass consumption has brought
numerous benefits: jobs and financial wealth, physical safety and security. New
ways of connecting, talking and thinking. Easy travel to nearly anywhere in the
world. Lights that keep the dark nights at bay. Music constantly available.
But the costs have also been
staggering. Economic inequality and wars over non-renewable resources have
killed untold numbers. The steep increase in products in recent decades has
accelerated pollutant emissions, deforestation and climate breakdown. It has
depleted water supplies and contributed to the rapid extinction of animals.
There are vast “garbage patches” floating across the world’s oceans, with
infinite bits of microplastics working their way into food webs. Even if we
accept the positives of mass consumption to date, we must acknowledge that the
situation is unsustainable. And yet, we can’t seem to stop ourselves.
At
the start of 2021, my wife, our daughter and I sat down for a family meeting to
see if we could restrain our household’s consumption. I had been drawing
inspiration from a range of so-called minimalists and wanted to give it a try.
I had investigated the likes of Lauren Singer, who lived a “zero-waste lifestyle” in
Brooklyn, limiting her trash of eight years to so few items that they could fit
in a single mason jar. I’d read about a family of four in Los Angeles who had
given up all plastics. I had learned about Lara Joanna Jarvis, a mother of two
in Hampshire, England, who didn’t buy anything for a year and saved £25,000.
“What could we do?” I said, as I
opened my laptop and pulled up a Forbes article (ironic for a magazine with a
“billionaire’s index”) that provided a guide to a “no buy” year. “How about
this?” I asked.
My then nine-year-old daughter
nodded in agreement. “I want to save the environment,” she said. She didn’t
like all the boxes that things came in. “The environment matters because that’s
where animals live and the trees that are living too,” she added. My wife
eagerly subscribed to the idea. “And I want to be less consumerist,” she said,
“because sometimes you think you have joy out of things. But things don’t bring
joy.” We were off to a good start.
There are a wide range of possible
motivations for this kind of strategic living: an aesthetic sense (when people
like spaces with fewer things), sustainability (driven by concerns over the
environment), thrift (saving money), mindfulness (wanting to be more
intentional in one’s life) and experience (when people are excited to try
different lifestyles). For my daughter, it was the environment; for my wife, mindfulness.
For me, I lean toward a minimalist aesthetic. But mainly I was exhausted by
endless shopping, and terrified by the possibility that our over-consumption
was destroying the planet.
After a moment of silence, my wife
reconsidered: “OK, maybe a speaker that brings out music brings out joy.”
She had a point. Living without
things is impossible. And things can give us experiences of joy. Things connect
us to each other, our pasts, our identities. Even if we loathe some things for
the destruction they bring, we love the things that make us who we are. After
all, humans have long depended on our things.
“What if,” I improvised, “we don’t
do a no-buy year, but a slow-buy year? Besides necessities, we each only get to
buy five things this year.”
We considered this. I drafted a
list of approved items, not to be counted toward our five things: food, school
and work items, health necessities and car parts (if needed). We could accept
gifts from others, though we would discourage them. But if we bought gifts to give,
then it would count toward our five.
Everyone happily agreed. But after
I closed my laptop, I began to think about all the things I wished I had bought
before we arrived at this plan – another phone plug, a better automatic
cat-feeder, running shoes, sunglasses … maybe this was going to be more
difficult than I’d imagined.
My family’s effort was a version
of minimalism, a growing movement in many consumerist societies to live with
less. There are those who refuse to bring more stuff into their lives. Elizabeth
Chai, a 40-year-old in Portland, Oregon, got rid of 2,020 possessions and didn’t buy anything in 2020 except food, drink and
toiletries. Others refuse to buy certain things, such as anything made of
plastic. Others may give up single-use gadgets or fast fashion or things that
just seem wasteful, such as paper plates.
Then there are individuals
committed to the ethic of reuse, who throw away less and save items that would
otherwise be tossed. In recent years, the app Nextdoor has gained popularity:
neighbours use it borrow tools, trade items and give away things headed to
landfill. Nextdoor reports that it is used in 11 countries and in nearly one in
three US households. Similarly, Buy Nothing – a social network group founded in
2013 and dedicated to the “gift economy” of sharing and loaning items that
would otherwise be bought or tossed – has a massively popular app. Creative
reuse is also central to Singer and others seeking a “zero-waste lifestyle”,
which requires reusing items (such as cloth grocery bags), borrowing others’
items (such as wine glasses from a neighbour for a party (i.e. STEALING –
DJI), and repurposing or “upcycling” an item (such as turning wine corks
into a countertop).
Finally, there are those who
reduce, as with my family’s attempt at a slow-buy year. Some have reduced their
possessions to just 100 things. The 2021 Netflix documentary The Minimalists:
Less Is Now challenges viewers to consider getting rid of one thing in the
first month, two things in the second, three things in the third, and so on –
selling, giving away or trashing the items. Another version is the rise of a
kind of “heirloom materialism”, in which people try to purchase only items that
will endure for many years – planned perseverance instead of planned
obsolescence. My family’s attempt to slow-buy for a year fell into this last
category.
My
initial panic endured for a week. I kept coming across things that I “needed”
to buy – sunglasses, a bouncy ball to play with my daughter after our favourite
one got a hole, a new book, a gift for a friend who had a baby. Let it be said:
I resisted all these temptations. I reminded myself to be grateful for what we
had, and I found ways to make do. But then the pandemic hit, and suddenly, our
small house became my office, gym and vacation spot – the place where our
family spent almost every moment of our lives. Hesitantly, we started
house-hunting.
By April, we had bought a piano
book and a new bike for my daughter. A hole finally opened in the toe of one of
my running shoes; I had no choice (I thought) but to buy a new pair. After all,
my physical fitness depended on it. My wife bought two books as a gift to a
friend.
Then things got dicey. Some
permanent pens accidentally went into a load of washing with nearly all my
clothes. Still, I resisted buying new ones. But then, the next month, we saw a
great house for us. We made an offer, knowing – half-accepting, half-denying –
that to make it our home, we would have to buy a lot more than five things
each.
When our slow-buy year was on the
brink of failure after just six months, I came across a harsh but
hilarious screed against minimalism, written by Chelsea Fagan of
the Financial Diet blog. Fagan levels multiple arguments against all forms of
minimalism. She writes that it is classist, a fad for the rich, because people
in real poverty don’t have to worry about what not to buy, and because of how
expensive “sustainable” and “heirloom” items often are. “‘Stop wasting money on
all that Ikea nonsense!’” Fagan imagined a minimalist saying. “‘With this
$4,000 dining table hand-whittled by a failed novelist in Scandinavia, you will
never need another piece of furniture!’ – which really just points to having
enough disposable income to ‘invest’ in your wardrobe and surroundings.”
Furthermore, she derides the idea that a simple aesthetic and decluttering
equals moral worth, a “faux spiritualism”. Every form of minimalism, Fagan
concludes, “is just another form of conspicuous consumption, a way of saying to
the world, ‘Look at me! Look at all of the things I have refused to buy, and
the incredibly expensive, sparse items I have deemed worthy instead!’”
Others have pointed out that
attacking consumption itself in order to solve the problems of over-consumption
is unlikely to succeed. Consumerism has become a symbol of liberty and
democratic equality – in today’s world, the idea goes, anyone can consume
anything, and thus be turned into the person they want to be. The symbolic glow
of consumption cannot simply be turned off.
People do love things. The anthropologist
Daniel Miller studied shoppers in London and saw that many people do not see
consumption as an act of hedonism, but as necessary provisioning for themselves
and their families. The items brought into the household were a way of showing
thought and concern about the needs of the people in it. In this way, shopping
is a means to express care – an act of love. Anti-consumer logic, in a strange
way, can be interpreted as anti-love. And who doesn’t want love?
While these arguments against minimalism
– particularly in its most extreme forms – struck me as worryingly true, I also
reflected on how much, by at least trying it, I learned about myself, my
family’s needs, my relationship with things. When I asked my wife about these
critiques, she explained how our slow-buy phase made her pause before each
purchase, to ask herself if she really needed the item, or if there was some
other way to obtain it. She was less stressed during holidays and birthdays
because she knew she didn’t have to worry about what to buy. And it made her
consider how, just because a person has the ability to buy something doesn’t
mean she should. For her, minimalism isn’t faux spiritualism, but a real
contentment and reframing of what brings true joy.
I agreed, even as I worried that
while minimalism can be an important approach for individuals, we still need
bigger answers – answers that don’t reframe just individual consumption, but
how our larger world of consumerism operates.
In
the early dawn of one summer day in 2008, Marcus Eriksen’s raft, floating in
the Pacific 60 miles west of Los Angeles, was sinking. Fifty-knot gusts churned
the sea and threaded through the powerless vessel, pulling it apart. This
should not have been a surprise. After all, the raft, named Junk,
was constructed of a Cessna airplane fuselage sitting atop ply board and
strapped to 15,000 plastic bottles.
Eriksen had been motivated by the
plastics crisis eight years earlier, when he had visited Midway Atoll, a speck
of flat land at the western edge of the Hawaii archipelago. There lay hundreds
of thousands of laysan albatross nests. Led by the biologist Heidi Auman,
Eriksen’s visit was focused on the amount of plastic that the birds ingest as
food. Albatross parents feed their young the shocking range of plastics that
litter the island and its waters – toothbrushes, utensils, wires, cigarette
lighters – providing a false sense of satiety. Many of the birds die, of
course, and their rotting carcasses burst open to reveal stomachs overstuffed
with plastics.
Eriksen is a man of action. He
dedicated his life to bringing what he witnessed at Midway Atoll to those who
were unaware of how humanity’s love affair with plastic had become a horror
show for our oceans. In 2003, he paddled 2,000 miles down the Mississippi in
the Bottle Rocket, a raft made of 232 two-litre plastic bottles, to bring
attention to the waterway’s pollution. Next, Eriksen wanted to see where all
the plastic from North America’s rivers ends up.
He travelled to the Great Pacific garbage patch – a collection of
human debris bigger than Peru trapped in a circular ocean current – guided by
the man who is credited with discovering it, Capt Charlie Moore. There, Eriksen
learned that the patch is less garbage and more a thick soup of fragmented
plastics, or as he would write, “a kaleidoscope of microplastics, like sprinkles
on cupcakes”. He realised it would be nearly impossible to clean up the tiny
fragments infiltrating marine life. In 2014, after 24 expeditions, Eriksen and
a team of scientists would be the first to estimate the total weight of
plastics in the world’s oceans: around 250,000 tonnes.
The scale of this crisis mocks
attempts such as my family’s to reduce the amount of waste – especially plastic
– in the world. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans
threw out nearly 51m tonnes of plastic in 2021, or about 140kg per person. Even
if I had somehow managed not to consume and throw away a single ounce of
plastic for an entire year, my actions would have reduced the country’s total
plastic waste by about a vanishingly tiny amount. When I finally did these
calculations, the amount of energy and worry I’d spent on my slow-buy year
seemed absurd.
This was the conundrum buzzing in
my head when I sat down to interview Marcus Eriksen. He wore dark jeans and a
black fleece sweater; with glasses perched atop his salt-and-pepper hair, he
had a professorial air. Although ascetics point to the question of individual
responsibility for what we consume, Eriksen emphasises that our modern debate
has been shaped by narratives created by some of the corporations most
responsible for the crisis we find ourselves in.
Eriksen believes the primary
responsibility for solving the environmental crisis belongs to businesses and
governments. Those who produce materials, and those responsible for overseeing
it, can act at the scale necessary for real change. “We’re fooling ourselves if
we think that individual actions are going to move the meter,” Anna Cummins,
co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, a non-profit focusing on reducing plastic
pollution, recently told the Los Angeles Times. “Every little bit helps,
but public policy and corporations have to change.”
Eriksen believes the overall
strategy must involve moving from a “linear economy” to a “circular economy”.
This is a shift from a single-use, throwaway economy, as he wrote in 2017, to a
model “with end-of-life design, recovery, and remanufacture systems that keep
synthetic materials like plastic in a closed loop”. Ideally, synthetic materials are
increasingly replaced by less environmentally harmful and less wasteful
substitutes. Businesses can develop innovative packaging and delivery systems,
such as returnable and reusable boxes.
Governments can pass laws that ban
certain materials or products, and moderate planned obsolescence – for example,
in the US, proposed right to repair legislation would support far more
gadgets being repaired instead of replaced. In 2020, France passed an anti-waste law that compelled makers of
smartphones, washing machines, televisions, laptops and lawnmowers to list
their products on a “repairability index”, and banned companies destroying
unsold items. Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania have all banned
single-use plastic bags, and Kenya recently outlawed all single-use plastics,
along with glass and silverware, in national parks. Legislation in
Chile will ban all single-use food and beverage products
by 2025. “There is also the zero-waste city model,” Eriksen said. “We
especially see this movement in emerging markets that don’t have space for
landfills or funds for incinerators.” This strategy involves creating a
workforce built around waste sorting, recycling and composting.
These ideas, while visionary, have
received considerable criticism. Some suggest that there is little evidence
that industrial societies can make the switch from linear to circular and have
the anticipated environmental benefits. From an engineering standpoint, some
have suggested that it is impossible to build a truly closed-loop system. In
industrial production, there will always be times where new materials must be
introduced into the system and waste products must exit it. Materials wear
down. Machines leak. Some toxins are too dangerous to be recirculated. Additionally,
when one study looked at circular economies – not just the industrial
mechanisms to create closed-loop systems – there was a paradoxical increase in
overall production.
The reason is that precisely
because circular production decreases per-unit production costs, there is an
increase in demand for the cheaper stuff, which ultimately increases production
and reduces the intended environmental benefits of a circular economy. In other
cases, the savings in efficiencies are offset by consumer choices about what to
do with those potential savings. For example, in recent years, there have been
leaps forward in fuel efficiency in cars, but those savings in fuel have been
offset by the increase in car size. The study found that steps can be taken to
mitigate this “circular-economy rebound”, but that they are incongruous with
the goals of for-profit companies.
Still others argue that the
circular-economy idea merely reframes rather than rejects the corporate and
capitalist assumptions that got us into this mess in the first place. Instead
of challenging the goal of growth, circular economies create a new form of
growth that is still in the hands of industrial corporations. The accusation is
that the circular economy has become a corporate slogan that depoliticises our
environmental crisis by seeing the answer as a technical one to be solved by
industry, rather than tackling an unjust economic system that gives power and
benefits to a few at the cost of the many.
There
are strong moral arguments that we have an obligation to reduce our consumption
and its associated waste, because although our individual contributions to the
environmental crisis may be infinitesimally small, our small sacrifices –
buying less plastic, for example – do add up to meaningful change. Such
sacrifices also express our values, which can inspire others around us to do
their part.
On the collective level, changes
must be structural – new public policies, laws, international treaties,
infrastructure, economic programmes, investments. No doubt, the idea of the
circular economy has practical limitations and may be usurped by commercial
interests. But I find it naive to imagine that the world can simply do away
with capitalism and the global economy in time to save our planet. In practice,
the circular economy is not one approach but many – a wide array of practices
within certain industries, a way of thinking about engineering problems, a set
of guidelines and aspirations for governments and corporations. Although this
range of approaches in some measure fractures the movement into parts, it also
means that we can look to these different experiments to see what works and
what doesn’t. This moment of emergency requires immediate action, and for now
that must mean collaborating with the companies that make our modern world.
It does not mean acquiescence,
however. All of us must do our part to push those in power to create real and
meaningful change, even as we must seek to make real and meaningful change in
our own lives.
This is an edited extract from
Stuff: Humanity’s Epic Journey from Naked Ape to Nonstop Shopper, published by
Hurst on 30 November and available at guardianbookshop.com
ATTACHMENT TWO – From AL
JAZEERA
UN COP28: WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE CLIMATE SUMMIT IN DUBAI
(See website for charts and graphs)
Climate financing and reining in
fossil fuels are to top the agenda of the 2023 climate change summit to be held
in Dubai.
By Areesha Lodhi Published
On 28 Nov 202328 Nov 2023
World leaders, government
representatives and delegates are set to gather for the annual United Nations
climate change summit, known as the Conference of the Parties or COP28, in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Reining in fossil fuels and carbon
emissions are expected to be topping the agenda of the 13-day summit (November
30 to December 12). International funding to help countries adapt to climate
change will also be hotly debated as developing countries have been demanding
more contributions from the industrialised nations.
(See more... )
Climate leaders gather in Spain before ‘challenging’ COP28
Man grabs mic from Greta Thunberg at climate rally
US and China agree to resume stalled cooperation on climate crisis
UN says greenhouse gases in atmosphere hit record high in 2022
An ambitious loss and damages fund
agreed last year to support poorer nations to help manage the negative effects
of climate change has yet to be put into place. World leaders agreed to the
fund after COP27 last year, but they have failed to reach consensus on the most
important questions of all – which states will pay into it and how much.
Countries will also face the first
review of their progress towards the Paris Agreement, a landmark international treaty
on limiting carbon emissions that was signed at the COP21, almost eight years
ago.
Although the UAE was the first
Middle Eastern country to ratify the agreement, people are deeply divided over
hosting the summit in a nation that has been termed as part of the problem for its
reliance on fossil fuels, which account for more than 75 percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions. Some are now also criticising the inclusion of oil
and gas-linked representatives in such summits at all.
As the debate around COP28 and its
impact continues, here’s what to know about this year’s conference and what
makes it significant.
What, when,
where is COP28?
COP is the primary decision-making body of The United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), established in 1992.
Representatives of 197 countries
who have signed or are “parties” to the UNFCCC will participate primarily
through debates and negotiations.
COP28 will begin on November 30
and continue for almost two weeks, while the exact schedule for each day will
be published a night prior. Pre-sessions for the conference began on November
24.
The conference will be held at
Expo City in Dubai, UAE.
Why is COP28
important?
The COP28 will take place in the
backdrop of devastating floods and heatwaves, fierce wildfires and the Earth’s hottest summer on
record this year.
The event is considered an opportunity
for countries to better rein in climate change by devising improved targets and
measures through tools such as finance, technology and capacity-building.
The conference comes weeks
after a UN report said greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere hit a record high in 2022. Based on countries’ current climate
plans, the report says, global carbon emissions by 2030 will be cut by only two
percent compared with 2019 levels, far short of the 43 percent fall needed to
limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial levels.
Although the 1.5 degree Celsius
target became binding in the 2015 Paris Agreement, the goal was first adopted
after COP16, more than a decade ago.
A report from the World
Meteorological Organization in May also found that with current trends, the world may temporarily breach the
1.5 degrees Celsius target in 2027.
As states scramble to catch up
before climate change risks spike further, they will not be immune to crises
around the world.
“For years parties have been
struggling to agree to a fossil fuel phase-out, and the challenge to reach an
agreement was made worse by the fiscal crises precipitated by the pandemic and
energy crisis following the war in Ukraine,” said Olivia Rumble, director of
Climate Legal in South Africa.
What is the
agenda and theme for COP28 in Dubai?
A primary objective of COP each
year is to review and calibrate the implementation of the UNFCCC terms, Paris Agreement, and Kyoto Protocol, a binding treaty
agreed in 1997 for industrialised nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This year, member states will
negotiate while facing their first Global Stocktake (GST) – a scorecard analysing
countries’ progress towards the Paris Agreement – so they can adapt their next
climate action plans which are due in 2025.
“Countries will be hard-pressed to make
concessions to agree on the principal reasons for historic failures and what
they believe needs to be done going forward to make meaningful progress on the
agreement’s goals,” said Rumble.
Parties will also seek to
operationalise the loss and damages fund after developing nations
proposed in September that developed countries should disperse at least $100bn
to them by 2030.
Additionally, this year’s
presidency has set four themes to be at the forefront of the summit:
·
Fast-tracking
the energy transition: revolves
around renewable energy, and food and agricultural systems.
·
Fixing climate finance: aims to prioritise the
Global South in adaptation finance and help vulnerable communities rebuild
after climate disasters, among other targets.
·
Nature, people,
lives, and livelihoods: geared
towards food systems, nature-based solutions, and protecting against extreme
weather events and biodiversity loss.
·
Inclusivity in
climate management: includes
youth involvement and improved communication between different sectors and
agencies.
However, focusing on specific
themes such as financing strategies must also be accompanied by a revamping of
global structures to be effective across the world.
While this year’s climate
financing agenda aims to better support developing nations with emergency
funding, such mechanisms currently lack effective needs analysis and involve
the inefficient distribution of funds. High debts imposed on such countries
through global financing structures also reduce their ability to invest in the
maintenance of climate projects.
“They [renewable energy and energy efficiency]
will mean little to African countries without significant reforms to the global
financial architecture to make these targets achievable. This includes revising
risk ratings and perception of investment risk in Africa,” said Rumble.
Who will and
will not attend COP28 in Dubai?
More than 140 heads of state,
senior government leaders and at least 70,000 participants are expected to
attend COP28.
Some of the notable figures who
have confirmed their attendance so far include:
·
Britain’s
King Charles III, who will also deliver an address at the opening ceremony
·
Rishi Sunak,
prime minister of the United Kingdom
·
Humza Yousaf,
first minister of Scotland
·
Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi.
US President Joe Biden is not
expected to attend but the country will be represented by top officials such as
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry.
Pope Francis, who was scheduled to
attend the summit, on Tuesday cancelled his participation as he recovers from
the flu and lung inflammation.
The summit will be divided into a
“blue zone” with sessions for UN-accredited participants such as state
representatives only, and a “green zone” with events and exhibits for
registered participants from the public and civil society.
What are the
controversies around COP28?
Many environmentalists and other
analysts have raised concerns about COP28’s choice of president.
Sultan al-Jaber, CEO of the Abu
Dhabi National Oil Co, has been tasked with changing the world’s climate
course while the company he heads is one of the world’s largest oil producers.
The UAE is the world’s seventh-largest liquid fuel producer.
In May, al-Jaber faced criticism for referring to the need to phase
out “fossil fuel emissions” — using techniques such as carbon capture — instead
of phasing out fossil fuels themselves.
Others have questioned the UNFCCC
for involving the fossil fuel industry in its
discussions and failing to generate sufficient progress towards the 1.5-degree
goal.
In September, more than 200 civil
society organisations, including Amnesty International, wrote an open letter to
the UAE government to follow certain demands in the lead-up to COP28. On top of
calling for labour reforms, and abandoning plans to step up oil and gas
production, the letter demanded that the UAE refrain from surveilling COP28
attendees.
The country has said it will
allow environmental activists to “assemble peacefully”
for protest acts during the summit.
ATTACHMENT THREE – From the WASHINGTON POST
AS WINTER NEARS, SNOW IS THE FORGOTTEN PRECIPITATION ALONG EAST COAST
A historic
snow drought is ongoing from Virginia to New York
By Ian
Livingston November
28, 2023 at 10:45 a.m. EST
From southern Virginia to New York
City, nearly two years have elapsed since the last time an inch or more of snow
fell on a calendar day. In several locations, the snow drought is the longest
on record. The lack of snow has occurred during abnormally warm winters and
amid a trend toward declining amounts of snow — both probable consequences of
human-caused climate change.
New York’s Central Park received
an inch of snow on one calendar day 652 days ago, its longest streak without
that much snow in records dating to 1869. In the Washington region, Dulles
International Airport has a similar record-long streak ongoing.
Even typically cold and snowy
places in the parts of the Northeast are not receiving the amount of snow to
which they are accustomed. Boston and Pittsburgh, for example, have not
recorded more than 3 inches of snow on a calendar day in almost two years.
The burning question is whether
these streaks of snowlessness will end in the weeks and months ahead.
The Northeast
snow drought, by the numbers
Feb. 13, 2022, was the last time
New York’s Central Park recorded more than an inch of snow in a day, and it was
a mere 1.6 inches. Its record-setting 652-day streak is 269 days longer than
the next-longest streak, which spanned 1997 and 1998.
The Big Apple is far from alone.
Many Mid-Atlantic locations have similar streaks.
In the Washington area, Dulles
Airport’s streak is 625 days and counting. Baltimore, with a streak of 668
days, is closing in on the record of 672 days that ended in late December 2012.
Some other locations that have registered
historically long periods without a calendar-day inch of snow include:
·
Philadelphia:
667 days, the city’s longest on record
·
Lynchburg,
Va.: 680 days, second-longest
·
Wallops
Island, Va.: 667 days, third-longest
·
Richmond: 681
days, fourth-longest
·
Washington:
680 days, fifth-longest
North and west of the above
locations, places that are colder and snowier also have experienced major snow
deficits. They have encountered unusually long periods without at least 3
inches of snow falling in a calendar day. Those places include:
·
Elkins,
W.Va.: 625 days (without 3 inches in a calendar day), third longest on record
·
Boston: 640
days, third-longest
·
Pittsburgh:
625 days, fourth-longest
·
Islip, N.Y.:
652 days, fourth-longest
·
Allentown,
Pa.: 625 days, fifth-longest
These streaks have reached
historic levels largely because of last winter, when snow amounts for the full
winter were minuscule:
·
Washington
received 0.4 inches, third-least on record.
·
Philadelphia
received 0.3 inches, a tie for the second-least on record with 2019-2020.
·
Manhattan’s
Central Park received 2.3 inches, its lowest amount on record.
·
Boston
received 12.4 inches, fourth-least on record and more than 3 feet below
average.
The lack of snow last winter
extended a longer period of snowlessness. In Washington, 3 of the past 4
winters have brought below-average snow, including two with hardly any. In
Philadelphia, New York and Boston, snowfall has been below average in 4 of the
past 5 winters.
Improved snow
prospects?
Even amid a warming climate and
trends toward less snow, these streaks should not last forever. And this winter
presents a strong opportunity for the streaks to end.
The increased snow prospects stem
from the ongoing El Niño climate pattern, which tends to increase winter
moisture in the South and Mid-Atlantic.
Historically, some of the Mid-Atlantic’s snowiest winters have occurred during El Niños,
although some El Niños end up being so mild that little snow falls.
In the Northeast, Appalachians and
Ohio Valley, moisture is sometimes harder to come by during El Niños. But even
in these areas, there’s a somewhat elevated risk for a large snowstorm.
The long streaks without
significant snowfall will become more probable in a warming world, particularly
in the Mid-Atlantic, where temperatures often are only marginally low enough to
support frozen precipitation. Just a little warming will mean that more
precipitation falls as rain. Farther north and northwest, many areas will
remain cold enough for snow to hang on longer.
ATTACHMENT FOUR – From POSITIVE
NEWS.COM
EIGHT WAYS TO STAY
SANE IN THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Words by Robin EveleighNovember 23, 2023
‘Eco-anxiety’
is a growing challenge, so what can you do to manage it?
Feeling anxious
in the face of climate breakdown is an entirely normal response – but how do
you ensure your emotions don’t overwhelm you? How can they even be channelled
for good?
As data from
Google Trends shows that search queries related to ‘climate anxiety’ have increased dramatically –
27 times higher in the first 10 months of 2023 compared to the same period in
2017 – we’ve pulled together eight tips for building resilience, from reframing
the issue to finding your climate community.
1. Remember
that your anxiety is rational, and it makes you more likely to act
Experiencing
climate grief and anxiety is a natural and arguably overdue response to these
uncertain times. It’s entirely normal to worry and fear for the consequences
when life as we know it is under threat, and people and species the world over
are already being badly impacted.
Try to
remember that you’re not alone, and that your feelings are simply a
manifestation of your care and compassion for the planet and its inhabitants,
human, plant and animal. The reality is, according to research, that if you feel anxious and if you care for nature, the more likely you
are to take action to safeguard it. And that’s far
better than turning a blind eye and hoping the problem will magically
disappear.
2. Reframe
the issue, and keep humanity’s resourcefulness in mind
This isn’t
the first time humanity has faced hardship, but our resourcefulness as a
species means we’ve often flourished in the face of adversity. Technology and
innovation are being mobilised to meet the challenge, and there are genuine
reasons to be optimistic about the future. For example, there’s plenty of talk
about negative climate change tipping points, but the same logic applied in the
opposite direction – positive tipping points – might offer solutions. Some academics believe they are well within our
grasp.
3. Focus on
the changes that you can make
It’s easy to
feel overwhelmed by the gargantuan task at hand, but rather than succumb to
guilt or anxiety, channel it into a motivating force for positive action. That
doesn’t necessarily mean super-gluing yourself to the nearest zebra crossing:
little things count, too. Make changes to your own life that align with your
climate values. They might include simple emissions-reducing measures like
swapping a car journey for a bike ride, buying secondhand, insulating your
home, or switching to a more planet-friendly diet.
4. Find
community, and work together
Climate dread
expert Britt Wray suggests collective action is even
better than going it alone: fostering community resilience builds our emotional
fortitude. That means getting connected, developing social ties and sharing
goals. Consider joining a local community energy group or rewilding project,
for example. Get involved with a campaign that resonates with you. Share your
voice and your concerns with others in person or through online spaces
like Call Your Mother and Dear Tomorrow.
5. Be mindful
about your media diet
The deluge of
doomy headlines and images of melting glaciers and ferocious blazes can feel
paralysing, but there is good news out there. No one is suggesting burying your
head in the sand, but focusing on facts and key articles, and counterbalancing
with some solutions journalism will help stave off the sense of helplessness.
Did you know, for example, that booming green energy growth is keeping the 1.5C dream alive? Or that China’s emissions
are on the brink of tipping into decline? If you search for evidence that
we’re defeated, you’ll find it, points out Rebecca Solnit.
What would
happen if everyone suddenly started reading solution-focused journalism? We
don’t know for sure – but we think it would be transformational. Signing up to our weekly
newsletter, with which we uplift your inbox every Saturday
morning with a roundup of the latest positive developments, is a good place to
start. For a quarterly influx of constructive journalism, you can subscribe to our print
magazine here.
6. Remember
that change can be incremental
Scientists
have been sounding the alarm on the climate emergency for decades, and now
we’re in this mess, we’re not getting out of it overnight. Policy shifts and
legislation take time to manifest themselves as visible change – it’s often
incremental to begin with but experience suggests once it reaches a certain
tipping point it can become exponential. Take the adoption of solar panels, for
example. Or EVs in Norway. Some of it might even seem a bit boring – we can’t expect everyone to get
excited about advances in battery storage materials. And even after we’ve
implemented change, it takes time again to measure its effect on our climate
systems.
7. Look after
your overall mental health
Recent research from Imperial College London shows how
existing mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression can make us
more vulnerable to climate distress. And it cuts both ways: eco distress can
exacerbate mental health issues, with young people being particularly
vulnerable. Thankfully there are meaningful measures you can build into your
life to make you more resilient to its challenges. We covered a few of
them here.
8. Get
professional help or support if you need it
If all else
fails and you feel truly overwhelmed, don’t shy away from seeking out
professional help or some other form of support. Watch out for warning signs
that things are getting out of hand, such as intrusive thoughts, obsessive
thinking, panic attacks and insomnia. Counselling or therapy might help you
explore your feelings and develop some coping strategies. Search online for an
eco-anxiety support group, or read up on the Good Grief Network’s 10 step
programme, and find a group here.
ATTACHMENT FIVE – From the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
GLOBAL HEALTH COMMUNITY CALLS FOR URGENT ACTION ON CLIMATE AND HEALTH
AT COP28
27 November 2023
In the run-up to COP28, the World
Health Organization (WHO) together with the global health community, is raising
its voice to ensure that the impact of climate change on health takes centre
stage in the negotiations. It is imperative to broaden the focus to human
health in global discussions, leaving no room for excuses, and compelling
negotiators to recognize that they bear the responsibility for the well-being
of our most invaluable asset: the health of populations worldwide.
"Prioritizing health is not just
a choice; it is the foundation of resilient societies,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Leaders must deliver in Dubai, providing
the strong health outcomes their peoples expect and their economies urgently
need. We must change the conversation and demonstrate the massive benefits of
bolder climate action on our health and well-being.”
The extreme weather events around
the world in recent months offer a terrifying glimpse of what lies ahead in a
rapidly heating world. The IPCC report says about 3.5 billion people –
nearly half of humanity – live in areas highly vulnerable to climate change.
Heat-related deaths among those aged over 65 years have risen by 70% worldwide
in two decades, according to WHO’s figures. Only a dramatic and dedicated effort to
limit warming to 1.5 °C will prevent a future much worse than what we see now.
Increasingly frequent and severe
extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods and heatwaves, will also
strain healthcare infrastructure. Last year's floods in Pakistan displaced 8
million people and affected 33 million overall. Forecasts from the World Bank
indicate that without bold and immediate action, climate change could displace
approximately 216 million people by 2050.
As the climate crisis jeopardizes
lives and livelihoods, global food systems struggle to sustain a growing
population, and compromised water sources compound the challenges. In parallel,
climate change is catalyzing a surge in infectious diseases like dengue and
cholera, endangering millions. Now is the time for decisive and collaborative
action to mitigate the health impacts of the climate crisis and build a
sustainable future for all.
As climate change poses an
unprecedented challenge to health systems worldwide, it is also imperative that
we strengthen our systems to be resilient, low carbon and sustainable. Failure
to act swiftly will render health systems worldwide vulnerable to the
overwhelming impacts of climate change.
Climate change is not a distant
threat; it is a present danger affecting our health on multiple fronts. The
health community asserts that climate change is already affecting our health,
contributing to the spread of infectious diseases and vector-borne illnesses.
There is an urgent need for negotiators to comprehend that climate change is a
direct threat to global health that can no longer be ignored or downplayed.
Adapting our health systems means
upgrading key interventions such as vector control, epidemiological
surveillance, and access to safe water and sanitation. Additionally, the
training of health staff is crucial, and support is needed to align health
systems with the guidance included in WHO's operational framework for building climate resilient and low carbon
health systems.
To reduce the negative impact on
health, the health community stresses the importance of reducing and stopping
emissions. According to WHO, 7 million premature deaths annually are attributed
to air pollution. Urgent mitigation measures, including transitioning to clean
energy sources, are necessary to protect human health and create sustainable
outcomes.
The health community recognizes
the role health systems play in contributing to emissions, and advocates for
greening the health sector. This involves decarbonizing health systems,
digitalizing medicine and implementing sustainable practices in hospitals and
health-care facilities to significantly reduce the 5% global emissions
attributed to the health sector.
Over 1 billion people worldwide
are served by health-care facilities with unreliable electricity or no
electricity at all. For low-income countries lacking access to electricity, the
health community calls for an acceleration of access to clean energy. WHO is
working with partners to accelerate electrification of health-care facilities
through renewable energies and to harmonize medical supplies and lead a
transformative change towards cleaner energy sources, better services and
reduced reliance on diesel and gas.
Recognizing the
financial disparity in health systems
Acknowledging the financial gap in
health systems, the health community calls for increased financing from new
sources. The plea is to divest from and end subsidies for fossil fuels, and to
mobilize new funds to support health systems in coping with climate change.
The WHO-led Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health (ATACH)
is dedicated to realizing the goals set at COP26 by leveraging the collective
influence of WHO Member States and stakeholders to advance climate-resilient
health systems. ATACH also focuses on identifying financing needs.
With the health sector grappling
with unprecedented challenges, it is imperative to address the glaring
disparity in financial support. Currently, the sector receives a mere 0.5% of
global climate financing. To effectively confront the many challenges ahead –
from the ongoing global health crisis to the ever-evolving landscape of medical
research and technological advancements – a substantial increase in resources
is not only warranted but essential. By multiplying financial support, we can
strengthen the sector's ability to innovate, adapt and provide optimal care,
ensuring a resilient healthcare infrastructure for the challenges of today and
the uncertainties of tomorrow.
WHO urgent
call for climate and health action at COP28
As the world unites at COP28, the health
community calls for decisive action. We urge negotiators to recognize that
climate action is health action, and failure to address this reality will have
profound consequences for the well-being of current and future generations.
The WHO call to action unites the health community
in demanding a commitment to building resilient health systems, reducing
emissions, and prioritizing health. The first-ever Health Day is set to elevate
the global profile of the climate and health nexus and integrate health within
the climate change agenda.
Health Day
and Ministerial session
The first-ever Health Day is set
to elevate the global profile of the climate and health nexus and integrate
health within the climate change agenda. For the very first time, a record
number of health ministers will be attending COP28. The presence of a
significant number of health ministers underscores the commitment to prioritize
health in the context of climate discussions and reinforces our commitment to
creating a healthier and more sustainable future. The Ministerial session
promises to amplify the urgency for action by bringing together global leaders
to implement sustainable solutions. This historic gathering will focus on
addressing the crucial intersection of health and climate change.
The legacy of COP 28 will be a
commitment to a healthier planet, where the health arguments for climate action
are not just heard but lead to tangible results.
ATTACHMENT SIX – From the
WASHINGTON POST
WHY AN OIL KINGDOM IS HOSTING THE COP28 CLIMATE SUMMIT AND OTHER
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
The global
climate conference starts in the UAE on Nov. 30. Here are the big issues, who
will be in Dubai, and what’s at stake.
By Maxine
Joselow
Updated November 28, 2023 at 2:53 p.m. EST|Published November
27, 2023 at 11:19 a.m. EST
1.
What is COP?
4.
Who will and won’t attend this year?
6.
Why is an oil kingdom hosting COP28?
7.
Why does the host country matter?
8.
Which country will host the next COP?
9.
What has happened at past COPs?
10. Why do we keep holding COPs if countries
keep missing their climate targets?
Tens of thousands of people from
around the world will descend on Dubai this week for the annual United Nations
Climate Change Conference.
The United Arab Emirates, a major
oil producer, is hosting this year’s summit, known as COP28. It comes as top
scientists warn the world is far off track from meeting its
climate goals.
Here’s what to know, and why it
matters:
What is COP?
COP stands for “Conference of the
Parties,” with the word “parties” referring to the nearly 200 countries that
agreed to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992.
Diplomats from these nations have
been meeting every year since 1995. This marks the 28th time they have met,
hence COP28.
When is
COP28?
The summit is officially scheduled
to run from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12. But these climate talks often stretch into
overtime, as negotiators haggle over unresolved issues.
Where is
COP28?
The conference will take place at
Expo City Dubai, which bills itself as a futuristic “mini-city” with
apartments, restaurants and other attractions. The venue is southwest of the center
of Dubai, a city of many climate contradictions, with indoor
ski slopes miles from massive solar parks.
Who will and
won’t attend this year?
Scores of world leaders, with
varying climate records, have said they will be there. They include Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has vowed to halt deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, and British
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who recently delayed U.K. climate goals because of concerns
about their costs.
King Charles III has also
confirmed plans to attend COP28. But Pope Francis, who warned last month that “the world in which we live
is collapsing,” has canceled his trip to Dubai because of ongoing
treatment for a lung inflammation, the Vatican said Tuesday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is
expected to skip the summit, although Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang and Chinese
climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua plan to participate. With the war in Ukraine still raging, Russian
President Vladimir Putin is likely to be another no-show.
President Biden will not attend a world leaders’ summit Friday and Saturday at the
outset of COP28, according to the official White House schedule released Sunday.
It is unclear whether Biden will travel to Dubai for the second week of the
negotiations, when other world leaders probably will have left.
What is
expected at COP28?
The main agenda item is the
“global stocktake,” the first assessment of whether the world is on track to
meet the goal of the Paris agreement. The thorniest agenda item, however, is
negotiations over a new fund to compensate poor countries for “loss and damage”
— U.N. jargon for the ravages of global warming.
At last year’s summit in Sharm
el-Sheikh, Egypt, wealthy nations reached a historic agreement to establish
this fund. But since then, they have failed to agree on who will pay into the
fund, and by how much.
Negotiators also are expected to
clash over whether the final COP28 deal calls for phasing out fossil fuels, the
main driver of global warming. Major oil-producing countries are likely to
resist language about a fossil fuel phaseout and push for language about the
importance of carbon-capture technology, which sucks carbon dioxide from
polluting facilities and stores it deep underground. (Many climate activists
view this technology as a false climate solution that prolongs the life of
fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come.)
Why is an oil
kingdom hosting COP28?
The United Nations rotates the
location of COPs each year through five regions: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eastern
Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe. This year, it was
the Asia-Pacific group’s turn to host, and the United Arab Emirates made an
unopposed bid in May 2021.
Sultan Al Jaber — who chairs the
UAE’s renewable energy arm and is also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi
National Oil Co. — is heading up this year’s talks.
Why does the
host country matter?
The host plays a key role in
corralling all of the delegations to agree on a “cover decision” — a political
document that signals a consensus among nearly 200 nations.
When past conferences have
culminated in successful outcomes, the hosts have typically spent at least a
year preparing for the negotiations, meeting with key world leaders and ironing
out any differences.
Which country
will host the next COP?
The United Nations usually chooses
the host well in advance so that the country can prepare for an influx of tens
of thousands of delegates. For instance, the UAE was selected as the host in
2021.
But U.N. officials have not
announced where COP29 will be held, largely because of geopolitical
tensions over the war in Ukraine. Although it is Eastern Europe’s turn to host,
Russia has voiced strong opposition to holding the
summit in a European Union country, while warring neighbors Azerbaijan and
Armenia have blocked each other’s bids.
That means the next global summit
to save the planet is currently leaderless.
“Usually the host is nominated in
advance of the COP, and the decision approving the selection is just a
formality," said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the climate think tank
E3G who has attended 26 of 27 COPs so far.
“But this year, tensions over
Ukraine in the Eastern European U.N. region have blocked agreement on a COP
presidency,” he said. “It’s not clear how this will be resolved.”
What has
happened at past COPs?
Many diplomats and experts say
these summits have a long — if mixed — history of achievement.
The 1997 COP in Japan resulted in
the Kyoto Protocol, which for the first time delineated the legal obligations
of rich nations to reduce their emissions. The 2015 COP in France resulted in
the Paris climate accord, which calls for limiting
global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above
preindustrial levels.
The 2021 COP in Scotland was also considered a success,
with nations making a string of bold pledges to further reduce their emissions.
Many activists, however, now see Glasgow as a summit of false promises,
since major economies are not on track to meet
their targets set two years ago.
Last year’s COP in Egypt nearly ended in failure, but was
salvaged by the late-hour agreement on creating the “loss and damage” fund.
Why do we
keep holding COPs if countries keep missing their climate targets?
Supporters say these summits
remain the world’s biggest annual opportunity to get global leaders in the same
room to discuss climate change. They see the meetings as vital for accelerating the reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions and protecting nations that are most vulnerable to
climate change, many of them in the Global South.
Critics, however, note that
greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere have continued to soar since
1995, when these meetings began. Greenhouse gas levels set a record in 2022, with “no end in sight,” the
World Meteorological Organization said this month. Detractors also argue that
these summits have been heavily influenced by large numbers of lobbyists and representatives from the fossil fuel
industry that have attended over the years.
Even so, the world has seen some
notable progress since the Paris accord was adopted in 2015.
In 2014, before the treaty’s adoption, the world was on track
to heat up by nearly 4C (7.2F) by the end of the century, an outcome widely
seen as catastrophic. Today, countries’ strongest climate pledges would put the
planet on a path to warm by 2.5C (4.5F) by 2100, the United Nations said last week.
ATTACHMENT SEVEN – From the GUARDIAN U.K.
DEAL TO KEEP 1.5C
HOPES ALIVE IS WITHIN REACH, SAYS COP28 PRESIDENT
Exclusive:
Sultan Al Jaber says progress means ‘unprecedented outcome’ is possible
By
Fiona Harvey Environment editor
Wed 29 Nov
2023 00.00 EST
An
“unprecedented outcome” that would keep alive hopes of limiting global temperature
rises to 1.5C is within reach, the president-designate of the UN Cop28 climate summit has said – and even Saudi
Arabia is expected to come with positive commitments.
Significant
progress has been made in recent weeks on key aspects of a deal at the crucial
meeting that starts in Dubai this week, with countries agreeing a blueprint for a fund for the most vulnerable, and
reaching an important milestone on climate finance.
Sultan Al Jaber, who will lead the talks on behalf
of the Cop28 host country, the United Arab Emirates, told the Guardian in an
exclusive interview on the eve of the talks that the positive momentum meant
the world could agree a “robust roadmap” of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by
2030 that would meet News about climate change can be overwhelming. As NPR's
climate solutions reporter Julia Simon shared, "I talk with people about
climate change — I often hear hopelessness. Like we've already lost. People
just throw up their hands ... but what if we reframe the conversation?"
"Humans
are driving global warming. And that means we humans can change our
trajectory."
And some
folks already have; there is good news. But these moments of joy can often get
lost in a sea of headlines.
‘I wasn’t the obvious choice’: meet the oil man tasked
with saving the planet
“I have to be cautiously optimistic,” he said.
“But I have the levers and the traction that I am experiencing today that will
allow for us to deliver the unprecedented outcome that we all hope for.”
He added:
“Getting back on track, and ensuring that the world accepts a robust
understanding of a roadmap to 2030 that will keep [a temperature rise above
pre-industrial levels of] 1.5C (2.7F) within reach is my only goal.”
World leaders
and heads of state and government, including King Charles III, the UK prime
minister, Rishi Sunak, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen,
and the pope, will attend the first few days of the fortnight of talks, which begin on Thursday. Joe Biden
of the US and Xi Jinping of China are not expected to attend, but will send
high-level representatives.
More than
70,000 delegates are expected, and ministers and high-ranking officials from
198 countries will try to forge agreement on how to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions urgently in order to hold global temperatures to 1.5C above
pre-industrial levels, a target that is slipping rapidly out of reach as
temperatures soar and carbon emissions continue to rise.
Al Jaber is
also chief executive of the UAE national oil company, Adnoc. Campaigners have
decried this as a conflict of interests, but Al Jaber has insisted it will help
him to engage businesses and other oil producers, including Saudi Arabia,
a close ally of UAE, and the world’s second biggest oil producer behind the US.
Saudi Arabia
has long been seen as an obstructive element in the annual
conferences of the parties (COPs) under the UN framework convention on climate
change.
Al Jaber
hinted that new commitments from the country were possible, after meetings when
the government had shown “positivity, engagement, receptive to my cause and my
call to actions … towards achieving the most ambitious climate action outcome
at Cop28”.
“They have been cooperating and they’re coming
with ambition,” said Al Jaber. “They have been engaging in a collaborative
manner across all climate areas.”
There were
still questions over how exactly to address the issue of fossil fuels in the
final outcome of the two-week conference, he noted.
Some
countries want a “phase-out” of fossil fuels, while others are resisting. A compromise commitment to a “phase-down of
unabated fossil fuels”, meaning a gradual reduction of coal, oil and gas that
is used without carbon capture and storage technology, is also seen as possible
by some.
Al Jaber
said: “I am inviting and incentivising and motivating all parties to engage in
a collaborative manner to see and assess how we can include fossil fuel in the
negotiated text, that will cater for consensus and common ground, while keeping
1.5C within reach.”
Campaigners
have also questioned the presence of fossil fuel companies and
lobbyists at the talks, and leaked documents show the UAE planned to use Cop28 to promote oil deals. Al Jaber
said representation from the fossil fuel industry was needed.
“The
International Energy Agency [in a recent report] tells us that all sectors must
be part of the solution,” he said. “Real tangible climate action will only come
with everyone being held responsible and accountable. [We need] to ensure that
they all progress towards an energy transition. And you can’t do that without
including the heavy-emitting industries as well as oil and gas.”
Earlier this
month, a compromise was reached among rich and poor countries over setting up a
new fund for loss and damage – the rescue and rehabilitation of poor and
vulnerable countries struck by climate disaster. However, the fund has yet to
be filled, and both rich industrialised countries and emerging economies such
as China and oil producer countries are expected to contribute.
Al Jaber said
he was hopeful of progress on this effort. “We will leave the parties to decide
when we start seeing pledges,” he said.
Al Jaber said
he was “energised” but noted that “while I very much appreciate the momentum we
have and the very solid traction we are all experiencing, there is still some
chatter out there, if I can move things forward or not”.
He urged
countries not to stall agreement until the final days, which many poor countries accused rich countries of doing last year, at Cop27 in
Egypt, to widespread anger. “I don’t want parties to keep
their cards close to their chests until the last minute,” he said. “The earlier
they open up and engage and collaborate, the more will be done.”
The Guardian
has approached the Saudi Arabian government for comment.
ATTACHMENT EIGHT – From TIME
WHAT SULTAN AL JABER’S OIL LOBBYING MEANS FOR COP28
BY JUSTIN WORLAND
NOVEMBER 29, 2023 10:31 AM EST
Alarm bells
sounded earlier this week for observers of this year’s U.N. COP28 climate conference following the revelation that oil
CEO Sultan Al Jaber had used his position as president of the talks to push his
company’s fossil fuel interests. Leaked slides, published by the BBC, show his talking points for
meetings with climate envoys from other countries that include offers to
develop oil and gas projects.
For some, the report was a
realization of their greatest fears. In their view, Al Jaber is using the climate platform to disguise
a dirty, polluting agenda. For others, it was shocking but not surprising. Al
Jaber is, after all, the CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
(ADNOC), and continues to oversee the 3 million barrels of oil the country
produces every day.
In the past, outrage over Al Jaber
being appointed to lead COP28 has led to calls for him to resign from that
role, which he has summarily rejected. Now, of course, with the international
conference kicking off on Nov. 30, it’s too late for such a move. But that
doesn’t mean the revelation doesn’t matter. The unyielding
criticism—intensified by the latest news—has placed Al Jaber and his team under
enormous pressure to deliver a deal at the talks that acknowledges the urgency
of cutting fossil fuels, including oil and gas. A failure to do so would not
just spell trouble for efforts to address climate change but also for the whole
United Nations climate process.
To make sense of the hubbub over
Al Jaber’s talking points, it’s helpful to understand the role of COP president
and how Al Jaber has approached it. Every year, the country hosting the U.N.
climate talks designates an official from its own government to serve as COP
president. These figures are typically government ministers, but they are meant
to put aside their own national interest to find mutual agreement between the
nearly 200 countries that participate in the talks. It’s because of the
impartial nature of the role that Al Jaber’s promotion of national interest—in
this case fossil fuel deals—has triggered such an outcry.
Read more: What Happens When You Put a Fossil Fuel Exec in Charge of Solving Climate
Change
In my conversations with Al Jaber
ahead of COP, he sought to underscore that his role is to push countries to
come to an agreement, not to issue edicts. “I will be calling on all parties to
engage in a collaborative manner, and to propose a solution,” he told me. “I
will not be dictating.”
And yet as COP president he has
significant sway to decide whose views to prioritize. Any single country can
veto the deals that emerge and deciding who to listen to on particular elements
of negotiation can pose a gargantuan task—one that often leaves delegates
disappointed. We’ve seen this play out before. Two years ago, at COP26 in
Glasgow, then-COP president Alok Sharma, who had served as U.K. Secretary of
State for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, made a decision in the
final hours of COP to replace language referring to a “phase out” of coal to
language referring to a “phase down” at the insistence of China and India.
Other countries were not given a chance to respond before the deal was gavelled
in, and Sharma was left to apologize through tears for the way the change
occurred.
The drumbeat of criticism on Al
Jaber may not have led him to resign, but it certainly has created pressure on
the COP presidency to prove that it isn’t acting to favor the UAE’s oil and gas
business. To do that, Al Jaber will have to thread a difficult needle,
moderating not just the UAE’s interests but also those of influential oil-rich
countries like Saudi Arabia that are keen to limit the scope of language
seeking to phase out fossil fuels.
In September, I asked Al Jaber
about the stream of criticism pointed at him. “I am genuine in addressing
this,” he told me. “If you don't want to believe me, all they have to do is
just wait until the COP happens. And only then I will show them.” The
opportunity to make good on that is now upon us
ATTACHMENT NINE – From AL
JAZEERA
POPE FRANCIS CANCELS TRIP TO DUBAI’S COP28 OVER HEALTH ISSUES
The 86-year-old would have been
the first pontiff to address the United Nations climate conference.
Published On 28 Nov 202328 Nov
2023
Pope Francis has cancelled his
trip to the United Arab Emirates for a United Nations climate summit on
doctors’ orders as he recovers from the flu and lung inflammation, the Vatican
says.
Francis, 86, was scheduled to
leave on Friday to address the Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai on
Saturday. He would have become the first pontiff to address a UN climate
conference.
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He also was set to inaugurate a faith
pavilion on Sunday on the sidelines of the event.
On Tuesday, Vatican spokesman
Matteo Bruni said Francis’s health was improving after the flu and inflammation
of his respiratory tract had forced him to cancel his audiences on Saturday,
but the doctors advised him not to travel to Dubai.
The pope agreed not to travel
“with great regret”, according to the Vatican statement, which added that it
would look into ways that the leader of the world’s Roman Catholics could
contribute to the climate discussions remotely.
Francis, who had part of one lung
removed as a young man, came down with the flu last week and had a CT scan. The
Vatican subsequently said the test had ruled out pneumonia.
On Sunday, he skipped his
traditional appearance at his studio window overlooking St Peter’s Square to
avoid the cold. Instead, he gave the traditional noon blessing in a televised
appearance from the chapel in the Vatican hotel where he lives and asked a
priest to read his written daily reflections out loud.
The pope had to postpone a trip to
the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan in 2022 because of knee
inflammation. He was able to make that journey early this year.
When asked about his health in a
recent interview, Francis responded in what has become his standard line:
“Still alive, you know.”
ATTACHMENT TEN – From THE HOLY SEE
DISCORSO DEL SANTO PADRE ALLA CONFERENZA DEGLI STATI
PARTE ALLA CONVENZIONE QUADRO DELLE NAZIONI UNITE SUI CAMBIAMENTI CLIMATICI
(COP28), 02.12.2023
Traduzione
in lingua inglese
I
have the honour to read the Address that His Holiness Pope Francis prepared for
this occasion:
Mr
President,
Mr
Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Distinguished
Heads of State and Government,
Ladies
and Gentlemen,
Sadly,
I am unable to be present with you, as I had greatly desired. Even so, I am
with you, because time is short. I am with you because now more than ever, the future
of us all depends on the present that we now choose. I am with you because the
destruction of the environment is an offence against God, a sin that is not
only personal but also structural, one that greatly endangers all human beings,
especially the most vulnerable in our midst and threatens to unleash a conflict
between generations. I am with you because climate change is “a global social
issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life” (Apostolic
Exhortation Laudate Deum, 3). I am with you to raise the question which we must
answer now: Are we working for a culture of life or a culture of death? To all
of you I make this heartfelt appeal: Let us choose life! Let us choose the
future! May we be attentive to the cry of the earth, may we hear the plea of
the poor, may we be sensitive to the hopes of the young and the dreams of
children! We have a grave responsibility: to ensure that they not be denied
their future.
It
has now become clear that the climate change presently taking place stems from
the overheating of the planet, caused chiefly by the increase of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere due to human activity, which in recent decades has
proved unsustainable for the ecosystem. The drive to produce and possess has
become an obsession, resulting in an inordinate greed that has made the
environment the object of unbridled exploitation. The climate, run amok, is
crying out to us to halt this illusion of omnipotence. Let us once more
recognize our limits, with humility and courage, as the sole path to a life of
authentic fulfilment.
What
stands in the way of this? The divisions that presently exist among us. Yet a
world completely connected, like ours today, should not be un-connected by
those who govern it, with international negotiations that “cannot make
significant progress due to positions taken by countries which place their
national interests above the global common good” (Encyclical Letter Laudato
Si’, 169). We find ourselves facing firm and even inflexible positions
calculated to protect income and business interests, at times justifying this
on the basis of what was done in the past, and periodically shifting the
responsibility to others. Yet the task to which we are called today is not
about yesterday, but about tomorrow: a tomorrow that, whether we like it or
not, will belong to everyone or else to no one.
Particularly
striking in this regard are the attempts made to shift the blame onto the poor
and high birth rates. These are falsities that must be firmly dispelled. It is
not the fault of the poor, since the almost half of our world that is more
needy is responsible for scarcely 10% of toxic emissions, while the gap between
the opulent few and the masses of the poor has never been so abysmal. The poor
are the real victims of what is happening: we need think only of the plight of
indigenous peoples, deforestation, the tragedies of hunger, water and food
insecurity, and forced migration. Births are not a problem, but a resource:
they are not opposed to life, but for life, whereas certain ideological and
utilitarian models now being imposed with a velvet glove on families and
peoples constitute real forms of colonization. The development of many
countries, already burdened by grave economic debt, should not be penalized;
instead, we should consider the footprint of a few nations responsible for a
deeply troubling “ecological debt” towards many others (cf. ibid., 51-52). It
would only be fair to find suitable means of remitting the financial debts that
burden different peoples, not least in light of the ecological debt that they
are owed.
Ladies
and Gentlemen, allow me to speak to you, as brothers and sisters, in the name
of the common home in which we live, and to ask this question: What is the way
out of this? It is the one that you are pursuing in these days: the way of
togetherness, multilateralism. Indeed, “our world has become so multipolar and
at the same time so complex that a different framework for effective
cooperation is required. It is not enough to think only of balances of power…
It is a matter of establishing global and effective rules (Laudate Deum, 42).
In this regard, it is disturbing that global warming has been accompanied by a
general cooling of multilateralism, a growing lack of trust within the
international community, and a loss of the “shared awareness of being… a family
of nations” (SAINT JOHN PAUL II, Address to the United Nations Organization for
the Fiftieth Anniversary of its Establishment, New York, 5 October 1995, 14).
It is essential to rebuild trust, which is the foundation of multilateralism.
This
is true in the case of care for creation, but also that of peace. These are the
most urgent issues and they are closely linked. How much energy is humanity
wasting on the numerous wars presently in course, such as those in Israel and
Palestine, in Ukraine and in many parts of the world: conflicts that will not
solve problems but only increase them! How many resources are being squandered
on weaponry that destroys lives and devastates our common home! Once more I
present this proposal: “With the money spent on weapons and other military
expenditures, let us establish a global fund that can finally put an end to
hunger” (Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti, 262; cf. SAINT PAUL VI, Encyclical
Letter Populorum Progressio, 51) and carry out works for the sustainable
development of the poorer countries and for combating climate change.
It
is up to this generation to heed the cry of peoples, the young and children,
and to lay the foundations of a new multilateralism. Why not begin precisely
from our common home? Climate change signals the need for political change. Let
us emerge from the narrowness of self-interest and nationalism; these are
approaches belonging to the past. Let us join in embracing an alternative
vision: this will help to bring about an ecological conversion, for “there are
no lasting changes without cultural changes” (Laudate Deum, 70). In this
regard, I would assure you of the commitment and support of the Catholic
Church, which is deeply engaged in the work of education and of encouraging
participation by all, as well as in promoting sound lifestyles, since all are
responsible and the contribution of each is fundamental.
Brothers
and sisters, it is essential that there be a breakthrough that is not a partial
change of course, but rather a new way of making progress together. The fight
against climate change began in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and the 2015 Paris
Agreement represented “a new beginning” (ibid., 47). Now there is a need to set
out anew. May this COP prove to be a turning point, demonstrating a clear and
tangible political will that can lead to a decisive acceleration of ecological
transition through means that meet three requirements: they must be “efficient,
obligatory and readily monitored” (ibid., 59). And achieved in four sectors:
energy efficiency; renewable sources; the elimination of fossil fuels; and
education in lifestyles that are less dependent on the latter.
Please,
let us move forward and not turn back. It is well-known that various agreements
and commitments “have been poorly implemented, due to the lack of suitable
mechanisms for oversight, periodic review and penalties in cases of
non-compliance” (Laudato Si’, 167). Now is the time no longer to postpone, but
to ensure, and not merely to talk about the welfare of your children, your
citizens, your countries and our world. You are responsible for crafting
policies that can provide concrete and cohesive responses, and in this way
demonstrate the nobility of your role and the dignity of the service that you
carry out. In the end, the purpose of power is to serve. It is useless to cling
to an authority that will one day be remembered for its inability to take
action when it was urgent and necessary to do so (cf. ibid., 57). History will be
grateful to you. As will the societies in which you live, which are sadly
divided into “fan bases”, between prophets of doom and indifferent bystanders,
radical environmentalists and climate change deniers… It is useless to join the
fray; in this case, as in the case of peace, it does not help to remedy the
situation. The remedy is good politics: if an example of concreteness and
cohesiveness comes from the top, this will benefit the base, where many people,
especially the young, are already dedicated to caring for our common home.
May
the year 2024 mark this breakthrough. I like to think that a good omen can be
found in an event that took place in 1224. In that year, Francis of Assisi
composed his “Canticle of the Creatures”. By then Francis was completely blind,
and after a night of physical suffering, his spirits were elevated by a
mystical experience. He then turned to praise the Most High for all those
creatures that he could no longer see, but knew that they were his brothers and
sisters, since they came forth from the same Father and were shared with other
men and women. An inspired sense of fraternity thus led him to turn his pain
into praise and his weariness into renewed commitment. Shortly thereafter,
Francis added a stanza in which he praised God for those who forgive; he did
this in order to settle – successfully – an unbecoming conflict between the
civil authorities and the local bishop. I too, who bear the name Francis, with
the heartfelt urgency of a prayer, want to leave you with this message: Let us
leave behind our divisions and unite our forces! And with God’s help, let us
emerge from the dark night of wars and environmental devastation in order to
turn our common future into the dawn of a new and radiant day. Thank you.
ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – From TIME
THE TOP 3 ISSUES COUNTRIES WILL TACKLE AT COP28
BY JEFFREY
KLUGER NOVEMBER 30, 2023 7:00 AM EST
More
than 70,000 delegates and other guests are expected to
attend the COP28 climate conference in Dubai beginning Nov. 30 and
concluding Dec. 12. The international swarm will include representatives of 197 nations, who will be
accommodated in more than 230 hotels and resorts.
But all of those numbers are for the hospitality committee. The far more
important metrics will be addressed by the delegates themselves, who will be
tending to a wide range of tough environmental issues—perhaps none more
important than these three:
The great global stock-taking
There’s no better way to clean up
a mess than to stand back and take a fearless and searching moral inventory of
just how bad things have gotten. Every five years,
the United Nations climate conference does just that, evaluating where the
world stands in relation to the goal established by the 2015 Paris Accords of
keeping global warming no higher than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
This year, the news is grim. According
to a just-released U.N. report, the world has nearly reached
that limit. At this pace, greenhouse gas emissions will have to decline by a
head-snapping 43% to have any hope of keeping temperature rise to the more
ambitious 1.5°C goal by 2030.
“Implementation of the Paris
agreement is lacking across all areas,” said the U.N. report, “and [is] not where
it should be.”
Farewell to fossil fuels?
The scourge of fossil fuel
emissions would go away entirely if the fossil fuels themselves did. And that’s
not an entirely impossible—if admittedly improbable—goal. Just over a week ago, the European Parliament voted by
a whopping 462 to 134 (with 30 abstentions) to phase out all direct and
indirect fossil fuel subsidies “as soon as possible and by 2025 at the latest.”
Doing away with subsidies, of course, is not the same as doing away with the
fuels themselves, but the Parliament also voted for “a tangible phasing out of
fossil fuels as soon as possible, as well as halting all new investment in
fossil fuel extraction.”
Read more: What Happens When You Put a Fossil Fuel Exec in Charge of Solving Climate
Change
The European Parliament, of
course, is just one part of the picture. The U.A.E., for example, has the
world’s sixth highest per capita CO2 emissions, and while COP28
president Sultan Al Jaber, head of the U.A.E. state-owned oil
company ADNOC, has committed his country to reducing fossil fuel emissions,
here too that’s not remotely the same as eliminating use of the fuels entirely,
something the country has no stated intention of doing. Similar sentiments
prevail in the U.S.—the world’s 12th highest per capita CO2 emitter—where just 31% of the public favors phasing out
fossil fuels; Australia, the 10th highest per capita emitter, actually plans to expand fossil fuel production and export;
and in China, the number one per capita emitter, chief climate envoy
Xie Zhenhua recently dubbed the elimination of fossil fuels
“unrealistic.”
Loss and damage fund
India got clobbered by the monsoon
season this year, with an estimated 428 deaths and more than $1.4 billion in property damage.
That’s just a fraction of the losses the subcontinent and much of the
developing world have suffered over the decades at the hands of the climate
depredations largely wrought by wealthier nations’ historic emissions.
At COP27 last year nations agreed
to create a loss and damage fund. Ahead of this year’s summit, during a Sept. 1
meeting in the Dominican Republic, delegates made progress on that,
calling on one another to establish funding sources to
help the developing world prepare in advance for climate disasters and make the
necessary fixes when calamities inevitably occur.
That kind of assistance, though
long overdue, will not come cheap. According to a recent U.N. report, mitigation, prevention, and
recovery will cost an estimated $215 billion per year in developing countries.
COP27, estimates put the figure even higher, at $300 billion per year by 2030.
Either way, wealthy countries are nowhere near making good on their pledges:
the first loss and damage fund, proposed in Copenhagen
in 2009, pledged to raise $100 billion for the developing world. The funds
raised thus far have topped out at just $10.3 billion .
“It is one thing to have a
well-structured fund,” said Al Jaber, addressing the September gathering. “But
[it] will only be fully operational if it is actually funded. COP28 … is the
place to deliver and operationalize the fund.”
ATTACHMENT TWELVE – From TIME
BY PETER THOMSON
NOVEMBER 30, 2023 11:27 AM EST
Thomson is the United Nations
Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean and co-chair of Friends of
Ocean Action at the World Economic Forum.
Over the last
two years, a positive wave of ocean action has been sweeping the planet. Its
momentum offers the most powerful opportunity in recent memory to improve
humanity’s relationship with the ocean.
The ocean hosts 95% of the
planet’s life; it also absorbs 93% of its excess heat and about 30% of
human-generated carbon dioxide. The ocean produces more than half of the oxygen
on the planet. In fact, just one little photosynthetic creature in the ocean,
the Prochlorococcus, provides 20% of the oxygen in Earth’s
biosphere.
The development of a sustainable
ocean economy includes a myriad of climate adaptation and mitigation
opportunities. For example, by protecting and restoring blue carbon ecosystems
like mangrove forests, seagrasses, and coral reefs, we can safeguard our coasts and the
livelihoods of millions of people who live there; by supporting sustainable
seafood, we can improve food security while keeping the carbon footprint of
global protein production low. Meanwhile, by developing offshore wind alongside marine carbon dioxide removal projects, we could get
back on track to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goal of keeping global
temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. And green shipping could help maintain the growth
global trade in a carbon neutral manner.
Basically, the ocean and climate
change are inextricably entwined. The good news is that recently there’s been a
surge of engagement in ocean conservation and the development of a truly
sustainable ocean economy that recognizes this reality. Corporations and banks
now see the wisdom of being in on the action. Ocean-related start-ups and innovation are flourishing. The
ongoing work of philanthropies, NGOs, and civil society is compounding. Ocean science is receiving more attention than
ever before in human history, and despite current geopolitical tensions, there
has been remarkable momentum on the ocean front in international arenas.
For example, in 2017, the United
Nations General Assembly decision to declare 2021-2030 the “Decade of Ocean Science
for Sustainable Development” is proof of the global
commitment and momentum. And at the U.N. Ocean Conference in Lisbon in June
2022, participants from across governments, industry, and civil society
presented a profusion of workable, science-based solutions for the ocean’s
problems, committing at least $1 billion dollars towards the
creation, expansion, and management of marine protected areas to restore ocean
health. Kenya and Portugal, the co-hosts of the meeting, led the U.N. to commit
to investing the needed resources and creating the policies necessary to
protect and restore the ocean, while developing a sustainable ocean economy.
Their progress and accountability will be closely examined at the next U.N.
Ocean Conference in Nice in June 2025.
In Montreal last December, 196
countries agreed to the Global Biodiversity Framework, which will undertake to
fully protect 30% of the planet —including ocean and coasts—from most human
activities by 2030. And in June 2023, the Marine Biodiversity Beyond National
Jurisdiction High Seas Treaty was adopted in New York. It’s a
ground-breaking legal instrument that commits nations across the world to sharing
responsibility for managing and protecting international waters. Meanwhile, at
the World Trade Organization in Geneva, ongoing work to rid the world of
harmful fisheries subsidies, or those that foster overfishing and illegal
activities, is making steady progress, as are the efforts out of Nairobi to
negotiate a treaty to control the rampant plastic pollution of our planet.
These are monumental steps in our
struggle to meet the triple planetary crises of our times—human-induced climate
change, biodiversity loss, and rampant pollution—but none will have any effect
until they enter into force. Further, if we do not stop burning fossil fuels,
we will continue to threaten biodiversity on our planet—and ultimately,
therefore, the very survival of humankind. That's why the phrase I always use
when asked what matters most is "ratify and implement."
If any of this sounds like
hyperbole, these are not ordinary times. Based on the findings of Earth scientists and meteorologists, U.N.
Secretary-General António Guterres declared a red alert for
humanity back in 2021, and things have only worsened since then. The most
recent forecasts show we are on track for about 3°C global warming within the
lives of our grandchildren. That is an unacceptable world of plague, fire,
famine, and ferocious storms. Indeed, at the U.N. Ocean Conference in
Lisbon, Guterres deeply apologized to the youth of the
world for the dystopian future our generation has been preparing for them, and
promised to spend his remaining years working in partnership with young people
to work towards the 1.5°C warming goal. He has since conveyed throughout the
U.N. system that henceforth youth and early career ocean professionals must not
be at the periphery of our meetings, but rather at the meeting tables, helping
to negotiate the future they will inherit.
The realities of our planetary
responsibilities, and the absolute moral imperative of intergenerational
justice, hopefully imbued with love, oblige us to start living in better
balance with the world, to stop making war on nature, to make peace with it,
and thereby to stop the decline in the ocean’s health.
There can be no fulfillment of the
Paris Agreement without the ocean. To meet the 1.5°C goal, the world must make
a massive pivot towards investment in ocean science, innovation, and the
development of a truly sustainable and socially responsible ocean economy. We
must make that pivot as if our grandchildren’s lives depend on it, because for
many of them, that will be the case.
The “No Paris without the
Ocean” session on the opening day of COP28, Nov. 30, 2023—co-hosted by TIME CO2
and the World Economic Forum Friends of Ocean Action—explored the centrality of
the ocean to tackling the climate crisis. Watch the recording
here.
ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – FROM the WASHINGTON POST
OPINION
HOW TO END PLASTIC POLLUTION ON EARTH FOR GOOD
By Tatiana Schlossberg Nov. 27 at 12:30 p.m.
Someday, if future forms of
intelligent life look for evidence of human existence in the 20th and 21st
centuries, they should have an easy time finding us in the geologic record.
Just look for the plastic.
Between 1950 and 2021, humanity
produced about 11 billion metric tons of virgin plastic —
that’s the weight of 110,000 U.S. aircraft carriers. Only about 2 billion tons
of this is still in use. The rest — some 8.7 billion tons — is waste: 71
percent has ended up in landfills or somewhere else in the environment, including the ocean; 12 percent has been recycled; 17
percent has been incinerated. At the rate we’re going, global plastic waste
will rise 60 percent by 2050.
But now comes hope that it’s
possible to stop the accumulation: Last year, more than 175 countries agreed to develop a legally binding international treaty to
end plastic pollution by 2040. And new research demonstrates that it is
actually possible: with a combination of nine policies, countries could reduce
annual plastic waste by more than 87 percent.
3.2 billion tons from 2010 to 2050
As things stand, from 2010 to 2050
alone, the world could generate enough to cover all of Manhattan with a pile of
plastic more than two miles high.
A less-ambitious treaty could
include reducing single-use packaging by 30 percent and a 20 percent minimum
recycling-rate mandate. Along with other policies, such an agreement might
reduce plastic waste by 16 percent.
A highly ambitious treaty might
require a 90 percent reduction in single-use packaging and a 40 percent minimum
recycling rate mandate, cutting plastic waste by half.
A few of these policies would have
much greater impact than others, especially if negotiators are ambitious.
Picking the right policies will determine whether the treaty will be effective
in the end. Here are some of the most effective policies, according to data
gathered by scientists from the University of California:
A mandate that all new plastic products contain at least 30 percent
recycled plastic would,
alone, reduce mismanaged plastic waste by about 30 percent, from about 108
million tons to 77 million tons by 2050.
But that’s still too much. So the
scientists also suggest capping plastic production at 2025
levels. Both
policies combined would bring mismanaged plastic waste down to 68 million tons.
Add in a high consumer tax on plastics, and it would be possible to avert about 10
million more metric tons of pollution. If we use the revenue from that tax
to invest $50 billion in global waste infrastructure, we could reduce pollution to
one-third of the business-as-usual scenario.
Some people might be surprised
that banning single-use items — plastic bags, straws or polystyrene packaging —
wouldn’t be the most effective solution, though these plastics make up a
disproportionately large share of the plastic waste in rivers and oceans.
Banning polystyrene alone would reduce plastic waste by 500,000 tons by 2050;
for single-use plastics made from other polymers, such as polypropylene, a ban
could reduce pollution by 13.7 million tons. Yet such bans, beneficial as they
would be, would not move the needle as much as other measures.
And it is essential to move the
needle. Plastic waste threatens ecosystem health, biodiversity and efforts to
address climate change, and it is also a health concern and environmental-justice
issue. Microplastics have been found in breast milk and in our blood. Around the world, up to 60 percent of all
recycled plastic is collected by waste pickers, often members of poor and
marginalized communities, who suffer from inhaling caustic fumes from burning
plastic and drinking water heavily contaminated with microplastics.
“The more plastic we make, the
more we find it in our bodies — we are polluting ourselves,” said Monica
Medina, head of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who, as an assistant secretary
of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs
under President Biden, participated in previous international negotiations.
U.N. negotiators just finished
meeting again in Nairobi to begin crafting the actual treaty, in hopes of
completing it by the end of next year, though progress seems to have stalled, a
result of excessive influence from oil and gas industry lobbyists, according to
nongovernmental organizations.
The United States, which produces more plastic waste than any other
country, has a responsibility and an opportunity to lead the world in the right
direction. Navigating the legal vagaries and facing up to the powerful fossil
fuel industry won’t be easy, but this is an extraordinary opportunity. We know
that if we do nothing, we’ll bury ourselves under mountains of plastic. But if
we try, we can rewrite the geologic record of our planet. We can end plastic
pollution on Earth.
ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – From TIME
THE DIRTY
SECRET OF ALTERNATIVE PLASTICS
BY ARYN BAKER NOVEMBER
28, 2023 2:05 PM EST
This story was produced in partnership
with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.
In the three decades since it was
first introduced, the plastic, coin-sized sticker you see on fruit and
vegetables has become a staple of modern agriculture, imparting essential
information about the grower, brand, country of origin, and even price of fresh
produce as it crisscrosses the globe. The Product Look Up (PLU)
label is designed to be briefly scanned then discarded, destined for landfill.
There, it might last for hundreds of years, joining an endless accumulation of
plastic packaging also intended to be removed after purchase and immediately
jettisoned.
Like most single-use packaging,
the stickers are not easily recycled. Those that don’t end up in landfill
collect in the environment, and then often end up clogging up our rivers and oceans. According to the United Nations
Environment Program, nearly a garbage truck and a half’s worth of plastic ends
up in rivers, lakes, and oceans every minute.
Eventually those plastics break down into micro and nano plastic particles
that poison our air, the water we drink, and our bloodstream.
Approximately 40% of all plastic produced is designed for
single-use purposes, and little of it is easily recycled. Like the PLU sticker,
it is used just once and then thrown away. Yet the long-term consequences are
enormous: The production of plastic, 98% of which is sourced from fossil fuels,
is the cause of some 10% of all global greenhouse-gas emissions.
One proposed solution is to
replace these plastics with alternatives: biodegradable utensils, compostable
wrappers, plant-based bottles, and compressed-fiber plates and bowls.
Theoretically, these products could seamlessly slot into existing supply
chains, requiring no sacrifice on the part of consumers, who are clamoring for more sustainable options. But
production is limited in scale, more expensive than conventional plastic, and
it’s not yet clear that the alternatives are actually better for human and
planetary health: most plant-based plastics are, on a molecular level,
identical to their fossil-fuel-sourced siblings and last just as long in the
environment. Other substitutes require many of the same toxic chemical additives as conventional plastics
to keep them waterproof, flexible, durable, and colorfast.
Perhaps the biggest problem is
that the infrastructure to ensure these bioplastics actually biodegrade or
compost is very limited. That means that despite the best intentions of
manufacturers and consumers, supposedly compostable plastic bags and supposedly
biodegradable single-use cutlery may be causing just as much climate damage as
conventional plastics.
The future of such plastics, as
well as the role of bioplastics in the global economy, is under negotiation. In
November, representatives from 162 nations converged in Nairobi, Kenya, for
INC-3, the third of five planned sessions for the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee to
develop a global treaty to end plastic pollution, a kind of Paris Climate
Accords for plastic. So far, the delegates have put forth a wide range of
options, ranging from greater recycling capacity to a tax on manufacturers,
which would go to global cleanup projects. Among the more ambitious proposals is for global production of virgin
plastic to be slashed, largely through a reduction in single use products.
Treaty negotiations are scheduled to conclude at the end of 2024.
Read
more: Countries May Be Getting One Step Closer To Actually Tackling
Plastic Pollution
A complete ban would not be enough
to end the plastic scourge, but it’s a start. A new tool developed
by the University of California Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley, and the Benioff Ocean Initiative shows that a 90%
reduction of single-use plastics would remove some 286 million metric tons of
ocean pollution by 2050—the equivalent in water bottles stacked end-to-end
would cover the distance to the sun and back nearly six times. (Marc and Lynn Benioff, who support the Benioff Ocean Science
Laboratory at UC Santa Barbara, also own TIME Magazine).
The
composting complication
Practically speaking, there isn’t
enough global supply of alternative materials to replace the amount of
single-use plastic being produced today, and that may be a good thing,
says Paula Luu, project director for the Center for the
Circular Economy at impact investing firm Closed Loop Partners.
That’s because, while plastic alternatives show a lot of promise, it won’t be
realized unless their implementation is accompanied by an upgrade of current
waste-collection systems, ongoing scientific research, and policy change.
“Before we do a full switchover, we really need to focus on addressing a number
of different challenges, including customer education, waste-recovery
infrastructure, and the economic incentives to a full transition,” says Luu.
“If it’s not done thoughtfully, with a whole-system view, it could result in
unintended consequences.”
France’s effort to reduce
single-use plastics is a case in point. In 2022, the country banned all non-compostable PLU tags. A win for French
environmentalists, however, soon became a sticky problem for produce importers: in a
globalized market where produce comes from all corners of the world, one
country’s ban on plastic PLU tags only really works when every other country
opts to do the same.
The technology
exists—multinational fruit-labeling company Sinclair, among others, has been producing them for
years—but the cost is higher given how cheap plastic is. A global ban on
plastic stickers would certainly encourage competition and economic incentives,
leading to lower prices for compostable versions. But without widespread access
to composting facilities, most of those compostable stickers would end up in
landfill anyway, where they could cause even more climate damage than
conventional plastic. In a well-regulated composting facility, bacteria use
oxygen to break organic materials down into carbon. In a landfill’s low-oxygen
environment, that material creates methane as
it decomposes, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than
carbon when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Read
more: Compostable Dog Poop Bags Aren’t Really That Compostable
The terms “biodegradable” and
“compostable” are often misinterpreted to mean that the products will melt away
in the natural environment, which is rarely the case. To meet a baseline
standard of compostability, 90% of a PLU sticker, or a fork, for that matter,
must break down into carbon matter within six to 24 months under carefully
regulated heat and moisture conditions. But if you just tossed a supposedly biodegradable
fork into your backyard, it could last almost as long as your typical plastic
cutlery. In one 2019 study, researchers left compostable plastic
bags buried in soil or submerged in seawater for three years as a trial. At the
end, some of the bags were intact enough to carry a full load of groceries.
Which means that without a dramatically ramped-up global system of collecting
and processing biodegradable packaging, compostable is little better than
plastic for the environment.
In the U.S., only 27% of the
population has access to food waste composting programs, and only 142 out of
the 201 industrial composting facilities nationwide that process food waste
will accept compostable packaging as well, according to a new survey conducted by the composting
website BioCycle and
the Composting Consortium, a business group that promotes
effective composting. That means that the country is producing far more
compostable cups, plates, and take-out containers than it can actually process,
says BioCycle’s editor and publisher, Nora Goldstein.
Facilities that are reluctant to
take compostable packaging argue that they can’t always tell the difference
between conventional plastics and compostable, and they don’t want to risk
contamination. A compostable sachet of pre-washed salad greens looks just like
a polyethylene produce bag, says Goldstein. “If I can’t tell the difference,
and I am a composting professional, your average consumer is just as likely to
throw a plastic bag in the compost as a compostable bag in the recycling.” Both
are bad: When plastic ends up in compost, the facility can’t sell it, which
threatens the financial viability of the project. And when compostable
packaging ends up in a recycling facility, it can gum up the machinery or,
depending on how it is made, taint the next batch of recycled plastic.
Plant-based
doesn't necessarily mean plant-friendly
Add plant-based plastics into the
mix, and you have even more problems. Polyethylene terephthalate, the PET
plastic used for most soda bottles (and also in many other single-use packaging
products), is usually extracted from fossil fuels, but, in a process similar to
turning corn into ethanol, it can also be manufactured from plants. The plant-
and fossil-fuel-based versions are chemically indistinguishable—the only way to
tell the difference is through radiocarbon dating (carbon molecules extracted
from fossil fuels are older than ones that come from plants)—and like
conventional PET, plant-based PET can be recycled.
But when consumers see a label
saying a plastic is plant-based, “One in two Americans will say, ‘Oh, this
belongs in a composting bin’,” says Luu of Closed Loop Partners, which recently
conducted a survey of American attitudes to plastic alternatives. In other
words, consumers might think they are doing the right thing, even if half of
them are putting their plant-based PET products in the wrong place. Luu
believes better labeling is the answer: “Just like we universally understand
the stop sign, we should immediately understand that this package is
compostable because it’s tinted green or is prominently labeled. If we don’t
get labeling and design right, we could be creating problems for both the
recycling and the composting industries.”
Another option, says Daphna
Nissenbaum, CEO and co-founder of TIPA Corp, a multinational company producing a wide
range of compostable plastic films and food packaging, is to go the fully
compostable PLU route, and mandate, through global standards, that all flexible
plastic packaging—sandwich wrappers, zipper bags, cling film, and shopping
bags, for example—goes to the compost bin. TIPA’s technology, which is licensed
to manufacturers around the world, can create compostable packaging for
everything from dry cleaning to granola bars. The goal is for no one to ever
worry about special labels, she says. “It will be intuitive. If it’s flexible,
it will go in the compost with the banana peels.” On the other hand, if it’s
rigid, like a soda bottle or a yogurt pot, it should go to recycling.
The only problem is that while
TIPA’s films are compostable, they, like many other compostable products, are
still made partially from fossil fuels. The technology exists to make a fully
compostable, fully plant-based plastic product, but it is far more expensive
than conventional plastics, and does not always work as well, especially if it
is used to package food items that are acidic, or liquid, or require long-term
storage. Blending plant-based and fossil-fuel sourced plastics to create a
compostable product lowers the cost and improves performance.
The truth:
'carbon is carbon'
That is the dirty secret of
so-called bioplastics, says Ramani Narayan, a chemical engineering professor at
Michigan State University and an expert on alternative plastics. “Carbon is
carbon, it doesn’t matter where it comes from when it comes to
biodegradability.”
What matters is how the long
polymer chains that make the plastic, no matter the source of carbon, are
configured: insert oxygen molecules in the right place with the help of a
chemical additive, and it opens the way for microbes that can accelerate
decomposition. Compostability may help solve plastic pollution, but if
compostable plastics are still made with fossil fuels, it does nothing to
address the problem of carbon emissions.
Like conventional plastics, both
plant-based and biodegradable versions—no matter their source—still need chemical additives to help with durability, fire
resistance, waterproofing and colorfastness. Compressed fiber and paper plates,
bowls, and cups are often lined with a plastic film to keep them from leaking.
Those additives can be toxic for human health and dangerous for the
environment, yet few have been studied.
Pennie Lindeque, head of science for marine ecology and
biodiversity at the U.K.’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory, is currently trying to
do just that, investigating how the breakdown process of biodegradable plastics
impacts the ocean ecosystem. Marine creatures still mistake fragments for prey,
and chemicals released in the process of breaking down might have unforeseen
consequences for other kinds of ocean life, including coral. “Biodegradable
materials could help reduce the impacts of plastic waste in the ocean. However,
we must be sure that such materials, and the chemicals they contain, do in fact
demonstrate little or no impact on organisms and ecosystems,” she says. We
don’t want to, as she puts it, “jump from the frying pan into the fire.”
Read
more: There’s Almost No Research on the Health Impact of Plastic Chemicals in
the Global South
One of the most promising plastic
replacements is polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA, which is made by fermenting plant
sugars that come from beets, corn, and other vegetable waste, or even biogas
from landfill, in a process similar to brewing beer. As with other
naturally-occurring polymers like silk or cellulose, PHA products degrade into
nontoxic components within months. They can also be shredded, melted, and
reformed into new products. Different kinds of bacteria, some naturally
occurring, others specifically engineered, are used instead of chemical
additives to create properties such as flexibility and transparency.
According to chemists that
specialize in plastic alternatives, most conventional plastics could
theoretically be replaced by PHA, but its biodegradable qualities are
better suited for single-use and disposable items. That said, PHA is currently
expensive and time-consuming to produce—current global capacity is 100,000
metric tons a year, compared to the 430 million metric tons of conventional
plastic produced annually. And even Anindya Mukherjee, co-founder of GO!PHA,
a global PHA-focused business coalition, admits that it could have other
drawbacks that have yet to be discovered. Indeed, there is a glaring absence of
scientific oversight for pretty much all the current alternative plastic
options, he says. “Right now, anybody can say anything they want about how good
their product is for the environment. There needs to be a scientific advisory
board as part of the INC process, one that will regulate the development and
the proliferation of alternatives. Otherwise, we will always have this
problem.”
Better science plays an important
role, but it is not enough, says Christina Dixon, ocean lead for the
London-based Environmental Investigation Agency. To solve plastic’s
underlying problem, we have to look beyond substitutes and rethink our reliance
on disposable goods. “These new materials may seem like some sort of Holy
Grail—walking and talking like a plastic without plastic’s impact—but all they
are doing is shifting the burden somewhere else.” Instead, Dixon argues, we
need to create circular systems that rely on reusable, refillable goods that
last, instead of a linear trajectory from production through consumption to
disposal. “Our goods should not be designed to end up in landfill, no matter
what they are made of,” she says.
The alternative plastic world is a
minefield, cloaked in sustainability marketing that at best is aspirational,
and at worst causes as many problems as the products it is trying to replace. A
ban on single-use plastics could level the playing field, allowing products
that are better for the climate, for the environment, and for human health to
rise to prominence. That also means questioning the very idea of disposability.
That is, after all, what started all the problems in the first place. If
plastic products were valuable, they probably wouldn’t end up polluting our
oceans.
ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – From THE DAILY
CLIMATE
THIS INDIGENOUS COOK WANTS TO HELP READERS DECOLONIZE THEIR DIETS
Karuk writer and home cook Sara Calvosa
Olson has assembled a collection of Native recipes to help readers reconnect to
the natural world.
BY TWILIGHT GREENAWAY
NOVEMBER 28, 2023
Sara Calvosa Olson didn’t set out
to write a traditional cookbook. She had spent several years writing a column
about the Indigenous foodways of California for the quarterly magazine News From Native
California when she landed a book deal with Heyday
Books (the magazine’s publisher) to expand on the column. Then, the pandemic
hit and Calvosa Olson turned toward her own kitchen and began writing about and
developing recipes based on the meals she’d been cooking for more than two
decades. Chími Nu’am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen, released
earlier this fall, is the fruit of that labor.
Calvosa Olson grew up with a Karuk
mother and an Italian father on a homestead in the Hoopa Valley Reservation,
near California’s northern edge. She spent a great deal of time during those
formative years outside, learning about her plant and animal relatives and
eating a combination of commodity foods and the foods her parents grew,
gathered, hunted, and bartered for. “Family celebrations and special foods were
formative to the way I now show love and connect to my identity as a
flourishing matriarch,” she writes in the introduction to Chími Nu’am.
“We are all colonized, our palates
are colonized. And it’s kind of impossible to raise children who don’t love Fruit
Snacks and other processed foods.”
Although Calvosa Olson moved to
the Bay Area, she stayed in touch with the Karuk community and continued to
nurture the food traditions with which she was raised. She writes:
“When I had children of my own, I wanted
to connect my sons to these family recipes and to being Karuk, as we were
living away from Karuk community and traditional lands. By intentionally
establishing this connection, I discovered a love for developing new and
colorful recipes based on our old family recipes and traditions. Gathering wild
foods, sharing, teaching, cooking, and tending have all been an opportunity to
grow and heal in the nurturing way I didn’t know I needed.”
Chími Nu’am, which translates to “Let’s eat!”
in the Karuk language, is in many ways a record of that process in addition to
a compendium of recipes. Organized by season, the book guides its readers in
gathering, processing, and cooking with Indigenous foods in hopes of helping us
begin to integrate more traditional ingredients into our oversimplified modern
palates.
Its recipes range from creative
takes on familiar foods—blackberry-braised smoked salmon and elk chili beans—to
dishes that will be entirely new to many readers, such as nettle tortillas,
miner’s lettuce salad, and spruce-tip syrup. And it includes recipes for nearly
a dozen foods made with acorns, including crackers, muffins, crepes, and hand
pies, as well as a rustic acorn bread that calls for one cup of acorn flour and
two cups of wheat flour.
Calvosa Olson has written a book
that will speak to multiple audiences. But whether she’s guiding Indigenous
readers to embrace more of their cultural foods or making recommendations for
non-Indigenous readers interested in decolonizing their diets in an ethical way
(hint: it’s about reciprocity), her voice and philosophy come through clearly
on the page.
Civil Eats spoke to Calvosa Olson
recently about the book, how she hopes it will reach those very different
audiences, and her urgent call to all of us to begin reconnecting to the
natural world through food.
How did the recipes in the book
take shape, and how did you decide what to include and what to leave out to
protect or preserve specific cultural foods and traditions?
I think we can all agree that
Native people have lost so much, and so much has been taken, appropriated, and
diluted. There are still some cultural foodways that are very similar to the
foodways that we have always eaten. And because there are so few, I didn’t feel
like it would be appropriate to put those in a book for everybody. Even in the
work that I do for my own family, there’s a difference between what is for us
in ceremony and what is for us to incorporate in our everyday lives or to
maintain our connection to our stewardship.
We are all colonized, our palates
are colonized. And it’s kind of impossible to raise children who don’t love
Fruit Snacks and other processed foods. But I really wanted them to develop a
love for foods that are bitter or fishy—those types of things that we shy away
from in Western culture.
“We are all suffering from
diet-related diseases. It’s terrible. And it’s so difficult to right that ship
for many reasons.”
Different audiences will
experience this book differently, but as a non-Indigenous reader, I felt
invited in—invited to take part and understand more of the cultural experience
behind these foods rather than merely follow recipes. That said, gathering and
preparing these ingredients is also going to be a learning curve for some
readers.
We all need to develop relationships
with our foodways, and our lifeways, and what’s going on around us. Nobody can
turn on the news and disagree with that. We need to at least develop some
relationships with the rhythms of the world around us right now. So, I want the
book to be a warm welcome in to do that.
But also, how you do that is very
important. And I love that people are asking: How do I do it ethically? You
have this opportunity to go forward intentionally and choose the lens that you
want to view this work through, and you can center Indigenous people, and our
traditional knowledge and our relationship-building and community-centered
lifeways, as you go forward. Which means that you are also building
relationship and building community with Indigenous people and we’re all working
together.
And how do you interact with
Native people who have been deliberately othered in the state, and deliberately
made invisible? Growing up in the U.S., we don’t hear from Indigenous people,
and that’s what causes a lot of the mystic Indian tropes. And you can see that
in the [U.S.] education system, which ignores Native people, and refers to us
in the past. But we are still here, and we are safeguarding so much of the
world’s biodiversity.
We’re also at the forefront of
environmental science; we have incredibly sophisticated people working in our
environmental departments. We have climate action plans, we have stewardship
plans, we have everything we could possibly need to go forward to rehabilitate
the land except power and influence. Even if I only reach one person at a time,
and they went about things in a different way and began to understand the value
of [traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous foodways] in a new way,
that would be a success.
You recommend that non-Native
folks contact their local tribal representatives when they want to learn how to
gather acorns and other Indigenous ingredients. What do you say to people who
worry that they’d be bothering them in asking for their services?
I realize it’s uncomfortable!
Because, again, [people are used to] othering of us, and don’t know how to
interact with us. They feel like they’re going to bother us. But that just
keeps people going to foragers who are non-Native. But overcoming that
awkwardness is important because the worst thing that can happen is that they
can say, “Yikes, we don’t know anybody.”
“People are still reliant on
commodity food and subsistence gathering. And often when you go out to gather
your traditional foods, they’re not there anymore.”
You share strategies for decolonizing
your diet gradually by adding, for example, a cup of squash to frybread or a
cup of acorn flour to bread to replace processed white flour. Can you say more
about that approach?
Because our palates are all
colonized, to some degree, we have to reintroduce these foods gradually.
There’s a dilution that occurs. But I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad
thing. Because we can’t all go rushing into the forest right now to completely
decolonize our diets. It’s impossible. We would we need to set up new food
systems that are as robust as the ones we have now before we could do that.
This is a gradual change.
One cup of acorn flour instead of
one cup of white flour is still one less cup of white flour. In [Indigenous]
communities that really matters. We are all suffering from diet-related
diseases. It’s terrible. And it’s so difficult to right that ship for many
reasons. There’s so little food education, no access to healthy foods. People
are still reliant on commodity food and subsistence gathering. And often when
you go out to gather your traditional foods, they’re not there anymore. The
fish are gone and the fires have burned the mycelium mats, so the mushrooms
aren’t coming back the same.
Anything that we can do to start
turning this ship around is important. And it’s about eating and nourishment,
yes. But it’s also about connecting to community and connecting to our role as
people for the environment—and waking up to our obligations to everything
around us.
You recommend that readers start
to expand their worldview and their approach to Indigenous foods slowly, but
you also go on to write, “I want to impress upon everybody the urgency with
which we must act to keep our ecosystems healthy.” How do you balance that
desire to move slowly and build deeper connections to ecosystems against that
larger sense of urgency?
“Hurry up! And go slow”—that’s
what I’m telling people. Connecting to this approach requires you to go slow in
the beginning, but as you develop your own connections and your own
relationships it’s like a snowball; it will start to build on itself
exponentially. And you will become more attuned to these issues and more
connected to the activism that Indigenous people are engaged in. And then, in a
year, you will have so much more knowledge and it will be an exponential leap
to the next year. And it goes on from there. If you go too fast, and you’re not
developing relationships or practicing reciprocity, then you’re just
perpetuating the same cycles of settler colonialism and extraction that got us
into this mess in the first place.
You worked with the California
Indian Museum and Cultural Center teaching cooking to Indigenous elders during
the pandemic. Can you speak to how that work helped shape this book?
Indigenous readers were really the
first and only audience that I was considering at first. This whole book took a
lot of checking in with community and gut-checking constantly about how to go
forward and be inclusive, because I really, genuinely believe that we need
everybody together to do this. And I don’t think that Indigenous people alone
can do this. But I do want to prioritize the health of our communities first,
because I want us to be healthy and ready to keep it up.
“We are reclaiming that history and
knowledge, and we have to teach it to our children.”
As lost as [non-Native people]
might feel sometimes about how to go forward and who to ask about Indigenous
foods and practices, we often feel the same way. Many Native people are
disconnected from family and community, and they’re spread out or flung all
over the place. For instance, I’m on Coast Miwok land, but I’m not Coast Miwok,
so I’m still a guest on this land. How do I go forward here in a way that
centers reciprocity? And we’re all asking these kinds of questions.
Most of our foodways were not
documented in California because it was considered “women’s work.” We just have
smoked salmon and acorn soup. I know we had a massive variety of foods, and it
was vibrant, colorful, nuanced, and delicious. And yet, if you were to read
documentation about the Karuk tribe, you would see that we only ate two things.
We are reclaiming that history and
knowledge, and we have to teach it to our children. And sometimes I teach it to
older people who were sent to boarding schools or whose parents were sent to
boarding schools and didn’t want to have anything to do with their indigeneity
when they returned. It is complicated for all of us. There are not very many
people doing this work in a way that is engaging all people. And that’s mainly
because there are so few of us and the first focus has to be on fortifying the
people in our own communities. But I’m a white Indian, so I want to be able to
leverage my whiteness to speak to a non-Native community, and to engage them
about how to go about this in a good way. I’m like a liaison.
I have a whole half of me that
isn’t Native, and it’s a challenge to reconcile these two sides. But I don’t
have to reconcile them right now. What I can do is use what was good on [my
Italian side]—the things I learned about family and community and how to show
my love through food and laughter and storytelling—to uplift the Native people
in my communities.
This interview has been edited for
length and clarity.
ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – From TIME
THE COP28 OUTCOMES BUSINESS LEADERS ARE WATCHING FOR
BY JUSTIN
WORLAND/DUBAI NOVEMBER 30,
2023 4:26 PM EST
The U.N. climate conference
known as COP28 officially kicked off this afternoon in
Dubai with more corporate executives and big players in the financial sector
present than in any such meeting before. Much of their attention on the ground
will focus on the private sector announcements made and deals struck, but
there's a reason for private sector folks to pay attention to the seemingly
wonky official negotiations taking place between countries in Dubai’s Expo City
convention center.
For many businesses, the
conversations can seem overly procedural and disconnected from the day-to-day
reality of cutting a firm’s emissions. And yet these negotiations can move the market
over time, and it’s worth paying attention to the signal that emerges from
Dubai.
To understand how such influence
can spread from COP negotiation halls, look no further than the
negotiations that took place in Paris in 2015. Countries agreed to come up with
plans to limit average global warming to well-below 2°C over pre-industrial
temperatures. The commitment was non-binding for countries and had even less of
an immediate impact for companies.
And yet
the Paris Agreement has become a key benchmark for climate-concerned investors
and companies. CEOs refer to “Paris alignment” to explain their decarbonization
progress. There are now funding systems that act as investment vehicles
designed specifically to support companies working towards the Paris targets.
And some, if not enough, deals are reached or rejected because of these
priorities. Laurence Tubiana, the head of the European Climate Foundation and a
key framer of the deal, described this to me as “a transformation of the
mindset.” “The Paris Agreement [became] the norm, the reference for everybody
to know where to go,” she told me in
2020.
What is the signal that might
emerge from Dubai? As I’ve written here before, perhaps the biggest area of debate centers
on the future of fossil fuels. Negotiators are trying to find
common ground on how the world should view oil, gas, and coal. Getting through
the negotiations remains a tall order, but any collective agreement that is
serious about phasing out fossil fuels will signal to investors and companies
that policymakers remain—at least in principle—committed to addressing climate
change. That reality should at the very least make backers of fossil fuel
expansion pause to take stock. On the flip side, failure to reach a deal on
fossil fuels would signal that countries have lost their fortitude, and the
speed of the energy transition may be slower than hoped.
Fossil fuels are just the start.
Delegates are trying to find the best ways to commit public money to advancing
private clean energy projects in emerging markets. Outcomes that advance this
so-called blended finance approach could create new opportunities for investors
interested in funding clean energy deployment.
Those two changes alone will shape
the allocation of billions of dollars in capital, and spread across the
economy, and they’re just the most obvious ones.
ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – From HAPPY ECO
NEWS
I
believe:
·Most people want to do good in the
world.
·To make positive changes for the
environment, people must be engaged with the news, not desensitized to it.
·To be engaged, they must have
hope.
·People must have a reason for hope; the news
must sometimes be good.
·The news must sometimes be good to learn and
stay informed and, most importantly, take action.
·It is impossible to love something you do not
understand or have not yet experienced. People must spend time in nature.
Therefore, protection of the
environment lies with people spending time in nature and feeling hope for the
future. People, young and old, all need encouragement to undertake the effort
required to fix the problems we face.
I
know this to be true:
·Society must make a large shift in
terms of what we value if we want to survive as a species.
·This large shift will occur from
the actions of everyday people who vote in political elections and with their
dollars every day.
·Giving and doing good feels good,
and people like to feel good.
·People overwhelmed with bad news
often “tune out” and hide rather than make any change.
·People need to be aware of the bad
but also hear the good in equal measure – maybe even more.
·I won’t reach every person, but
every person needs good news.
I
want to:
·Give people a reason for hope.
·Inspire people to make small
changes that add up to large societal shifts.
·Encourage young people to take
action and make positive changes in the world they will soon inherit.
·Encourage young people to vote at
the ballot box on election day and with their money every day.
·Inspire parents to take their
children to spend time in nature so they, too, experience and understand it.
·Support independent journalism to
ensure that people are presented with unbiased reporting of truth.
ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – From NPR
IT'S NOT ALL BAD NEWS:
WONDERFUL AND WILD STORIES ABOUT TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE
By The
NPR Network OCTOBER 3, 202312:00 PM ET
News about
climate change can be overwhelming. As NPR's climate solutions reporter Julia Simon
shared, "I talk with people about climate change — I often hear
hopelessness. Like we've already lost. People just throw up their hands ... but
what if we reframe the conversation?"
"Humans
are driving global warming. And that means we humans can change our
trajectory."
And some
folks already have; there is good news. But these moments of joy can often get
lost in a sea of headlines.
So as part of
our week of coverage focused on climate solutions, we pulled
together some of the moments of success, of progress small and large. Some are
solutions underway; some are efforts from the past that are paying off in new
and unexpected ways. Some are weird reminders of the power of nature and the
role we play.
And some are
just good news.
2023 is on track to be one of the largest pink salmon runs in Puget Sound
in the past decade. "In the
last two pink salmon cycles, we've seen declining run sizes," Matt Bogaard
of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife told KUOW. "So it's great to see a larger number
coming back this year."
Restoration
contractors in California and Oregon will plant nearly 19 billion native seeds
as part of efforts to restore land along the Klamath River that is currently
dammed. Draining the reservoirs will expose about 900 acres of wet mud.
Joshua Chenoweth, a senior riparian ecologist for the Yurok Tribe who is
leading the replanting effort, told OPB: "It's our job to make sure it's
revegetated. We want that to be revegetated with a healthy native plant
ecosystem."
Here's the plan for what's being called the largest river restoration
project in American history.
There's a new, more sustainable variety of avocado. Americans consume a lot of Hass
avocados: more than 3 billion pounds in 2021. But as KJZZ explains, they require a ton of water and
if planted incorrectly can cause soil erosion. Researchers in California have
developed a new variety of avocado that is more resistant to extreme climates.
But how does this new avocado taste?
Farmers in Pakistan are trying to make a baby glacier. As NPR's Diaa Hadid explains, this ancient ritual calls
for mixing chunks of white glaciers, which residents believe are female, and
black or brown glaciers, which residents believe are male (their dark color
comes from rock debris). It's an unconventional strategy, but it has a powerful
backer: the United Nations.
Jakob Steiner, a mountain hydrologist, explains how it works.
Tesla is building a drive-in movie theater EV charging station in Los
Angles. As LAist reports, Tesla's permits allow for 30-some
charging stalls, two outdoor movie screens and a restaurant with rooftop
seating, among other things, to be built at 7001 W. Santa Monica Boulevard.
Here's what Tesla's take on the classic drive-in could look like.
A handful of coral rescued near Miami spawned in a hatchery lab in
August. As WLRN reports, while it was too soon to know whether
they'd become viable, making babies could definitely be a good sign for coral
that had endured weeks of punishing heat.
Coral reef
bleaching is a huge problem for Florida's beleaguered reef. The only inshore
barrier reef on the U.S. mainland is not only a major tourist draw but also
a powerful barrier to storm surge that's expected to worsen as the planet
warms.
Plus, a new
study found that urban coral thriving near bustling Port Miami — despite ship traffic
churning up pollution and bay bottom — are more resilient than their cousins along Florida's reef.
This haunted house in Philly is terrifying (and an adaptation to
flooding). As WHYY reported, floodwaters from Hurricane Ida in
2021 reached 7 feet deep on the first floor of what's now Lincoln Mill Haunted
House, causing over a million dollars' worth of damage. Owners made more
flood-resistant repairs and reimagined the space for pop-up events like the
haunted house.
Owners hope that when the next flood comes, the building will be ready.
This Texas Girl Scout troop is tackling water conservation by doing
everything other troops do — but underwater. As KUT reports, the Scuba Scouts
is a special-interest troop where girls ages 12 to 17 can become certified
scuba divers, taking their love for service to new depths — learning about
local endangered species, researching reef-safe sunscreen and working with
local businesses to switch to sustainable practices.
Conservation summer programs are working to keep forests in New Mexico
healthy and build crew members' connection to the land. As KUNC explains, the Forest Stewards Youth Corps
summer program, which started in 1998, is made up of five crews across northern
and central New Mexico. Crew members, ranging in age from 15 to 25, are paid
for their work and receive education and training in natural resource careers —
all while restoring the land in cooperation with local communities.
John Galvan,
the tribal forest manager for Jemez Pueblo, says lots of the pueblo's natural
resource projects are critical to the livelihood of the Jemez people, as they
live by their traditions and live off the land.
A vacant lot outside Boston has been turned into a quarter-acre
"food forest." Unlike
community gardens, food forests mimic natural ecosystems, with a focus on
native food-bearing plants that provide habitat for insects and birds. And as WBUR explains, anyone in the community can
harvest food for free.
Climate solutions do exist. These 6 experts detail what they look like
The group that helped created the food forest hopes to develop 30 of them
by 2030.
Plus, a Wyoming food forest recently added a medicinal garden consisting
of over 100 plants that have spiritual, medicinal or nutritional significance
to the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and that help avoid the loss of traditional
knowledge and plant varieties.
More than 120,000 acres have just been set aside as a conservation area
in Idaho. As Boise State Public Radio reports, the Bennett Hills
conservation area covers more than 120,000 acres of rolling grasslands in
southwest Idaho, home to upland game bird species and wintering elk and mule
deer.
Bennett Hills
is the largest of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's backcountry conservation
areas and is intended to "support wildlife-dependent recreation and
hunting activities," according to the bureau.
A volunteer group known as the Garbage Humans of ATX gathers regularly to
keep parks clean in Austin, Texas. As KUT reports, despite ambitious goals to divert landfill
waste to reuse programs, some trash won't even make it to the dumpster.
Compelled to do something, Kellie Stiewert and her friends started regular
cleanups.
Taking action is helping the volunteers combat feelings of "climate
doom."
Farmers in
the Midwest are turning to millets, a highly resilient and cost-friendly grain,
to keep growing in a changing climate. As Harvest Public Media reports, the United Nations has
declared 2023 the International Year of Millets to encourage more awareness and
a bigger market for the extremely sustainable, weather-resilient, nutritious
grain.
Linus
Rothermich, a farmer in central Missouri, has found success growing Japanese millet in his crop rotation since the early 1990s.
These Cape Cod "old ladies" dive into local ponds to surface
trash. As CAI explains, in just 90 minutes this small team of
swimmers — the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage — can remove hundreds of
pieces of trash. Again and again, they surface with fistfuls of beer cans, golf
balls, fishing lures and dog toys.
As founding
member Susan Baur puts it, "We are heroically adventurous. And I'm not leaving the
age of competence, thank you very much. Not for a while."
This school district in Alaska has switched to a subsistence calendar to
allow students to participate in seasonal harvests. As KYUK explains, students now begin the year a week later
and finish 10 days earlier than other schools in the state. The strategy is
designed to help pass along traditional knowledge of land stewardship to the
next generation.
The shift has
also meant the school district can supplement its lunch program with fish and moose that the students catch.
The Soil Your
Undies campaign is helping Montanans monitor the health of their soil by
observing how a pair of cotton underwear decomposes when
buried underground. As Montana Public Radio reports, healthy soil
means healthy plants, which leads to more nutrient-rich foods for people and
livestock. And with over 2 million cattle living in Montana, soil health is especially
important.
As Holly
Stoltz with the Western Sustainability Exchange explains, "If you pull up
your underwear in two months and it is literally just the waistband left, [you]
you have a lot of activity in your soil, which means your soil is very healthy."
This year's participants included Republican state Sen. Butch Gillespie
and his wife.
Milwaukee-area artists have created an immersive art experience to
highlight the impact of invasive species. As WUWM explains, visitors' mission is to collect data on
each species (while also playing synthesizer sturgeons and making rainbow
shadow puppets).
Oklahoma has restored nearly 100 unhealthy streams thanks to water
monitoring and regenerative agriculture. Officials work with farms in the CARE
program to develop conservation plans and share the cost of implementing them.
Greg Kloxin,
who leads the Oklahoma Conservation Commission's soil health program, told KOSU that these nonregulatory, individualized
solutions that have come out of the program make a big difference for
Oklahoma's soil and streams
Here's how they're regenerating the landscape one pasture at a time.
More cemeteries in New England are embracing natural burials. As Vermont Public reports, Green Mount Cemetery and more
like it are burying the dead wrapped in shrouds and laid to rest in wicker
baskets and pine boxes, letting them decompose and avoiding the carbon
associated with conventional burials or energy for cremation.
People have
been buried this way forever. It's the custom in Jewish and Muslim
burials. But the process is new for a lot of cemeteries in the United States.
A 100-acre nature preserve in Hawaii is producing food and medicine and repurposing
invasive species into usable goods. As Hawaiʻi Public Radio reports,
Kōkua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services is the only community
health center in the country to have a large nature preserve as a place for
healing. Herbs to make traditional Hawaiian medicine grow at the preserve,
named Hoʻoulu ʻĀina. And some doctors even
recommend that their patients visit to start their own healing process.
The preserve is helping to highlight all that the forest has to offer the
community.
NPR's Emily Alfin Johnson produced this
piece and NPR's Amy Morgan edited this piece, which
includes reporting from member station newsrooms across the United
States.
ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – From MONGABAY
HAPPY-UPBEAT ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS (Takeaways w/links)
In reversal, Mexico calls for
moratorium on international deep-sea mining
BY ELIZABETH CLAIRE ALBERTS 28
NOVEMBER 2023
Mexico, a nation that previously
supported the development of deep-sea mining, has now called for a moratorium
on this activity in international waters. One environmental expert called
Mexico’s announcement a…
Collaboration key to rediscovery of
egg-laying mammal in Papua’s Cyclops Mountains
BY BASTEN GOKKON 28 NOVEMBER 2023
JAKARTA — Researchers have
credited a strong spirit of collaboration for the success of an expedition in
Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains that uncovered new sightings of a rare egg-laying
mammal and…
Jane Goodall and Dax Dasilva partner
with Amazon Indigenous youth for new Roots & Shoots program
BY LIZ KIMBROUGH 24 NOVEMBER 2023
Renowned primatologist and
conservationist Jane Goodall is bringing her youth program, Roots & Shoots,
to the Brazilian Amazon in partnership with Indigenous leaders and tech
entrepreneur and conservationist Dax Dasilva.…
Indonesia launches new front in
climate campaign focusing on seagrass
BY BASTEN GOKKON 21 NOVEMBER 2023
JAKARTA — Indonesia has launched a
climate mitigation plan focusing on the country’s seagrass meadows, an
overlooked ecosystem that ranks among the most efficient carbon sinks on the
planet.
Dominica set to open world’s first
reserve centered around sperm whales
BY ELIZABETH
CLAIRE ALBERTS 14 NOVEMBER 2023
The world’s first marine reserve
for sperm whales is set to open in the waters off the coast of Dominica, a tiny
island nation in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The…
Mongabay launches Africa news bureau
BY MONGABAY.COM 8 NOVEMBER 2023
In 2023, Mongabay is officially
expanding its coverage of environmental and conservation news in Africa by
launching a news bureau dedicated to producing our renowned and award-winning
brand of journalism…
Galápagos waters yield massive
deepwater corals in latest biodiversity find
BY ELIZABETH
CLAIRE ALBERTS 7 NOVEMBER 2023
A team of international
researchers recently discovered sprawling cold-water coral reefs in the deep
waters around the Galápagos Islands. They found the corals after identifying
marine areas with high wave…
Indonesian activist Gita Syahrani
wins $3m award for work on sustainable growth
BY LUSIA
ARUMINGTYAS 3 NOVEMBER 2023
JAKARTA — Indonesian environmental
activist Gita Syahrani, who has worked for years to push local governments to
adopt sustainable economic policies, has been named a recipient of this year’s
multimillion-dollar…
Sound recordings and AI tell us if
forests are recovering, new study from Ecuador shows
BY LIZ KIMBROUGH 23 OCTOBER 2023
Does planting trees bring back the
animals? Around the world, people are working to restore forests, either by
planting trees or allowing the flora to return naturally. But as the…
Iceland’s whaling paradox
(commentary)
BY MICAH GAREN 13 OCTOBER 2023
As I write this, two whaling ships
have just hung up their harpoons for the season, and we are all left to wonder,
what is next? Was whale number 25…
New electric-blue tarantula species
is first found in Thailand mangroves
BY LIZ KIMBROUGH 9 OCTOBER 2023
Researchers have described a new electric-blue
species of tarantula from Thailand. The vibrant tarantula (Chilobrachys
natanicharum) was known from the pet trade but hadn’t been seen in nature by
scientists.…
Small wins for Indigenous Malaysian
activists in dispute with timber giant
BY DANIELLE
KEETON-OLSEN 4 OCTOBER 2023
Indigenous activists have claimed
two small victories against timber giant Samling in their decades-long battle
to protect their remaining forests and territories in the Malaysian state of
Sarawak. Operating in…
Sumatran rhino birth is rare good
news for species sliding to extinction
BY JEREMY HANCE 3 OCTOBER 2023
We don’t know how many animals are
born every day on our little blue planet. But given the fecundity of insects,
it’s probably in the billions — and maybe in…
Mother Nature Cambodia’s ‘relentless’
activism earns Right Livelihood Award
BY GERALD FLYNN 28 SEPTEMBER 2023
PHNOM PENH — Mother Nature
Cambodia, one of the country’s most prominent environmental activism groups,
was named one of Right Livelihood’s 2023 laureates on Sept. 28, making it the
first…
Indigenous community fighting a mine
in Palawan wins a milestone legal verdict
BY KEITH
ANTHONY S. FABRO 25 SEPTEMBER 2023
PALAWAN, Philippines — In a move
celebrated as a victory by an Indigenous community that since 2005 has been
fighting plans to mine nickel in a protected area, the Philippine…
Panama copper mine to close after
Supreme Court rules concession unconstitutional
BY MAXWELL RADWIN 28 NOVEMBER
2023
The Supreme Court in Panama ruled
that the contract for the country’s largest copper mine is unconstitutional,
requiring it to shut down. Minera Panamá, a subsidiary of the Canadian company…
New calf brings new hope, and new
concerns, for embattled Sumatran rhinos
BY JEREMY HANCE 27 NOVEMBER 2023
The Sumatran rhino became a little
safer from extinction over the Thanksgiving weekend. On Nov. 25, at around 4
a.m. local time, first-time mother Delilah gave birth to a healthy…
Mongabay CEO discusses slowdown in
Amazon loss and other positive news
BY MIKE DIGIROLAMO 21 NOVEMBER
2023
According to data from Brazil’s
National Institute for Space Research (INPE), deforestation in the Brazilian
Amazon has declined by 22% for the year ending July 31, 2023. Mongabay’s CEO
and…
Indigenous farmers’ hard work
protects a Philippine hotspot, but goes overlooked
BY KEITH
ANTHONY S. FABRO 16 NOVEMBER 2023
PALAWAN, Philippines — At dawn, a
breathtaking orange glow bathes Tatandayan, a secluded sitio, or hamlet, on the
slopes of the bioculturally rich Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape. Under
towering trees…
Amazon women create sweet business
success with wild, vitamin-C packed fruit
BY MARIA FERNANDA LIZCANO 9 NOVEMBER 2023
In the village of Tarapacá, a
group of women are working to strike the perfect balance between using the
natural resources of the Amazon rainforest for income and protecting this…
Boost for Sumatran rhino IVF plan as
eggs extracted from Bornean specimen
BY BASTEN GOKKON 8 NOVEMBER 2023
JAKARTA — Conservationists in
Indonesia have announced the successful harvesting of egg cells from a female
Sumatran rhino, a key step in an effort to breed the critically endangered
species…
A mobile solution for Kenyan
pastoralists’ livestock is a plus for wildlife, too
BY DAVID NJAGI 6 NOVEMBER 2023
ENONKISHU, Kenya — Bernard
Leshinga, a Maasai pastoralist from southern Kenya, likes an easy day running
his herding business. But until recently, Leshinga hadn’t figured out how to
help his…
Video: A sanctuary for elephants and
forests in Cambodia
BY JOHN CANNON 31 OCTOBER 2023
Captive elephants often lead
difficult lives. In tourism, logging and roadbuilding, they put in long hours
in hazardous conditions that cause injuries. But since 2006, the Elephant
Valley Project has…
Mongabay wins prestigious 2023
Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication
BY MONGABAY.COM 18 OCTOBER 2023
Mongabay has won the prestigious
Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication for its “outstanding track
record” in communicating issues related to nature and biodiversity, especially
in countries in the Global South.…
How the United Nations, kids and
corporations saved the Red Sea from an oil disaster
BY ELIZABETH FITT 9 OCTOBER 2023
A diverse international coalition
of funders — ranging from national governments to oil companies and even U.S.
schoolchildren — have averted a potentially catastrophic million-barrel oil
spill in the Red…
Cambodia bars green activists from
traveling to accept international award
BY GERALD FLYNN 6 OCTOBER 2023
PHNOM PENH — A court in Cambodia
has denied the requests of three activists from environmental group Mother
Nature Cambodia to travel to Sweden to accept an international award. In…
Ken Burns discusses heartbreak &
hope of ‘The American Buffalo,’ his new documentary
BY LIZ KIMBROUGH 3 OCTOBER 2023
Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns
tells stories that shed light on the complexities and nuances of the United
States’ cultural tapestry. This time, Burns has turned his lens on a symbol…
As climate change hits the Turkish
coast, more marine reserves are needed (commentary)
BY FUNDA KÖK 29 SEPTEMBER 2023
Growing up, I lived in Ankara, far
away from the coast, but the best time of year for me was always the summer
months when I would travel to the…
Video: Rice as a peace offering in
India’s human-elephant conflict capital
BY BISWAJIT DAS, MONGABAY.COM 27 SEPTEMBER 2023
The state of Assam in northeastern
India has one of the highest incidences of human-elephant conflict in the
country, with more than 70 people and 80 elephants dying every year…
Seventy-plus nations sign historic
high seas treaty, paving way for ratification
BY ELIZABETH
CLAIRE ALBERTS 22 SEPTEMBER 2023
Seventy-six countries and the
European Union have now signed the high seas treaty, signaling interest in
ratifying the agreement designed to protect marine biodiver
ATTACHMENT TWENTY – From the Huffington Post
SIX BITS
OF POSITIVE CLIMATE NEWS WHICH MAY HAVE PASSED YOU BY RECENTLY
We've still got
a long way to go – but a little progress is still progress.
By Kate
Nicholson 16/10/2023
03:59pm BST
It really can feel like it’s hard to
come by good news sometimes, especially while international politics are dominating the
news cycle.
So, with that in mind, we’ve put
together a list of some of the better headlines to have emerged in recent weeks
about how we’re (very gradually) starting to actually do something about
the climate crisis.
And, after years of increasingly terrifying warnings about the future of our planet, any
snippet of good news is worth celebrating.
1. We have
actually improved since the Paris climate agreement
Back in 2015, countries around the
world agreed to limit climate change to just 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Fast-forward a few years and,
although we are definitely still not on track to reach that particular target,
we have improved – and significantly.
We were on path to 3.5C increase
in global temperatures by 2100 pre-the Paris agreement, but we’re now on track
to 2.5C overall.
And we’re probably going to
produce 7.5 billion tons less of CO2 between 2015 and 2030, compared
to pre-Paris agreement forecast, due to our use of solar panels, wind turbines
and electric vehicles.
That’s according to the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), released at the end of September.
However, the experts do warn that we
are still a long, long, way off where we nee to be with
everything from solar panel installation to switching to electric cars – but,
our current action means global climate pollution should peak by the mid-2020s.
2. Japan
makes a huge promise to the UN climate change fund
Japan has promised to put 165
billion yen (£906 million) into the UN’s fund to help countries more vulnerable
to climate change adjust.
The extra money has reportedly already helped a billion people,
avoided 2.9 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent being pumped into the atmosphere,
and aided 228 projects across 128 countries.
Tokyo announced on October 5 that it would be
contributing towards the 2024-2027 Green Climate Fund by matching the
commitment the country made for the 2020-2023 funding round.
The decision means Japan is now
one of the fund’s largest donors, after Germany, the UK and France.
3. Coca-Cola
unveils trial to make bottle tops from CO2 emissions
Yep, one of the world’s largest
producers of plastic is funding a three-year trial at Swansea University where
they’ll be making bottle tops out of CO2 removed from the atmosphere.
The Coca Cola company is trying to
reach net zero by 2040 but most of its packaging is still made from fossil
fuels and therefore releases a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere when produced.
In fact, the Global Carbon
Project says plastic-making process is responsible for
nearly 1% of the world’s total CO2 emissions – which is why this technique
could be very promising.
So, how does this technique work?
According to a BBC report, an electric charge goes
through a mix of CO2 (retrieved from nearby factories or its own smoke
emissions) and water to create ethylene, which is then used in bottle tops.
4. Europe’s
disused coal mines
In a twist of fate, abandoned coal mines across Europe are enjoying a
second life as a source of zero-carbon energy – including in the UK.
A project in Gateshead has used
the warm water which has accumulated in the tunnels to heat homes and
businesses for the last six months for 350 high rise homes, a college, art
gallery, office buildings and a manufacturing site.
England’s coal mines flooded after
years of disuse, leaving an estimate two billion cubic metres of warm water to
become naturally warmed by the planet.
It could unlock a huge energy
source lying under a quarter of all homes in the UK, especially former mining
communities, according to news outlet euronews.
The water often contains toxic
compounds, but it is still useful as a means for heat – especially as
temperatures can reach up to 45C at depths of one kilometre.
It works by drilling boreholes to
bring the water up to the surface, and then pushing it through heat pumps and
extractors, before it is sent into heating systems.
The water is then returned into
the mines to be heated again, to make a year-round heating solution.
5. Special
sponges may be able to absorb micro-plastics
@spongebob?
Researchers in China published a study in August which revealed how their
synthetic, incredibly lightweight sponge – made mostly from starch and gelatin
– helps pick up microscopic plastic particles.
In fact, their study found the
sponge removes both micro-plastics and nano-plastics from liquids, trapped in
the sponge’s pores. Depending on the conditions of the liquid, the sponges
could remove up to 90% of the micro-plastics.
And the researchers can tweak the
sponges when they’re being developed to make them more or less absorbent.
They could even be used in washing
machines, to absorb loose fibres from clothing, although the team suggested it
was probably too ambitious to use these to absorb the plastic in the ocean.
6. Oatly
calls for climate labelling on groceries
Oatly – a major producer of
oat drink – is calling for climate labelling to be put
on all food and drink sold in the UK, after publishing a Grey Paper calling for
more transparency on the climate impact.
And, the company’s own research
shows it is backed by UK consumers.
Sixty-two per cent of respondents
said they supported a policy to introduce carbon labelling on food and drink
products, while 55% think companies should be obliged to publish that
information.
Most consumers who responded (59%)
also said they would cut back or stop completely consuming high
carbon-footprint food and drink products.
ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – From ONE TREE
PLANTED
GOOD NEWS! 6 POSITIVE ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS STORIES FROM
NOVEMBER 2023
By Gabrielle
Clawson ● November 23, 2023
GOOD
NEWS FROM THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER
The holiday
season is well on its way! As many of us come together with family and friends
to celebrate Thanksgiving, we want to take a moment to consider all of the
amazing things nature has to offer and celebrate the courageous ways many
people are trying to protect our planet.
While you’re
carving that turkey or going back to the dessert table for a second slice of
pumpkin pie, let’s remember to be thankful for all that is being done on the
ground, in communities big and small, to protect our shared home. As the
holiday season draws near, let's celebrate some positive environmental news
that happened in November –– and keep the impact coming as the year draws to a
close!
1. DIY PARKS
ARE HELPING TURN URBAN SPACES GREEN
Cities are in desperate need of trees
and green spaces, but the cost of getting these spaces established can be a
significant barrier. To expedite the creation of greener urban spaces, many
city dwellers are taking matters into their own hands with DIY parks.
These parklets provide people with a public space
to relax and enjoy different aspects of nature. They are being constructed in
parking lots and unused road areas, and these pockets of green are an accessible
way for people in the city to escape from the concrete jungle.
Green spaces are a crucial part of
maintaining mental and physical health, especially in urban areas. By building
these miniature parks, people everywhere in the city can enjoy them on their
everyday walks. It’s especially helpful for neighborhoods that don’t have a
park nearby and have no means to get to a park. These parklets make enjoying
nature accessible to all, and that is a truly beautiful thing.
2. AI TECH IS
REVOLUTIONIZING WILDLIFE RECOVERY
Within the last few years,
artificial intelligence has flourished. From Siri to many chat AI forums, AI is
currently changing the game in a lot of ways. Now, artificial intelligence
might just become the next big thing for wildfire recovery.
As the Earth continues to warm,
wildfires grow in intensity and severity every year. They burn through large
swathes of land, endangering animals and people alike. Many first responders
put their lives on the line to fight these fires and get them under
control.
The emergence of new AI technology
may just help communities rebuild after these devastating fires. Public safety
teams have been testing a new tool in western states like Oregon and
California. This new tool can determine the amount of the damage, where the
damage occurred, and how severe the damage is, providing a complete picture of
the land in just 24 hours. This new technology could provide a crucial starting
point to ecosystem recovery post-wildfires, helping to promote resilience for
the future!
3. NEST AND
ETSY PARTNERED UP TO CREATE CLIMATE GUIDES FOR ARTISANS
With the holiday season upon us,
Etsy is creating climate guides to help small business owners
protect themselves. Etsy and Nest partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund
to create the climate guides and make them accessible online.
Two guides were made available for
free online, both outlining disaster preparedness and recovery. For many of
these small businesses, without the support of an entire team, navigating
federal programs that offer relief after environmental disasters can be quite
challenging. These guides were created to help these artisans and small
business owners access the support and resources they need in difficult times.
Supporting small businesses is so
important, and that can look like many different things. Whether you choose to
buy holiday gifts only from small businesses, or you leave a kind review on one
of their storefronts, these actions go a long way, and they even help the
planet. Let’s keep supporting these small businesses and artisans and help the
planet while doing so!
4. ONE MAN
SAVED A RARE BUTTERFLY SPECIES
Sometimes, with everything that’s
happening in the world, it’s hard to believe that just one person can make a
difference. We get it. It’s okay to feel that emotional fatigue when the headlines
are bleak, but we believe that the smallest of actions can make the biggest
impact. One person can truly make a difference, and one man in California has just proven that.
A senior biologist at the
California Academy of Sciences, Tim Wong, single-handedly saved a struggling
butterfly species in his home city of San Francisco. The California pipevine
butterfly had all but disappeared in San Francisco, and Wong wanted to remedy
that.
He built enclosures for the
caterpillars, found the native plant they feed on, and allowed them to mate and
reproduce safely. From there the caterpillars began pupating and forming
chrysalis before hatching and continuing the cycle. Conservation can truly
happen in your backyard!
5. CITIES ARE
EXPLORING MORE WAYS TO BUILD PUBLIC PARKS
It is incredibly hard to be
a tree in a city. We all know that. The costs of creating
green spaces in cities continue to grow, making it that much more difficult to
establish them for communities in need. The good news: many cities are starting
to explore new and more cost-effective ways to have green spaces and public parks built for neighborhoods that need
them.
In Hayward, California, after
almost a year of construction, the city debuted its first cost-effective public
park. A strip of land that many drivers zoom past has been transformed into a
tranquil outdoor space, full of flourishing plants and beautiful scenery.
These environments are so important
to local community members, and although the traditional means of creating a
park can be pricey, it can be done beautifully on a budget.
6. YOSEMITE
NATIONAL PARK HOSTS TRASH PICKUP EVENT
Home to granite cliffs and giant
sequoia trees, Yosemite National Park is a place where many
people come to enjoy the beauty of nature. Keeping these parks clean and
litter-free is vital to help preserve these natural spaces. Fortunately, these
national parks are so beloved that people join together annually to help
maintain them.
Every year on National Park Lands
Day, people come together in Yosemite to help preserve the beautiful
picturesque nature of the park. This year, for the day’s 20th anniversary, over
1,500 volunteers came together to clean up this beloved park.
Through this entire event,
volunteers collected 10,432 pounds of trash throughout the park, effectively
helping to preserve and safeguard the natural wonder that is Yosemite. Picking
up trash is an easy and effective way to make an impact on your local
environment! You can stop by a local park any day and help keep it clean for
everyone to enjoy.
We hope that you enjoyed reading
November’s good news stories as much as we enjoyed featuring them! Remember,
there is good in the world if you know where
ATTACHMENT “A” – From COP28 via Guardian U.K.
THURSDAY.TIMELINE
Cop28: key funding deal to help poorer nations cope with impact of climate
crisis agreed – as it happened
This live blog is now closed, you
can read
more on this story here
Updated 3h ago
·
Loss and damage
fund agreed on first day of Cop28
·
UAE pledges
$100m to loss and damage fund
·
Loss and damage
funding arrangement agreed
·
Sultan Al Jaber
officially opens the Cop28 climate summit
·
India's foreign minister
insists coal 'would remain' its main source of energy
·
Delegates hope
for early win on loss and damage fund
·
·
·
Guterres calls
for complete 'phase-out' of fossil fuels
By Damien
Gayle and Alan
Evans
Thu 30 Nov 2023 11.20 EST
Loss and damage
fund agreed on first day of Cop28
It was an action-packed opening
day in Dubai as the
Cop28 conference kicked off, and the world leaders don’t even arrive until
tomorrow.
·
The big news
of the day was that countries reached agreement on
setting up a loss and damage fund to help countries deal with
the impacts of climate breakdown, something that had long been a sticking point
in negotiations
·
The
UAE immediately pledged $100m to
the fund, and was followed by contributions from the EU, led by
Germany, the UK, the US and Japan, though the US in particular were criticised
for their relatively modest pledge
·
The
World Meteorological Organization said that 2023 would be the hottest year ever
recorded. UN secretary-general António Guterres responded to the news by
saying “We are living through climate collapse in real time”
·
A
representative of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said coal is, and will
continue to be, an important part of India’s energy needs
We’ll be back again tomorrow for
day two, when the focus will be on world leaders’ speeches and the official
opening of the conference, led by the UK’s King Charles III.
·
·
Updated at 11.58 EST
The Guardian will be hosting a
livestreamed event on Tuesday discussing the extent to which fossil fuel
companies are able and willing to transition into renewables.
It will feature the Guardian’s
environment editor, Damian Carrington, who will
chair a panel including Tessa Khan, founder and executive director of
Uplift; Christiana Figueres, the former
UNFCCC chief; and Mike Coffin of Carbon
Tracker.
More details can be found here:
Cop28: Can
fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
Jim Skea, the new chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has given an interview to the
Financial Times (£€$) about carbon capture and storage.
Skea is optimistic about the
technological side of things, saying that the key elements have all been
technically proven but that the main barriers to its widespread use lie in the
economics and business models.
It’s one of these large-scale
technologies which probably will not happen unless you really get the right
kind of policy framing to enable it to come forward. It won’t happen just
because the private sector chooses to do it. And also because, if you put
carbon dioxide in the ground, it frankly is of no value to any human on earth,
sitting under the ground. So somebody has to pay to put it there.
Carbon capture and storage is
expected to be a key point of debate during the conference, with major fossil
fuel producers insistent that any agreement to phase out fossil fuels includes
the word “unabated” – ie, the burning of them without the capture of the
resultant emissions.
Skea says he is moderately
optimistic due to the pace of progress:
There are things happening today –
if you had told me 10, 20 years ago what would happen with renewable energy, I would
have fallen off my chair. We have made enormous progress in some areas. But
it’s worthwhile saying that we still have the difficult bit to do.
·
·
A new paper from the Climate
Social Science Network examines the role of Saudi Arabia in
obstructing progress at climate talks over the past few decades.
The key quote the authors
highlight is:
What sets Saudi Arabia apart from
most other countries is that it sees its national interest as best served by
obstructing intergovernmental efforts to tackle climate change
The report finds that the fossil
resource rich country has spent years undermining climate science, and that its
intransigence has provided a useful shield for other countries to hide behind.
The authors warn that the latest
tactics used by the Saudis focus on the promotion of carbon capture and
storage, as well as atmospheric carbon removal. These technologies are still in
their infancy and scientists believe it will be a while until they are viable
at scale, and some say they may not ever play a significant part in climate
mitigation.
The report finds that although
Saudi Arabia has set a target of net zero emissions by 2060,
the country’s teams have opposed
mentions of ‘net zero’, ‘strong emission reductions’, ‘strong, rapid, and
sustained reductions of CO2 and non-CO2 emissions’ and ‘deep reduction’
The authors suggest one process
that could be adopted to prevent Saudi Arabia blocking progress would be to
move away from the need for consensus in the talks, and instead require a
supermajority of 7/8ths of parties. They say this “would capture overwhelming
support across the globe, while sidelining a tiny minority of obstructers.
Unanimity is not required, nor is it compatible with climate action at the
level required.”
·
·
Former UN secretary-general Ban
Ki-moon and Mozambican politician Graça Machel, both members of the Elders
group of former statespeople, have written in the Guardian today urging world
leaders not to squander the opportunities of Cop28.
The Glasgow pact agreed at Cop26
called for a doubling of finance to support developing countries in adapting to
the impacts of climate change and building resilience. Developed countries must
fulfil this commitment. Countries must also adopt an ambitious framework for
the Global Goal on Adaptation to guide action and investment on adaptation. We
urge leaders to seize the moment and send an unequivocal message that we need
urgent, meaningful investments in order to fortify people, economies and
ecosystems against the escalating threats of the climate crisis.
Crucially, the framework must
include robust, quantifiable targets so that we can all track progress over
time, and must include means of implementation – finance, capacity building and
technology transfer – to support the delivery of the framework, so that it
doesn’t become become another hollow promise that is never kept.
Read the full piece here:
To the world
leaders at Cop28 we say: do not squander this chance to get back on track
·
·
The pope, who had been expected to
attend the conference and speak on Saturday, cancelled his visit due to illness
but sent the conference a message from his sickbed.
“May participants in Cop28 be strategists who focus on the
common good and the future of their children, rather than the vested interests
of certain countries or businesses,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).
“May they demonstrate the nobility
of politics and not its shame.”
The Vatican said the pope still
hoped to participate in the conference in some form, but did not say how.
·
·
Updated at 10.32 EST
Fifi Peters of CNBC Africa asks
how the levels of donations to the loss and damage fund were determined,
pointing out the low level of commitment by the US, and the absence of any
pledges from other major emitters such as China and India.
Stiell says the response to the
calls for funding has been unprecedented, and says pledging will continue over
the next two days during the leaders’ summit, as he expects many countries will
want to save their announcements for their moment in the spotlight on stage.
He says he is encouraged by the
pledges so far and that he thinks it bodes well for the next steps of the
process.
·
·
Updated at 10.43 EST
Sophie Mokoena of the South
African Broadcasting Corporation asks what hurdles they foresee coming up in
negotiations concerning the global stocktake – the annual reckoning of how much
progress each country is making towards its climate targets.
Stiell concedes there is a
“massive gap” between where we are and where we need to be.
“There are differing views on how prescriptive
or non-prescriptive the global stocktake should be, so that will be one area of
debate.”
Stiell says there will also be
debate over how forward-looking or backward-looking the stocktake should be. This
is a reference to the debate over how much historical responsibility for
emissions should be considered as part of pledges versus current and future
emissions.
·
·
Updated at 10.42 EST
Time for questions from the press.
Ivan Couronne of AFP asks how much movement Al Jaber had seen from parties on
what they were willing to offer.
Al Jaber responds by saying he
told stakeholders a month ago that he wants an unprecedented outcome for this
conference. He says their ambition is for “the maximum, highest ambition
possible” and that they would leave no stone unturned.
“Compromise is going to be
essential. It is going to be a catalyst and an enabler.”
He vows that we will see “full
transparency and full inclusion” from the UAE.
·
·
Updated at 10.43 EST
He passes on to Hana Alhashimi,
the UAE’s chief climate negotiator. She says the UAE’s negotiating team is
two-thirds female, and two-thirds youth, from a range of diverse backgrounds.
She says that there were more than
160 items on the agenda, and expresses gratitude to everyone involved for
getting that approved in order that they could begin negotiations in a timely
fashion. There had been fears that a lack of agreement on the agenda could
hinder and delay negotiations.
·
·
Updated at 10.43 EST
Next is Majid al-Suwaidi,
the Cop28 director-general,
who lays out the programme for the next couple of days, during which world
leaders and their representatives will descend on the conference.
He also talks up the UAE’s hosting
plans, vowing that it will be “completely inclusive”.
“We have no time for polarisation and
argument; it is time for partnerships, solidarity and action.”
·
·
Updated at 10.08 EST
Al Jaber continues, saying the
loss and damage fund has had $420m pledged to it in the first few hours.
He singles out Germany, the UK,
the EU, the US and Japan for their pledges.
He thanks the delegates for their
attendance, and vows to work “hand in hand with everyone” to deliver “real
action and results”.
·
·
It is now the turn of the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, who
welcomes the delegates.
“I’m sure that most of you feel
what I actually feel. I came into this task with a full understanding of what
it takes to manage this process. I took this task with humility and with a
deeep sense of responsibility and a great sense of urgency. That’s why we have
approached this task in a completely different and unconventional way.
“The extraordinary effort that has
been put into this task, it is paying off. Why so, and how so? The fact that we
have been able to achieve such a significant milestone on the first day of this
Cop is unprecedented. This is historic. The fact that we were able to get the
agenda voted and agreed on without any delay, for those that have been involved
in previous Cops, this is just unprecedented.
“The fact we have been able to
deliver what was promised in Sharm el-Sheikh. The fact that we have been able
to operationalise and pass the threshold that had been associated with the
establishment of this fund [ie the creation of a loss and damage funding
facility] is a historic, unprecedented achievement.
“I feel excited, determined, and
I’m sure most of you feel the positivity, the optimistic environment and
ambience that we are all experiencing here at this very place. I have been to
12 Cops before. Each one had its own unique proposition. I must say though,
never ever did I feel this level of excitement, and this level of enthusiasm
among all sincere and genuine parties involved in this discussion.
“Now the real work begins. I am
determined to demonstrate that this Cop is a different Cop, and this president
is a different presidency. We are laser-focused on keeping [the Paris agreement
target of limiting emissions to] 1.5C [above preindustrial levels] within
reach.”
·
·
Updated at 10.07 EST
The conference has finally begun,
an hour and 45 minutes late. Moderator Alexander Saier apologises for the delay
and introduces the panel, which includes the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, and
the UNFCCC chief, Simon Stiell, who praises the loss and damage funding deal
agreed earlier and thanks the Cop27 hosts Egypt for their work over the past
year.
“This is 30 years’ worth of
discussion which concluded in Sharm el-Sheikh last year, which concluded with
the agreement to establish this funding arrangement.”
But, Stiell explains, over the
past year countries have had to work out how to actually set up the fund.
“Today’s news gives the Cop28
climate conference a running start … we must keep our eyes on the prize and
every second counts.”
“We still have a lot of work ahead
of us. Loss and damage is just one of the negotiating tracks, but the spirit in
which parties have engaged as we ended the pre-sessional week, where
negotiators were engaging and engaging constructively … what is consistent is
that willingness to start these negotiations with a constructive and engaged
outlook. So we need to work and build on what we have seen today as we work
through the 12 or 13 days that are ahead of us.”
·
·
Updated at 10.07 EST
We’re still waiting, so here’s
another of the best dressed conference attendees.
An early frontrunner in this year’s
fashion stakes is Briseida Iglesias, a Guna indigenous leader from Panama, sage
of the songs and other spiritual practices of the Gunadule people.
She is the founder of Bundorgan
Women’s Network, a front line organisation for the revitalisation of ancestral
farming and medicine practices. She is also an expert on the traditional
textiles worn by Guna women as symbol of protection, cultural resistance and
connection with mother Earth.
The conference is still being
delayed – 80 minutes overdue now – but we are assured “they are on their way
and will be here very soon”.
When asked what “very soon” meant,
the Cop28 spokesman
replied “10 to 15 minutes” – the same response he gave an hour ago – which was
met with laughter in the hall.
·
·
British academic Matthew Hedges, who
was imprisoned by the United Arab Emirates for seven months after being accused
of spying, has warned visitors to Cop28 not to fall into the same trap
he did.
He warned attendees to: “take a
clean phone, a new phone with limited access. Do not have social media on your
phone, or if you do, make sure it is a business account, with two-factor
authentication, or something like this, and do the same for the safety,
integrity of your emails.”
He also said attendees should be
particularly careful not to inadvertently put their contacts at risk:
“It isn’t just you, it’s anyone
you are connecting with, because there are laws which restrict and criminalise
working with international organisations that could be perceived to be critical
of the government.”
Dan
Sabbagh has the
full story here:
‘Don’t be
naive like I was’: UK academic advises Cop28 attenders to stay safe
Nina Lakhani
It’s all about fossil fuels. That
was the key message from the Climate Action Network, the world’s largest
coalition of climate NGOs, who used their first daily briefing to echo calls
from António Guterres demanding an agreement on phasing out oil, gas and coal.
“This is going to be a festival of
distraction, of miracle tech fixes including carbon capture and storage which
will be framed as essential. But this is no substitute for the full phase out
of fossil fuels which must be fast, full, fair and funded; it’s about these
four Fs,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager at Oil Change
International, at CAN’s first daily briefing.
It’s hard to stay optimistic
that Cop28 can
achieve the decisive action needed to tackle the climate emergency, given the
host’s intimate relationship with oil and gas, but giving up will play into the
fossil fuel industry’s hands, warned Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International’s
global climate justice lead. “We cannot stop believing, we cannot give up. We
have to get an outcome on fossil fuel phaseout.”
·
·
Long queues have been reported by
attendees at the conference. Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute
tweeted that he had been waiting an hour for registration.
It is still far less chaotic than
the scenes in Glasgow two years ago, where thousands of people were
kept outside for hours, and the notoriously queue-plagued
Cop15 in Copenhagen in 2009. Those in the queues will also be
glad that Dubai is significantly warmer than those venues.
·
·
Nina Lakhani
While we wait for the press
conference to start – now 45 minutes overdue – here’s another entry to the best
dressed competition in the form of Grace Louis, 23, from the Toposa tribe in
South Sudan, where drought and floods are severely affeecting communities.
Grace is a Cop first timer and is
in Dubai representing
the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.
·
The US – which is both the world’s
wealthiest country and its biggest polluter – is coming in for some criticism
for its relatively paltry contribution to the loss and damage fund.
Mohamed
Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, said: “The initial funding pledges are
clearly inadequate and will be a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the
need they are to address. In particular, the amount announced by the US is
embarrassing for president Biden and John Kerry. It just shows how this must be
just the start.
“Although rules have been agreed regarding
how the fund will operate there are no hard deadlines, no targets and countries
are not obligated to pay into it, despite the whole point being for rich, high
polluting nations to support vulnerable communities who have suffered from
climate impacts.
“The US and other rich countries
wanted the fund to be hosted by the World Bank. This has been agreed, but on an
interim basis, and only as long as it operates in a transparent and easy to
access way, something the World Bank is not known for. If it proves unfit for
the task, we will need to set up a separate entity to do the job.
“The most pressing issue now is to
get money flowing into the fund and to the people that need it. The pledged
funds must not just be repackaged commitments. We need new money, in the form
of grants, not loans, otherwise it will just pile more debt onto some of the
poorest countries in the world, defeating the point of a fund designed to
improve lives.”
·
·
Updated at 09.58 EST
Nina Lakhani
Some key points on the loss and
damage funding agreement:
·
The World
Bank will be the interim host for a period of four years, and the fund will
have an independent secretariat with developed and developing countries
represented
·
It’s been
agreed that the fund will have “at least’ $100bn a year by 2030, with
developing countries saying that actual needs are already closer to $400bn
annually. Loss and damage for climate breakdown cost about $1.5tn in
2022, according to one recent study.
·
Payments into
the fund will be voluntary, with developed countries “invited”, not obliged, to
contribute
·
All
developing countries will be eligible to directly access resources from the
fund, with a minimum percentage allocation to the least developed countries and
small island developing states.
·
·
The press conference scheduled for
5pm local time (1pm GMT) has still not begun, and attendees have been told it
is likely to be another 10 to 15 minutes. Restless delegates can be seen pacing
the floors of the conference centre.
The conference – when it does
begin – can be watched here on the official UNFCCC feed:
The term
“loss and damage” has been debated and fought over fiercely since it was first used
by the UN in the Bali Action Plan of 2007. If you’re wondering what exactly it
refers to, my colleague Nina Lakhani has written a handy guide to what it is
and why the entire Cop process hinges on it here:
Why loss and
damage funds are key to climate justice for developing countries at Cop28
·
·
More
reactions are coming in to the the agreement on the operationalisation of the
loss and damage fund.
Ghiwa Nakat, executive
director of Greenpeace MENA, said: “For communities suffering from
climate-related loss and damage every contribution matters. This is the kind of
leadership we expect from the host country and we urge other countries to
follow suit. Rich developed countries must step up with major contributions to
the new fund, and polluting industries must also be made to pay. If the Cop
presidency can build on this with a consensus agreement on a just phasing out
of fossil fuels, Cop28 will
indeed be an historic event.”
Mariana Paoli, Christian
Aid’s global advocacy lead, said: “This time last year, at the start of Cop27
in Egypt, the loss and damage fund was not even on the agenda for that meeting.
So it’s a testament to the determination of developing country negotiators that
we now already have the fund agreed and established.
“The fact
that the World Bank is to be the interim host of the fund is a worry for
developing countries. It needs to be closely scrutinised to ensure vulnerable
communities are able to get easy and direct access to funds and the whole
operation is run with far more transparency than the World Bank normally
operates on. These were the conditions agreed by countries and if they are not
kept to, a separate arrangement will be needed.
“It’s now
vital we see the fund filled. People who have contributed the least to the
climate crisis are already suffering climate losses and damages. The longer
they are forced to wait for financial support to cover these costs, the greater
the injustice. At Cop28 we need to see significant new and additional pledges
of money to the loss and damage fund, and not just repackaged climate finance
that has already been committed.”
Fanny Petitbon, head of advocacy
for Care France, said: “Today is a landmark day for climate
justice, but clearly not the end of the fight. We hope the agreement will
result in rapid delivery of support for communities on the frontlines of the
climate crisis. However, it has many shortcomings. It enables historical
emitters to evade their responsibility. It also fails to establish the scale of
finance needed and ensure that the fund is anchored in human rights principles.
“The loss and
damage fund must not remain an empty promise. We urgently call on all
governments who are most responsible for the climate emergency and have the
capacity to contribute to announce significant pledges in the form of grants.
Historical emitters must lead the way. Financial commitments must not be about
robbing Peter to pay Paul: funding must be new and additional.”
·
·
The US has
announced $17.5m for the loss and damage fund, $4.5m for the Pacific Resilience
Facility which is focused on the island nations in that ocean, and $2.5m for the
Santiago Network, which provides technical support for countries affected by
climate breakdown.
Japan has
also pledged $10m for the main loss and damage fund.
These
significant pledges, which already amount to about $300m, will increase the
pressure on other wealthy nations to contribute to the fund.
·
·
The funding
is starting to roll in. Germany has also announced it will put $100m towards
the loss and damage fund, and the UK has announced £60m ($75m), made up of £40
for the fund and £20m for funding arrangements.
Kate Hampton
of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation welcomed the UAE’s pledge: “Dr
Sultan has managed what no previous Cop president has and got a big decision
agreed on day one. Their $100m is a bold move of south-south solidarity. This
is exciting leadership.”
UAE pledges $100m to loss and damage fund
Immediately
after the announcement that the loss and damage funding arrangements had been
agreed, the United Arab Emirates, which is hosting the talks, pledged $100m to
the fund.
·
·
Loss and damage funding arrangement agreed
Countries have
just agreed on the operationalisation of the loss and damage fund to help
poorer countries deal with the impacts of climate breakdown.
The news drew
a standing ovation from delegates.
The creation of
the fund has long been a stumbling block at climate talks, and the agreement on
the first day of the conference has been tentatively welcomed by many
delegates, although it will not be officially rubberstamped until the close of
the conference.
Some early
reaction:
“The loss and
damage fund will be a lifeline to people in their darkest hour, enabling
families to rebuild their homes after disaster strikes, support farmers when
their crops are wiped out and relocate those that become permanently displaced by
rising seas. This outcome was hard-fought but is a clear step forward.
“The success
of this fund will depend on the speed and scale at which funds start flowing to
people in need. We call on world leaders to announce substantial contributions
at Cop28 – not only to cover start-up costs but also to fill the fund itself.
People in vulnerable countries will face up to $580bn in climate-related
damages in 2030 and this number will only continue to grow.”
– Ani
Dasgupta, President & CEO, World Resources Institute
“Amid the
historic decision to operationalise the Loss and Damage Fund within a year of
its establishment, addressing underlying concerns becomes critical. On one
hand, rich countries have pushed for the World Bank to host this fund under the
guise of ensuring a speedy response. Conversely, they have attempted to dilute
their financial obligations and resisted defining a clear finance mobilisation
scale.
“The
responsibility now lies with affluent nations to meet their financial
obligations in a manner proportionate to their role in the climate crisis,
which has been primarily driven by decades of unrestrained fossil fuel
consumption and a lack of adequate climate finance delivered to the global
south.”
- Harjeet
Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network
International
·
·
Nina Lakhani
Climate
justice advocates have condemned the atrocities in Gaza and called for a
permanent ceasefire, in the first Palestinian solidarity event of Cop28.
“As human
beings, we cannot ignore the absolutely horrendous situation in Gaza. But it is
also not a coincidence that the same countries allowing and supporting Israel
are the same ones blocking progress on climate action,” said Lidy Nacpil,
director of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development and convener of
the Cop28 Coalition. “As the whole world gathers here, it is our responsibility
to talk about what is happening in Palestine.”
The UNFCCC
cut off the livestream as Asad Rehman, director of the UK-based organisation
War on Want, called for a permanent ceasefire and accountability.
“The
Palestinian struggle is woven into every struggle for justice including climate
justice,” he said. “We want an end to ethnic cleansing, an end to the genocide,
an end to war crimes. We want a free Palestine.”
The
livestream was resumed after the organisers and attendees made a lot of noise.
More than
15,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis have died since 7 October. Israel’s
bombardment of the Gaza strip since Hamas’s cross-border attack has led to
widespread food and water shortages, as well as the destruction of agricultural
land and water infrastructure. More than 95% of the water in Gaza is unfit for
consumption, while water salinisation and treatment plants have been shut down
due to fuel shortages imposed by Israel, and in some cases partially destroyed
by the bombardment.
“As
Indigenous people of the world, we are heartbroken to see the genocide and
ecoside in Palestine,” said Mesiah Burciaga-Hameed, who read out a statement on
behalf of the Indigenous people’s caucus. “There is no climate justice without
human rights.”
“There can be
no climate justice on occupied land,” said Dylan Hamilton, a 19-year-old
climate justice and trans rights activist from Scotland. “The youth stand with Palestine.”
The briefing
ended with an emotional address from Tariq Luthun, a Palestinian American from
Friends of the Earth Palestine, who said denying water to people was a form of
collective punishment that has also been used in the US, for example the mass
water shutoffs for overdue bills in Detroit and the lead contamination scandal
in Flint, Michigan.
“What good is
to be found in a green world if the roots are soaked in blood,” said Luthum. “I
reject the notion that some people have to suffer so that others can prosper.”
The event
ended with calls of “Viva viva Palestina”.
·
·
Updated at
09.57 EST
By Patrick
Greenfield
The role that
carbon markets will play in helping countries meet their Paris commitments is
up for discussion at Cop28, and a series of forest deals made by a little-known
member of Dubai’s ruling royal family is causing controversy.
Rights to an
area of land larger than the size of the UK have been sold off to UAE-based
firm Blue Carbon, which is chaired by Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum. So far,
the exploratory deals cover a fifth of Zimbabwe, 10% of Liberia, 10% of Zambia
and 8% of Tanzania, amounting to a total area the size of the UK.
In October,
Blue Carbon signed its latest deal for “millions” of hectares of forest in
Kenya. The company said it was also working on an agreement with Pakistan. More
deals are expected in the coming months. Critics have called them a new “scramble for
Africa”.
Blue Carbon
is not alone. Today, Tanzania National Parks - which cares for famous parks
like the Serengeti and Kilimanjaro - announced it has signed a deal to turn six
protected areas into a 1.8m hectare carbon project, which would make it one of
the largest in the world.
The Guardian
has looked into the Sheikh’s business dealings, with concerns raised about his
involvement selling Russian’s Sputnik V vaccine, acting as a dealmaker with
Ghana, Guyana, Lebanon and Pakistan at lucrative premiums in 2021. One of the
listed Blue Carbon advisors is an Italian fugitive.
Read more
here:
Who is the
UAE sheikh behind deals to manage vast areas of African forest?
·
·
This is Alan
Evans now taking over from Damien Gayle for the rest of the day. You can reach
me at alan.evans@theguardian.com, or on X (formerly Twitter) at @itsalanevans.
Our
reporters Damian Carrington and Nina
Lakhani have
sent updates on the food situation on the ground:
If climate
summits march, like armies, on their stomachs then Cop28 looks in good shape.
Unlike the
first days of the disorganised Cop27 in Egypt, there is actually food. It’s mostly
vegan too, a nod to the enormous impact meat has on the climate. An avocado,
edamame and hummus sandwich was one offering.
It’s not all
cheap, though. A coffee is $6 (£4.75), more expensive even than most cafes in
New York, so delegates without big budgets are coming prepared with packed
lunches and thermoses.
Carnivores
are catered for though, and it’s halal – eg a chicken sausage roll. But it’s a
clear improvement on the meat feast of Cop24 in Poland, and the beefburger vans
of Cop27.
·
·
Updated at 09.57 EST
Nina Lakhani
Fossil fuels
have turned Indigenous communities into sacrifice zones, endangering their
land, water and air and fuelling displacement, one of Cop28’s first briefings
has been told.
Brenna
TwoBears, lead coordinator for the Indigenous Environmental Network in Oregon,
was among Indigenous environmental experts who kicked off the first day of
Cop28. They pledged their support for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
and warned of the dangers market-based false solutions posed to Indigenous
peoples and the global climate.
TwoBears
said:
Indigenous
people support the equitable phase out of coal, oil and gas without loopholes
used to justify delays and false solutions and tech fixes that allow the fossil
fuel regime to continue and grow, and which do not address the climate crisis…
this must be accompanied by the fast track adoption of clean energy, a just
transition in which no community or country is left behind.
Momentum has
been building behind the proposal for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty,
with support from Indigenous organisations and communities facing some of the
gravest threats from extreme weather events and slow-onset climate impacts,
such as sea level rise and melting glaciers.
Eight nations
– Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Niue, Antigua and Barbuda,
and Timor-Leste – have also thrown their weight behind the idea.
Eriel
Deranger, executive director of Indigenous Climate Action who is from the
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, an Arctic community where Canada exploits tar
sands, said:
Carbon
trading depends on the continued growth of emissions that will create more
sacrifice zones. We cannot achieve a just transition without centring climate
solutions on Indigenous and human rights.
By Aletha Adu
Keir Starmer, the leader of the UK’s
opposition Labour party, will have a series of meetings over two days with
heads of states, business leaders and being hosted for an international
investors roundtable on Friday at the Cop28 climate summit.
Starmer will be joined in Dubai by
shadow energy security and net zero secretary, Ed Miliband, and shadow foreign
secretary, David Lammy.
He will use the climate summit to emphasise his view that the push to net zero
is an economic opportunity, and to say Labour is the only UK party with a plan
to pragmatically harness the opportunities of the energy transition.
Starmer aims to draw a dividing line with the Conservative government, noting
that prime minister Rishi Sunak was shamed into going to Cop27 and has used the
year since to double down on his failures, turning off businesses and
investors, failing to cut energy bills and make the UK energy secure. He will
aim to get across that the Tories are more interested in sowing political
division than facing the biggest challenges of the world.
During his visit to the summit, Starmer will set out some of the planks of an
international climate strategy under a Labour government. Earlier this year,
Starmer pledged to “throw everything” at net zero and the overhaul of the UK’s
energy system and industries, promising new jobs in “the race of our lifetime”
to a low-carbon future.
·
Updated at 07.25 EST
Damian Carrington
“We are living through climate
collapse in real time,” UN secretary-general António Guterres has told Cop28 delegates in Dubai, writes
Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington.
He spoke at the launch of
the World Meteorological Organization’s stark State
of the Climate report, which said 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded.
“This year has seen communities
around the world pounded by fires, floods, and searing temperature – and the
impact is devastating,” Guterres said. “Record global heating should send
shivers down the spines of world leaders. And it should trigger them to act.”
The WMO report, timed to inform
the negotiations at Cop28, said climate records had been
shattered in 2023, leaving “a trail of devastation and
despair”.
Data up to the end of October
showed 2023 was about 1.4C (2.5F) above pre-industrial levels, driven by the
continued rise in carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and by the return
of the El Niño climate pattern.
The latter is likely to make 2024 another record year, and bring the
internationally agreed limit of 1.5C (2.7F) ever nearer.
‘Climate collapse
in real time’: UN head António Guterres urges Cop28 to act
·
·
Sultan Al
Jaber officially opens the Cop28 climate summit
Sultan
Al Jaber has
officially opened the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai, after receiving the tiny hammer
that is the symbol of his presidency.
Reuters has filed the first report
of his opening remarks to delegates, based on a text circulated to journalists.
The news agency quotes Al Jaber as saying there were “strong views about the
idea of including language on fossil fuels and renewables in the negotiated
text ... I ask you to work together.”
“Colleagues, let history reflect
the fact that this is the Presidency that made a bold choice to proactively
engage with oil and gas companies,” Jaber said. “We had many hard discussions.
Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.”
Al Jaber noted that many national
oil companies had adopted net-zero targets for 2050. “I am grateful that they
have stepped up to join this game-changing journey,” Jaber said. “But, I must
say, it is not enough, and I know that they can do more.”
While Sultan Al Jaber says some
oil companies have set net zero targets for 2050, those only cover the
emissions from producing the oil and gas.
No companies have committed to
cutting production of the polluting fuels themselves, which is what scientists
are clear is needed.
Indeed, the fossil fuel industry
plans to produce double the amount of
oil, gas and coal than could be burned while keeping under
internationally agreed limits for global heating. And the company with
the biggest net-zero busting plans is
Adnoc, the UAE’s state oil giant, whose CEO is Al Jaber himself.
·
The tiny hammer has been presented
to Sultan Al Jaber, officially
transferring to him the presidency of the Cop process.
·
·
Updated at 05.38 EST
India's
foreign minister insists coal 'would remain' its main source of energy
Even as the Narendra
Modi, India’s
prime minister, prepares to travel to the Cop28 summit, a top official in his
government insisted coal will remain India’s main source of energy for years to
come.
“Coal is, and would, remain an
important part of India’s energy needs,” Vinay Mohan Kwatra, India’s foreign secretary, told
reporters ahead of Modi’s trip to Dubai.
India currently depends on coal
for almost three-quarters of its electricity generation and is adding 17
gigawatts of coal-based power generation capacity at its fastest pace in recent
years to meet a record increase in power demand.
There is hope this year’s climate
talks will include efforts to secure a global agreement on the phase-out of
fossil fuels, of which coal is the dirtiest and most carbon intensive. India
and China have been opposing attempts to block construction of new coal-fired
power stations, according to Reuters.
Kwatra said India expects a clear
roadmap on climate financing at Cop28 and has always been upfront about its support
for a “loss-and-damage” fund aimed at helping countries recover from
environmental degradation caused by industrial development.
“Loss and damage fund will be of
great benefit to developing countries,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
·
·
Updated at 05.38 EST
Nina Lakhani
Delegates are just beginning to
find their way around the Cop28 climate talks venue this
morning. My environment desk colleague Nina Lakhani is there and sent this
dispatch on what it looks like around Expo City in Abu Dhabi.
It’s day one and the sprawling
Expo venue is beginning to fill up with delegates, diplomats and activists from
more than 180 countries, and among them are serious fashionistas bringing some
style to the tense and formal negotiations.
Forget fashion week, the climate
summit is both the place to see international clothing trends – and get to know
the traditional dress of countries, communities and Indigenous territories that
you’ve never visited.
From beaded hijabs, silk saris and
brilliant white dishdashas to Mayan huipiles, Amazonian headdresses, and west
African Ankara wax fabrics, getting to hang out with people from every corner
of the planet is one of the highlights of Cop.
Worst dressed group? The media,
without doubt, though some of our colleagues from Africa, Latin America and
Asia make a lot more effort than us comfort seekers.
English may be the main
negotiating language, wait in line for coffee or the bathroom, and you’ll hear
a glorious array of languages and dialects. It’s outside the formal
negotiations that the power of collaboration and grassroots community building
comes into its own. There’s a lot not to like about Cop but the diversity and
relationship building is a beautiful thing.
Updated at 04.33 EST
Greenpeace has a message for African
leaders heading to Cop28 today:
“Stop False Solutions”.
·
·
Delegates
hope for early win on loss and damage fund
Delegates at Cop28 are hoping to achieve an early
victory on a disaster fund on Thursday before the summit turns its attention to
more contentious areas, such as the future of fossil fuels, Reuters is
reporting.
The news agency says diplomats are
hoping a draft deal on a loss and damage fund can be approved quickly at the
start of the climate talks. The United Arab Emirates’ Cop28 presidency has
already published a proposal for such a fund.
Once an agreement is reached, rich
countries can begin pledging money. Nations including Germany, Denmark and the
Netherlands are expected to announce contributions over the next few days,
European diplomats told Reuters.
“Everyone with the ability to pay
should contribute,” said the EU climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, who said
he wanted to “broaden the donor base beyond the usual suspects, simply because
that reflects the reality of 2023.”
With governments preparing for
long, tough negotiations on whether to agree to phase out coal, oil and gas,
the main sources of carbon emissions, it is hoped an early win on loss and
damage will pave the way for further compromises later on.
·
·
Updated at 04.13 EST
Extinction
Rebellion, the climate
activist campaign, has issued a downbeat assessment of what we can expect
from Cop28.
Some five years after they began
their campaign for action on climate breakdown with their “declaration of rebellion”
outside the UK parliament, XR says we have woken up to a world that “is as bad,
if not worse than we predicted five years ago”, with 2023 set to be classified
the hottest year on record.
In this context … we are once
again seeing world leaders fly, on their private jets, to the next conference
of the parties (Cop) on climate, Cop28. The conference will take place in Dubai
in the United Arab Emirates, a nation built almost entirely on fossil fuel
wealth. Cop28 is led by Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, founder and chair of Abu
Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). which has the largest net-zero busting
plans in the world.
Before it has even begun, it is
clear the Cop process has been captured by the fossil fuel economy. We are
unlikely to see the rapid, just and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels
coming out of this process.
And yet XR says it will not simply
ignore the talks at Cop, and it has issued calls for a number of outcomes it
wants to see, including the honouring of climate finance grants, the urgent
establishment of a loss and damage fund, debt cancellation and a fast, fair
process.
To ignore Cop is to display our
minority world arrogance and play into the hands of the system we are trying to
fix. Those in power have designed Cop to their advantage — of course they want
us to ignore it. Many majority world countries have no choice but to work with
the United Nations (UN) because it is the only space that comes close to global
democracy in which their voices have a presence.
The G77 will be there, and in
Brazil, President Lula is calling for an Amazon Cop in 2030; many movements
come to Cop trying to push for justice.
So XRUK’s position is: Yes, Cop28 is not good enough, but it’s all we’ve got.
·
·
Updated at 03.49 EST
UK schools
union says it is 'deeply concerned' at impact of climate crisis on pupils and
education workers
The trade union representing the
leaders of schools in the England, Wales and Northern Ireland has said it is
“deeply concerned” at climate crisis and the impact it is having on pupils, education
workers and communities across the world.
As part of a submission to
the Cop28 climate
talks by UK trade unions, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT)
called for governments “to prioritise their actions before it is too late”,
pointing out that extreme climate events are disrupting the education of nearly
40 million children a year worldwide.
Helena Macormac, the NAHT’s
international secretary, said:
It is vital that decisive and
substantial collective international actions are taken as a matter of urgency –
the future of our children and young people is at stake.
The UK government has said that
tackling climate change and biodiversity loss is its number one international
priority, yet the lack of investment and sustained joined up policy on this
area would lead us to believe that this is not the case. Climate change is
already having detrimental effect to education working conditions in the UK,
with decades of state neglect of school buildings and classrooms not fit for
purpose in extreme weather events. We are also already seeing an increase in
‘climate refugees’ and displaced pupils impacting on school communities.
It is vital that the pupil voice
is heard within the climate crisis debate, and that they are able to access
climate education – it is they that will pioneer the necessary solutions to the
climate crisis. Governments must realise the integral role that pupils, school
leaders and education providers play in tackling climate change, and work to
deliver a ‘just transition’ for the future.
At the Guardian we’ve been working
hard to get you up to speed with what to expect from Cop28. If you can’t stop to read, you can
listen.
The Guardian’s Science Weekly
podcast this week focuses on everything you need to know about the climate
talks, with host Ian Sample talking to Fiona Harvey, our environment editor and
resident Cop expert.
After a year of record
temperatures, this year’s summit has been called the most vital yet. Fiona
explains why this summit proved controversial before it even began, what the
main talking points will be, and how countries can still collaborate to meet
the goals set out in 2015’s Paris agreement.
Everything
you need to know about Cop28 as the summit begins – podcast
·
·
ActionAid UK
criticises UK's climate action progress, saying it is sending wrong message to
other countries
Rishi
Sunak, the UK
prime minister, will be flying in to Dubai for the start of the Cop28
summit as he tries to burnish his credentials as an international statesman.
But over the past few months, the
UK government has issued more than 100 new licences for oil and gas
exploitation in the North Sea. The development charity ActionAid
UK has
criticised the UK’s progress on climate action, saying domestic policies are
threatening progress on the global stage by sending the wrong message to
countries elsewhere in the world.
In a statement send to the
Guardian, Zahra Hdidou, senior climate and resilience adviser at ActionAid UK,
said:
As Rishi Sunak lands in Dubai, we
are deeply concerned by the message the UK government is sending to countries
in the global south affected by its alarming inaction on climate change. Ahead
of the Cop summit this week, the UK claims that it is more ambitious on climate
than any other major economy, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
As it issues licences for over 100
new oil and gas fields and fails to provide a proper roadmap on how it will
deliver £11.6bn in loss and damage finance to climate-stricken countries, the
UK’s decisions today will continue to cause environmental catastrophe well into
the future and cause immense harm to women and girls disproportionately
affected by climate breakdown.
Attention should also be paid to
the role that the UK’s finance sector, one of the world’s most important, plays
in financing fossil fuel projects, Hiddou said:
The UK is also the heart of the
global financial sector, which our recent research found
has poured hundreds of billions of pounds into fossil fuels and agribusinesses
since the Paris agreement. With UK banks like HSBC and Barclays among the
largest funders of climate chaos, it also has a responsibility to regulate the
sector, ensuring that money stops flowing towards climate-wrecking industries.
Instead of accelerating
investments into fossil fuels and continuing its harmful, polluting legacy, it
should show strong leadership in Dubai and commit to phasing out fossil fuels
entirely.
·
·
Updated at 03.45 EST
The UN
Development Programme has
published a video explainer on the issues at play at this year’s Cop climate
summit. Take a look if you need a quick and easily absorbed rundown of what
delegates will be discussing over the next fortnight.
·
·
The United Arab Emirates, one of
the world’s foremost fossil fuel producing nations, was always going to be an
interesting choice for the Cop28 climate talks. Highlighting the
apparent contradiction is a tweet from one attendee showing this incongruous sight
from her hotel room window.
By Ajit Niranjan
People must balance outrage and
optimism after a “hellish summer” of extreme weather, the UN’s former climate
chief has urged at the start of the Cop28 climate summit, writes
Ajit Narinjan, the Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent.
“We have to keep the outrage
really high because we are so darn late,” said Christiana
Figueres, a veteran
negotiator hailed as the architect of the Paris climate agreement.
She pointed to the weak policies that
governments have set in order to cut planet-heating pollution and the $7tn with
which they directly and indirectly subsidise fossil fuels.
But there were reasons for
optimism that could stop people falling into “a dark rabbit hole”, she added.
“I do make a conscious choice every morning to say: ‘Yes, I know what all the
bad news is’ – that’s easy to get because that just screams at you from
whatever news feed you have – but also, what is positive that is going out there?
What are the disruptive pieces that are real, strong evidence of the fact that
this is changing?”
Speaking to a small group of
reporters on Monday, Figueres highlighted the plummeting cost of renewable
energy and the growth of electric cars as two areas where positive changes were
happening faster and faster.
We have to
balance outrage with optimism, says UN’s former climate chief
·
·
Updated at 03.44 EST
Dawn has broken over the Cop28
climate talks in Dubai. Here are the
first few pictures appearing on the news wires of the scene there this morning
as the conference gets under way.
Updated at 03.35 EST
By Damian Carrington
Simon
Stiell, the
executive secretary of the UN climate convention, the international framework
which governs Cop28, has given a
call to arms to all nations as the summit begins:
This year’s climate conference
comes as the crisis enters a new phase – and shows its full force, harming
billions of people, and costing trillions. Now everyone is on the frontlines.
No country is immune.
Yet most governments are still
taking baby steps, when bold strides are urgently needed. So, the problem is clear:
business-as-usual is breaking our planet. At the Cop28 climate conference,
leaders must get to work fixing it.
It’s great that over 160 world
leaders are coming, but Cop28 cannot be just a photo-op. Leaders must deliver
in Dubai – the message is clear.
They must agree to triple
renewable energy this decade, and double energy efficiency. And Cop28 must show
a clear agreement to leave fossil fuel dependency behind. Only renewable energy
offers safe, affordable, secure energy, as well as far more jobs, stronger
economic growth, less pollution and better health for people in every country.
Developing nations – who did least
to cause the crisis – have been starved of climate justice and resilience for
too long. Last year’s Cop in Egypt delivered an historic loss & damage
fund. This year’s cop in the UAE must put meat on the bone of this fund. That
means putting real money on the table. Table scraps won’t cut it.
In a fractured world, climate
action is a chance to unite around a common cause: survival, justice,
prosperity. In short – Divisions will destroy us. But solutions can save us.
It’s time for us all to get to work.
·
·
Updated at 03.34 EST
Guterres
calls for complete 'phase-out' of fossil fuels
António
Guterres, the UN
secretary general, has said this year’s Cop climate talks should aim for a
complete “phase-out” of fossil fuels, insisting of the 1.5C climate goal: “It
is not dead, it’s alive.”
Speaking to French state-backed news
agency AFP before embarking on his flight to attend the conference in Dubai, Guterres said:
Obviously I am strongly in favour
of language that includes (a) phaseout, even with a reasonable time framework.
We have the potential, the
technologies and the capacity and the money - because the money is available,
it’s a question of making sure it goes into the right direction- to do what is
necessary, not only to keep the 1.5 degrees alive, but alive and well.
The only thing that is still
lacking is political will.
Scientists are increasingly
warning the goal of restricting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial
levels looks ever more unlikely, an outcome that nations have agreed would be disastrous
for human civilisation.
Since the goal was agreed at the
Paris climate talks in 2015, nations’ actions have fallen far short. Some
countries have called for the final statement of Cop28, which requires unanimous agreement,
to explicitly call for a reduction in fossil fuel consumption – which would be
a historic first.
But Guterres went further, telling
AFP a simple promise to reduce fossil fuels would not be enough. “I think it
would be a pity if we would stay in a vague and noncommittal ‘phase-down’ whose
real meaning would not be obvious for anybody,” he said.
·
·
Updated at 03.26 EST
So what is a conference of the
parties? My colleague Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment editor and a veteran
of multiple Cops, has written a handy explainer, setting out what it is all
about. She writes:
For almost three decades, world
governments have met nearly every year to
forge a global response to the climate emergency. Under the 1992 UN framework
convention on climate change (UNFCCC), every country is treaty-bound to “avoid
dangerous climate change” and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
globally in an equitable way.
Cop stands for conference of the
parties under the UNFCCC, and the annual meetings have swung between fractious
and soporific, interspersed with moments of high drama and the occasional
triumph (the Paris agreement in 2015)
and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009). This year is the 28th iteration, and
promises to be a difficult follow-up to last year, when developing countries
celebrated victory on key issues of
climate finance.
For more answers to your
Cop28-related questions, including “Why do we need a Cop anyway?”, read more by
clicking the link below.
What is Cop28
and why does it matter?
·
·
Updated at 03.24 EST
Good morning! This is Damien
Gayle, on the very first day of the 28th conference of parties climate change
summit, or Cop28.
The Guardian will be live-blogging
the negotiations throughout, as always, and we look forward to your
contributions: please email me on damien.gayle@theguardian.com with thoughts
and suggestions. Alan Evans (alan.evans@theguardian.com)
will be taking over the blog later on.
Today, the first day of the
conference, will be focused around the opening ceremony. Joe Biden and Xi
Jinping will not be attending but other world leaders will be arriving today,
including Rishi Sunak.
Negotiators are hoping to make
strong progress this Cop, and Sultan Al Jaber, the president-designate of the
summit, has told my colleague Fiona Harvey that
an “unprecedented outcome” that would keep alive hopes of limiting global
temperature rises to 1.5C is within reach.
But it is all still to play for.
The US’s veteran climate negotiator, John Kerry, speaking to journalists in
Dubai yesterday, said: “I feel confident that we will make progress [at Cop28].
The question is: how much progress?”
FRIDAY
Cop28:
Rishi Sunak says ‘climate politics is close to breaking point’ – as it happened
Updated
6h ago
6h
ago
End-of-day
summary (chronology reversed)
7h
ago
Starmer
accuses Sunak of ‘retreating’ from climate leadership at Cop28
8h
ago
Rishi
Sunak: 'climate politics is close to breaking point'
9h
ago
‘Planetary
emergency’: droughts, the deadliest of disasters
9h
ago
Brazil's
Lula: 'it is not possible to face climate change without combating inequality'
10h
ago
Ursula
von der Leyen calls for world to follow EU with carbon pricing
10h
ago
Leaders
speeches begin with pleas on Palestine and Pacific islands
10h
ago
Summary
13h
ago
King's
climate warnings 'meaningless' unless UK government acts, say climate action
groups
13h
ago
King
Charles tells Cop28 summit 'our own survivability will be imperilled' unless we
'restore nature's economy'
15h
ago
Rishi
Sunak, King Charles and other world leaders fly in to Cop28
King
Charles III and Rishi Sunak
00:01:54
Climate
politics is 'close to breaking point', Rishi Sunak tells Cop28 – see website
for video
Helena
Horton (now) and Matthew Taylor (earlier)
Fri
1 Dec 2023 10.08 EST
From
8h ago
08.44
EST
Rishi
Sunak: 'climate politics is close to breaking point'
Sunak
has declared to Cop that he has watered down UK climate policies, potentially
embarrassing the country on the world stage.
As
other world leaders ask for more action to be taken on the climate emergency,
the prime minister continued his environment rhetoric – which has been condemned
as damaging by environment charities.
“Climate
politics is close to breaking point”, he said, adding that “the costs of
inaction are intolerable but we have choices in how we act”.
Sunak
said that net zero would only be delivered in a way that “benefits the British
people”, adding that “we have scrapped plans on heat pumps and energy
efficiency that would have cost people thousands of pounds”.
He
also highlighted his new nature plan, which has been panned by critics.
Despite
this, he did tell other countries that “the mounting science and evidence of
climate related disasters prove we are not moving fast enough”, and added that
“everyone can do more”.
He
called on major emitters to cut faster and said “the UK is leading the charge”.
Updated
at 09.58 EST
6h
ago
10.08
EST
End-of-day
summary
We
are wrapping up the blog. Here is a refresh of a very busy day at the summit:
Keir
Starmer, the UK opposition leader, has accused Rishi Sunak of “shrinking and retreating”
from showcasing leadership on the global stage at Cop28 and over the climate
crisis. Starmer added he he’d had a “lot of engagement” and many requests for
bilateral meetings, “more requests than we can possible handle”. He added: “The
prime minister said this morning we will be judged by our grandchildren not on
what we said but what we did and what we didn’t do. And therefore, for the
prime minister to reduce this down in the way that he does, the smallness of
his politics is becoming a feature of his politics. We saw it with the Greek
prime minister. We saw it with some of the lines that he was putting out about
‘eco zealots’ as he got on the plane to come here. This is not something to
shrink from, not something to retreat from.”
Sunak
declared to attenders of the summit that he had watered down climate policy in
the UK, drawing anger from politicians and climate experts who said he had
“misread the room”.
World
leaders, particularly those from developing countries at the forefront of the
climate crisis, called on large economies and emitters to take urgent action to
reduce emissions and fund loss and damage.
A
UN report found that droughts were a global emergency causing widespread
famine, and that they were a silent, often ignored, killer.
Brazil’s
president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said it was not possible to tackle the
climate crisis without also tackling inequality. He spoke of climate suffering
in the Amazon, which was experiencing one of the “most tragic droughts in its
history”, while cyclones in the south of Brazil had left a trail of
“destruction and death”.
Greek
people were excited that King Charles wore a Greek-motif tie and pocket square
during his address to the conference – signalling – or so it has been
interpreted – his support for the return to Athens of the Parthenon marbles
after a row over the antiquities this week.
Speaking
of the monarch, his speech was certainly more well-received than Sunak’s.
Charles said alarming tipping points were being reached and that it was greatly
worrying that the world was so far off track in tackling the climate crisis.
“Unless we rapidly repair and restore nature’s economy based on harmony and
balance, which is our ultimate sustainer, our own economy and survivability
will be imperilled,” he added.
Updated
at 10.28 EST
7h
ago
09.59
EST
The
leaders’ speeches are over and I am pretty certain Rishi Sunak is the only one
to have used it as an opportunity to boast about domestic climate policy
rollback. A less tone-deaf leader may have focused on the positive actions
Britain has taken, and urge other countries to follow suit, rather than
doubling down on our regressions. In my personal view, it is quite embarrassing
and sets a bad example for other countries to follow. Why should poorer
countries, which are bearing the brunt of our emissions that are causing
extreme weather events, invest in decarbonising when the British prime minister
will address Cop of all places to trumpet a retreat from net zero policies? It
is a dangerous move to talk about the so-called costs of decarbonisation at a
summit where each country is being asked to do its utmost to prevent climate
catastrophe.
Below
is a summary I wrote in September about Sunak’s net zero rollback to remind you
of the policies we are referring to.
UK
net zero policies: what has Sunak scrapped and what do changes mean?
Read
more
Updated
at 10.32 EST
7h
ago
09.42
EST
Starmer
accuses Sunak of ‘retreating’ from climate leadership at Cop28
Aletha
Adu
Aletha
Adu
Keir
Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of “shrinking and retreating” from showcasing
leadership on the global stage at Cop28 and over the climate crisis.
This
comes after Sunak’s tetchy press conference during which he boasted about UK plans
to water down climate action.
Starmer
made his comments on the first day of the Cop28 summit, which he attended with
the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, and the shadow net zero secretary,
Ed Miliband.
Starmer
said he has had a “lot of engagement” and many requests for bilateral meetings,
“more requests than we can possible handle.”
He
added: “The prime minister said this morning we will be judged by our
grandchildren not on what we said, but what we did and what we didn’t do.
“And
therefore, for the prime minister to reduce this down in the way that he does,
the smallness of his politics is becoming a feature of his politics. We saw it
with the Greek prime minister. We saw it with some of the lines that he was
putting out about ‘eco zealots’ as he got on the plane to come here. This is
not something to shrink from, not something to retreat from.”
Starmer
accuses Sunak of ‘retreating’ from climate leadership at Cop28
Read
more
Updated
at 09.51 EST
7h
ago
09.34
EST
Ed
Miliband, Labour’s shadow energy secretary, was not very impressed by Sunak’s
remarks to the media in which he reiterated his plans to water down the UK’s
domestic climate commitments.
He
described Sunak’s stance on the crisis as a “failure”, explaining: “That was a
complacent performance from a prime minister in denial about the energy bills
crisis at home, and the weakening of the United Kingdom’s standing abroad in
his time in office.
“Working
people are paying the price for Rishi Sunak’s climate failure, in the form of
higher bills, and in the awful costs this leaves our children and
grandchildren. His approach, criticised today by a former Tory prime minister,
is undermining Britain’s energy security.
“Only
Labour can deliver the climate leadership that Britain needs, to cut energy
bills for families, make the UK energy independent, and protect the planet.”
Updated
at 10.36 EST
7h
ago
09.30
EST
UK
prime minister Rishi Sunak is on stage at the world leader’s speeches. He said
“climate science shows we are off track” and that credibility is being
undermined by “climate politics”. This phrase appears to mean, judging by his
press conference earlier, criticising him for his net zero rollback.
Rishi
Sunak
Rishi
Sunak boasted to world leaders that Britain was watering down its climate
commitments. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP
Sunak
criticised the divide between “lofty rhetoric on stages like this” and what
happened on the ground. He pointed out that the UK had “decarbonised faster
than any other major economy”.
The
prime minister again boasted on the world stage that he was “taking a new
approach” to net zero and watering down commitments.
He
outlined the £1.6bn fund announced today, which will include loss and damage
funding as well as support for forests, and said the UK was a leading green
finance centre.
Sunak
added: “I believe we can deliver here in Dubai but we’ve got to work together.”
The
UK PM will not be around to work on the climate negotiations, however, as he is
soon due to board his private jet and return to the UK after spending only
eight hours in Dubai.
He
also said “the debate is too divided”, which may surprise the climate experts
he has repeatedly labelled as “zealots” in recent days.
Updated
at 10.36 EST
7h
ago
09.23
EST
By Bibi van der Zee
Here
are some further extracts from the leaders’ speeches:
The
prime minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, welcomed the summit’s plans to conclude
the first ever global stocktake but the world is not yet on pathway to 1.5C. He
outlined the country’s financial and energy transition plans, including a goal
to make renewable energy its main source of power – Japan is apparently the
world’s third largest market for solar power.
Abiy
Ahmed, president of Ethiopia, said his country had planted 32.5bn seedlings and
was turning a desert into a biodiverse paradise. He said his country is
planting climate resilient plants, and produced 6m hectares of wheat in one
year. He said “this has relieved us from decades of import dependency” and that
they had for the first time become a wheat exporter.
Pedro
Sánchez, president of Spain, said we need to have a “polluter pays” principle,
where polluters pay for the destruction they cause.
It
was pretty difficult for the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, to commit to
anything very significant as he has already stepped down as prime minister and
his appearance follows a divisive and angry election in the tiny but wealthy
country. He contented himself with an exhortation to action, particularly on
behalf of the young people around the world, and an acknowledgment that the
decarbonisation in the Netherlands has been tricky. “It is a painstaking
process but it can be done.” It remains to be seen what the government that
succeeds him – still taking shape after the far-right politician Geert Wilders
won an unprecedented percentage of the vote – will want to do on this topic.
Updated
at 09.54 EST
7h
ago
09.13
EST
Unsurprisingly,
climate experts are not impressed by Sunak’s decision to use Cop as an excuse
to boast about the UK’s back sliding on climate goals.
Tessa
Khan, executive director at Uplift, an organisation campaigning for a fossil
fuel free UK said: “The prime minister has completely misread the room. While
the head of the UN implores countries to urgently phase out fossil fuels, the
UK is one of just a handful of wealthy nations that is continuing to greenlight
major new oilfields.
“Rishi
Sunak’s disinterest in tackling the climate crisis plays badly with voters at
home, but to play dumb at Cop and ignore the UK’s role in literally adding fuel
to the fire, for example by approving the massive Rosebank oilfield, is
diplomatically embarrassing.”
Updated
at 09.54 EST
8h
ago
09.02
EST
Bibi van der Zee
Here
are some more updates from the world leaders.
Nikos
Christodoulides, president of Cyprus, told the summit that his country was
experiencing the effects of climate change – wildfires, floods, and extreme
heatwaves which have destroyed large parts of their forests and had a
devastating effect on livelihoods. The eastern Mediterranean and Middle East
climate change initiative was working on a coordinated response across the
region. “Let us come together to build resilient and green businesses and
communities of the future.”
Vahagn
Khachaturyan, president of Armenia, said it was clear we cannot continue down
the route of using predominantly hydrocarbons for energy. He said we need to
“phase down” fossil fuels – he didn’t say he wanted to phase them out.
Emmanuel
Macron, president of France, went well over his allotted time, delivering a
long and comprehensive analysis of the many changes that need to be made to
international structures so that action on climate change can be optimised. His
speech focused on routes to decarbonisation around the world and pointed out
the dysfunction of the investment systems that run them. He called for a
complete U-turn on the subject of coal, with the G7 countries must set the
example and commit to putting an end to coal. “France will close all plants by
2027,” he promised and the richest countries must help developing countries to
phase out coal.
He
said the world must also stop subsidising new coal power plants and must change
rules when it comes to private financing: “The private sector has no
disincentive, and our investment systems are dysfunctional.”
He
wanted to see the World Trade Organization redraw its trade rules to allow
countries to subsidise green industries and place a tariff on coal.
Updated
at 09.56 EST
8h
ago
08.52
EST
Asked
by the Telegraph about the leaders of the world’s two largest emitters, China
and US not attending the Cop, UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, focused on the
UK’s emissions.
“The
UK accounts for less than 1% of global emissions. We have to acknowledge in
reality that what we do isn’t going to be the difference in terms of our
emissions.”
However,
many argue that the UK needs to lead by example as a wealthy, developed country
which has historically been one of the world’s largest emitters.
Sunak
reiterated net zero needs to be “pragmatic and proportionate” because “we only
account for less than 1% of emissions”.
Asked
by the i about his meeting with Tony Blair, Sunak said “it was nice to see Tony
Blair”.
Asked
by Politico why he is spending more time on a private jet than at Cop, which he
is only going to be at for a matter of hours, he said it is not about the
amount of time spent but the impact made.
He
said he had very useful meetings with people about a “very significant reform
of the global financial system that needs to happen”.
Sunak
said: “I feel very good that it’s been a very productive day.”
Updated
at 09.57 EST
8h
ago
08.48
EST
Now
some questions to Sunak from journalists. He was asked by the BBC if he was
saying the UK has “already done its bit” and the onus was on other more
emitting countries.
He
replied that the UK has more ambitious targets than other countries, adding:
“We are on track to deliver all these targets, we have carbon budgets that we
have met and we are on track to meet the next one as well. With all the
announcements I made earlier, we are still on track to meet these carbon
targets.”
Sky
asked him whether other world leaders had raised concerns about the net zero
rollback. Sunak says: “Hand on heart, 100% no. Not a single leader I have
spoken to today has, because our targets are more ambitious than theirs.”
He
added that other countries are “hugely appreciative” of his work and the UK.
Defending
himself, he added: “I shift a date to be in line with almost every other
country and it’s treated like it’s a rather extreme measure.”
Updated
at 09.57 EST
8h
ago
08.44
EST
Rishi
Sunak: 'climate politics is close to breaking point'
Sunak
has declared to Cop that he has watered down UK climate policies, potentially
embarrassing the country on the world stage.
As
other world leaders ask for more action to be taken on the climate emergency,
the prime minister continued his environment rhetoric – which has been
condemned as damaging by environment charities.
“Climate
politics is close to breaking point”, he said, adding that “the costs of
inaction are intolerable but we have choices in how we act”.
Sunak
said that net zero would only be delivered in a way that “benefits the British
people”, adding that “we have scrapped plans on heat pumps and energy
efficiency that would have cost people thousands of pounds”.
He
also highlighted his new nature plan, which has been panned by critics.
Despite
this, he did tell other countries that “the mounting science and evidence of
climate related disasters prove we are not moving fast enough”, and added that
“everyone can do more”.
He
called on major emitters to cut faster and said “the UK is leading the charge”.
8h
ago
08.11
EST
Here
are some more highlights from the leaders’ speeches, by Bibi van der Zee and I.
Wavel
John Charles Ramkalawan, president of the Seychelles, said he was disheartened
that so many financial commitments on climate change were yet to be fulfilled
despite the urgency of the crisis.
“Small
island developing states are on the frontline of climate change,” he told the
summit. They urgently need money to deal with the coastal erosion they are
seeing. “We made history by operationalising the loss and damage fund on the
first day of this Cop … It is vital that this fund is equitable and genuinely
helpful.” The Seychelles is an environmental champion which already protects
32% of its marine land, but it is categorised as a high-income country, and
Ramkalawan is extremely concerned that this will affect their ability to access
LAD funding.
South
Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Seychelles’ president, Wavel
Ramkalawan.
South
Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Seychelles’ president, Wavel
Ramkalawan. Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
Turkey’s
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was another leader who made comparisons between the
war in Gaza and the climate crisis. He said: “Turkey has stood by peace during
all these crises and works towards finding solutions on the basis of equity. We
approach the issue of climate change from the same perspective.” He pointed out
that Turkey is the second in Europe and ninth in the world for hydro energy. He
said despite the devastating earthquake in February they are managing to keep
on track for their goals and are “healing the wounds” of the disaster while
building “climate and environment friendly” structures.
Zuzana
Čaputová, president of Slovakia, asked the summit: “How much more do we
want to harm future generations?” Her country’s emissions have peaked already,
and are 55% lower than they were in 1980. They plan to use 5% of GDP from
public sources to decarbonise their country and by the end of this year will
stop using coal to generate electricity.
Updated
at 08.27 EST
9h
ago
07.55
EST
Patrick
Greenfield
Steven
Guilbeault, Canada’s environment minister, has said the loss and damage fund
should help rebuild trust between the global north and south after years of
tense negotiations.
Earlier
today, Canada committed US$11.8m to the new fund, which will be housed within the
World Bank. Guilbeault also said his country was happy to support language on
reducing fossil fuels that was consistent with Canada’s 2050 carbon neutrality
target.
“It
is significant. For 30 years, we made absolutely no progress on loss and
damage. We went from nothing about a year ago to a fund and countries pledging
money today. I think for the global south, this is a very significant issue.
Between that and the $100bn dollar goal, I think these are very important
elements that will help restore trust. Trust is the fuel of this process. I
think it bodes well for the next two weeks,” he said.
“It’s not a recognition that we are willing to
take on liability from the results of climate change. But as large emitters, we
have a role to play. We have a greater role to play in supporting the global
south.”
When
asked whether Canada supports language to phase out all fossil fuels, a key
point of contention at the Cop28 summit, Guilbeault said his country was open
to different forms of language in the final text and underscored that fossil
fuel production would have to drop.
“We
support language that’s aligned with our commitment to be carbon neutral by
2050. Whether you want to call it phasing out unabated fossil fuels or say it
in a different way. Some people would like us to say we want to phase out all
fossil fuels but even the IPCC and the IEA still say in a 2050 carbon neutral
world that we will still be using fossil fuels,” he said.
“I
don’t know how realistic it is to say we will phase them all out but what’s
important is that we radically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. And for
those that we are using, we need to capture and sequester the emissions. We
don’t have a choice. But we need to see significant emission reduction from the
oil and gas centre. We can’t do that through abatement technology. There is
going to be a reduction in production,” he said.
Updated
at 08.59 EST
9h
ago
07.50
EST
Veteran
climate reporter Roger Harrabin, who used to work for the BBC and is now
freelance – sometimes writing for the Guardian – points out that only political
journalists, not environmental specialists, have been allowed into an event
with Rishi Sunak. Harrabin says he was “kicked out”.
We
have a brilliant reporter in there and will bring you the news from his press
conference, but it is true that this government often hides from scrutiny and
one of the ways it does that is by barring specialist reporters from its
briefings.
Our
environment editor, Fiona Harvey, has also reported troubles in accessing press
conferences at the summit.
Updated
at 08.32 EST
9h
ago
07.45
EST
The
leader’s speeches continue. Here are some updates from myself and one of my
editors, Bibi van der Zee, who is also listening in.
Santiago
Peña, president of Paraguay, said: “In my country of Paraguay all energy is
clean and renewable. Yes you heard that, it is all clean and renewable.”
He’s
right – the Itaipu Dam, located on the Paraná River, is one of the largest
hydroelectric power plants in the world and generates about 95% of Paraguay’s
electricity, all of which comes from renewable sources.
He
also pointed out that 44% of their land surface is forest, and asked China to
allow Taiwan to be included in the Cop process – the small country is currently
barred at the instruction of the Chinese government.
Kassym-Jomart
Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan, has pledged to join the global methane
pledge. He says there is extraordinary potential for wind and solar in his
country – a key oil exporter - and also points out that Kazakhstan is poised to
become a major source of rare earth minerals. Tokayev is planning to convene a
regional climate summit in 2024 under UN auspices.
President
of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, said that temperatures in his country
have increased by 1.8C already. Serbians experienced uncomfortable “tropical
nights” over 20C degrees celcius for the first time this October, which he said
was “unprecedented for the region”.
Abdul
Latif Rashid, president of Iraq, drew on the history of the region, pointing
out that his predecessors in Mesopotamia, 4,500 years ago, drew up the first
agreement for sharing water resources, and warned the summit that the famous
rivers of Iraq were now under threat from drought linked to climate change.
“The drought in the south of Iraq, the record level temperatures,
desertification, and sand storms have led to economic challenges that resulted
in a larger level of poverty and internal displacement.” He urged the gulf
countries to act as a unified bloc, and condemned the aggressive attack on
Gaza.
Updated
at 08.43 EST
9h
ago
07.36
EST
‘Planetary
emergency’: droughts, the deadliest of disasters
Damian
Carrington
Droughts
supercharged by global heating are “an unprecedented emergency on a planetary
scale”, according to a UN report released on Friday at Cop28, leading to food
shortages and famine.
While
other climate impacts such as heatwaves, wildfires and floods often hit the
headlines, droughts are often silent disasters, the report said, and “the
massive impacts of human-induced droughts are only starting to unfold”.
The
report is from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which is an
international agreement on good land stewardship. It says “few if any hazards
claim more lives, causes more economic loss and affects more sectors of
societies than drought”.
Ibrahim
Thiaw, UNCCD executive secretary, said: “Unlike other disasters, droughts
happen silently, often going unnoticed and failing to provoke an immediate
public and political response. This silent devastation perpetuates a cycle of
neglect, leaving affected populations to bear the burden in isolation.”
“With
the frequency and severity of drought events increasing, as reservoir levels
dwindle and crop yields decline, as we continue to lose biological diversity
and famines spread, transformational change is needed,” he said.
Extreme
droughts that have wrecked the lives of millions of people in Syria, Iraq and
Iran since 2020 would not have happened without human-caused global heating, a recent
study found. The climate crisis also made the record drought across the
northern hemisphere in summer 2022 at least 20 times more likely, scientists
have calculated. Without human-caused global heating, the event would have been
expected only once every four centuries.
“Several
countries already experience climate-change-induced famine,” said the UNCD
report. “Forced migration surges globally; violent water conflicts are on the
rise; the ecological base that enables all life on Earth is eroding more
quickly than at any time in known human history.”
The
report cited a string of scientific findings:
120
million people are people expected to experience extreme drought even if global
temperatures are restricted to 1.5C. Current policies are on track for 3C of
heating, meaning extreme drought for 170 million people
In
China, 15-20% of the population face more frequent moderate-to-severe droughts
this century
1.2
million people in the Central American dry corridor are in need of food aid
after five years of drought, heatwaves and unpredictable rainfall the drought
in the La Plata basin of Brazil and Argentina in 2022 was the worst in 78
years, reducing crop production and affecting global markets
The
report notes that those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis are
most exposed: 85% of those affected by droughts live in low- or middle-income
countries.
The
report said better farming techniques, such as drought-resistant crops, efficient
irrigation methods, no-till farming, can reduce the impact of drought on
farmers’ crops and incomes. The International Drought Resilience Alliance,
which was launched at Cop27, by the leaders of Spain and Senegal at Cop27, is
creating political momentum and mobilising money and technology for a
drought-resilient future and now has 34 member nations.
Updated
at 08.47 EST
9h
ago
07.27
EST
Brazil's
Lula: 'it is not possible to face climate change without combating inequality'
Jonathan
Watts
The
President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said his country was leading by
example: “We have adjusted our climate goals, which are now more ambitious than
those of many developed countries. We have drastically reduced deforestation in
the Amazon and will bring it to zero by 2030,” he said.
Lula,
as he is best known, called for developed countries to invest more to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and to support developing nations who are suffering
from climate impacts.
“The
planet is fed up with unfulfilled climate agreements. Governments cannot escape
their responsibilities. No country will solve its problems alone. We are all
obliged to act together beyond our borders”, he argued.
He
told delegates that the trillions of dollars spent on weapons should be used
against hunger, inequality and climate change: “The world has naturalised
unacceptable disparities in income, gender and race and that it is not possible
to face climate change without combating inequality.”
He
spoke of climate suffering in the Amazon, which is experiencing one of the
“most tragic droughts in its history” while cyclones in the south of Brazil
have left a trail “of destruction and death”.
Although
his energy minister announced yesterday that Brazil will align more closely
with the world’s biggest oil syndicate, Opec, Lula said it was necessary to
“work for an economy less dependent on fossil fuels.”
As
an aside, we have reported on this inequality in our series The Great Carbon
Divide.
Updated
at 08.51 EST
9h
ago
07.10
EST
Helena
Smith
A
royal observation that may have gone unnoticed but over in Greece is causing
waves of excitement.
King
Charles’s address has been well received in Athens and not only for his
dramatic call for climate action to save the planet for future generations. The
Greek media has noted with a touch of euphoria that the British monarch was
donning a Greek-motif tie and breast pocket handkerchief – signalling (or so it
has been interpreted) his support for the return to Athens of the Parthenon
marbles in the wake of this week’s row over the antiquities.
King
Charles III makes his opening address at the World Climate Action Summit at
Cop28 in Dubai
King
Charles III makes his opening address at the World Climate Action Summit at
Cop28 in Dubai. Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA
Charles,
who regularly holidays in Greece, the country of his father’s birth, has
frequently spoken of his great love and passion for all things Hellenic. The
king cannot publicly take a stance in the centuries-long row over whether the
2,500-year-old sculptures are better exhibited in the Duveen gallery of the
British Museum or the Parthenon gallery of the Acropolis Museum beneath the
fifth-century BC temple but in this instance his sartorial choice, say Greeks,
appears a little more than symbolic.
Updated
at 08.49 EST
9h
ago
07.06
EST
World
leaders are using their Cop speeches to push other political points.
Gitanas
Nausėda, president of Lithuania, said the Russian president, Vladimir
Putin, has committed “ecocide” in his war against Ukraine and should not be
about to get away with it.
Emmerson
Mnangagwa, the president of Zimbabwe, said “economic sanctions placed on our
country are hindering climate action”. He demanded the lifting of what he described
as the “heinous sanctions”. These sanctions were put in place by the US, UK and
EU in 2022 because of human rights violations such as murdering protesters, and
not respecting democracy and the rule of law.
Updated
at 08.50 EST
10h
ago
06.54
EST
Ursula
von der Leyen calls for world to follow EU with carbon pricing
Ursula
von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, had a focus on “loss and
damage” in her speech. She said:
At
this Cop we will set a decisive step forward to protect the most vulnerable
citizens worldwide. They suffer loss and damage and we will stand by their
side.
She
added: “Global emissions must peak by 2025, we must phase out fossil fuels and
we must reduce methane emissions”
Von
der Leyen said the EU would contribute to the new loss and damage fund, and
that they’ve pledged more than £270m so far. “We must get the fund up and
running and we must do it fast,” she added.
In
terms of private finance, she said: “We need to reform the international
financial system, we need more carbon pricing.”
Updated
at 06.58 EST
10h
ago
06.49
EST
William
Ruto, the president of Kenya, said that his region was already facing the
horrific effects of climate breakdown.
“In
eastern Africa, catastrophic flooding has followed the most severe drought the
region has seen in over 40 years,” he said, adding that studies indicated
droughts were now more than 100 times more likely in parts of Africa than in
the pre-industrial era.
The
extreme weather this year has “seized lives and destroyed communities” as well
as destroying infrastructure and supply chains.
He
added that the world needs to invest in green energy and other infrastructure
in Africa. “A tendency to ignore Africa’s developmental and industrial needs … is
no longer a tenable position. Turning Africa into a green powerhouse is not
just essential for the continent, it is also vital for global
industrialisation, decarbonisation.”
10h
ago
06.37
EST
David
Cameron, the recently appointed UK foreign secretary (and former prime
minister) seems to be enjoying himself at Cop, shaking hands and beaming his
way around the conference centre. Our environment editor, Fiona Harvey, is, as
we write, sitting just behind him at a press conference and we will find out
from her what he has to say very soon. For now, enjoy these pictures of a very
happy Cameron. He seems delighted to be out of his shed and back on the world
stage.
Updated
at 07.04 EST
10h
ago
06.32
EST
Nina
Lakhani
It’s
now been confirmed that more than 130 prime ministers and presidents today
signed the Cop28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food
Systems, and Climate Action – the first of its kind commitment to adapt and
“transform” food systems as part of broader climate action. But, the
International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (Ipes-Food), an
independent, expert panel on sustainable food systems, points out that the
declaration contains no legally binding commitments. And there are no targets
or clear steps to tackle key climate-related issues such as the crazy amount of
food waste in some countries, the overconsumption of industrially produced meat
and processed foods, and the food industry’s huge fossil fuel footprint.
Lim
Li Ching, co-chair of Ipes-Food and senior researcher for Third World Network
said: “It’s encouraging to see that food systems are finally taking their place
at the heart of climate negotiations and at the highest levels of government.
We cannot meet our global climate goals without urgent action to transform the
industrial food system, which is responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas
emissions and 15% of fossil fuel use. But while this is an essential first
step, the language remains very vague – and specific actions and measurable
targets are conspicuously missing.”
Updated
at 07.10 EST
10h
ago
06.21
EST
Patrick
Greenfield
Zambia’s
president, Hakainde Hichilema, has hit back at suggestions that a wave of
carbon offsetting deals in African countries by a UAE sheikh, which include his
country, are a new “scramble for Africa”.
Speaking
after an EU event on carbon markets alongside Ursula von der Leyen, the Spanish
prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the heads of the World Trade Organization
(WTO), World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Hichilema said his
country lacked expertise on developing carbon projects and needed international
organisations to help.
This
year, the rights over vast tracts of African forest have been sold off in a
series of huge carbon offsetting deals that cover an area of land larger than
the UK to a UAE-based firm called Blue Carbon, with concerns raised about the
previous business dealings of the young Dubai royal behind the agreements.
When
asked about the secretive Blue Carbon deals, Hichilema said they would benefit
local people.
“It
shouldn’t be [a scramble for Africa’s resources]. When someone comes to our
country and brings an idea around carbon, we say that we don’t understand how
to work through this. That is why we have asked the World Bank, the IMF, the
WTO, the African Development Bank to put the technical capacity together,
learning from what the countries of the north have done,” he said.
In
a speech that lacked specifics, Ursula von der Leyen has said carbon markets
and taxation were important for global decarbonisation, including voluntary
carbon markets which have been beset by accusations of poor quality by
scientific research and journalistic investigations.
The
new World Bank president, Ajay Banga, said his organisations would soon be
presenting high-quality forestry projects in three countries that, he hoped,
would help assuage concerns about lack of environmental integrity in forest
carbon projects.
Updated
at 07.21 EST
10h
ago
06.14
EST
Leaders
speeches begin with pleas on Palestine and Pacific islands
Hello,
Helena Horton here, an environment reporter here at the Guardian and I’ll be
blogging throughout the rest of the day. The leaders have started speaking.
Here are a few highlights.
We
are starting with some monarchs – the UK’s King Charles spoke earlier.
Abdullah
II bin Al-Hussein, the king of Jordan linked the climate emergency to the war
happening in Gaza. He said:
“As
we speak the Palestinian people are facing an immediate threat to their lives
and well being. Tens of thousands have been injured or killed in a region
already on the frontline of climate change. The massive destruction of water
makes the environmental threats of water scarcity and food insecurity more
severe.”
He
added that people there are living without clean water and with a bare minimum
of food supplies and points out that climate change exacerbates the destructive
nature of war.
The
monarch asked for more aid to be sent to the most vulnerable and pointed out
that Jordan does not contribute significantly to climate breakdown but is
greatly affected, with water scarcity a real threat.
Tupou
VI, the King of Tonga said it was “painful” for small developing island states
to see that Cop28 “may not be the milestone moment we were all hoping for” and
that progress on the Paris agreement had been far too slow.
Every
year, we hear anguished pleas from those representing small island states who
are literally sinking under the water due to climate breakdown. Unsurprisingly
they have felt ignored as large, wealthy countries continue to belch out fossil
fuels. Tupou said that over 50,000 Pacific island people were displaced every
year as their homes are lost as a result of climate breakdown. He told the
conference: “We are ocean people, the ocean is our lifeblood, it feeds us, is
our mode of transportation and is a deep part of our culture.”
Updated
at 06.24 EST
11h
ago
06.03
EST
Summary
It
has been a busy morning with big name politicians from around the globe
arriving for day two of Cop28.
King Charles addressed delegates telling them “I
pray with all my heart that Cop28 will be [a] critical turning point towards
genuine transformational action.”
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, arrived
for a flying visit but his decision to push ahead with new oil and gas drilling
in the North Sea and rowing back on key climate measures has not got down well.
A new declaration on transforming food systems
has been agreed, the first Cop resolution which directly tackles the
relationship between what we eat and the changing climate.
Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, was due
to arrive with a cadre of administration officials, including Tony Blinken, the
US secretary of state, and Michael Regan, administrator of the EPA.
Updated
at 06.27 EST
11h
ago
05.50
EST
Some
reaction to the new declaration on food that my colleague Nina Lakhani reported
on earlier.
Tom
Mitchell, executive director of the International Institute for Environment and
Development, said:
“This
agreement is a tentative first step in addressing one of the thorniest problems
of the climate crisis – our broken food systems. They are responsible for so
many greenhouse gas emissions, from cutting down forests and clearing land for
animal feed, to the emissions of cattle themselves. It’s staggering there has
been no obligation to include this sector in emissions reductions plans for so
long.
“Government
subsidies have long supported the polluting effects of large scale agriculture,
acting as a hidden brake on climate action. These payments should be redirected
in a way that means people and nature can thrive.”
Patty
Fong, from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, said:
“The
declaration doesn’t set out how governments will tackle food emissions, and
makes no reference to fossil fuels, despite food systems accounting for at
least 15% of fossil fuels burned each year –equivalent to the emissions of all
EU countries and Russia combined. This is a glaring omission.
“However,
the commitment to integrate food and farming into domestic climate action plans
is welcome and long overdue. Over 70% of countries’ nationally determined
contributions lack adequate action on food systems – updating them is where
there is real potential to tackle emissions and unlock climate finance.
“Our
more than two dozen philanthropic members and other partners around the world
are working to catalyse much-needed food system transformation that can help to
phase out dependency on polluting fossil fuels in the sector while improving
health, community wellbeing, and biodiversity.”
Updated
at 06.28 EST
11h
ago
05.34
EST
Some
photographs from today at Cop28 (See
website)
12h
ago
05.04
EST
A
quick analysis shows that while women and girls bear the brunt of the climate
crisis, only 15 out of the 133 world
leaders participating in this year’s Cop28 are women.
Last
year, seven out of the 110 world leaders attending Cop27 were women. So
although there has been a welcome increase since last year, at 11%, women are
still significantly underrepresented.
Helen
Pankhurst, senior adviser on gender equality at Care International UK said:
“Yet again, the red carpet is being rolled out for male leaders at Cop and men
dominate among the senior negotiators. How are we going to achieve a fair
outcome in climate negotiations with such inequity at the top? Women and girls
are the most affected by climate change, yet they are silenced. Invisible. This
must change.”
Updated
at 05.19 EST
12h
ago
04.53
EST
More
from Nina Lakhani on the new food declaration
While
far from perfect, the groundbreaking declaration was widely welcomed by
small-scale and Indigenous farmers – who produce a third of the world’s food –
as well as right to food campaigners, consumer associations and small business
groups.
“The
destruction of nature and climate change threatens food security, rural
livelihoods and nutrition, but our food systems also cause a third of global
emissions and are a primary driver of wildlife loss. It’s about time the Cops
put them on the main menu,” said Hilal Elver, a former UN special rapporteur on
the right to food. “Food and agriculture must be at the heart of new climate
plans and funding if we are to meet the Paris agreement and have enough
nutritious food for everyone.”
Esther
Penunia, secretary-general of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Development,
a regional alliance representing 13 million family farmers, said: “The
declaration is a major milestone on the road towards a more resilient and
sustainable food system. Governments need to work with family farmers networks
to ensure these promises are translated into the concrete policies and funding
needed to support small-scale producers and promote a shift to more diverse and
nature friendly farming, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
says is needed to safeguard food security.”
Other
commitments include a pledge to accelerate and scale science and evidence-based
innovations – including local and Indigenous knowledge – which increase
sustainable agriculture, promote ecosystem resilience and improve livelihoods, including
for rural communities, smallholders, family farmers and other producers.
It’s
been a long time coming but finally, world leaders seem to be catching on to
the fact that achieving the long-term goals of the Paris agreement will be
impossible without transforming agriculture and food systems. Progress on this
is a key area to watch, especially given the power and influence of the meat,
dairy and industrialized farming conglomerates.
Updated
at 05.22 EST
12h
ago
04.50
EST
Nina
Lakhani
World
leaders have signed a declaration on transforming food systems – the first ever
Cop resolution which directly tackles the symbiotic relationship between what
we eat and the changing climate. The resolution recognises that “unprecedented
adverse climate impacts are increasingly threatening the resilience of
agriculture and food systems as well as the ability of many, especially the
most vulnerable, to produce and access food in the face of mounting hunger,
malnutrition, and economic stresses … [we recognise] the profound potential of
agriculture and food systems to drive powerful and innovative responses to
climate change and to unlock shared prosperity for all.”
The
100+ countries to sign the declaration on sustainable agriculture, resilient
food systems and climate action have committed to including food and land use
in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation
plans by Cop30 in 2025.
Globally,
food systems account for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, with
the vast majority coming from industrialised farming, particularly livestock
and fertilisers. The climate crisis is already impacting agriculture and food
security, as extreme weather events like floods, droughts, heatwaves and
wildfires – and slow-onset impacts like sea level rise and desertification –
fuel high prices and food shortages in countries across the world.
12h
ago
04.43
EST
As
the Cop28 conference continues, a new study underlines the growing severity of
the fossil fuel driven climate emergency.
Research
by the short-term climate prediction team at the Institute of Atmospheric
Physics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, finds that after the warmest
summer on record we could be heading for a similarly abnormal winter.
Published
in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, the study predicts the
“imminent maturity of a moderate to strong eastern Pacific El Niño” during the
northern hemisphere winter, creating more record-breaking temperatures in the
coming months. It notes that large parts of Asia and most parts of the Americas
are likely to experience an exceptionally warm winter – and gives a 95% chance
that the global average surface temperature for the 2023-24 winter will set a
new historical record.
Updated
at 05.27 EST
12h
ago
04.33
EST
Oliver
Milman
Kamala
Harris, the US vice-president, arrives in Dubai today with a cadre of
administration officials, including Tony Blinken, the US secretary of state,
and Michael Regan, administrator of the EPA.
Harris
will “highlight the administration’s historic achievements” in combating the
climate crisis when she addresses Cop28 tomorrow, according to a US state
department official. A new US rule limiting methane emissions is expected to be
unveiled tomorrow, to chime with the visit.
Other
developments have been less flattering for the Americans, however. Joe Biden
himself is skipping Cop28 (he took part in the essential business of lighting
the White House Christmas tree yesterday) and his administration is auctioning
off large tracts of public land for oil and gas drilling during the summit.
At
Cop, the pledge made by the US, the world’s leading economy, to the loss and
damage fund was just $17.5m (£13.8m), a figure described as “embarrassing” by
climate campaigners. A group of Republican lawmakers are making the trip to
Dubai, meanwhile, where they will push a contrary message – that Biden is
waging a war on American energy and that China is being let off too easily in
emissions cuts.
Updated
at 05.28 EST
12h
ago
04.11
EST
Helena
Horton
One
may think former prime minister Boris Johnson would have relished the chance to
make an appearance at Cop. Last year he was widely credited with forcing Rishi
Sunak, who had just become prime minister, into going by announcing his
appearance. You’ll remember Sunak banned the king from going and planned on
skipping it himself, before U-turning.
However,
friends of Johnson tell us he isn’t going this year, despite registering and
hoping to, because of the timings for the Covid inquiry. He’s due to appear
next week and is going over his evidence to prepare for what are likely be some
gruelling days of interrogation.
He
would probably much prefer addressing international groups at Cop, where he is
quite well-respected because of his enthusiastic hosting of Cop26, where
pledges for international finance and halting deforestation were made, and for
his public pronouncements on the climate crisis (which did not always match
with his policy). Johnson, who is still said to partly blame Sunak for his
downfall, would also probably have enjoyed usurping the prime minister’s
appearance, particularly as Sunak’s standing on climate has arguably diminished
even since last year, what with his net zero rollback, frequent use of private
jets and descriptions of climate experts as “zealots”.
Updated
at 04.24 EST
12h
ago
04.08
EST
My
colleague Damian Carrington is picking up more frustration with the UK’s stance
on climate action under Sunak.
A
British veteran of UN climate talks has told me: “It doesn’t matter what Sunak says
today.” He said the delegates at Cop28 told him they have seen what the prime
minister has done at home: pushed new oil and gas licences and delayed measures
on electric cars and home heating. “We used to be a climate leader. Now we are
going backwards.”
13h
ago
04.05
EST
Nina
Lakhani
It’s
a big day for food and agriculture at Cop28, with the first ever major
statement by world leaders on food and climate expected this afternoon, with
more than a hundred countries expected to commit to transforming their food and
agricultural systems. The fact that it’s taken so long for a Cop commitment on
food is remarkable given that industrialized agriculture and food systems are
both a cause and casualty of global heating – and could also play a major role
in mitigation.
Like
everything at Cop, the expected commitment seems to have been watered down a
fair bit, but overall small scale farmers, Indigenous groups and right to food
campaigners seem quite positive about what’s to come. Stay tuned for more
details.
Updated
at 04.25 EST
13h
ago
04.03
EST
Downing
Street has also been forced to defend the decision for Sunak, King Charles and
the foreign secretary, David Cameron, to all fly to the climate conference on
three separate private jets.
A
No 10 spokesperson said: “It is in line with the government’s position that we
are not anti-flying. We do not seek to restrict the public from doing so and
it’s important the UK has strong attendance at Cop28 given we continue to be a
world leader in tackling climate change.”
Updated
at 04.26 EST
13h
ago
03.55
EST
King's
climate warnings 'meaningless' unless UK government acts, say climate action
groups
Reaction
to King Charles’s speech is already coming in and it is mainly taking aim at
Rishi Sunak’s record on climate.
Izzie
McIntosh, from Global Justice Now said: “King Charles’s dire warnings are
meaningless unless the UK government backs them up with actions. Instead, Rishi
Sunak has been rolling back net zero plans, expanding North Sea oil and gas,
and is now fiddling the figures on climate finance. Rich polluting countries
saying the right thing while doing the wrong thing has become all too familiar
over 30 years of climate summits – the only difference this time is that in
Charles and Rishi it’s a deceitful double act.”
Zahra
Hdidou, from ActionAid UK said:
“We
welcome King Charles’s keynote speech at Cop and his continued dedication
towards climate action … The irony should not be lost that the king is flanked
at the summit by two men who remain committed to climate wrecking policies. On
one side we have a prime minister who has gone on record as saying he wants to
“max out” North Sea oil and gas – and stands accused by former colleagues as
being ‘uninterested’ in environmental policies. And on the other side, the king
is joined by a foreign secretary who swiftly abandoned his own promise to lead
the greenest government on record just three years after being elected in
2010.”
Updated
at 05.21 EST
13h
ago
03.44
EST
King
Charles said the world was facing a dark choice and asks how dangerous are we
prepared to make it for future generations.
He
said humans were carrying out a vast, frightening experiment, changing every
ecological condition, all at once, at a pace that far outstrips nature’s
ability to cope.
The
conference was an unmissable opportunity to keep common hope alive, he said. “I
can only urge you to meet it with ambition, imagination, and a true sense of
the emergency we face.”
He
said delegates should remember what the indigenous world view taught us “that
we are all connected. Not only as human beings, but with all living things and
all that sustains life … The earth does not belong to us, we belong to the
Earth.”
Updated
at 03.54 EST
13h
ago
03.35
EST
King
Charles tells Cop28 summit 'our own survivability will be imperilled' unless we
'restore nature's economy'
King
Charles is addressing the conference now. He says he was touched to be asked to
speak at the opening of COP21 in Paris, which culminated in the landmark Paris
Agreement, and adds “I pray with all my heart that COP28 will be another
critical turning point towards genuine transformational action at a time when,
already, as scientists have been warning for so long, we are seeing alarming
tipping points being
reached.”
He
says we are seeing alarming tipping points being reached and that is greatly
worried that we are so far off track in efforts to address the climate crisis.
“Unless
we rapidly repair and restore nature’s economy, based on harmony and balance,
which is our ultimate sustainer, our own economy and survivability will be
imperilled.”
Updated
at 03.43 EST
13h
ago
03.32
EST
Damian
Carrington
Damian
Carrington
The
prominent climate scientist, Dr Friederike Otto, at Imperial College London,
has a simple message for Cop28.
“Climate
change is already destroying lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems around the
world. Until we radically cut carbon emissions, extreme weather events will
become more frequent and intense. That means there is a human rights imperative
to phasing out fossil fuels.
“Despite
their carefully crafted, green-washed talking points, fossil fuel companies
will not save the world. Since 2021, we’ve known that no new gas and oilfields
could be developed if the world is to keep warming to 1.5C. But fossil fuel
companies continue to expand their operations, ignoring the suffering of
millions of people around the world, so they can make more money.”
“Climate
negotiations need to be highly sceptical of the influence and involvement of
big oil.”
Cop28
is being run Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of an oil company planning a huge
expansion in production. He says his background is an advantage in bringing
everyone to the climate table.
My
colleague Nina Lakhani has
more on yesterday’s loss and damage agreement.
As the second
day gets under way, the president of the G77 plus China group – the bloc of 135
developing countries which played a key role in yesterday’s historic resolution
on operationalising the loss and damage fund – said the decision sent a clear
political message.
“It was a
milestone in terms of creating a positive mood for the very, very complex
process on the GST [global stock take] that we had ahead of us now. But the
fund needs to be filled up. The pledges announced were a welcome sign, but they
were just pledges and must materialise as soon as possible. And we expect much,
much more because of the impact of loss and damage in developing countries,”
said ambassador Pedro Pedroso of Cuba.
Yesterday’s
pledges by UAE, Germany, the UK and Japan amounted to almost $439m for the
start-up loss and damage fund – not nothing but a drop in the ocean compared
with the $400bn a year of climate related irreversible losses being incurred.
Further
pledges are likely as world leaders take to the stage today and tomorrow, but
some countries have an inglorious track record on repacking existing funding
commitments into new pledges – and a move towards providing loans rather than
grants. “We have seen a lot of recycling of money by developed countries like
the UK outrageously changing its methodology on climate finance. We’re not
naive and we’ll keep a check on that.”
Future loss
and damage will depend on the success of climate mitigation and climate
adaptation measures, which all depend on the global stocktake and climate
finance negotiations under way.
“Mitigation,
adaptation, supporting technology and capacity building are all interconnected
with each other – and loss and damage. In the context of the GST, there has to
be the recognition that the means of implementation is the single most
important cross-cutting factor that will enable developing countries to transition
justly to another development model. So we will be watching the negotiations on
the GST very closely,” said Pedroso.
·
·
Updated at
03.31 EST
From my
colleague Damian Carrington.
Bad news for
Rishi Sunak as he arrives in Dubai today: the UK’s own North Sea regulator has
concluded the new annual oil and gas licensing
rounds Sunak is forcing are unnecessary. The North Sea
Transition Authority, which is charged with maximising oil and gas extraction,
said a mandatory annual process was not needed and undermined its independence.
This was the “unanimous view” of the NSTA board, as the Financial Times reported.
Tessa Khan,
at campaign group Uplift, said the NSTA minutes showed the government “pressed
ahead with a policy that will do significant damage to the UK’s reputation and efforts
to tackle climate change globally, despite being told by the body in charge of
licensing that it is completely unnecessary”. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer,
who, like Sunak, is attending Cop28, has ruled out new licences if
elected, and called Sunak’s move a “gimmick”.
Sunak’s
announcement was widely criticised and runs counter to the International Energy
Agency’s statements that all new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with net
zero goals, and the consensus of scientists that most oil and gas reserves must
stay in the ground to restrict global heating to 1.5C.
·
·
Updated at
03.13 EST
My colleague
Patrick Greenfield reports that the loss and damage commitments – money being
pledged to poorer countries to help them deal with the costs of the climate
crisis – are continuing today after yesterday’s landmark agreement. Canada has
committed $60m to the fund, environment minister Steven Guilbeault announced
outside his country’s pavilion.
That brings
the initial size of the fund to US$489m. €225m ($245m) has already been
committed by the EU, including US$100m from Germany. There is also £60m ($75m)
from the UK, $24.5m from the US and $10m from Japan.
·
·
A little more
from my colleague Aletha Adu on what Sunak said when he landed in UAE this
morning.
Asked who he
meant when he said he was “not in hock to ideological zealots” over climate
change, the UK prime minister told broadcasters in Dubai: “Perhaps the people
protesting outside my house recently. “But there are people who think we should
get to net zero without any regard to the cost on ordinary families. I don’t
think that’s right. “I think we’ve got to be cognisant of the impact of this on
ordinary families up and down the country.”
Sunak
declined to single out China when asked which countries need to do more to
tackle climate change, and heaped praise on Cop28 host the United Arab Emirates.
Pressed on
whether Beijing should do more, the prime minister told reporters in Dubai:
“Everyone collectively needs to do more to make sure that we do reduce
emissions sufficiently.”
Quizzed on scepticism
over a major oil producer hosting the summit, he said: “I actually commend the
UAE for their leadership. “They’ve been particularly strong on the issue of
climate finance.”
The UK has “a
great story to tell” at the Cop28 climate conference in Dubai, Sunak has said.
Challenged over whether his rollback of climate ambition at home makes it
harder to push other countries to do more, the prime minister told
broadcasters: “We have got an incredible track record in decarbonising in the
UK, faster than any other major economy. We should be really proud of that.
“And I’ll be proud of that record at my meetings later today.”
He said other
countries were “deeply appreciative” of the support that they were receiving from
the UK to help them with the transition.
·
·
Updated at
02.44 EST
Sultan Al
Jaber, the UAE president of Cop28, is addressing the conference now
urging delegates to be flexible and to work together during the negotiations. He
says it is essential global south countries do not have to chose between
development and climate action. “let this be the Cop when we deliver on our
promises [of financial support to the those in the global south]” he told
delegates.
He says the
next two weeks will not be easy, adding everyone understands the gravity of the
situation now they need to accelerate progress and push a “positive can do
attitude.”
“Let’s
delivery some good news to the world.”
·
·
While we are
waiting for day 2 of Cop28 to get going this is good read
on what it is all about and why it matters from my colleague Fiona Harvey
What is Cop28 and why does it
matter?
·
Updated at
02.24 EST
My colleague
Damian Carrington reports that the arrival of the world’s leaders at today’s
conference is adding an extra challenge for delegates.. . and journalists.
Cops are
always a marathon for delegates, long days and long walks around the huge
sites. But today is an ultra-marathon for the thousands of attendees. The short
walk from the metro to the venue was blocked off, a security mounted for the
world leaders arriving today. That meant a trek in the sun to even enter the
site. And once in, more barricades have been erected to cordon off the
presidents and prime ministers, turning 5 minute trots into 30 minute slogs.
Updated at
01.48 EST
Rishi Sunak, King Charles and other world
leaders fly in to Cop28
World leaders
and assorted dignitaries are due to fly in to Cop28 today including UK prime
minister Rishi Sunak and
King Charles. My colleague Alehta Adu is with the prime minister
and says he has just touched down.
King Charles,
a long time campaigner on climate issues, is due to give a “call to arms” in
his opening statement to the conference. Sunak on the other hand will have his
work cut out defending a series of policy moves – including a decision to push
ahead with new oil and gas licences in the north sea – that have been widely
condemned by climate experts and campaigners.
Updated at
02.28 EST
Good morning.
This is Matthew Taylor, on the second day of the Conference of Parties 28th
climate change summit, or Cop28.
The Guardian
will be liveblogging the negotiations throughout, as always, and we look
forward to your contributions: please email me on
matthew.taylor@theguardian.com with thoughts and suggestions. Helena Horton
(helena.horton@theguardian.com) will be taking over later on.
Today will
see the formal opening ceremony, where the world’s leaders will be addressing
the conference. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is flying in from the UK,
as is the leader of the opposition Sir Keir Starmer.
Yesterday saw
significant developments at the conference as a deal on a fund for loss and damage
was finally done after many years of discussion; we lost count of the number of
people who called it historic.
A quick
summary of yesterday’s events with the loss and damage fund to help countries deal
with the impacts of climate breakdown the big news of the day;
·
The UAE immediately pledged $100m to
the fund, and was followed by contributions from the EU, led by
Germany, the UK, the US and Japan, though the US in particular were criticised
for their relatively modest pledge
·
The
World Meteorological Organization said that 2023 would be the hottest year ever
recorded. UN secretary-general António Guterres responded to the news by
saying “We are living through climate collapse in real time”
·
A
representative of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said coal is, and will
continue to be, an important part of India’s energy needs
Let’s see
what today brings.
ATTACHMENT “B” – From EURONEWS
FROM REWILDED COAL MINES TO MEGA WIND FARMS: POSITIVE ENVIRONMENTAL
STORIES FROM 2023
By Euronews Green Published on 16/10/2023 - 08:00•Updated
31/10/2023 - 18:19
We're going to be regularly
updating this page with good news about our planet in an effort to combat climate
anxiety.
Eco-anxiety, climate doom, environmental
existential dread - as green journalists, we see these terms used a lot - and
often feel them ourselves.
While there's a lot to be
worried about when it comes to the climate and nature crises, we must not lose
hope - because hopelessness breeds apathy.
The media has an important role
to play in combatting climate doom. It's our job to be truthful and accurate in
our reporting, not trying to downplay or greenwash the situation. But it's also
our job to show that there is hope.
In 2022, as part of our
ongoing effort to tackle eco-anxiety (both that of our readers and our own), we
kept track of all the positive environmental news throughout the year -
racking up over 100 stories of eco-innovation, green breakthroughs and climate
wins.
In 2023, we're confident the good news will
keep on coming, as renewable power soars,
vulnerable ecosystems gain rights, and
climate protocols start to pay dividends.
This article will be regularly
updated with the latest good news. It may be something small and local,
something silly that made us smile, or
something enormous and potentially world-changing.
If you come across a great,
positive story that we haven't covered here - please reach out to us on
Instagram or Twitter to share your ideas.
Positive
environmental stories from October 2023
X101
Peatland, plastic and
phasing-out coal: Here’s why Wales is our Green Country of the Month
Though it may be small, Wales is
one country making moves on climate action.
From challenging Westminster on
net-zero to switching its coal mines for community-owned renewable energy,
here's why it's our Country of the Month for October.
X102
Do heat pumps work in winter?
Experts explain why Nordic countries have installed the most devices
Oyvind Solsta’s “light bulb”
moment with heat pumps came upon reading that the heat they produce far exceeds
the amount of electricity that goes in.
Installing a heat pump in his
house in the hills of Oslo has greatly benefited the 56-year-old communications
adviser for a railways company: improving his comfort, finances and climate
footprint.
Norway is among the countries with
the most heat pumps per capita, along with neighbouring Finland and Sweden.
X103
Going, going, gone: Watch as a
notorious power plant is demolished to make way for offshore wind
For decades, tourists heading to
the New Jersey beach resorts of Ocean City and Cape May saw the towering
smokestack of the BL England Generating Station as they zipped past it on the Garden
State Parkway.
But the oil and coal-burning smoke
stack is no more. It was toppled by 350 pounds (160kg) of explosives last week
to clear the way for offshore wind farms.
X104
‘Let nature take it back’:
Svalbard is rewilding the site of a massive former coal mine
An Arctic mining site in Norway is
being returned to nature in one of the country’s biggest-ever natural
restoration projects.
Svea mine, a 40-minute helicopter
ride from Svalbard’s main town of Longyearbyen, produced 34 million metric
tonnes of coal in its lifetime. Opened in 1917, thousands of people worked
there at its peak with a canteen, airfield, power plant and workshop built on
the site.
It officially closed 100 years
later and now its overgrown railway tracks lead nowhere.
X105
An ambitious plan to save the
world’s oceans: What happened at the IUCN nature conference
The International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has just launched an ambitious new initiative to
protect the world’s oceans.
During the IUCN Leaders Forum,
IUCN President Razan Al Mubarak announced the project which focuses on marine
conservation, ocean renewable energy, shipping, aquatic food, and coastal
tourism.
X106
Kylian Mbappe and team will
travel by train under new climate-conscious French football rules
France’s football teams will
travel to all matches under three hours away by train instead of plane in a bid
to cut carbon emissions.
The country’s football federation
announced the new policy, which applies to all national sides, this month.
X107
'Unstoppable' shift to clean
energy will see demand for fossil fuels peak before 2030, IEA says
Global demand for all fossil fuels
could peak before the end of the decade, according to the International Energy
Agency (IEA).
The agency’s annual World Energy
Outlook finds that the “phenomenal” rise of clean energy technologies like
solar, wind, electric cars and heat pumps is on track to reshape how we power
everything from homes to vehicles and factories.
X108
'Promising' new breakthrough
for recycling EV batteries discovered by Swedish scientists
Swedish researchers say they have
developed a new, more efficient way of recycling electric car batteries.
The method allows for the recovery
of far more valuable metals found in EV batteries.
The process does not require the
use of expensive or harmful chemicals either, the scientists say.
X109
‘A bright future for the
plant’: Giant solar space farm could be orbiting Earth by 2035
A solar space farm designed to
orbit above the Earth could be operational by 2035.
Technology firm Space Solar, based
in Oxfordshire in the UK, says the project could contribute to Britain’s energy
supply in the future.
The 2km-long farm of solar panels
would send energy to receivers on Earth much in the same way as mobile phone
signals.
X110
A ‘luminescent’ crab, doomed
seal and firefly forest: Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023 winners
A "hauntingly beautiful"
photo of a horseshoe crab has snapped up the top prize in the prestigious
Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.
It was taken by French marine
biologist Laurent Ballesta, who won the award for the second time - beating
almost 50,000 other entries from 95 countries.
X112
‘Exactly how we should be
responding to the energy crisis’: UK mega wind farm produces first power
The world’s largest offshore wind
farm under construction has produced its first power.
Dogger Bank wind farm, located in
the North Sea off the UK’s Yorkshire coast, has installed the first of a
planned 277 turbines.
As of 7 October, it is connected to
the UK’s national grid and is providing renewable power to homes and
businesses.
X113
Flooded and forgotten: How Europe's
disused coal mines are being used to heat our homes
The UK’s first large-scale mine
water heat network has been hailed a success, six months after it started
operating.
Gateshead’s project is delivering
hot water and heat to hundreds of homes and businesses in the former coalfield
community. With almost a quarter of Britain’s homes sitting above old mining
tunnels, there’s great potential for this clean source of energy.
Other European countries have been
tapping into it for a while, including the Netherlands and Spain.
X114
Stockholm is introducing a
petrol and diesel car ban in its city centre to slash emissions
Sweden’s capital is banning petrol
and diesel cars from its centre next year in a bid to tackle air pollution.
It’s the first big European capital city to do so.
In place of polluting cars,
traffic councillor MP Lars Strömgren envisions a city with “outdoor seating and
plenty of space for walking and cycling”.
Once the ban comes into force at
the end of 2024, only electric vehicles (EVs) and low emissions gas vehicles
will be allowed to drive in the zone which spans 20 blocks.
X115
From pipe to pint: This
eco-beer is brewed from the water that goes down your sink
The thought of drinking wastewater
is pretty unsavoury, right?
But that’s exactly what one
American brewery is encouraging people to do - and for sound environmental
reasons.
With the help of a clean tech
start-up, Devil’s Canyon brewery has created a beer made using water from the
showers, laundry and bathroom sinks of a San Francisco apartment block.
X116
‘More eyes on us’: Here’s what
being European Green Capital 2023 has meant to Tallinn
Summer 2023 brought a fresh
makeover to Tallinn’s Town Hall square. From June to September, it buzzed with
new life as a temporary park, complete with wooden seating, flowers, saplings
and even a free library for people to peruse.
It’s all part of numerous
city-wide projects accomplished during Tallinn’s year as European Green
Capital. We visited last month to see what the city has achieved while wearing
the crown.
X117
Superfood-based ‘beanless
coffee’ could slash emissions and water use by 94%
A Seattle-based startup backed by some
of the investors behind Beyond Meat has launched the world's first 'beanless
coffee'. Its inventors hope to slash the environmental impact of the popular
drink.
The caffeinated brew uses
superfoods and plant-based waste ingredients like date seeds to mimic the
molecular structure of coffee.
The innovation has caught the eye
of investors, who have poured $51.6 million (€49.1 million) into Atomo
Coffee.
X118
Tallinn: Cars were a status
symbol after the Soviets. Now bike, bus and tram are overtaking
Ten years after making public
transport free, Tallinn's politicians are reinventing the city's roads to
better serve residents - and the environment.
“What the city is trying to do
now, in the belief in the concept of the 15-minute city, is diversify the
purpose of the districts,” Tallinn City Government deputy mayor Vladimir Svet
told Euronews Green on a recent visit.
X119
England bans single-use
plastic: What is and isn’t included in the new rules?
A ban on some single-use plastic
items has just been introduced across England.
It will mean businesses are no
longer allowed to supply some items like polystyrene cups and plastic cutlery.
“This new ban is the next big step
in our mission to crack down on harmful waste,” said Environment Minister
Rebecca Pow.
Positive
environmental stories from September 2023
X9
Baltic Sea wind and a brand
new climate law: Here’s why Estonia is our Green Country of the Month
All European countries are on
unique journeys - some fast, some slow - to reach climate neutrality. But the
nation we spotlighted in September is on a particularly unusual path.
From e-leader to green
frontrunner, here's why this ‘nature rich’ European nation is our Green Country
of the Month.
X9
Saving Brazil’s Amazon: These
tree-hugging AI boxes can detect ‘when destruction starts’
Small, artificially intelligent
(AI) boxes tied to tree trunks in the Brazilian Amazon are the latest weapon
against deforestation.
The boxes sport sensors and
software trained "to recognise the sounds of chainsaws and tractors, or
anything that could cause deforestation," says project manager Thiago
Almeida.
They are being used by scientists
and environmentalists to battle destructive jungle invaders.
X9
This spider’s bite could help
treat erectile dysfunction
Researchers in Brazil are investigating
whether spider venom could help treat erectile dysfunction.
The banana spider’s bite is known
to cause painful, prolonged erections and scientists are now using its venom to
develop a synthetic molecule.
X9
Ireland: Wind generation
exceeds demand for electricity for the first time ever
Wind power generation temporarily
exceeded the total demand for electricity in Ireland for the first time ever.
In the early hours of Tuesday 26
September, wind generation reached a high of 3,642 MW. Though Storm Agnes
brought strong winds across the country, it isn’t unusual for it to reach this
level.
What was unusual was the fact that
it surpassed the demand on Ireland’s electricity grid throughout the entire
island for the first time.
X9
This tech is saving male
chicks from being killed by the egg industry
At the start of this year, France
promised to ban the culling of male chicks in the egg industry. The practice
has been banned in Germany since 2022.
Under the new rules, hatcheries
must use in-ovo sexing to determine the sex of embryos before they are
born.
This company is using artificial
intelligence (AI) to make this crucial animal welfare measure a reality.
X9
Want to work from home all the
time? The climate could be your best excuse
If you work from home, you could
be saving around half the greenhouse gas emissions of your office working
peers, according to a new study.
Employees in the US who work
remotely full time were estimated to cut their emissions by 54 per cent
compared with those working in an office, researchers from Cornell University
and Microsoft found.
X9
Solar panels installed in
remote Arctic community to power green energy transition
Norway has installed the world’s
northernmost ground solar panels in its Svalbard archipelago, a region plunged
in round-the-clock darkness all winter.
The pilot project could help
remote Arctic communities transition to green energy.
Neatly lined up in six rows in a
field, 360 solar panels have begun providing electricity to an old shipping
radio station, Isfjord Radio, now converted into a base camp for tourists.
X9
‘Nature surprises us’:
Scientists in Brazil rediscover tree thought extinct for nearly 200 years
A species of small holly tree last
seen nearly two centuries ago has been rediscovered in Brazil and scientists
say it is an “incredible find”.
The tree, 'Ilex sapiiformis' also
known as the Pernambuco holly, was feared to have been extinct. But it was
recently found in the urban city of Igarassu, in Pernambuco state, by an
expedition that spent six days exploring the region in the hope of locating the
species.
X9
This homegrown tree-planting
scheme wants to tackle carbon offsetting’s greenwashing problem
Homegrown sustainability projects
should replace dodgy carbon accreditation schemes, a UK climate entrepreneur
has urged.
As the race to net-zero heats up,
carbon offsetting programs are becoming increasingly popular.
Promoted by companies as a way to
fight climate change with the click of a button, many of these projects may
actually make global heating worse.
‘The Great Reserve’, an
organisation aiming to plant 100,000 giant sequoias in the UK, hopes to address
the issue.
X9
Solar panels installed in
remote Arctic community to power green energy transition
Norway has installed the world’s
northernmost ground solar panels in its Svalbard archipelago, a region plunged
in round-the-clock darkness all winter.
The pilot project could help
remote Arctic communities transition to green energy.
X90a
Want to sponsor an ocean? This
tiny island nation has come up with a novel conservation plan
The tiny Pacific island nation of
Niue has come up with a novel plan to protect its vast and pristine territorial
waters - it will get sponsors to pay.
Under the plan, which was being
launched by Niue's Premier Dalton Tagelagi on Tuesday in New York, individuals
or companies can pay $148 (€139) to protect 1 square kilometre of ocean from
threats such as illegal fishing and plastic waste for a period of 20 years.
X90b
Some German cities are
offering drivers free public transport. But there’s a catch
Would you give up driving if it
meant free public transport?
Several cities and districts in
Germany are offering drivers unlimited travel on all local and regional public
transport.
The catch? You have to surrender
your driving licence.
X90c
5 years of Fridays for Future:
Researchers say climate strikes bring slow but sure change
This year’s Global Climate Strike
on 15 and 17 September marked the fifth anniversary of the movement started by
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
The protests, organised by the
Fridays for Future group, have seen rapid growth. According to their figures,
some 27,000 people across 150 countries took part in the first strike in August
2018.
The protests are not just reaching
politicians. Researchers throughout Europe are motivated by the strikes: to
both take part and further their own work in the lab.
X90d
What is green methanol?
Denmark launches the world’s ‘first green container ship
The world’s “first green container
ship” was christened in Denmark this morning (14 September) by European
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
Laura Maersk - named after the
Danish company that owns it - will be the first container ship to run entirely
on green methanol.
It’s a promising milestone for the
international shipping industry, which produces around 3 per cent of greenhouse
gas emissions and hopes to reach net zero by 2050.
X90e
Lions, elephants and bears:
Holograms replace live animals in this German circus
Due to concerns over animal
welfare, Germany's Roncalli Circus stopped using lions and elephants in its
shows in 1991.
It went further in 2018 and
completely removed live animals from its programme. Now, the live animals have
been replaced by holograms.
X90f
Fridays for Future: Greta’s
school strikes led a third of Swiss citizens to change their habits
Almost a third of Swiss people
changed their daily habits as a result of Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future
climate strikes, new research has found.
Last month, the global youth movement
- which sees schoolchildren strike to demand action on climate change -
celebrated its fifth anniversary.
Now, a study by the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) has examined the wider impact of these
strikes on people’s environmental choices.
X90g
Just one per cent of textile
waste in Europe is recycled. These robots are going to change that
In the south of France, futuristic
robots are saving tonnes of waste from landfill by ripping up shoes.
Europe currently recycles just one
per cent of its used textiles.
Shoes are composed of multiple difficult-to-separate
materials like polyester, foam and leather, and so are particularly difficult
to recycle.
But the recycling industry is
rapidly innovating.
Launched in Hendaye in southwest
France, Cetia is the world's first ‘innovation platform’ that can automatically
remove the sole of a shoe.
X90h
World record: Wind turbine
generates enough energy in a day to power 170,000 homes
The world’s largest wind turbine
has smashed the record for the most power produced by a single turbine in a
day.
Offshore from Fujian Province,
China, the giant Goldwind GWH252-16MW towers above the sea.
On 1 September, the mammoth turbine
- which has a 252-metre diameter - produced 384.1 megawatt hours (MWh) in 24
hours, as a typhoon hammered southeast China.
This is enough to power roughly
170,000 homes, or 38 million LEDs, or 2.2 million kilometres driven in an
electric car.
X90i
2,000 white rhinos put up for
auction will be released as part of world’s biggest rewilding project
A South African NGO has purchased
the world’s largest captive rhino breeding operation. It now plans to rewild
the animals across the continent.
African Parks stepped in after an
online auction of breeder John Hume’s 2,000 rhinos failed to receive any bids.
Over the next 10 years, the
conservation organisation intends to relocate the animals to protected areas
across the continent to help secure the species’ future.
X90j
EU prepares to push for
‘global phase-out’ of fossil fuels at COP28, draft document shows
Diplomats from the bloc's 27
member states are drafting their position for the summit in Dubai in November,
where nearly 200 countries will try to strengthen efforts to rein in climate
change.
"The shift towards a climate
neutral economy will require the global phase-out of [unabated] fossil fuels
and a peak in their consumption already in the near term," a draft of the
EU's negotiating stance, seen by Reuters, says.
X80Positive
environmental stories from August 2023
X81
‘A sign of the times’: EU
reliance on fossil fuels falls to record low, report reveals
Energy generated by fossil fuels
in the EU hit a record low in the first half of 2023, a new report has shown.
In the first half of 2023, the 27
member states burned 17 per cent less fossil fuels for electricity than during
the same period in 2022.
The study from clean energy think
tank Ember found that between January and June, fossil fuels generated just 33
per cent of electricity - their lowest-ever share of the EU’s power mix.
X82
Watch the pufflings helping
their species stage a comeback in the Atlantic
On remote islands in the North
Atlantic, a unique seabird held its own this year in the face of climate
change.
Atlantic puffins off the coast of
Maine in the US had their second consecutive rebound year for fledging chicks
after suffering a catastrophic 2021, according to scientists who monitor the
birds.
X8
Hidden seals, forest rodeos,
busy bees: A sneak peek at 2023’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year
A tiger cub evacuated from
Ukraine, a healthy coral reef and a forest rodeo are just some of the images
featured in this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.
There have been an incredible
49,957 entries from photographers of all ages across 95 different countries.
They were judged by a panel of industry experts from around the world.
X8
Team wolf and sheep: Meet the
Swiss volunteers camping out on hilltops to keep both animals alive
After centuries of absence, wolves
were first spotted back in Switzerland in 2012.
Since then their population has
continued to grow. It was estimated that there were around two dozen packs at
the start of this year, with some 250 individual wolves counted.
And while nature preservation
groups hail it as a win for nature, farmers aren’t happy as attacks on their
sheep herds have also risen.
Biologist Jérémie Moulin came up
with an idea to protect the wolves, whilst appeasing the farmers.
X8
Saving Mediterranean turtles
and dolphins, one life at a time
Every morning, just as the sun is
rising, teams from the Greek environmental charity ARCHELON survey the beaches
of Kyparissia Bay in the west of the Peloponnese.
It is the largest sea turtle nesting
area in the whole of the Mediterranean, and most of the nests are along a strip
of just 10 kilometres.
And on the area ARCHELON are
surveying there are around 5,000 nests along a 1 2.5 kilometre strip.
X8
‘Dogs with feathers’: Could
your next pet be a chicken rescue from an egg farm?
Commercial hens start laying eggs
when they are about four months old. By 18 months, their output declines and
they are typically sent to slaughter.
Keen to rescue them from this fate
and give them a better life, the British Hen Welfare Trust works to rehome
chickens across the UK.
The charity started in 2005 with the
modest goal of rehoming 100 hens. To date, it has rehomed nearly 1 million of
them.
X8
Meet the company using
discarded oyster shells to cut energy costs and keep France's buildings cool
Cool Roof France (CRF) is on a
mission to reduce the temperature inside buildings by painting roofs white.
The company utilises the more
than 130,000 tonnes of oyster shells thrown away every year in France to
make sustainable and cost effective paint.
X8
Meet the Ukrainian woman
solving the ‘five fear factors’ of wave energy
Wind and solar are increasing in
popularity but as global demand rises, innovation is needed to improve clean
energy production.
71 per cent of the earth is
covered in water yet only around 1.5 per cent of the global energy is produced
through wave power.
In the US, it is estimated that 66
per cent of all energy needs could be met using wave power. So why aren’t we
doing more?
Euronews Green spoke to Eco Wave
Power CEO, Inna Braverman about how she’s taking on the challenge.
X8
In Darwin’s footsteps:
Conservationists embark on 2 year round the world voyage
Almost two centuries after Charles
Darwin's voyage around the world, environmentalists plan to follow in his
footsteps.
They are undertaking a two-year
journey across four continents to study endemic wildlife and boost
conservation.
X8
Montana court rules children
have right to a healthy environment in major blow to fossil fuels
In a landmark legal battle, a US
court has ruled that children have a constitutional right to a healthy
environment.
Young environmental activists
scored what experts described as a ground-breaking legal victory this month. A
Montana judge said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a
clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil fuel development.
X8
‘It wrote me a new life’: Meet
the Mexican woman who opened her heart to hummingbirds
Catia Lattouf has turned her
apartment in Mexico City’s Polanco neighbourhood into a clinic for sick,
injured or infant hummingbirds, about 60 of which currently flit around.
Her improvised clinic supports
institutions like the Iztacala campus of Mexico’s National Autonomous
University, which sometimes refers cases to her due to a lack of resources,
time and space.
India slashes emissions rate
by one-third in 14 years, putting it on track to reach UN goal
India's greenhouse emissions rate
dropped by 33 per cent in 14 years, officials report.
This drop is faster than expected
and is down to a rise in renewable energy generation and forest cover,
according to two officials who have seen the latest assessment made for submission
to the United Nations.
The report's findings showed India
well on the way to meeting a commitment to the United Nations Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC), to reduce emissions intensity by 45 per cent from the
2005 level by 2030.
X8
France is raising taxes on
flights to pay for trains
France will increase taxes on
flights to invest more in its railways, the country’s Transport Minister
Clément Beaune has announced.
The move aims to make train travel
more appealing by closing the price gap between airline tickets and train
tickets.
X8
‘We have to make sure the
whole city is green’: How can we improve access to green spaces in Europe?
Aside from their cooling effects,
green spaces are linked to increased happiness, better mental health, increased
social interactions and lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
And the good news is that over
eight in ten Europeans say green spaces and nature are easy to access,
according to a new Eurobarometer poll.
Here's which European countries
have the best access to green spaces and what we can learn from them.
X8
‘Humanity flourishes in
community’: Locals fix their broken items for free at this repair cafe
“It’s abhorrent seeing things
thrown away,” says Chris Murphy, the organiser of Tunbridge Wells Repair Cafe.
Chris is the type of person who
goes to the dump and leaves with more things than he went with. He makes do and
mends items when they’re broken. And he enjoys bringing people together.
So when he learnt about repair
cafes from a friend back in 2019, his next step was a no-brainer.
“I thought well, we don’t have
one, I'll start one,” the 51 year old from Tunbridge Wells, UK tells Euronews
Green.
X8
Free food: Geneva’s community pantries
use the sharing economy to prevent food waste
In an effort to cut waste, a
Geneva nonprofit is rolling out street-side, free-access refrigerators where
people can give and take food that might otherwise perish.
The project launched a year ago with
a single fridge outside a community centre. The first fridge helped save around
three tonnes of food from going to waste last year.
X8
France to end non-essential
printing of paper receipts
The end of the systematic printing
of paper sales receipts has come into effect in France. This measure, which
also applies to bank card receipts, has been taken in the name of the
environment.
X70 Positive
environmental stories from July 2023
X71
Deutschlandticket: Germany’s
€49 ticket pushes passenger numbers up 25% on local train services
A scheme to increase the uptake of
public transport in Germany has been hailed as a “huge success”.
The €49 a month
‘Deutschlandticket’ has led to a 25 per cent rise in passengers on national
railway company Deutsche Bahn's regional services, according to DB Regio CEO
Evelyn Palla.
X72
Solar, €49 train tickets and
home energy efficiency: Why Portugal is our Green Country of the Month
This month, we’re recognising the
efforts of a country which has brought forward some crucial decarbonisation
targets. It’s seeking to boost renewables, and help citizens on their own
journeys to sustainable living.
Here’s why Portugal is our Green
Country of the Month for July.
X7
A giant water battery inside a
mountain will help Scotland hit net zero
The Scottish government has given
the green light to expand a hydro storage plant in the west of the country.
Renewable power developer Drax
wants to build a new £500 million (€581 million) development in their existing
Cruachan facility.
Authorities have approved the
plans, which will also help Scotland in its bid to reach net-zero targets.
X74
Six reasons to be hopeful
about the future of food
According to UN estimates, one
third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) come from the global
food system.
Food production uses 70 per cent of
the world’s freshwater too, yet the World Food Programme estimates that nearly
a third of the food we grow is lost or wasted each year.
While these issues may seem
insurmountable, there are still reasons to be hopeful about food’s future.
X75
'A blessing': Wounded soldiers
help US scientists to save coral reefs
A group of US Army veterans
wounded in combat are working to restore coral reefs off the southern tip of
Florida, USA.
The mission is twofold: save coral
threatened by disease and rising sea temperatures, and help veterans heal
wounds - both physical and emotional.
X7
India, Germany, Poland: All
the ways in which countries are harnessing solar power for railways
An Indian railway network is
installing over 1,000 hectares worth of solar energy.
The Central Railway, one of 18
rail ‘zones’ in the country, has committed to developing 1 megawatt (MW) of
solar units at 81 spots throughout its network.
It’s part of a growing trend of
railways using their large land portfolios to go greener and help meet national
renewable energy goals.
X7
Feeding daffodil extract to
cows could reduce methane emissions
Daffodils, which are grown at
higher altitudes, hold a secret power. They produce a crucial medical compound
that is a key component in a drug used in the management of Alzheimer's.
But that's not all. Recent studies
reveal another astonishing benefit. Early evidence shows high altitude
daffodils produce an extract which, when fed to cows, has the unique ability to
reduce their methane emissions.
X7
At this farm in Portugal’s
Alentejo trees get to retire and pigs go on maternity leave
Herdade de S. Luís is part of the
vast estates of Montado, an ancient cultural landscape rolling from the hills
down to the plains of Alentejo that combines trees with livestock and crops.
“Montado is the perfect system
because it allows us to integrate different land uses,” says Francisco Alves,
the property’s owner.
“The animals help prevent fires
and can fertilise the soil. They feed on acorns, and also benefit from the
shade of oak trees.”
X7
'The more you install, the
cheaper it gets’: Wind and solar to produce 33% of global power by 2030
Wind and solar projects are on
track to account for more than a third of the world's electricity by 2030, a
report by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) said on Thursday.
This signals that the energy
sector can achieve the change needed to meet global climate goals.
Sultan al-Jaber, president of the
next UN climate summit, COP28, earlier this year called for a tripling of
renewable energy generation by 2030 to curb greenhouse gas emissions and help reach
goals set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
X7
EU to push for fossil fuel
phaseout ‘well ahead’ of 2050 at COP28 climate summit
The EU is pushing for a global
pledge to phase out the unabated use of fossil fuels “well ahead of 2050” at
COP28, according to climate chief Frans Timmermans.
Timmermans explained that this
would mean eliminating emissions from the oil and gas sector and products sold
by oil and gas companies. It will also require an end to the use of coal.
X7
This high speed train could be
the first to be powered entirely by renewable energy
California’s long-awaited high
speed train will be solar powered, according to the California High-Speed Rail
Authority.
To power this behemoth of a train,
44 megawatts of energy, theoretically generated by 552 acres of solar panels
will be required. On board batteries will aim to store 62 megawatt hours of
power.
X7
Can you change a polluting
industry from the inside? Ex aviation, mining and gas employees speak out
The world will need an army of
green collar workers, from solar panel engineers to public transport drivers,
if net zero ambitions are to be met.
This emerging workforce is
growing; by 2050, it’s estimated that there will be 300 million such jobs
worldwide.
And many of those roles will be
filled by people making a green transition in their own careers. It's a shift
that has been rapidly picking up pace since we spoke to oil and gas workers in
2021.
X7
Huge mineral discovery in
Norway could supply battery and solar panels for the next 50 years
Huge phosphate deposits discovered
in southwestern Norway could be large enough to supply electric vehicles, solar
panels and fertiliser for at least 50 years.
The valuable ore was discovered in
2018 by Norge Mining, who revealed in May that they’d found 70 billion tonnes
of the material.
Phosphate is rich in phosphorus
which is a key component of many green technologies, as well as fertiliser. The
find comes at a crucial time when Europe has been facing supply issues.
X7
Brazil Amazon deforestation
drops 34 per cent under Lula
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon
dropped by a third during the first six months of President Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva’s term, according to government satellite data.
From January to June the
rainforest had alerts for possible deforestation covering 2,650 square
kilometres, down from 4,000 sq km during the same period last year under former
leader Jair Bolsonaro.
This year's data includes a 41 per
cent plunge in alerts for June, which marks the start of the dry season when
deforestation tends to jump.
X7
Inside the factory making
‘tri-brid’ electric trains that could revolutionise transport in Europe
Only around 60 per cent of
Europe’s lines have been electrified so far. To upgrade all of the
railways in Europe could take decades and the cost would be enormous.
To help reduce emissions using
Europe’s limited infrastructure, Hitachi Rail has developed its Masaccio
tri-brid train. Euronews Green went to their factory in Pistoia, Italy to learn
more.
X7
What is water cremation? UK to
offer eco-friendly burial alternative for the first time
The UK will offer water cremation
for the first time this year, following rising demand for more environmentally
friendly end of life options.
When you die there’s currently
only two options in most of Europe - burial or a traditional fire cremation.
But new options are being
explored.
X60 Positive
environmental stories from June 2023
X 6
Austria is our Green European
country of the month - here’s why
Countries across Europe are racing
to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and avert the worst effects of the
climate crisis. This has thrown them into a new kind of healthy rivalry with
each other.
This June, we highlighted a
European country that is making good progress on a number of key climate
fronts: Austria, a small but mighty nation right at the heart of the continent.
Here's why it's our Green Country
of the Month.
X 6
Fountain of youth: Living near
a green space can reduce your biological age by 2.5 years
A new study has shown that having
access to parks and community gardens in your neighbourhood can slow biological
ageing.
A joint Spanish and American
research team found that people living near green spaces are on average 2.5
years biologically younger than those who do not.
“Living near more greenness can
help you be younger than your actual age,” said Kyeezu Kim, the study’s lead
author and a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School
of Medicine.
X 6
This ‘extinct’ earless dragon
has been spotted in a secret location after going missing for 50 years
A tiny earless dragon which experts
thought was extinct has been spotted for the first time in over 50 years.
The Victorian grassland earless
dragon - native to east Australian grasslands - was last spotted in the wild in
1969.
Conservationists feared for the animal’s
survival and previously made “considerable but unsuccessful efforts” to locate
the species. Now, they’ve discovered a small population.
X 6
Only the super wealthy stand
to lose money from shutting down fossil fuels, study finds
Scaling down fossil fuels would
have hardly any financial impact on the vast majority of people, new research
reveals.
Oil and gas companies are the
single biggest driver of global heating. But opponents of the renewable
transition often claim that cutting down fossil fuel production will be hugely
expensive - and hit ordinary people in the pocket.
New research sends this argument
up in smoke.
X 6
Church of England divests from
fossil fuels after oil and gas companies fail on climate
The Church of England is divesting
from oil and gas after accusing fossil fuel companies of stalling on net zero
plans.
The church’s Pensions Board will
divest its holding in Shell over what it said were insufficient plans to align
its strategy to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The Board has around 1.35 million
pounds (€1.58 million) invested in Shell of its total 3.2 billion pounds in
investments.
X 6
New EU law to force smartphone
makers to build easily replaceable batteries
The European Union will soon
require smartphone manufacturers to let users replace their batteries.
The tough new rules - endorsed by
the European Parliament in June - could save millions of phones from landfill.
Every year, more than 150 million
smartphones are thrown away. Making batteries more easy to replace could stem
this deluge of e-waste.
X 6
Paris Olympics to give waste a
second life with recycled plastic chairs
Spectators at the Paris 2024
Olympic Games will sit on chairs made of plastic recycled from local bins.
As well as combating a shortage of
raw materials for plastic, the initiative is part of wider efforts to
reduce the environmental footprint of the Olympic Games.
Around 11,000 seats will be made
from recycled materials.
X 6
Animal rights groups
'thrilled' to see Iceland's summer whaling season suspended
Iceland has suspended whaling
until the end of August in the name of animal welfare.
A full ban could eventually be
enforced, according to Iceland's Food Minister Svandis Svavarsdottir.
"If the government and
[hunting] licensees cannot guarantee the welfare requirements [according to
Iceland's Animal Welfare Act], this activity has no future," said
Svavarsdottir.
X 6
UN adopts world-first treaty
to protect marine life in seas outside national boundaries
Only 1 per cent of the world's
vast ocean areas were protected - until now.
The first-ever treaty to protect
biodiversity in waters outside national boundaries, known as the high seas, has
been adopted by UN members.
The UN's chief hailed the historic
agreement as giving the ocean "a fighting chance".
X 6
Climate 'victory': Swiss
citizens vote in favour of new law to reach net zero emissions by 2050
The Swiss people have voted yes to
a new climate law that will see the country cut net greenhouse gas emissions to
zero by 2050.
A majority of 59 per cent of
voters approved the government’s Climate Protection Targets, Innovation and
Strengthening Energy Security Act on 18 June.
Almost three-quarters of people
(74 per cent) backed it in the canton of Geneva, following a record-breakingly
warm spring for the wealthy European nation.
X 6
Meet the cattle
breeders-turned-conservationists protecting Colombia's Amazon wildlife
In the rural area of San José de
Guaviare, Colombia, is 40 hectares of reborn jungle.
Up until a decade ago, the forest
looked completely different - it was a pasture full of cattle.
The co-founder of the La Nupana
nature reserve, Dora Sánchez, moved from the centre of the country to the
jungle region in 1997. Like most of the settlers, her family - the Zapatas
- started livestock farming.
In 2012, she started planting
native trees on her 56 hectares of pasture as an “experiment to set up
agroforestry systems”.
X 6
London's solar street: How two
artists crowdfunded renewable energy for their neighbours
Sick of eye-watering energy bills
and keen to combat climate change, two London artists have made it their
mission to bring solar power to their street.
The couple have raised money for
the project in eye-catching ways, including spending three cold winter weeks
sleeping on the roof of their house.
The stunt helped them crowdfund
£113,000 (€132,000), which they are now using to install solar panels on dozens
of houses in north London.
X 6
A green oasis: How Nairobi’s
world-only national park benefits lions, giraffes and people
Did you know Nairobi is the only
capital city in the world that has a national park in it?
The park is a vast reserve that
covers 117 square kilometres and is a haven for wildlife, including lions,
rhinos, giraffes, buffalos and various species of antelope.
But experts say Nairobi National
Park is faced by a myriad of threats, including pollution, human-wildlife
conflict, infrastructure development and poaching.
X 6
A foliage-filled tram and free
plants: How Antwerp is encouraging residents to be urban gardeners
If you hopped on the tram in the
Belgian city of Antwerp last week and you might have found yourself in a
surprising verdant paradise.
The car running on line 1 had been
transformed into a lush mobile garden for a day, with plants squeezed into
every available space.
Between the seats, in the panels
separating the windows and even on the roof, leafy decorations sprouted.
It was a joy to ride, but it was
also part of a scheme to make citizens more green and encourage residents to
take up urban gardening.
X 6
Glastonbury’s ‘biggest fan’:
UK festival gets an eye-catching 28 metre wind turbine
It’s not as if Glastonbury
Festival goers need another reason to feel delighted by this year's line-up.
But the likes of Lizzo, Lana Del
Rey and Sir Elton John are being joined by one very prominent guest at Worthy
Farm: a pink and purple 28-metre wind turbine.
Octopus Energy erected the tall
turbine on 13 June, in a move they say will help make Glastonbury 2023 the
greenest yet.
X 6
Toyota announces new electric
car battery which could cut charging time to under 10 minutes
Toyota has announced its plans to
make an all solid-state battery as part of its ambitious plans for battery electric
vehicles.
The announcement comes amid
mounting criticism that Japan’s top automaker needs to do more to fight climate
change.
Toyota Motor Corp. said it's
aiming for a commercial solid-state battery as soon as 2027.
X 6
Magicians, engineers or agents
of chaos? On the rewilding estate giving refuge to beavers
A fifth generation son of the
Argaty estate near Stirling, Bowser (39) fought hard for the farm to become the
first privately owned place to relocate beavers in Scotland.
In total, 14 beavers have been
released on the estate since the Scottish government allowed the animals to be
translocated from conflict areas on the River Tay.
“I thought it might have been one
big explosion of biodiversity,” says Bowser of the ecological benefits of
beavers. “But it’s more like a series of small interventions; hundreds of
little explosions going off with this accumulative effect.”
X 6
Meet the ex-poachers restoring
the Indonesian coral reefs they destroyed
Twenty years ago, the coral reefs
in the waters of Spermonde Islands in Indonesia were nothing more than debris.
Poachers bombed and poisoned
corals to catch fish - methods ruled illegal by the government and punishable
by up to six years in prison.
Now, the same poachers have become
conservationists, working together to rehabilitate the corals they
destroyed.
X 6
Why a ‘virgin’ crocodile
pregnancy has ‘tantalising’ implications for dinosaur researchers
In the first known case of a
‘virgin birth’ among the species, a crocodile has been found to have made
herself pregnant.
The 18-year-old American crocodile
was kept away from other crocodiles in a zoo in Costa Rica. But that didn’t
stop her producing a fully formed foetus inside one of her eggs in 2018.
Five years later, researchers have
determined that the foetus was 99.9 per cent genetically identical to the
mother, confirming it had no father.
X 6
Wind and solar overtake fossil
fuels in the EU as energy transition hits ‘hyperdrive’
Wind and solar produced more
energy in the EU during May than all fossil fuels combined, according to energy
think tank Ember.
This is the first full month on
record where these renewables produced more power - with almost a third of the
bloc’s electricity coming from wind and solar. Fossil fuels generated a record
low of 27 per cent.
“Europe’s electricity transition
has hit hyperdrive,” says Ember’s Europe lead Sarah Brown. “Clean power
keeps smashing record after record."
X 6
A real material for the
future’: Could homes made of fungi slash emissions from construction?
Almost 40 per cent of annual
global CO2 emissions are attributed to the built environment, according to the
International Energy Agency (IEA). Of these, 11 per cent are a result of
manufacturing building materials such as steel, cement and glass.
Architects and scientists are
working on ways to reduce the climate impact of these important materials. But
low-carbon alternatives are needed to build a greener future.
One material that’s showing real
promise in the world of construction is fungus.
X 6
The eagles have landed:
widowed white-tailed eagle finds new partner in Ireland
A male white-tailed eagle who had
been living alone for four years after his partner died from avian flu has met
a new partner - and the pair now have two new chicks.
The male eagle was released in
2008 by Ireland's National Parks and Wildlife Service as part of a programme to
reintroduce the white-tailed eagle to the Emerald Isle.
He had previously partnered with
another eagle and they produced chicks - the first hatching and fledgling in
the country for 110 years.
X 6
The world’s most sustainable
beer - and how to make it at home
Bottles, cans and kegs filled with
liquid all carry significant weight. According to the Impact CO2 carbon
footprint calculator, packaging and transport account for 70 per cent of the
environmental impact of a litre (around two pints) of beer.
So if we can reduce the packaging
size and therefore transport demands, we can massively reduce the impact of the
beer industry.
And this is exactly what the Neuzelle
brewery in Germany is trying to do.
Positive
environmental stories from May 2023
X 5
Iceland is our Green European
country of the month - here’s why
Iceland generates more than 86 per
cent of its electricity from renewable sources according to Eurostat and around
66 per cent of this comes from its geothermal resources.
Not only does this hot water power
homes, but it also supplies some of Iceland’s most popular tourist attractions
including the famous Blue Lagoon.
X 5
‘Clean energy is moving fast’:
Solar set to overtake oil in investments for the first time ever
Solar energy investments are
expected to overtake oil for the first time ever this year, according to the
International Energy Agency (IEA).
A new report from the agency says
spending on clean energy technology is now significantly outpacing spending on
fossil fuels. This is due to affordability and security concerns triggered by
the global energy crisis.
X 5
Turtle power: Panama gives
legal rights to sea turtles, protecting against pollution and poaching
@ Growm-up mutant lawyer turtles?
A new law guarantees sea turtles
in Panama the right to live and have free passage in a healthy environment.
It “will allow any Panamanian
citizen to be the voice of sea turtles and defend them legally,” says Callie
Veelenturf, who founded a group that works to protect leatherback turtles and
pushed for the legislation.
“We will be able to hold
governments, corporations and public citizens legally accountable for
violations of the rights of sea turtles.”
X 5
Utrecht’s new vertical forest
will be home to 10,000 plants and trees. How will residents benefit?
It starts with a currant bush and
a pear tree: the first of 300 trees and 10,000 plants that will turn this Dutch
tower block into a living forest.
Utrecht is the latest city to get
the green treatment from celebrated architect Stefano Boeri. The 66-year old
Italian architect stretched the world’s imagination with his first vertical
forest in Milan a decade ago.
X 5
Giving people €5 a day could
bring the ‘good life’ to communities and ecosystems in need, study says
Paying people living in fragile
forests €5 a day could be the best way to halt biodiversity loss, a new study
suggests.
Similar to the concept of a
universal basic income, a conservation basic income (CBI) is an unconditional
cash payment given to people living in protected areas or alongside endangered
species.
X 5
Just like eating frogs’ legs?
Inside the European companies that want to convince us to eat insects
Will insects be a staple food in
the future? Several companies in Europe are betting on it.
From lower emissions to reduced
land use and a way to contribute to the circular economy, they claim a range of
benefits.
Although convincing Europeans to
eat insects isn’t easy, almost 60 per cent of people believe that they could
become an alternative and sustainable source of protein in the future,
according to a study from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya published earlier
this year.
X 5
Refill stores and bottle
deposit schemes: Inside the UN goal to cut plastic pollution by 80% by 2040
Plastic pollution could be slashed
by 80 per cent by 2040, according to a new report by the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP).
This ambitious target relies on
major policy changes and the deployment of existing technologies in the way we
produce, use and dispose of plastics.
Here's what would need to change
in our daily lives to reach it.
X 5
Spain, Sweden and Belgium: The
European countries setting new wind and solar records
Solar and wind produced more than
half of Portugal’s electricity for the first time last month, according to new
data from clean energy think tank Ember.
April saw the renewables reach 51
per cent of electricity production - beating the previous monthly record of 49
per cent in December 2021.
Strong solar deployment,
electricity imports from Spain and lower demand kept energy generated by fossil
fuels to just 24 per cent - despite a drought-driven dip in hydropower.
X 5
Deforestation in the Brazilian
Amazon fell by 68% in April
Deforestation in the Brazilian
Amazon fell by 68 per cent last month compared to April 2022.
This is the first significant drop
since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office at the start of this
year.
Lula, as the left-leaning
President is known, campaigned on transforming Brazil into a ‘green
superpower’. One of his promises was to combat illegal deforestation, which
rose to a 15-year high under former right wing President Jair Bolsonaro.
X 5
‘Look at that beast’: This
well-fed snapping turtle is a conservation success story
Footage of a plump snapping turtle
relaxing along a Chicago waterway has gone viral after the man who filmed the
well-fed reptile marveled at its size and nicknamed it “Chonkosaurus."
Conservationists have been
carrying out native plant restoration along the waterway to combat invasive
European species that have cropped up.
"The plants and the animals
are interrelated - if one is doing well, the other's doing well, it's
ecology," says Al Scorch, one of the botanists who spotted the giant
turtle.
X 5
EU emissions fell by 4% at the
end of last year - and economies grew, data reveals
Greenhouse gas emissions in the EU
fell by 4 per cent in the last three months of 2022, according to Eurostat data
released on 15 May.
Out of the 27 member states,
emissions fell in 23 EU countries.
It also found that while emissions
had fallen, GDP hadn’t and had actually increased by 1.5 per cent during those
three months.
It shows that countries are
reducing their greenhouse gas contribution while growing their economies.
X 5
Seals are making a comeback in
Belgium: This team of volunteers helping them coexist with humans
Seals are becoming an increasingly
common sight on Belgium’s beaches.
At the end of last century, there
were almost none of these marine mammals left on the country’s coast.
But their numbers have been on the
rise over the last 20 years, according to the Royal Belgian Institute of
Natural Sciences. Seals aren’t easy to count, but they estimate there are now
between 100 and 200 individuals from two species: grey seals and harbour seals.
X 5
‘New hope’: Tiny Galápagos
island birds make promising comeback
Darwin's flycatchers are on the
edge of extinction. But conservation experts now think the tiny bird could be
making a comeback.
Known for their striking
vermillion plumage, the charismatic birds can be found only in the Galápagos
Islands.
The International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has labelled them ‘vulnerable.’
But on the island of Santa Cruz,
12 new chicks have been born this year, officials have revealed.
X 5
From water saving to clean
energy: Here’s why floating solar farms are booming in the US
Producing electricity uses up huge
amounts of land and often generates vast quantities of climate-heating
emissions.
But what if it didn’t need to?
Floating solar panels are a simple
concept but they could provide the answer to these problems - and prevent water
loss from evaporation at the same time.
X 5
Ecuador strikes world's
biggest 'debt for nature' deal to protect the Galápagos Islands
Ecuador has converted $1.6 billion
(€1.5 billion) of debt into a loan which will free up millions for conservation
in the Galápagos Islands.
The deal, announced on Tuesday 9
May, is the largest of its kind ever made. It is known as a ‘debt for nature’ swap.
“The world’s biggest
ocean-friendly debt swap is coming together in Ecuador to protect its unique
natural resources,” says Pablo Arosemena Marriott, Minister of Economy and
Finance.
X 5
This millionaire is selling
his private jet after learning how polluting it is
It’s never too late to change -
just ask Stephen Prince. The American multimillionaire is selling his private
jet after learning how polluting it is.
The Georgia businessman started
flying in small jets six years ago, and compared the experience to a cocaine
habit.
The gift-card magnate once owned
three jets. Now, he’s selling his last one.
X 5
‘A daring heart’: Meet the
bamboo scaffolders bringing down Hong Kong’s carbon footprint
Mo Jia Yu wraps his legs around a
pole to balance high above the ground and secure a joint, a skill he must
master to become a bamboo scaffolder in Hong Kong.
The metropolis is one of the
world's last remaining cities to use bamboo scaffolding in modern construction
and building repair.
Scaffolders perched on bamboo
frames several storeys high are a common sight, and are nicknamed
"spiders" by Hong Kongers for their agility over the web-like
latticework.
X 5
Austria has helped pay for
more than half a million repairs in bid to tackle e-waste
Austrians have been taking
advantage of a scheme to repair broken electrical devices.
Designed to tackle electronic
waste, the government programme covers half the cost of repairs. It applies to
defective devices such as smartphones, laptops, coffee makers and dishwashers.
Since being introduced one year
ago, it has seen 560,000 vouchers worth up to €200 redeemed, according to the
Environment Ministry.
X 5
Europe’s first wild river park
is a nature lover’s paradise: Here’s how to experience it on a budget
Vjosa River National Park is
something of a miracle. After years of campaigning by clothing brand Patagonia,
the IUCN and none other than actor Leonardo Dicaprio, this 6,500
square-kilometre basin of tributaries and wild waterways was given the
protection it deserves, making it Europe’s first wild river park.
It may be the first park, but it
is Europe’s last wild river, home to 1,110 species of animals and plants, of
which two plant species and 13 animals are in danger of disappearing globally.
Hence why official protection is so important.
X 5
This Nigerian environmentalist
is channelling Spider-Man to wage war on litter
In Nigeria, environmental waste
poses a major challenge, especially in urban regions.
But on the streets of Osogbo in
Osun State, Jonathan Olanlokun’s superpower is his determination to make a
difference in his community.
Dressed as Spider-Man, he picks up
rubbish to improve his local environment. He says the costume gets him noticed
and draws attention to the problem of litter on the streets.
Positive
environmental stories from April 2023
X 4
Denmark is our Green European
country of the month - here’s why
It should come as no surprise that
Denmark is on our radar as one of Europe’s greenest countries.
The Scandinavian nation is a
consistent frontrunner in rankings like the Climate Change Performance Index
(CCPI) and Yale’s Environmental Performance Index.
Last year Denmark had the highest
share of renewables in its electricity mix out of 78 different countries. Its
emissions targets are also highly ambitious. And it's not resting on
its laurels.
X 4
How the Netherlands plans to
spend €28bn on slashing emissions by 2030
The Dutch government says it will
spend €28 billion in the coming years to guarantee it meets its 2030 climate
goals.
The government announced a range of
measures which it said would make sure CO2 emissions in the Netherlands will be
55 per cent lower than in 1990 by 2030. They range from building large offshore
solar power fields to lifting taxes for polluting industries.
Last year, emissions were around
30 per cent lower in the euro zone's fifth largest economy than in 1990.
X 4
Meet the trollhunters who got
600 climate change deniers banned from Twitter
Peter and Tom are part of a group
of online activists dubbed the Team Ninja Trollhunters (TNT). Created in 2019,
their mission is to fight climate change trolls on Twitter.
These 'trollhunters' look for
viral tweets or prominent accounts on Twitter which were spreading climate
disinformation and respond to them by debunking their claims using factual
information and scientific articles.
Climate change denial is not
forbidden on Twitter, however other types of content - threats, harassment and
hate speech - are.
X 4
US Supreme Court won't rule on
local climate cases in a ‘critical victory’ for activists
Cities and states in the US will
be able to sue massive fossil fuel polluters thanks to a Supreme Court
decision.
As the climate crisis worsens,
local governments are taking energy giants to court.
Big Oil appealed five of these
local cases to America’s Supreme Court. But the court declined to hear them-
setting an important precedent for future lawsuits.
X 4
From vibrant floats to
cleanups: Creativity and colour were everywhere on Earth Day
More than a billion people
celebrated Earth Day on Saturday 22 April.
From parades to mass die-ins and
four-metre-tall floats, people from 190 different countries got creative to
urge politicians to “Invest in Our Planet.”
“This is the moment to change it
all!” the Earth Day Network declared.
X 4
‘Extinct’ lion spotted in
Chad’s Sena Oura National Park for first time in 20 years
A lion has been spotted in a Chad’s
Sena Oura National Park - the first sighting in almost 20 years.
Researchers previously believed
the animals to be extinct in the area, which is close to Chad’s border with
Cameroon.
The sighting - the first since
2004 - is an early sign that big cat populations in the area could be
increasing.
X 4
World’s biggest cross-border
power line will deliver clean energy to 1.8 million homes in Europe
The Netherlands and the UK plan to
build Europe's biggest cross-border power line to deliver clean energy and
boost energy security.
Connected to an offshore wind
farm, the 'LionLink' interconnector will be able to transfer 1.8 gigawatts (GW)
of electricity - enough to power 1.8 million homes.
X 4
Solar baking: How the sun is
helping to reduce the cost of bread in Lebanon
Food prices have skyrocketed in
Lebanon during a three-year economic crisis.
In an effort to reduce production
costs and emissions, inventor Toufic Hamdan has created a commercial bakery
oven powered by the sun’s heat.
"This oven will save bakery
owners about 80 per cent of their monthly usage of diesel, and therefore it
would reduce the price of the bread bundle that reaches the consumer,"
says Hitaf Ghazal, co-founder and operations manager of Partners With Sun.
X 4
‘A Herculean task’: How is
Luxembourg using people power to shift its energy targets?
More than a third of Luxembourg’s
energy will come from renewables by the end of the decade, under a new climate
plan unveiled yesterday.
All EU countries have to submit an
updated national energy and climate plan (NECP) by June, showing how they will
achieve the bloc’s goal of cutting CO2 emissions by 55 per cent by 2030.
Europe’s richest country has
stepped up its green energy and efficiency targets, partly thanks to public
motivation.
X 4
‘Now we can breathe a little’:
How Gaza is bringing its wetlands back to life
Decades of reduced freshwater
inflows, creeping urban development and pollution have crippled Wadi Gaza’s
fragile environment. Yet despite being buried under layers of sewage and waste,
the valley is still alive.
A recent project by the United
Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP) aims to rehabilitate the area as a nature
reserve and coastal wetland.
Since launching in 2021, an internationally-funded
wastewater treatment plant in central Gaza has allowed cleaner water to flow
into the valley.
X 4
‘End of the fossil age’: Wind
and solar broke energy records last year, report reveals
Experts are calling time on the
fossil age as new analysis shows wind and solar power produced a record amount
of the world’s electricity last year.
The renewables generated 12 per
cent of global electricity in 2022, up from 10 per cent the previous year,
according to the report from clean energy think tank Ember.
And while a small increase in coal
burning pushed electricity emissions up to an all-time high, analysts predict
this will be the peak of pollution.
X 4
‘Natural buffer’: Could this
tiny red crab help protect the Great Barrier Reef?
Scientists fighting to save the
Great Barrier Reef have discovered a new secret weapon - a tiny red crab.
The Great Barrier Reef is one of
the natural wonders of the world. But many of its reef-building corals
have been devoured by plagues of toxic crown-of-thorns (COTS) starfish.
A little crab could help to stop
that. The red decorator crab - or ‘Schizophrys aspera’ - has a voracious
appetite for the juvenile starfish, research from the University of Queensland
has shown.
X 4
'Really encouraging': Plastic
bag bans work, say campaigners
Plastic bags are everywhere -
littering our streets, clogging up our rivers, and choking wildlife in the
ocean.
But after years of campaigning
from environmental groups, many places have banned them entirely.
Over 100 countries now have a full
or partial ban on single-use plastic bags. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of
public policies intended to phase out plastic carryout bags tripled.
The results of such tough rules
are starting to show.
X 4
Wildlife crossings: US rolls
out $350 million in funding to prevent collisions and improve habitats
The US Department of
Transportation is rolling out funding for wildlife crossings along busy roads.
Studies show than more than 350
million vertebrate animals are killed by traffic in the US each year.
Meanwhile, about 200 people are
killed each year in collisions involving wildlife and vehicles in the US,
according to federal officials.
Now, Indigenous groups as well as
state and local governments will have access to $350 million (€320) to combat
the issue.
X 4
UK proposes ban on plastic wet
wipes to tackle water pollution
The UK is looking to ban plastic
wet wipes that clog up the country’s sewers.
Under a plan to tackle water
pollution, the government is launching a public consultation on whether to get
rid of plastic wipes. Some retailers like supermarket Tesco and health and
beauty company Boots have already stopped selling them in favour of
biodegradable alternatives.
Although these alternatives are
available, most products still contain plastic which doesn’t break down, sticks
together and can create something known as a fatberg.
Positive
environmental stories from March 2023
X 3
Albania is our Green European
country of the month
The climate and nature crises have
thrown European countries into a new kind of healthy rivalry with each other.
In the race to reach net zero
emissions and restore depleted ecosystems, any nation’s win is a victory for
all of us. But looking to the most positive examples on the continent can help
inspire and pressure our own politicians to follow suit.
In March, we’re celebrating a
European country that has done the right thing for one of its most precious
natural features: Albania.
X 3
‘Safeguard our future’:
Australia passes law capping oil and gas emissions for the first time
Australia has passed tough new
laws capping oil and gas emissions.
The breakthrough legislation
requires coal mines and oil refineries to curb their emissions by about five
per cent each year.
The centre-left Labor government
behind the new laws estimate it will prevent 200 million tonnes of carbon
emissions over the next decade.
X 3
'A win for climate justice of
epic proportions': UN vote could push countries to take climate action
United Nations member states have
adopted a historic resolution on climate justice.
It aims to hold highly polluting
countries legally responsible for failing to address the climate crisis.
More than 130 UN member states
voted for the resolution at the General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.
It calls on the world’s highest
court, the International Court of Justice, to clarify states' obligations to
tackle the climate emergency.
X 3
Gravity batteries: Abandoned
mines could store enough energy to power ‘the entire earth’
Repurposed underground mines could
store enough energy to power “the entire earth” for a day, new research
suggests.
During good weather conditions,
wind and solar often generate more power than a grid can use. So where can we store
this excess energy?
According to scientists at the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), abandoned mines
could provide a solution.
X 3
This Danish artist has hidden
giant, recycled wooden trolls across the world
Danish artist Thomas Dambo is
known for using recycled wood to create large, ambitious sculptures.
After constructing 99 wooden
trolls across Denmark, Belgium, Germany, the USA, Puerto Rico and South Korea,
he’s just added a 100th to the series. But it’s in a mystery location.
To find the 100th troll you have
to find all 99 others first. Could this be the world’s biggest treasure hunt?
X 3
Could this colourful
plant-based film replace the need for air conditioning?
Energy-intensive, chemical-leaking
air conditioning units take a devastating toll on our planet.
Now, scientists at Cambridge
University in the UK are working on an eco-friendly alternative. Their
invention consists of a plant-based film that stays cool when exposed to
sunlight.
The material could someday be used
to keep buildings and cars cool without the need for external power. Coming in
a range of textures and bright iridescent colours, it’s aesthetically pleasing
too.
X 3
How the EU's new energy system
could save you money
After almost two years of big
energy bills dropping onto European doorsteps, the EU has proposed changes to
its electricity market to ease pressure on consumers and boost renewable power
production.
The proposed reform introduces new
protections for households and small businesses as well as giving them more
choices around their electricity contracts.
It also supports more stable,
long-term contracts between EU industries or EU governments and renewable power
producers to boost cheap, green power production and limit volatile prices
caused by fossil fuels.
X 3
This company has come up with
a cutting-edge way to recycle EV batteries
As the whole of Europe moves
towards the energy transition, French mining group Eramet is developing
techniques to recycle critical metals used in electric cars.
The aim is to reuse metals such as
nickel, cobalt and lithium to make new batteries.
It is all part of the effort to
stick to The European Parliament’s new law banning the sale of petrol and
diesel cars from 2035.
X 3
The rise of electric vehicles
has led to a ban on new petrol stations in this US city
A US city is banning new petrol
stations as lawmakers say they feel an “obligation” to tackle climate change.
Lousiville, near Denver in the
state of Colorado, is home to around 21,000 people and currently has five
stations. A sixth was recently approved but it could be the city’s last.
The new local legislation notes
that “gasoline station bans may also be seen as promoting the use of Electric
Vehicles (EVs), thus, reducing vehicle emissions and encouraging low-carbon and
cleaner energy options for transportation.”
X 3
The richest country in Europe
is celebrating three years of free public transport
If you've been living in the tiny
EU state of Luxembourg you will already have had access to free public
transport for the last three years.
Unsurprisingly on the anniversary of
this novel and seemingly very expensive public initiative, almost everyone who
uses trams, buses and trains in the tiny EU state says they're happy with it.
"Since it's free, it's easier
to make a decision quickly, to choose between public transport or a private
car. This means that it is very positive for the environment and
practical," one man said whilst using the tram in Luxembourg City.
X 3
Good boy turned bad: Anxious
dog found his forever home in an unlikely place
Inmates in a Tasmanian prison have
adopted a dog that was so anxious no one else wanted him.
“Caesar would fret so much when he
went out that he was actually only happy when he was here,” says prison officer
Wayne Schulze.
Ten-year-old Caesar suffers from
such extreme separation anxiety, he can’t be left alone for more than 30
minutes.
He is now enjoying a happy, secure
life behind bars, showered with attention.
X 3
Shark in the water: This robot
can collect 21,000 plastic bottles in a day
Richard Hardiman first came up
with the idea for a water-cleaning robot after seeing two men struggle to catch
rubbish from their boat in his home city of Cape Town, South Africa.
Inspired by a whale shark’s wide
mouth - which scoops up whatever is in front of it - his company Ran Marine
created the WasteShark.
“I liken it to a Roomba for water.
It's an autonomous machine that scoops up pollution out of water on the surface
level,” says Richard.
X 3
Solar panels could be
installed in the spaces between railway tracks in world first
Solar panels are being rolled out
“like carpet” on railway tracks in Switzerland.
Swiss start-up Sun-Ways is installing
panels near Buttes train station in the west of the country in May, pending
sign-off from the Federal Office of Transport.
As the climate crisis demands that
we speed up Europe’s energy transition, developers have been seeing new
potential in unusual surfaces.
Roadsides, reservoirs and farms
are all finding space for solar systems. And Germany’s Deutsche Bahn is also
experimenting with adding solar cells to railway sleepers.
X 3
York Minster, Pompeii, the
Vatican: How heritage sites are discreetly making solar power
Solar panels will soon be fitted
on the roof of York Minster in northern England.
Faced with rising bills and
climate concerns, the historic cathedral is turning to renewable energy - and
following in the footsteps of other historic sites across Europe including the
Vatican and Pompeii.
The 199 photovoltaic (PV) tiles,
recently approved by the City of York Council, will generate 75,000 KwH of
power annually - or enough electricity for around 25 average UK
households.
X 3
US to limit toxic 'forever
chemicals' in drinking water
The USA has proposed placing the
first ever federal limits on toxic 'forever chemicals' in drinking water.
The chemicals have been found to
be dangerous in amounts so small as to be undetectable.
Restricting them will save
thousands of lives and prevent serious illnesses, including cancer, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says.
X 3
Family of big cats are now
living a ‘tiger-worthy life’ after 15 years inside a train carriage
A year ago four Bengal tigers were
rescued from a train carriage on a farm in Argentina.
The cats have adapted well to
their new life and are enjoying roaming (and lazing) in their new home.
“Big cats are so resilient. It’s
really wonderful to see how they are rehabilitated and they have started
blooming and getting into their own personality,” says head caretaker at
LIONSROCK Big Cat Sanctuary, Hildegard Pilker.
X 3
French islanders celebrate
sixth egg-laying of 'Emma', a 150kg green turtle
Three centuries of human
settlement on Reunion Island near Mauritius were enough to eradicate baby
turtles from the beaches until 2004.
But years of conservation work
have once again made the French overseas department a hospitable place for the globally
endangered species.
Weighing 150kg, 30-year-old
Emma is one of two reproductive turtles in Reunion. She has recently given
birth to her sixth round of eggs.
X 3
'Float-ovoltaics': How
floating solar panels in reservoirs could revolutionise global power
Floating solar panels on
reservoirs could produce three times as much electricity as the entire EU, a new
study has shown.
According to the study published
in the journal Nature, covering 30 per cent of the surface of the world’s
115,000 reservoirs with solar could generate 9,434 terawatt hours of power
annually.
That’s more than triple the energy
production of the EU, which reached 2,785.44 terawatt hours in 2021.
X 3
EU agrees to push for
worldwide phaseout of fossil fuels at COP28
European Union countries have
agreed to push for the global phaseout of fossil fuels at COP28.
It is part of the bloc’s promise
to support and accelerate the energy transition ahead of the climate summit in
Dubai this November.
Faced with climate change, biodiversity
loss, pollution and the fallout of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the EU says that
our dependence on fossil fuels leaves us vulnerable.
Family of big cats are now
living a ‘tiger-worthy life’ after 15 years inside a train carriage
A year ago four Bengal tigers were
found trapped a train carriage on a farm in Argentina, where they had been
living for 15 years.
The two eldest animals had been
left behind by a circus who no longer deemed them worthy of performing.
The family of four were rescued
and transported to LIONSROCK Big Cat Sanctuary in South Africa last year
and are now on the road to recovery.
X 3
Electric ferries and trucks
could be charged like toothbrushes with this tech breakthrough
Electric ferries and vehicles
could soon be charged wirelessly after an exciting technological breakthrough.
Until now, inductive charging -
where there’s no contact between the device and conductor - has been unable to
deliver the high power that electric vehicle batteries need. The method has
only worked for small devices, like electric toothbrushes and some mobile
phones.
But new components have enabled
scientists at a Swedish university to show that the recharging of urban ferries
and city buses is possible without human or robotic hands.
X 3
German mayors on why they're
giving climate activists (some of) what they want
Across Germany, cities are
striking deals with climate activists to stop roads from being blocked by
protests.
In Hannover, Mayor Belit Onay
announced last week that he supports some of environmental protest group Last
Generation’s demands. Not long after, the cities of Tübingen and Marburg
followed suit.
“You can't do that - glue yourself
to the road. But if I get upset about it, I won't get an inch further. If I
speak to people and find a solution, one that meets the interests of the city
in every way, that seems to me a sensible way to go,” says Marburg’s Dr
Thomas Spies.
X 3
Floating solar and trash
mountains: How the Netherlands became Europe’s solar power leader
The land-stretched Netherlands is
finding innovative places to put new renewable energy capacity.
A 25-metre-tall hill of household
and business waste covered in solar panels generates enough electricity
for about 2,500 households. Car parks, commercial lakes, sheep grazing fields,
strawberry farms, disused churches, train stations and airfields are also lined
with panels.
The country now has more than 48
million solar panels installed - an average of two per inhabitant.
X 3
Recycling dead solar panels
isn’t easy. These Australian scientists might have found a solution
Solar panels are key to the clean
energy transition. But 90 per cent currently end up in landfill once they have
stopped working.
A team of researchers from
Australia’s Deakin University are working to change that.
They’ve developed a new thermal
and chemical technique to extract silicon from the obsolete panels.
X 3
Car-free future: Europe’s
longest cycle tunnel aims to cut traffic in this Norwegian city
Norway's Bergen is gearing up to
open the world’s longest purpose-built pedestrian and bicycle tunnel.
On 15 April 2023, the 2.9km tunnel
will open to the public with running and cycling events. It takes around 10
minutes to cycle through and 30 to 45 minutes to walk through.
Known as the Fyllingsdalstunnelen,
the tunnel cuts through the Løvstakken mountain in the southwest Norwegian
city, linking the residential areas of Fyllingsdalen and Mindemyren. Cyclists
can continue on to the centre of Bergen using existing routes.
X 3
US got a record-breaking 40%
of its energy from carbon-free sources in 2022, report reveals
Carbon-free sources supplied over
40 per cent of the US’s total energy output in 2022, a new report reveals. This
is an all-time high.
The figure combines renewable
generation - such as solar, wind and hydro - and nuclear power. Nuclear and
hydropower remained at similar levels to previous years, so the majority of
this increase comes from wind and solar.
X 3
Scotland becomes the first
country to ban the high-emissions anaesthetic desflurane
Scotland has banned the inhaled
anaesthetic desflurane due to its devastating impact on the climate. It is the
first country in the world to do so.
The gas, which is used to put
patients to sleep safely during surgery, has a global warming potential 2,500
times greater than carbon dioxide, according to the UK’s National Health
Service (NHS).
Various hospitals in other parts
of the UK have already begun phasing out the anaesthetic. NHS England plans to
stop using desflurane completely by early 2024, except in exceptional
X 3
Catching poachers was almost
impossible until this Dutch company invented a new type of camera
Poachers are the long-standing
enemy of wildlife conservation.
In national parks across Africa it
can be almost impossible to catch them red-handed. That’s where Dutch tech
company Hack the Planet comes in.
"We developed a smart camera
system that can, in real time, track down people or animals in huge remote
areas,” explains Hack the Planet’s engineer, Thijs Suijten.
Positive
environmental stories from February 2023
X 2
First pangolin born in Europe
‘doing well’ after zookeepers fed her cat milk
A Chinese pangolin has been born
at a European zoo for the first time.
Welcomed into the world at Prague
Zoo, the pangolin baby is the first of her critically endangered species to be
born in captivity in Europe.
The tiny scaly-skinned mammal -
nicknamed 'Little Cone' because she resembles a spruce cone - is doing well
after some initial troubles, the park in February.
X 2
How breeding low-emissions
sheep could bring down farming’s methane footprint
In a bid to tackle climate change,
British farmers are trying to breed low-methane emitting sheep.
When sheep fart and belch, they
release methane gas. Over a 20 year period, this powerful substance is about 80
times worse powerful than carbon dioxide for trapping heat in the atmosphere,
thereby causing global warming.
But farmers are turning to genetic
engineering to bring these emissions down.
X 2
Funga: How does the world’s
first fungi-powered carbon removal project work?
How do we support our trees, while
at the same time tightening up the offset schemes that rely on them?
The answer lies in a “galaxy below
our feet”, according to the enterprising ecologists behind Funga, the world’s
first company using the fungal microbiome to create commercial carbon
offsetting credits.
Research has shown that the
reintroduction of wild soil microbial biodiversity can accelerate plant growth
by an average of 64 per cent.
X 2
World’s oldest European
hedgehog could provide hope for the future of the species
The world’s oldest European hedgehog
has been found at a Danish volunteer project.
The posthumous discovery was the
result of the Danish Hedgehog Project, a citizen science initiative that asked
volunteers to collect dead hedgehogs in the name of conservation research.
They were shocked to discover that
one of the hogs was 16 years old, making it the oldest scientifically
documented European hedgehog ever found.
"If a hedgehog can reach an
age of 16 years, there is still hope for the population,” says Dr Sophie
Lund Rasmussen, who led the University of Oxford research project.
X 2
Heat pumps avoided 8m tonnes
of CO2 emissions in Europe last year
A record number of heat pumps were
sold last year in Europe.
Data from Europe shows that 3
million units replaced around 4 billion cubic metres of natural gas in 2022 -
the equivalent of avoiding 8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
It means that heat pumps are now
helping Europe to avoid 54 megatonnes of CO2 or roughly the equivalent annual
emissions of Greece.
X 2
Live in an apartment? This new
solar technology cut could your bills in half
A housing block in Wales has been
fitted with a ‘world-first’ solar system that connects all the flats to the
same rooftop panels.
The residents of Odet Court in
Cardiff are set to save 50 per cent off their energy bills thanks to the new
technology, which can meet up to 75 per cent of each flat’s electricity demand.
Australian manufacturer Allume
Energy claims that its ‘SolShare’ model is the only technology that enables
solar energy from a single rooftop system to be shared by multiple homes in the
same building.
X 2
Baby kangaroo poo could be the
secret to stopping cows’ methane farts, researchers say
Kangaroo poo could be a surprising
ally in the fight against methane-spewing cow farts.
It may sound like science fiction
from the brain of a 10 year old, but scientists at Washington State University
are putting the roo poo to the test.
The researchers added a microbial
culture made from baby kangaroo faeces plus a known methane inhibitor to a cow
stomach simulator. The result? It produced acetic acid instead of methane.
Unlike the greenhouse gas, acetic
acid isn’t emitted as flatulence and actually benefits cows by aiding muscle
growth. So it’s something of a win-win situation.
X 2
Light pollution: City of
London to ask high-rise buildings to switch off their lights at night
London’s night-time skyline might
soon look very different, as city authorities draft rules requiring skyscrapers
to dim their lights overnight.
The initiative will “cut light
pollution and save energy”, promised the City of London Corporation, the
financial district governing body.
If the new plans are adopted, buildings
in the Square Mile - the London area where most of its high rise buildings are
clustered - will be asked to switch off unnecessary building lights after dark.
X 2
Wildlife Photographer of the
Year: ‘Dream’ shot of elusive snow leopard wins people’s choice award
An elusive snow leopard is the
winning subject of the latest Wildlife Photographer of the Year’s People’s
Choice Award.
It’s not easy to capture a ‘ghost
of the mountain’ as they’re known in the Indian Himalayas.
German photographer Sascha Fonseca
embarked on a three-year bait-free camera trap project in order to pose the big
cat so perfectly against the pink and purple sunset.
X 2
‘Tipping point’: Renewable
energy to become the world’s top source of electricity by 2025
According to the International
Energy Agency’s Electricity Market Report 2023, 90 per cent of new electricity
demand between now and 2025 will be covered by clean energy sources like wind
and solar, along with nuclear energy.
This growth in output means that
renewables will become the world’s largest electricity source within three
years - providing 35 per cent of the world’s electricity and overtaking coal.
X 2
Climate win: Australia blocks
new coal mine 10km from Great Barrier Reef
Australia has
blocked a proposal for a new coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef.
In February, the Australian
government declined to grant permission for a new thermal coal project just off
the coast of central Queensland.
The news comes after public outcry
over potential risks to the UNCECO World Heritage-listed reef.
X 2
Beavers are returning to
London - and they might protect a local train station from flooding
Beavers will return to London for
the first time in 400 years - and they could stop flooding at a local train
station.
Widely hunted for their fur and
meat, beavers went extinct in England during the 16th century. But after a
decade of successful breeding programs, the semi-aquatic mammal is back. Now,
they are being reintroduced to London.
X 2
Switzerland's solar dam: Why
are mountains and snow the perfect mix for solar energy?
A snaking wall of solar panels has
been attached to Switzerland's Lake Muttsee dam, helping the landlocked
nation maximise its green energy production in the winter months.
Over 7,800 feet (2,400 metres)
above sea level and surrounded by snow-capped peaks, the dam's almost 5,000
solar panels produce 3.3 million kilowatt hours of energy per year, enough to
supply around 700 houses.
X 2
Installing solar panels on
these family homes led to spare cash and more free time
Back in 2014, seven households of
UK social housing tenants were surprised to be offered PV panels by their local
authority.
Despite their initial scepticism,
the families took ownership of the opportunity to become prosumers - both
producing and consuming rooftop solar energy - gaining cheaper access to
electricity and sharing it with their communities.
X 2
Watch the hunt for an elusive
grey wolf once thought to be extinct in France
The European grey wolf was once
widespread across the French countryside. By the 19th century, it only occupied
half of its historical territory. Humans reduced their habitat and hunted the
species almost to extinction. Then it disappeared entirely in 1937.
But now the number of wolves is
growing again in France with its population on the verge of exceeding 1,000
individuals.
X 2
World’s oldest dog narrowly
escaped death as a puppy, owner reveals
A Portuguese pup has smashed the
record for the oldest dog ever.
30-year-old Bobi has lived his
entire life in the rural village of Conqueiros, in Leiria, western Portugal,
according to Guinness World Records.
Owner Leonel Costa has revealed
Bobi's rocky start to life and his secret to longevity.
X 2
From a beef farm gone vegan to
Scottish seaweed: All the winners of PETA’s new Farming Awards
Agriculture is a major source of
greenhouse gas emissions. To help UK consumers in their search for climate
and animal-friendly foods, rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA) has launched its first ever Farming Awards.
Focusing on ethical, animal-free
farming, the awards spotlight producers for their eco-friendly practices and
products, from a seaweed farm in Scotland to a beef farmer who recently moved
all his cows to a sanctuary.
X 2
This French village enjoys ‘no
bills’ after building wind turbines and solar panels
Electricity bills rose across
France on 1 February and steadily over the past year. But in tiny Muttersholtz
- a French village with just 2,200 inhabitants - the price-hike was greeted
with some nonchalance.
Their municipal bills were already
near zero thanks to pioneering use of solar power and hydropower.
Positive environmental stories
from January 2023
X 1
Major milestone for EU energy:
Wind and solar produced more electricity than gas in 2022
Wind and solar power produced more
of the EU’s electricity than fossil gas for the first time last year.
The renewable energies were
responsible for a record fifth (22 per cent) of the bloc’s electricity, a new
report from clean energy think tank Ember shows.
X 1
Portugal is trading Cape
Verde’s national debt for climate investments
Portugal has signed an agreement
to swap Cape Verde's debt for environmental investments.
Such 'debt-for-nature' deals are
emerging in other countries as a way to reduce the impact of climate change.
They also touch on the dilemma of who should foot the bill for climate change
mitigation.
Cape Verde owes around €140
million to the Portuguese state and over €400 million to its banks and other
entities. Ultimately, this will now end up in an environmental and climate
fund established by Cape Verde.
X 1
Bees could be ensured safe
flight around Europe via ‘buzz lines’
Creating a network of ecological
corridors is one of a number of measures in the European Commission’s ‘New Deal
for Pollinators’.
One in three bee, butterfly and
hoverfly species are currently disappearing in the EU, so we urgently need to
reverse their decline by 2030.
The deal aims to do that by
targeting their key adversaries: pesticides, pollution, invasive alien species,
changing land use and climate change.
X 1
Bill Gates is taking on cow
burps by backing an Australian climate tech start-up
Bill Gates is funding
an Australian start-up that hopes to combat methane-emitting cow burps.
Agriculture is the main culprit
for human-caused methane emissions, one of the biggest drivers of global
warming.
Australian climate technology
start-up Rumin8 wants to tackle this issue by feeding cows seaweed.
X 1
Designer pets that suffer
‘miserable’ health problems could soon be banned in the Netherlands
The breeding of designer pets was
banned in the Netherlands in 2014. Now the government is looking to close a
loophole to stop the import and trade of these breeds.
“Today we are taking the big step
towards a Netherlands where no pet has to suffer from his or her
appearance,” the country’s Minister of Culture, Nature and Food Quality,
Piet Adema, said in a statement.
The Minister said he is looking to
ban the ownership of designer breeds as well as photos of them in and on social media.
X 1
More than a fifth of energy
used in the European Union in 2021 came from renewables
New Eurostat data shows that
solar, wind and other ‘green’ sources contributed 21.8 per cent to the EU’s
total energy consumption.
Although this was a 0.3 per cent
drop on 2020, the report shows that Europe’s energy infrastructure is
still heading in the right direction, spurred on by recent global events.
Last month, the International
Energy Agency revealed that the world is set to add as much renewable power in
the next five years as it did in the last 20.
X 1
Scientists name three easy and
cheap solutions that could drastically cut emissions
New research has named three small
interventions that could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation and may be the
fastest way to drive global action.
These positive tipping points
could have a snowball effect in a good way, drastically cutting carbon
emissions in some of the world’s most polluting sectors and giving us
"plausible grounds" for hope.
X 1
Paris makes headway on net
zero as commuters cycle to work
Paris commuters took advantage of
the capital's newly expanded network of bicycle lanes to bypass public
transport disruptions resulting from a nationwide strike.
Bike lane traffic has often surged
during recent strikes. The last Paris metro strike on 10 November boosted bike
lane usage by 80 per cent from average daily use that month.
In a bid to make Paris a 'cycling
city' and move towards carbon neutrality, Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo has
invested more than €150 million into new bike infrastructure in recent years.
X 1
France votes to ban deep-sea
mining in its waters
The French Parliament has voted in
favour of banning deep-sea mining in its waters, in an emphatic move against
the controversial practice.
Deep-sea mining would see heavy
machinery being used on the ocean floor to suck up small rocks containing rare
metals. Though it’s still at an exploratory stage, companies are very
interested in the cobalt, nickel and manganese which could be extracted for car
batteries.
But scientists are concerned about
the potentially devastating impact on marine ecosystems. As well as the
climate, given the vast amounts of CO2 stored at these depths.
Nicholas Thierry, the Green MP who
tabled the motion, welcomed the vote as a “victory for the seabed and
environmentalists.”
X 1
Edinburgh has
endorsed the Plant Based Treaty to combat climate change
Edinburgh has become the first
European capital to endorse a plant-based diet to tackle the climate emergency.
The city council has signed on to
the Plant Based Treaty, an initiative which aims to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from animal agriculture.
The treaty could eventually see
the council introduce some carbon labelling on menus and transition to more
plant based meals in schools and council buildings.
X 1
Regular trips to the park
could reduce people's reliance on antidepressants
Visiting green spaces can
dramatically lower mental health drug use, research has found.
Dropping into a park, community
garden or other urban green space between three and four times a week can cut
people’s chances of taking medication for anxiety or depression by a third.
The positive impact - documented
by researchers at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare - also extends
to physical health. Visiting green spaces reduces the chances of a city
resident having to take asthma or high blood pressure medication by a third and
a quarter, respectively.
X 1
Companies will soon have to
prove that they really are taking climate action, under draft EU law
A draft European Union law will
require companies to back up green claims with evidence.
The proposal will clamp down on
companies promoting their products as 'climate neutral' or 'containing recycled
materials' if such labels are not substantiated. It aims to fight misleading
environmental advertisements.
"By fighting greenwashing,
the proposal will ensure a level playing field for businesses when marketing
their greenness," the draft document states.
X 1
German solar power firm sees
soaring demand as homeowners seek to cut energy bills
Soaring demand for home solar
power systems in Germany could boost revenues at Solarwatt by more than 50 per
cent this year to €500 million.
By installing solar panels,
batteries and heat pumps, homeowners are seeking to cut their energy bills
after huge price hikes last year when Russia cut fossil fuel exports to the
West.
"We are a life-long supplier to
people who want to become self-reliant on renewable energy," says
solarwatt chief executive Detlef Neuhaus. The company should reach
profitability this year.
X 1
Finland: Wind power increased
by 75% last year, boosting energy security and climate goals
Finland’s wind power capacity
increased by 75 per cent last year, according to the Finnish Wind Energy
Association (FWPA).
With almost half of Finland’s wind
power domestically owned, the renewable energy source is providing a
significant lifeline during the current energy crisis.
The growth in renewables is also helping
Finland achieve its ambitious climate goals. The country hopes to be one of the
first in Europe to reach net zero, setting a 2035 target - well ahead of the
EU’s 2050 goal.
X 1
'Love Island': Hit UK TV show
to promote sustainable fashion in latest series
Hit UK reality TV show ‘Love
Island’ is back on 16 January - and pre-loved fashion is set to steal the show
once again.
In 2022, the series ditched its
fast fashion image by partnering with eBay - the first ever pre-loved fashion
partnership on a TV show. Clothing from eBay's online second hand marketplace
was worn by contestants as they descended on an exotic location to find love.
Searches for ‘pre-loved clothing’
soared by 1,600 per cent on eBay after the show aired.
X 1
New solar-powered technology
can transform plastic waste into sustainable fuels and cosmetics
Scientists have developed a way of
transforming plastic waste and greenhouse gases into sustainable fuels using
solar power.
The system, developed by
researchers at the University of Cambridge, could address plastic pollution and
become a “game-changer” in the development of a circular economy.
X 1
Ozone layer on track to
recover within decades, UN reports
Human emissions of certain
chemicals cause a hole to open up in the ozone layer each year over the
Antarctic. This affects the ability of the ozone to protect life on Earth from
the sun's harmful radiation.
Now, the 1987 Montreal Protocol,
under which 197 countries pledged to phase out ozone depleting chemicals, is
paying off.
A UN-backed panel of experts,
presenting at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting yesterday,
said the ozone would heal by around 2066 over the Antarctic, by 2045 over the
Arctic and by 2040 for the rest of the world.
X 1
Antalya goes solar: How this
Turkish city is transforming its energy supply
A large solar power plant has been
built in Dağbeli, on the outskirts of Antalya, Turkey, to provide free
energy to local farmers.
Local growers in the fruit and vegetable
farming hub say they once refrained from irrigating their crops properly
because of the high energy prices. Some 60,000 people now benefit from the
support scheme, which gives farmers the means to run irrigation systems and
increase crop production.
X 1
Tobacco companies must pay for
clean up of discarded cigarettes in Spain
Spain has ruled that tobacco
companies will have to pay to clean up cigarette butts.
Millions of cigarette ends are
tossed onto Spain’s streets and beaches by smokers each year.
The new environmental regulations
also include bans on single-use plastic cutlery and plastic straws. The rulings
are part of an EU-wide drive to reduce waste and promote recycling.
X 1
England bans some single-use
plastics
Single-use plastic items including
cutlery and plates will soon be banned in England, the government has
announced.
Each year, the country uses around
1.1 billion single-use plates and 4.25 billion items of cutlery, according to
government estimates. Only 10 per cent of these are recycled.
Now, environment secretary Thérèse
Coffey has confirmed that such items will be outlawed in England.
X 1
Circular economy: Human hair
recycled to clean waterways in Belgium
A Belgian NGO is using human hair
clippings to absorb environmental pollutants.
Clippings are collected from
hairdressers across the country then turned into matted squares. These can be
used to absorb oil and other hydrocarbons polluting the environment.
The mats can be placed in drains
to soak up pollution in water before it reaches a river. They can also be used
to deal with pollution problems due to flooding and to clean up oil spills.
X 1
Lula plans to end
deforestation and make Brazil a green superpower
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was
sworn in as Brazil's president in January marking a new era for the country's
environmental policies.
Lula's plans for government
provide a stark contrast to far-right former leader Jair Bolsonaro, whose four
years in office were characterised by backsliding on environmental protections.
The new president says he wants to
turn Brazil, one of the world's top food producers, into a green superpower.
Our favourite
positive environmental story from 2022
World's oldest two-headed
tortoise celebrates his 25th birthday
In the wild, a two-headed tortoise
would not ordinarily survive long since it can’t retract its heads into its
shell to shelter from predators. But this month, Janus - named after the
two-faced Roman God - became the world's oldest two-headed tortoise at 25.
Lovingly cared for at Geneva
Natural History Museum, he is treated to a personalised care regime - including
daily massages and green tea baths - that keeps him in good health.
For more good news on the
environment from last year, check out all of Euronews Green's positive environmental stories from
2022.
ATTACHMENT
“A” – FROM COP28
@
The conference has finally begun,
an hour and 45 minutes late. Moderator Alexander Saier apologises for the delay
and introduces the panel, which includes the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, and
the UNFCCC chief, Simon Stiell, who praises the loss and damage funding deal
agreed earlier and thanks the Cop27 hosts Egypt for their work over the past
year.
“This is 30 years’ worth of
discussion which concluded in Sharm el-Sheikh last year, which concluded with
the agreement to establish this funding arrangement.”
But, Stiell explains, over the
past year countries have had to work out how to actually set up the fund.
“Today’s news gives the Cop28
climate conference a running start … we must keep our eyes on the prize and
every second counts.”
“We still have a lot of work ahead
of us. Loss and damage is just one of the negotiating tracks, but the spirit in
which parties have engaged as we ended the pre-sessional week, where
negotiators were engaging and engaging constructively … what is consistent is
that willingness to start these negotiations with a constructive and engaged
outlook. So we need to work and build on what we have seen today as we work
through the 12 or 13 days that are ahead of us.”
·
·
Updated at 10.07 EST
We’re still waiting, so here’s
another of the best dressed conference attendees.
An early frontrunner in this
year’s fashion stakes is Briseida Iglesias, a Guna indigenous leader from
Panama, sage of the songs and other spiritual practices of the Gunadule people.
She is the founder of Bundorgan
Women’s Network, a front line organisation for the revitalisation of ancestral
farming and medicine practices. She is also an expert on the traditional
textiles worn by Guna women as symbol of protection, cultural resistance and
connection with mother Earth.
The conference is still being
delayed – 80 minutes overdue now – but we are assured “they are on their way
and will be here very soon”.
When asked what “very soon” meant,
the Cop28 spokesman
replied “10 to 15 minutes” – the same response he gave an hour ago – which was
met with laughter in the hall.
·
·
British academic Matthew Hedges,
who was imprisoned by the United Arab Emirates for seven months after being
accused of spying, has warned visitors to Cop28 not to fall into the same trap
he did.
He warned attendees to: “take a
clean phone, a new phone with limited access. Do not have social media on your
phone, or if you do, make sure it is a business account, with two-factor
authentication, or something like this, and do the same for the safety,
integrity of your emails.”
He also said attendees should be
particularly careful not to inadvertently put their contacts at risk:
“It isn’t just you, it’s anyone
you are connecting with, because there are laws which restrict and criminalise
working with international organisations that could be perceived to be critical
of the government.”
Dan
Sabbagh has the
full story here:
‘Don’t be
naive like I was’: UK academic advises Cop28 attenders to stay safe
Nina Lakhani
It’s all about fossil fuels. That
was the key message from the Climate Action Network, the world’s largest
coalition of climate NGOs, who used their first daily briefing to echo calls
from António Guterres demanding an agreement on phasing out oil, gas and coal.
“This is going to be a festival of
distraction, of miracle tech fixes including carbon capture and storage which
will be framed as essential. But this is no substitute for the full phase out
of fossil fuels which must be fast, full, fair and funded; it’s about these
four Fs,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager at Oil Change
International, at CAN’s first daily briefing.
It’s hard to stay optimistic
that Cop28 can
achieve the decisive action needed to tackle the climate emergency, given the
host’s intimate relationship with oil and gas, but giving up will play into the
fossil fuel industry’s hands, warned Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International’s
global climate justice lead. “We cannot stop believing, we cannot give up. We
have to get an outcome on fossil fuel phaseout.”
·
·
Long queues have been reported by
attendees at the conference. Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute
tweeted that he had been waiting an hour for registration.
It is still far less chaotic than
the scenes in Glasgow two years ago, where thousands of people were
kept outside for hours, and the notoriously queue-plagued
Cop15 in Copenhagen in 2009. Those in the queues will also be
glad that Dubai is significantly warmer than those venues.
·
·
Nina Lakhani
While we wait for the press
conference to start – now 45 minutes overdue – here’s another entry to the best
dressed competition in the form of Grace Louis, 23, from the Toposa tribe in
South Sudan, where drought and floods are severely affeecting communities.
Grace is a Cop first timer and is
in Dubai representing
the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.
·
The US – which is both the world’s
wealthiest country and its biggest polluter – is coming in for some criticism
for its relatively paltry contribution to the loss and damage fund.
Mohamed
Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, said: “The initial funding pledges are
clearly inadequate and will be a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the
need they are to address. In particular, the amount announced by the US is
embarrassing for president Biden and John Kerry. It just shows how this must be
just the start.
“Although rules have been agreed
regarding how the fund will operate there are no hard deadlines, no targets and
countries are not obligated to pay into it, despite the whole point being for
rich, high polluting nations to support vulnerable communities who have
suffered from climate impacts.
“The US and other rich countries
wanted the fund to be hosted by the World Bank. This has been agreed, but on an
interim basis, and only as long as it operates in a transparent and easy to
access way, something the World Bank is not known for. If it proves unfit for
the task, we will need to set up a separate entity to do the job.
“The most pressing issue now is to
get money flowing into the fund and to the people that need it. The pledged
funds must not just be repackaged commitments. We need new money, in the form
of grants, not loans, otherwise it will just pile more debt onto some of the
poorest countries in the world, defeating the point of a fund designed to
improve lives.”
·
·
Updated at 09.58 EST
Nina Lakhani
Some key points on the loss and
damage funding agreement:
·
The World
Bank will be the interim host for a period of four years, and the fund will
have an independent secretariat with developed and developing countries
represented
·
It’s
been agreed that the fund will have “at least’ $100bn a year by 2030, with
developing countries saying that actual needs are already closer to $400bn
annually. Loss and damage for climate breakdown cost about $1.5tn in
2022, according to one recent study.
·
Payments
into the fund will be voluntary, with developed countries “invited”, not
obliged, to contribute
·
All
developing countries will be eligible to directly access resources from the
fund, with a minimum percentage allocation to the least developed countries and
small island developing states.
·
·
The press conference scheduled for
5pm local time (1pm GMT) has still not begun, and attendees have been told it
is likely to be another 10 to 15 minutes. Restless delegates can be seen pacing
the floors of the conference centre.
The conference – when it does
begin – can be watched here on the official UNFCCC feed:
The term
“loss and damage” has been debated and fought over fiercely since it was first used
by the UN in the Bali Action Plan of 2007. If you’re wondering what exactly it
refers to, my colleague Nina Lakhani has written a handy guide to what it is
and why the entire Cop process hinges on it here:
Why loss and
damage funds are key to climate justice for developing countries at Cop28
·
·
More
reactions are coming in to the the agreement on the operationalisation of the
loss and damage fund.
Ghiwa Nakat, executive
director of Greenpeace MENA, said: “For communities suffering from
climate-related loss and damage every contribution matters. This is the kind of
leadership we expect from the host country and we urge other countries to
follow suit. Rich developed countries must step up with major contributions to
the new fund, and polluting industries must also be made to pay. If the Cop
presidency can build on this with a consensus agreement on a just phasing out
of fossil fuels, Cop28 will indeed
be an historic event.”
Mariana Paoli, Christian
Aid’s global advocacy lead, said: “This time last year, at the start of Cop27
in Egypt, the loss and damage fund was not even on the agenda for that meeting.
So it’s a testament to the determination of developing country negotiators that
we now already have the fund agreed and established.
“The fact
that the World Bank is to be the interim host of the fund is a worry for
developing countries. It needs to be closely scrutinised to ensure vulnerable
communities are able to get easy and direct access to funds and the whole
operation is run with far more transparency than the World Bank normally
operates on. These were the conditions agreed by countries and if they are not
kept to, a separate arrangement will be needed.
“It’s now
vital we see the fund filled. People who have contributed the least to the
climate crisis are already suffering climate losses and damages. The longer
they are forced to wait for financial support to cover these costs, the greater
the injustice. At Cop28 we need to see significant new and additional pledges
of money to the loss and damage fund, and not just repackaged climate finance
that has already been committed.”
Fanny Petitbon, head of
advocacy for Care France, said: “Today is a landmark day for
climate justice, but clearly not the end of the fight. We hope the agreement
will result in rapid delivery of support for communities on the frontlines of
the climate crisis. However, it has many shortcomings. It enables historical
emitters to evade their responsibility. It also fails to establish the scale of
finance needed and ensure that the fund is anchored in human rights principles.
“The loss and
damage fund must not remain an empty promise. We urgently call on all
governments who are most responsible for the climate emergency and have the
capacity to contribute to announce significant pledges in the form of grants.
Historical emitters must lead the way. Financial commitments must not be about
robbing Peter to pay Paul: funding must be new and additional.”
·
·
The US has announced
$17.5m for the loss and damage fund, $4.5m for the Pacific Resilience Facility
which is focused on the island nations in that ocean, and $2.5m for the
Santiago Network, which provides technical support for countries affected by
climate breakdown.
Japan has
also pledged $10m for the main loss and damage fund.
These
significant pledges, which already amount to about $300m, will increase the
pressure on other wealthy nations to contribute to the fund.
·
·
The funding
is starting to roll in. Germany has also announced it will put $100m towards
the loss and damage fund, and the UK has announced £60m ($75m), made up of £40
for the fund and £20m for funding arrangements.
Kate Hampton
of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation welcomed the UAE’s pledge: “Dr
Sultan has managed what no previous Cop president has and got a big decision
agreed on day one. Their $100m is a bold move of south-south solidarity. This
is exciting leadership.”
UAE pledges $100m to loss and damage fund
Immediately
after the announcement that the loss and damage funding arrangements had been agreed,
the United Arab Emirates, which is hosting the talks, pledged $100m to the
fund.
·
·
Loss and damage funding arrangement agreed
Countries
have just agreed on the operationalisation of the loss and damage fund to help
poorer countries deal with the impacts of climate breakdown.
The news drew
a standing ovation from delegates.
The creation
of the fund has long been a stumbling block at climate talks, and the agreement
on the first day of the conference has been tentatively welcomed by many
delegates, although it will not be officially rubberstamped until the close of
the conference.
Some early
reaction:
“The loss and
damage fund will be a lifeline to people in their darkest hour, enabling
families to rebuild their homes after disaster strikes, support farmers when
their crops are wiped out and relocate those that become permanently displaced
by rising seas. This outcome was hard-fought but is a clear step forward.
“The success
of this fund will depend on the speed and scale at which funds start flowing to
people in need. We call on world leaders to announce substantial contributions
at Cop28 – not only to cover start-up costs but also to fill the fund itself.
People in vulnerable countries will face up to $580bn in climate-related
damages in 2030 and this number will only continue to grow.”
– Ani
Dasgupta, President & CEO, World Resources Institute
“Amid the
historic decision to operationalise the Loss and Damage Fund within a year of
its establishment, addressing underlying concerns becomes critical. On one
hand, rich countries have pushed for the World Bank to host this fund under the
guise of ensuring a speedy response. Conversely, they have attempted to dilute
their financial obligations and resisted defining a clear finance mobilisation
scale.
“The
responsibility now lies with affluent nations to meet their financial
obligations in a manner proportionate to their role in the climate crisis,
which has been primarily driven by decades of unrestrained fossil fuel
consumption and a lack of adequate climate finance delivered to the global
south.”
- Harjeet
Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network
International
·
·
Nina Lakhani
Climate
justice advocates have condemned the atrocities in Gaza and called for a
permanent ceasefire, in the first Palestinian solidarity event of Cop28.
“As human
beings, we cannot ignore the absolutely horrendous situation in Gaza. But it is
also not a coincidence that the same countries allowing and supporting Israel are
the same ones blocking progress on climate action,” said Lidy Nacpil, director
of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development and convener of the Cop28
Coalition. “As the whole world gathers here, it is our responsibility to talk
about what is happening in Palestine.”
The UNFCCC
cut off the livestream as Asad Rehman, director of the UK-based organisation
War on Want, called for a permanent ceasefire and accountability.
“The
Palestinian struggle is woven into every struggle for justice including climate
justice,” he said. “We want an end to ethnic cleansing, an end to the genocide,
an end to war crimes. We want a free Palestine.”
The
livestream was resumed after the organisers and attendees made a lot of noise.
More than
15,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis have died since 7 October. Israel’s
bombardment of the Gaza strip since Hamas’s cross-border attack has led to
widespread food and water shortages, as well as the destruction of agricultural
land and water infrastructure. More than 95% of the water in Gaza is unfit for
consumption, while water salinisation and treatment plants have been shut down
due to fuel shortages imposed by Israel, and in some cases partially destroyed
by the bombardment.
“As
Indigenous people of the world, we are heartbroken to see the genocide and
ecoside in Palestine,” said Mesiah Burciaga-Hameed, who read out a statement on
behalf of the Indigenous people’s caucus. “There is no climate justice without
human rights.”
“There can be
no climate justice on occupied land,” said Dylan Hamilton, a 19-year-old
climate justice and trans rights activist from Scotland. “The youth stand with
Palestine.”
The briefing
ended with an emotional address from Tariq Luthun, a Palestinian American from
Friends of the Earth Palestine, who said denying water to people was a form of
collective punishment that has also been used in the US, for example the mass
water shutoffs for overdue bills in Detroit and the lead contamination scandal
in Flint, Michigan.
“What good is
to be found in a green world if the roots are soaked in blood,” said Luthum. “I
reject the notion that some people have to suffer so that others can prosper.”
The event
ended with calls of “Viva viva Palestina”.
·
·
Updated at
09.57 EST
By Patrick
Greenfield
The role that
carbon markets will play in helping countries meet their Paris commitments is
up for discussion at Cop28, and a series of forest deals made by a little-known
member of Dubai’s ruling royal family is causing controversy.
Rights to an
area of land larger than the size of the UK have been sold off to UAE-based
firm Blue Carbon, which is chaired by Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum. So far,
the exploratory deals cover a fifth of Zimbabwe, 10% of Liberia, 10% of Zambia
and 8% of Tanzania, amounting to a total area the size of the UK.
In October,
Blue Carbon signed its latest deal for “millions” of hectares of forest in
Kenya. The company said it was also working on an agreement with Pakistan. More
deals are expected in the coming months. Critics have called them a new “scramble for
Africa”.
Blue Carbon
is not alone. Today, Tanzania National Parks - which cares for famous parks
like the Serengeti and Kilimanjaro - announced it has signed a deal to turn six
protected areas into a 1.8m hectare carbon project, which would make it one of
the largest in the world.
The Guardian
has looked into the Sheikh’s business dealings, with concerns raised about his
involvement selling Russian’s Sputnik V vaccine, acting as a dealmaker with
Ghana, Guyana, Lebanon and Pakistan at lucrative premiums in 2021. One of the
listed Blue Carbon advisors is an Italian fugitive.
Read more
here:
Who is the
UAE sheikh behind deals to manage vast areas of African forest?
·
·
This is Alan
Evans now taking over from Damien Gayle for the rest of the day. You can reach
me at alan.evans@theguardian.com, or on X (formerly Twitter) at @itsalanevans.
Our
reporters Damian Carrington and Nina
Lakhani have
sent updates on the food situation on the ground:
If climate
summits march, like armies, on their stomachs then Cop28 looks in good shape.
Unlike the
first days of the disorganised Cop27 in Egypt, there is actually food. It’s mostly
vegan too, a nod to the enormous impact meat has on the climate. An avocado,
edamame and hummus sandwich was one offering.
It’s not all
cheap, though. A coffee is $6 (£4.75), more expensive even than most cafes in
New York, so delegates without big budgets are coming prepared with packed
lunches and thermoses.
Carnivores
are catered for though, and it’s halal – eg a chicken sausage roll. But it’s a
clear improvement on the meat feast of Cop24 in Poland, and the beefburger vans
of Cop27.
·
·
Updated at 09.57 EST
Nina Lakhani
Fossil fuels
have turned Indigenous communities into sacrifice zones, endangering their
land, water and air and fuelling displacement, one of Cop28’s first briefings
has been told.
Brenna
TwoBears, lead coordinator for the Indigenous Environmental Network in Oregon,
was among Indigenous environmental experts who kicked off the first day of
Cop28. They pledged their support for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
and warned of the dangers market-based false solutions posed to Indigenous
peoples and the global climate.
TwoBears
said:
Indigenous
people support the equitable phase out of coal, oil and gas without loopholes
used to justify delays and false solutions and tech fixes that allow the fossil
fuel regime to continue and grow, and which do not address the climate crisis…
this must be accompanied by the fast track adoption of clean energy, a just
transition in which no community or country is left behind.
Momentum has
been building behind the proposal for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty,
with support from Indigenous organisations and communities facing some of the
gravest threats from extreme weather events and slow-onset climate impacts,
such as sea level rise and melting glaciers.
Eight nations
– Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Niue, Antigua and Barbuda,
and Timor-Leste – have also thrown their weight behind the idea.
Eriel
Deranger, executive director of Indigenous Climate Action who is from the
Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, an Arctic community where Canada exploits tar
sands, said:
Carbon
trading depends on the continued growth of emissions that will create more
sacrifice zones. We cannot achieve a just transition without centring climate
solutions on Indigenous and human rights.
Aletha Adu
Keir Starmer, the leader of the UK’s
opposition Labour party, will have a series of meetings over two days with
heads of states, business leaders and being hosted for an international
investors roundtable on Friday at the Cop28 climate summit.
Starmer will be joined in Dubai by
shadow energy security and net zero secretary, Ed Miliband, and shadow foreign
secretary, David Lammy.
He will use the climate summit to emphasise his view that the push to net zero
is an economic opportunity, and to say Labour is the only UK party with a plan
to pragmatically harness the opportunities of the energy transition.
Starmer aims to draw a dividing line with the Conservative government, noting
that prime minister Rishi Sunak was shamed into going to Cop27 and has used the
year since to double down on his failures, turning off businesses and
investors, failing to cut energy bills and make the UK energy secure. He will
aim to get across that the Tories are more interested in sowing political
division than facing the biggest challenges of the world.
During his visit to the summit, Starmer will set out some of the planks of an
international climate strategy under a Labour government. Earlier this year,
Starmer pledged to “throw everything” at net zero and the overhaul of the UK’s
energy system and industries, promising new jobs in “the race of our lifetime”
to a low-carbon future.
·
Updated at 07.25 EST
Damian Carrington
“We are living through climate
collapse in real time,” UN secretary-general António Guterres has told Cop28 delegates in Dubai, writes
Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington.
He spoke at the launch of
the World Meteorological Organization’s stark State
of the Climate report, which said 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded.
“This year has seen communities
around the world pounded by fires, floods, and searing temperature – and the
impact is devastating,” Guterres said. “Record global heating should send
shivers down the spines of world leaders. And it should trigger them to act.”
The WMO report, timed to inform
the negotiations at Cop28, said climate records had been
shattered in 2023, leaving “a trail of devastation and
despair”.
Data up to the end of October
showed 2023 was about 1.4C (2.5F) above pre-industrial levels, driven by the
continued rise in carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and by the return
of the El Niño climate pattern.
The latter is likely to make 2024 another record year, and bring the
internationally agreed limit of 1.5C (2.7F) ever nearer.
‘Climate
collapse in real time’: UN head António Guterres urges Cop28 to act
·
·
Sultan Al
Jaber officially opens the Cop28 climate summit
Sultan
Al Jaber has
officially opened the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai, after receiving the tiny hammer that
is the symbol of his presidency.
Reuters has filed the first report
of his opening remarks to delegates, based on a text circulated to journalists.
The news agency quotes Al Jaber as saying there were “strong views about the
idea of including language on fossil fuels and renewables in the negotiated
text ... I ask you to work together.”
“Colleagues, let history reflect
the fact that this is the Presidency that made a bold choice to proactively
engage with oil and gas companies,” Jaber said. “We had many hard discussions.
Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.”
Al Jaber noted that many national
oil companies had adopted net-zero targets for 2050. “I am grateful that they
have stepped up to join this game-changing journey,” Jaber said. “But, I must
say, it is not enough, and I know that they can do more.”
While Sultan Al Jaber says some
oil companies have set net zero targets for 2050, those only cover the
emissions from producing the oil and gas.
No companies have committed to
cutting production of the polluting fuels themselves, which is what scientists
are clear is needed.
Indeed, the fossil fuel industry
plans to produce double the amount of
oil, gas and coal than could be burned while keeping under
internationally agreed limits for global heating. And the company with
the biggest net-zero busting plans is
Adnoc, the UAE’s state oil giant, whose CEO is Al Jaber himself.
·
The tiny hammer has been presented
to Sultan Al Jaber, officially
transferring to him the presidency of the Cop process.
·
·
Updated at 05.38 EST
India's
foreign minister insists coal 'would remain' its main source of energy
Even as the Narendra
Modi, India’s
prime minister, prepares to travel to the Cop28 summit, a top official in his
government insisted coal will remain India’s main source of energy for years to
come.
“Coal is, and would, remain an
important part of India’s energy needs,” Vinay Mohan Kwatra, India’s foreign secretary, told
reporters ahead of Modi’s trip to Dubai.
India currently depends on coal
for almost three-quarters of its electricity generation and is adding 17
gigawatts of coal-based power generation capacity at its fastest pace in recent
years to meet a record increase in power demand.
There is hope this year’s climate
talks will include efforts to secure a global agreement on the phase-out of
fossil fuels, of which coal is the dirtiest and most carbon intensive. India
and China have been opposing attempts to block construction of new coal-fired power
stations, according to Reuters.
Kwatra said India expects a clear
roadmap on climate financing at Cop28 and has always been upfront about its
support for a “loss-and-damage” fund aimed at helping countries recover from
environmental degradation caused by industrial development.
“Loss and damage fund will be of
great benefit to developing countries,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
·
·
Updated at 05.38 EST
Nina Lakhani
Delegates are just beginning to
find their way around the Cop28 climate talks venue this
morning. My environment desk colleague Nina Lakhani is there and sent this
dispatch on what it looks like around Expo City in Abu Dhabi.
It’s day one and the sprawling
Expo venue is beginning to fill up with delegates, diplomats and activists from
more than 180 countries, and among them are serious fashionistas bringing some
style to the tense and formal negotiations.
Forget fashion week, the climate
summit is both the place to see international clothing trends – and get to know
the traditional dress of countries, communities and Indigenous territories that
you’ve never visited.
From beaded hijabs, silk saris and
brilliant white dishdashas to Mayan huipiles, Amazonian headdresses, and west
African Ankara wax fabrics, getting to hang out with people from every corner
of the planet is one of the highlights of Cop.
Worst dressed group? The media,
without doubt, though some of our colleagues from Africa, Latin America and
Asia make a lot more effort than us comfort seekers.
English may be the main
negotiating language, wait in line for coffee or the bathroom, and you’ll hear
a glorious array of languages and dialects. It’s outside the formal
negotiations that the power of collaboration and grassroots community building
comes into its own. There’s a lot not to like about Cop but the diversity and
relationship building is a beautiful thing.
Updated at 04.33 EST
Greenpeace has a message for African
leaders heading to Cop28 today:
“Stop False Solutions”.
·
·
Delegates
hope for early win on loss and damage fund
Delegates at Cop28 are hoping to achieve an early
victory on a disaster fund on Thursday before the summit turns its attention to
more contentious areas, such as the future of fossil fuels, Reuters is
reporting.
The news agency says diplomats are
hoping a draft deal on a loss and damage fund can be approved quickly at the
start of the climate talks. The United Arab Emirates’ Cop28 presidency has
already published a proposal for such a fund.
Once an agreement is reached, rich
countries can begin pledging money. Nations including Germany, Denmark and the
Netherlands are expected to announce contributions over the next few days,
European diplomats told Reuters.
“Everyone with the ability to pay
should contribute,” said the EU climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, who said
he wanted to “broaden the donor base beyond the usual suspects, simply because
that reflects the reality of 2023.”
With governments preparing for
long, tough negotiations on whether to agree to phase out coal, oil and gas,
the main sources of carbon emissions, it is hoped an early win on loss and
damage will pave the way for further compromises later on.
·
·
Updated at 04.13 EST
Extinction
Rebellion, the climate
activist campaign, has issued a downbeat assessment of what we can expect
from Cop28.
Some five years after they began
their campaign for action on climate breakdown with their “declaration of rebellion”
outside the UK parliament, XR says we have woken up to a world that “is as bad,
if not worse than we predicted five years ago”, with 2023 set to be classified
the hottest year on record.
In this context … we are once
again seeing world leaders fly, on their private jets, to the next conference
of the parties (Cop) on climate, Cop28. The conference will take place in Dubai
in the United Arab Emirates, a nation built almost entirely on fossil fuel
wealth. Cop28 is led by Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, founder and chair of Abu
Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). which has the largest net-zero busting
plans in the world.
Before it has even begun, it is
clear the Cop process has been captured by the fossil fuel economy. We are
unlikely to see the rapid, just and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels
coming out of this process.
And yet XR says it will not simply
ignore the talks at Cop, and it has issued calls for a number of outcomes it
wants to see, including the honouring of climate finance grants, the urgent
establishment of a loss and damage fund, debt cancellation and a fast, fair
process.
To ignore Cop is to display our
minority world arrogance and play into the hands of the system we are trying to
fix. Those in power have designed Cop to their advantage — of course they want
us to ignore it. Many majority world countries have no choice but to work with
the United Nations (UN) because it is the only space that comes close to global
democracy in which their voices have a presence.
The G77 will be there, and in
Brazil, President Lula is calling for an Amazon Cop in 2030; many movements
come to Cop trying to push for justice.
So XRUK’s position is: Yes, Cop28 is not good enough, but it’s all we’ve got.
·
·
Updated at 03.49 EST
UK schools
union says it is 'deeply concerned' at impact of climate crisis on pupils and
education workers
The trade union representing the
leaders of schools in the England, Wales and Northern Ireland has said it is
“deeply concerned” at climate crisis and the impact it is having on pupils, education
workers and communities across the world.
As part of a submission to
the Cop28 climate
talks by UK trade unions, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT)
called for governments “to prioritise their actions before it is too late”,
pointing out that extreme climate events are disrupting the education of nearly
40 million children a year worldwide.
Helena Macormac, the NAHT’s
international secretary, said:
It is vital that decisive and
substantial collective international actions are taken as a matter of urgency –
the future of our children and young people is at stake.
The UK government has said that
tackling climate change and biodiversity loss is its number one international
priority, yet the lack of investment and sustained joined up policy on this
area would lead us to believe that this is not the case. Climate change is
already having detrimental effect to education working conditions in the UK,
with decades of state neglect of school buildings and classrooms not fit for
purpose in extreme weather events. We are also already seeing an increase in
‘climate refugees’ and displaced pupils impacting on school communities.
It is vital that the pupil voice
is heard within the climate crisis debate, and that they are able to access
climate education – it is they that will pioneer the necessary solutions to the
climate crisis. Governments must realise the integral role that pupils, school
leaders and education providers play in tackling climate change, and work to
deliver a ‘just transition’ for the future.
At the Guardian we’ve been working
hard to get you up to speed with what to expect from Cop28. If you can’t stop to read, you can
listen.
The Guardian’s Science Weekly
podcast this week focuses on everything you need to know about the climate
talks, with host Ian Sample talking to Fiona Harvey, our environment editor and
resident Cop expert.
After a year of record
temperatures, this year’s summit has been called the most vital yet. Fiona
explains why this summit proved controversial before it even began, what the
main talking points will be, and how countries can still collaborate to meet
the goals set out in 2015’s Paris agreement.
Everything
you need to know about Cop28 as the summit begins – podcast
·
·
ActionAid UK
criticises UK's climate action progress, saying it is sending wrong message to
other countries
Rishi
Sunak, the UK
prime minister, will be flying in to Dubai for the start of the Cop28
summit as he tries to burnish his credentials as an international statesman.
But over the past few months, the UK
government has issued more than 100 new licences for oil and gas exploitation
in the North Sea. The development charity ActionAid UK has criticised the UK’s
progress on climate action, saying domestic policies are threatening progress
on the global stage by sending the wrong message to countries elsewhere in the
world.
In a statement send to the
Guardian, Zahra Hdidou, senior climate and resilience adviser at ActionAid UK,
said:
As Rishi Sunak lands in Dubai, we
are deeply concerned by the message the UK government is sending to countries
in the global south affected by its alarming inaction on climate change. Ahead
of the Cop summit this week, the UK claims that it is more ambitious on climate
than any other major economy, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
As it issues licences for over 100
new oil and gas fields and fails to provide a proper roadmap on how it will
deliver £11.6bn in loss and damage finance to climate-stricken countries, the
UK’s decisions today will continue to cause environmental catastrophe well into
the future and cause immense harm to women and girls disproportionately
affected by climate breakdown.
Attention should also be paid to
the role that the UK’s finance sector, one of the world’s most important, plays
in financing fossil fuel projects, Hiddou said:
The UK is also the heart of the
global financial sector, which our recent research found
has poured hundreds of billions of pounds into fossil fuels and agribusinesses
since the Paris agreement. With UK banks like HSBC and Barclays among the
largest funders of climate chaos, it also has a responsibility to regulate the
sector, ensuring that money stops flowing towards climate-wrecking industries.
Instead of accelerating
investments into fossil fuels and continuing its harmful, polluting legacy, it
should show strong leadership in Dubai and commit to phasing out fossil fuels
entirely.
·
·
Updated at 03.45 EST
The UN
Development Programme has
published a video explainer on the issues at play at this year’s Cop climate
summit. Take a look if you need a quick and easily absorbed rundown of what
delegates will be discussing over the next fortnight.
·
·
The United Arab Emirates, one of the
world’s foremost fossil fuel producing nations, was always going to be an
interesting choice for the Cop28 climate talks. Highlighting the
apparent contradiction is a tweet from one attendee showing this incongruous
sight from her hotel room window.
Ajit Niranjan
People must balance outrage and
optimism after a “hellish summer” of extreme weather, the UN’s former climate
chief has urged at the start of the Cop28 climate summit, writes
Ajit Narinjan, the Guardian’s Europe environment correspondent.
“We have to keep the outrage
really high because we are so darn late,” said Christiana
Figueres, a veteran
negotiator hailed as the architect of the Paris climate agreement.
She pointed to the weak policies that
governments have set in order to cut planet-heating pollution and the $7tn with
which they directly and indirectly subsidise fossil fuels.
But there were reasons for optimism
that could stop people falling into “a dark rabbit hole”, she added. “I do make
a conscious choice every morning to say: ‘Yes, I know what all the bad news is’
– that’s easy to get because that just screams at you from whatever news feed
you have – but also, what is positive that is going out there? What are the
disruptive pieces that are real, strong evidence of the fact that this is
changing?”
Speaking to a small group of
reporters on Monday, Figueres highlighted the plummeting cost of renewable energy
and the growth of electric cars as two areas where positive changes were
happening faster and faster.
We have to
balance outrage with optimism, says UN’s former climate chief
·
·
Updated at 03.44 EST
Dawn has broken over the Cop28 climate
talks in Dubai. Here are the
first few pictures appearing on the news wires of the scene there this morning
as the conference gets under way.
Updated at 03.35 EST
Damian Carrington
Simon
Stiell, the
executive secretary of the UN climate convention, the international framework
which governs Cop28, has given a
call to arms to all nations as the summit begins:
This year’s climate conference
comes as the crisis enters a new phase – and shows its full force, harming
billions of people, and costing trillions. Now everyone is on the frontlines.
No country is immune.
Yet most governments are still
taking baby steps, when bold strides are urgently needed. So, the problem is
clear: business-as-usual is breaking our planet. At the Cop28 climate
conference, leaders must get to work fixing it.
It’s great that over 160 world
leaders are coming, but Cop28 cannot be just a photo-op. Leaders must deliver
in Dubai – the message is clear.
They must agree to triple
renewable energy this decade, and double energy efficiency. And Cop28 must show
a clear agreement to leave fossil fuel dependency behind. Only renewable energy
offers safe, affordable, secure energy, as well as far more jobs, stronger
economic growth, less pollution and better health for people in every country.
Developing nations – who did least
to cause the crisis – have been starved of climate justice and resilience for
too long. Last year’s Cop in Egypt delivered an historic loss & damage
fund. This year’s cop in the UAE must put meat on the bone of this fund. That
means putting real money on the table. Table scraps won’t cut it.
In a fractured world, climate action
is a chance to unite around a common cause: survival, justice, prosperity. In
short – Divisions will destroy us. But solutions can save us. It’s time for us
all to get to work.
·
·
Updated at 03.34 EST
Guterres
calls for complete 'phase-out' of fossil fuels
António
Guterres, the UN
secretary general, has said this year’s Cop climate talks should aim for a
complete “phase-out” of fossil fuels, insisting of the 1.5C climate goal: “It
is not dead, it’s alive.”
Speaking to French state-backed news
agency AFP before embarking on his flight to attend the conference in Dubai, Guterres said:
Obviously I am strongly in favour
of language that includes (a) phaseout, even with a reasonable time framework.
We have the potential, the
technologies and the capacity and the money - because the money is available,
it’s a question of making sure it goes into the right direction- to do what is
necessary, not only to keep the 1.5 degrees alive, but alive and well.
The only thing that is still
lacking is political will.
Scientists are increasingly
warning the goal of restricting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial
levels looks ever more unlikely, an outcome that nations have agreed would be disastrous
for human civilisation.
Since the goal was agreed at the
Paris climate talks in 2015, nations’ actions have fallen far short. Some
countries have called for the final statement of Cop28, which requires unanimous agreement,
to explicitly call for a reduction in fossil fuel consumption – which would be
a historic first.
But Guterres went further, telling
AFP a simple promise to reduce fossil fuels would not be enough. “I think it
would be a pity if we would stay in a vague and noncommittal ‘phase-down’ whose
real meaning would not be obvious for anybody,” he said.
·
·
Updated at 03.26 EST
So what is a conference of the
parties? My colleague Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment editor and a veteran
of multiple Cops, has written a handy explainer, setting out what it is all
about. She writes:
For almost three decades, world
governments have met nearly every year to
forge a global response to the climate emergency. Under the 1992 UN framework
convention on climate change (UNFCCC), every country is treaty-bound to “avoid
dangerous climate change” and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
globally in an equitable way.
Cop stands for conference of the
parties under the UNFCCC, and the annual meetings have swung between fractious
and soporific, interspersed with moments of high drama and the occasional
triumph (the Paris agreement in 2015)
and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009). This year is the 28th iteration, and
promises to be a difficult follow-up to last year, when developing countries
celebrated victory on key issues of
climate finance.
For more answers to your Cop28-related
questions, including “Why do we need a Cop anyway?”, read more by clicking the
link below.
What is Cop28
and why does it matter?
·
·
Updated at 03.24 EST
Good morning! This is Damien
Gayle, on the very first day of the 28th conference of parties climate change
summit, or Cop28.
The Guardian will be live-blogging
the negotiations throughout, as always, and we look forward to your
contributions: please email me on damien.gayle@theguardian.com with thoughts
and suggestions. Alan Evans (alan.evans@theguardian.com)
will be taking over the blog later on.
Today, the first day of the
conference, will be focused around the opening ceremony. Joe Biden and Xi
Jinping will not be attending but other world leaders will be arriving today,
including Rishi Sunak.
Negotiators are hoping to make
strong progress this Cop, and Sultan Al Jaber, the president-designate of the
summit, has told my colleague Fiona Harvey that
an “unprecedented outcome” that would keep alive hopes of limiting global
temperature rises to 1.5C is within reach.
But it is all still to play for.
The US’s veteran climate negotiator, John Kerry, speaking to journalists in
Dubai yesterday, said: “I feel confident that we will make progress [at Cop28].
The question is: how much progress?”
X32
FRIDAY
FRIDAY
guardian
@
EnvironmentClimate
crisisWildlifeEnergyPollutionGreen light
Cop28
Cop28:
Rishi Sunak says ‘climate politics is close to breaking point’ – as it happened
This
live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Cop28 coverage here
Updated 6h ago
6h
ago
End-of-day
summary
7h
ago
Starmer
accuses Sunak of ‘retreating’ from climate leadership at Cop28
8h
ago
Rishi
Sunak: 'climate politics is close to breaking point'
9h
ago
‘Planetary
emergency’: droughts, the deadliest of disasters
9h
ago
Brazil's
Lula: 'it is not possible to face climate change without combating inequality'
10h
ago
Ursula
von der Leyen calls for world to follow EU with carbon pricing
10h
ago
Leaders
speeches begin with pleas on Palestine and Pacific islands
10h
ago
Summary
13h
ago
King's
climate warnings 'meaningless' unless UK government acts, say climate action
groups
13h
ago
King
Charles tells Cop28 summit 'our own survivability will be imperilled' unless we
'restore nature's economy'
15h
ago
Rishi
Sunak, King Charles and other world leaders fly in to Cop28
King
Charles III and Rishi Sunak
00:01:54
Climate
politics is 'close to breaking point', Rishi Sunak tells Cop28 – video
Helena
Horton (now) and Matthew Taylor (earlier)
Fri
1 Dec 2023 10.08 EST
From
8h ago
08.44
EST
Rishi
Sunak: 'climate politics is close to breaking point'
Sunak
has declared to Cop that he has watered down UK climate policies, potentially
embarrassing the country on the world stage.
As
other world leaders ask for more action to be taken on the climate emergency,
the prime minister continued his environment rhetoric – which has been condemned
as damaging by environment charities.
“Climate
politics is close to breaking point”, he said, adding that “the costs of
inaction are intolerable but we have choices in how we act”.
Sunak
said that net zero would only be delivered in a way that “benefits the British
people”, adding that “we have scrapped plans on heat pumps and energy
efficiency that would have cost people thousands of pounds”.
He
also highlighted his new nature plan, which has been panned by critics.
Despite
this, he did tell other countries that “the mounting science and evidence of
climate related disasters prove we are not moving fast enough”, and added that
“everyone can do more”.
He
called on major emitters to cut faster and said “the UK is leading the charge”.
Updated
at 09.58 EST
6h
ago
10.08
EST
End-of-day
summary
We
are wrapping up the blog. Here is a refresh of a very busy day at the summit:
Keir
Starmer, the UK opposition leader, has accused Rishi Sunak of “shrinking and retreating”
from showcasing leadership on the global stage at Cop28 and over the climate
crisis. Starmer added he he’d had a “lot of engagement” and many requests for
bilateral meetings, “more requests than we can possible handle”. He added: “The
prime minister said this morning we will be judged by our grandchildren not on
what we said but what we did and what we didn’t do. And therefore, for the
prime minister to reduce this down in the way that he does, the smallness of
his politics is becoming a feature of his politics. We saw it with the Greek
prime minister. We saw it with some of the lines that he was putting out about
‘eco zealots’ as he got on the plane to come here. This is not something to
shrink from, not something to retreat from.”
Sunak
declared to attenders of the summit that he had watered down climate policy in
the UK, drawing anger from politicians and climate experts who said he had
“misread the room”.
World
leaders, particularly those from developing countries at the forefront of the
climate crisis, called on large economies and emitters to take urgent action to
reduce emissions and fund loss and damage.
A
UN report found that droughts were a global emergency causing widespread
famine, and that they were a silent, often ignored, killer.
Brazil’s
president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said it was not possible to tackle the
climate crisis without also tackling inequality. He spoke of climate suffering
in the Amazon, which was experiencing one of the “most tragic droughts in its
history”, while cyclones in the south of Brazil had left a trail of
“destruction and death”.
Greek
people were excited that King Charles wore a Greek-motif tie and pocket square
during his address to the conference – signalling – or so it has been
interpreted – his support for the return to Athens of the Parthenon marbles
after a row over the antiquities this week.
Speaking
of the monarch, his speech was certainly more well-received than Sunak’s.
Charles said alarming tipping points were being reached and that it was greatly
worrying that the world was so far off track in tackling the climate crisis.
“Unless we rapidly repair and restore nature’s economy based on harmony and
balance, which is our ultimate sustainer, our own economy and survivability
will be imperilled,” he added.
Updated
at 10.28 EST
7h
ago
09.59
EST
The
leaders’ speeches are over and I am pretty certain Rishi Sunak is the only one
to have used it as an opportunity to boast about domestic climate policy
rollback. A less tone-deaf leader may have focused on the positive actions
Britain has taken, and urge other countries to follow suit, rather than
doubling down on our regressions. In my personal view, it is quite embarrassing
and sets a bad example for other countries to follow. Why should poorer
countries, which are bearing the brunt of our emissions that are causing
extreme weather events, invest in decarbonising when the British prime minister
will address Cop of all places to trumpet a retreat from net zero policies? It
is a dangerous move to talk about the so-called costs of decarbonisation at a
summit where each country is being asked to do its utmost to prevent climate
catastrophe.
Below
is a summary I wrote in September about Sunak’s net zero rollback to remind you
of the policies we are referring to.
UK
net zero policies: what has Sunak scrapped and what do changes mean?
Read
more
Updated
at 10.32 EST
7h
ago
09.42
EST
Starmer
accuses Sunak of ‘retreating’ from climate leadership at Cop28
Aletha
Adu
Aletha
Adu
Keir
Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of “shrinking and retreating” from showcasing
leadership on the global stage at Cop28 and over the climate crisis.
This
comes after Sunak’s tetchy press conference during which he boasted about UK
plans to water down climate action.
Starmer
made his comments on the first day of the Cop28 summit, which he attended with
the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, and the shadow net zero secretary,
Ed Miliband.
Starmer
said he has had a “lot of engagement” and many requests for bilateral meetings,
“more requests than we can possible handle.”
He
added: “The prime minister said this morning we will be judged by our
grandchildren not on what we said, but what we did and what we didn’t do.
“And
therefore, for the prime minister to reduce this down in the way that he does,
the smallness of his politics is becoming a feature of his politics. We saw it
with the Greek prime minister. We saw it with some of the lines that he was
putting out about ‘eco zealots’ as he got on the plane to come here. This is
not something to shrink from, not something to retreat from.”
Starmer
accuses Sunak of ‘retreating’ from climate leadership at Cop28
Read
more
Updated
at 09.51 EST
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7h
ago
09.34
EST
Ed
Miliband, Labour’s shadow energy secretary, was not very impressed by Sunak’s
remarks to the media in which he reiterated his plans to water down the UK’s
domestic climate commitments.
He
described Sunak’s stance on the crisis as a “failure”, explaining: “That was a
complacent performance from a prime minister in denial about the energy bills
crisis at home, and the weakening of the United Kingdom’s standing abroad in
his time in office.
“Working
people are paying the price for Rishi Sunak’s climate failure, in the form of
higher bills, and in the awful costs this leaves our children and
grandchildren. His approach, criticised today by a former Tory prime minister,
is undermining Britain’s energy security.
“Only
Labour can deliver the climate leadership that Britain needs, to cut energy
bills for families, make the UK energy independent, and protect the planet.”
Updated
at 10.36 EST
7h
ago
09.30
EST
UK
prime minister Rishi Sunak is on stage at the world leader’s speeches. He said
“climate science shows we are off track” and that credibility is being
undermined by “climate politics”. This phrase appears to mean, judging by his
press conference earlier, criticising him for his net zero rollback.
Rishi
Sunak
Rishi
Sunak boasted to world leaders that Britain was watering down its climate
commitments. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP
Sunak
criticised the divide between “lofty rhetoric on stages like this” and what
happened on the ground. He pointed out that the UK had “decarbonised faster
than any other major economy”.
The
prime minister again boasted on the world stage that he was “taking a new
approach” to net zero and watering down commitments.
He
outlined the £1.6bn fund announced today, which will include loss and damage
funding as well as support for forests, and said the UK was a leading green
finance centre.
Sunak
added: “I believe we can deliver here in Dubai but we’ve got to work together.”
The
UK PM will not be around to work on the climate negotiations, however, as he is
soon due to board his private jet and return to the UK after spending only
eight hours in Dubai.
He
also said “the debate is too divided”, which may surprise the climate experts
he has repeatedly labelled as “zealots” in recent days.
Updated
at 10.36 EST
7h
ago
09.23
EST
Bibi van der Zee
Bibi van der Zee
Here
are some further extracts from the leaders’ speeches:
The
prime minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, welcomed the summit’s plans to conclude
the first ever global stocktake but the world is not yet on pathway to 1.5C. He
outlined the country’s financial and energy transition plans, including a goal
to make renewable energy its main source of power – Japan is apparently the
world’s third largest market for solar power.
Mark
Rutte
Mark
Rutte Photograph: Ali Haider/EPA
Abiy
Ahmed, president of Ethiopia, said his country had planted 32.5bn seedlings and
was turning a desert into a biodiverse paradise. He said his country is
planting climate resilient plants, and produced 6m hectares of wheat in one
year. He said “this has relieved us from decades of import dependency” and that
they had for the first time become a wheat exporter.
Pedro
Sánchez, president of Spain, said we need to have a “polluter pays” principle,
where polluters pay for the destruction they cause.
It
was pretty difficult for the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, to commit to
anything very significant as he has already stepped down as prime minister and
his appearance follows a divisive and angry election in the tiny but wealthy
country. He contented himself with an exhortation to action, particularly on
behalf of the young people around the world, and an acknowledgment that the
decarbonisation in the Netherlands has been tricky. “It is a painstaking
process but it can be done.” It remains to be seen what the government that
succeeds him – still taking shape after the far-right politician Geert Wilders
won an unprecedented percentage of the vote – will want to do on this topic.
Updated
at 09.54 EST
7h
ago
09.13
EST
Unsurprisingly,
climate experts are not impressed by Sunak’s decision to use Cop as an excuse
to boast about the UK’s back sliding on climate goals.
Tessa
Khan, executive director at Uplift, an organisation campaigning for a fossil
fuel free UK said: “The prime minister has completely misread the room. While
the head of the UN implores countries to urgently phase out fossil fuels, the
UK is one of just a handful of wealthy nations that is continuing to greenlight
major new oilfields.
“Rishi
Sunak’s disinterest in tackling the climate crisis plays badly with voters at
home, but to play dumb at Cop and ignore the UK’s role in literally adding fuel
to the fire, for example by approving the massive Rosebank oilfield, is diplomatically
embarrassing.”
Updated
at 09.54 EST
8h
ago
09.02
EST
Bibi van der Zee
Bibi van der Zee
Here
are some more updates from the world leaders.
Nikos
Christodoulides, president of Cyprus, told the summit that his country was experiencing
the effects of climate change – wildfires, floods, and extreme heatwaves which
have destroyed large parts of their forests and had a devastating effect on
livelihoods. The eastern Mediterranean and Middle East climate change
initiative was working on a coordinated response across the region. “Let us
come together to build resilient and green businesses and communities of the
future.”
Vahagn
Khachaturyan, president of Armenia, said it was clear we cannot continue down
the route of using predominantly hydrocarbons for energy. He said we need to
“phase down” fossil fuels – he didn’t say he wanted to phase them out.
Emmanuel
Macron
Emmanuel
Macron. Photograph: Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters
Emmanuel
Macron, president of France, went well over his allotted time, delivering a
long and comprehensive analysis of the many changes that need to be made to
international structures so that action on climate change can be optimised. His
speech focused on routes to decarbonisation around the world and pointed out the
dysfunction of the investment systems that run them. He called for a complete
U-turn on the subject of coal, with the G7 countries must set the example and
commit to putting an end to coal. “France will close all plants by 2027,” he
promised and the richest countries must help developing countries to phase out
coal.
He
said the world must also stop subsidising new coal power plants and must change
rules when it comes to private financing: “The private sector has no
disincentive, and our investment systems are dysfunctional.”
He
wanted to see the World Trade Organization redraw its trade rules to allow
countries to subsidise green industries and place a tariff on coal.
Updated
at 09.56 EST
8h
ago
08.52
EST
Asked
by the Telegraph about the leaders of the world’s two largest emitters, China
and US not attending the Cop, UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, focused on the
UK’s emissions.
“The
UK accounts for less than 1% of global emissions. We have to acknowledge in
reality that what we do isn’t going to be the difference in terms of our
emissions.”
However,
many argue that the UK needs to lead by example as a wealthy, developed country
which has historically been one of the world’s largest emitters.
Sunak
reiterated net zero needs to be “pragmatic and proportionate” because “we only
account for less than 1% of emissions”.
Asked
by the i about his meeting with Tony Blair, Sunak said “it was nice to see Tony
Blair”.
Asked
by Politico why he is spending more time on a private jet than at Cop, which he
is only going to be at for a matter of hours, he said it is not about the
amount of time spent but the impact made.
He
said he had very useful meetings with people about a “very significant reform
of the global financial system that needs to happen”.
Sunak
said: “I feel very good that it’s been a very productive day.”
Updated
at 09.57 EST
8h
ago
08.48
EST
Now
some questions to Sunak from journalists. He was asked by the BBC if he was
saying the UK has “already done its bit” and the onus was on other more
emitting countries.
He
replied that the UK has more ambitious targets than other countries, adding:
“We are on track to deliver all these targets, we have carbon budgets that we
have met and we are on track to meet the next one as well. With all the announcements
I made earlier, we are still on track to meet these carbon targets.”
Prime
minister Rishi Sunak.
Rishi
Sunak speaks during Cop. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Sky
asked him whether other world leaders had raised concerns about the net zero
rollback. Sunak says: “Hand on heart, 100% no. Not a single leader I have
spoken to today has, because our targets are more ambitious than theirs.”
He
added that other countries are “hugely appreciative” of his work and the UK.
Defending
himself, he added: “I shift a date to be in line with almost every other
country and it’s treated like it’s a rather extreme measure.”
Updated
at 09.57 EST
8h
ago
08.44
EST
Rishi
Sunak: 'climate politics is close to breaking point'
Sunak
has declared to Cop that he has watered down UK climate policies, potentially
embarrassing the country on the world stage.
As
other world leaders ask for more action to be taken on the climate emergency,
the prime minister continued his environment rhetoric – which has been
condemned as damaging by environment charities.
“Climate
politics is close to breaking point”, he said, adding that “the costs of
inaction are intolerable but we have choices in how we act”.
Sunak
said that net zero would only be delivered in a way that “benefits the British
people”, adding that “we have scrapped plans on heat pumps and energy
efficiency that would have cost people thousands of pounds”.
He
also highlighted his new nature plan, which has been panned by critics.
Despite
this, he did tell other countries that “the mounting science and evidence of
climate related disasters prove we are not moving fast enough”, and added that
“everyone can do more”.
He
called on major emitters to cut faster and said “the UK is leading the charge”.
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08.11
EST
Here
are some more highlights from the leaders’ speeches, by Bibi van der Zee and I.
Wavel
John Charles Ramkalawan, president of the Seychelles, said he was disheartened
that so many financial commitments on climate change were yet to be fulfilled
despite the urgency of the crisis.
“Small
island developing states are on the frontline of climate change,” he told the
summit. They urgently need money to deal with the coastal erosion they are seeing.
“We made history by operationalising the loss and damage fund on the first day
of this Cop … It is vital that this fund is equitable and genuinely helpful.”
The Seychelles is an environmental champion which already protects 32% of its
marine land, but it is categorised as a high-income country, and Ramkalawan is
extremely concerned that this will affect their ability to access LAD funding.
South
Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Seychelles’ president, Wavel
Ramkalawan.
South
Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Seychelles’ president, Wavel
Ramkalawan. Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters
Turkey’s
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was another leader who made comparisons between the
war in Gaza and the climate crisis. He said: “Turkey has stood by peace during
all these crises and works towards finding solutions on the basis of equity. We
approach the issue of climate change from the same perspective.” He pointed out
that Turkey is the second in Europe and ninth in the world for hydro energy. He
said despite the devastating earthquake in February they are managing to keep
on track for their goals and are “healing the wounds” of the disaster while
building “climate and environment friendly” structures.
Zuzana
Čaputová, president of Slovakia, asked the summit: “How much more do we
want to harm future generations?” Her country’s emissions have peaked already,
and are 55% lower than they were in 1980. They plan to use 5% of GDP from
public sources to decarbonise their country and by the end of this year will
stop using coal to generate electricity.
Updated
at 08.27 EST
9h
ago
07.55
EST
Patrick
Greenfield
Patrick
Greenfield
Steven
Guilbeault, Canada’s environment minister, has said the loss and damage fund
should help rebuild trust between the global north and south after years of
tense negotiations.
Earlier
today, Canada committed US$11.8m to the new fund, which will be housed within
the World Bank. Guilbeault also said his country was happy to support language
on reducing fossil fuels that was consistent with Canada’s 2050 carbon
neutrality target.
“It
is significant. For 30 years, we made absolutely no progress on loss and
damage. We went from nothing about a year ago to a fund and countries pledging
money today. I think for the global south, this is a very significant issue.
Between that and the $100bn dollar goal, I think these are very important
elements that will help restore trust. Trust is the fuel of this process. I
think it bodes well for the next two weeks,” he said.
Workers
adjust the flag of Canada in the runup to Cop28.
Workers
adjust the flag of Canada in the runup to Cop28. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP
“It’s
not a recognition that we are willing to take on liability from the results of
climate change. But as large emitters, we have a role to play. We have a
greater role to play in supporting the global south.”
When
asked whether Canada supports language to phase out all fossil fuels, a key
point of contention at the Cop28 summit, Guilbeault said his country was open
to different forms of language in the final text and underscored that fossil
fuel production would have to drop.
“We
support language that’s aligned with our commitment to be carbon neutral by
2050. Whether you want to call it phasing out unabated fossil fuels or say it
in a different way. Some people would like us to say we want to phase out all
fossil fuels but even the IPCC and the IEA still say in a 2050 carbon neutral
world that we will still be using fossil fuels,” he said.
“I
don’t know how realistic it is to say we will phase them all out but what’s
important is that we radically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. And for
those that we are using, we need to capture and sequester the emissions. We
don’t have a choice. But we need to see significant emission reduction from the
oil and gas centre. We can’t do that through abatement technology. There is
going to be a reduction in production,” he said.
Updated
at 08.59 EST
9h
ago
07.50
EST
Veteran
climate reporter Roger Harrabin, who used to work for the BBC and is now
freelance – sometimes writing for the Guardian – points out that only political
journalists, not environmental specialists, have been allowed into an event
with Rishi Sunak. Harrabin says he was “kicked out”.
We
have a brilliant reporter in there and will bring you the news from his press
conference, but it is true that this government often hides from scrutiny and
one of the ways it does that is by barring specialist reporters from its
briefings.
Our
environment editor, Fiona Harvey, has also reported troubles in accessing press
conferences at the summit.
Updated
at 08.32 EST
Support
the Guardian
As
we head into 2024, we’re preparing for one of the most consequential news
cycles of our lifetimes. At the Guardian, we have no billionaire owner, so
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by outside influence. Which is why we need your support to raise $1.5m to fund
our reporting next year.
This
live blog is a great way to understand every single minute of a story as it
unfolds. We’ve been publishing our live blogs for more than two decades –
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9h
ago
07.45
EST
The
leader’s speeches continue. Here are some updates from myself and one of my
editors, Bibi van der Zee, who is also listening in.
Santiago
Peña, president of Paraguay, said: “In my country of Paraguay all energy is
clean and renewable. Yes you heard that, it is all clean and renewable.”
He’s
right – the Itaipu Dam, located on the Paraná River, is one of the largest
hydroelectric power plants in the world and generates about 95% of Paraguay’s electricity,
all of which comes from renewable sources.
The
Itaipu Dam.
The
Itaipu Dam. Photograph: Imagebroker/Alamy
He
also pointed out that 44% of their land surface is forest, and asked China to
allow Taiwan to be included in the Cop process – the small country is currently
barred at the instruction of the Chinese government.
Kassym-Jomart
Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan, has pledged to join the global methane
pledge. He says there is extraordinary potential for wind and solar in his
country – a key oil exporter - and also points out that Kazakhstan is poised to
become a major source of rare earth minerals. Tokayev is planning to convene a
regional climate summit in 2024 under UN auspices.
President
of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, said that temperatures in his country
have increased by 1.8C already. Serbians experienced uncomfortable “tropical
nights” over 20C degrees celcius for the first time this October, which he said
was “unprecedented for the region”.
Abdul
Latif Rashid, president of Iraq, drew on the history of the region, pointing
out that his predecessors in Mesopotamia, 4,500 years ago, drew up the first
agreement for sharing water resources, and warned the summit that the famous
rivers of Iraq were now under threat from drought linked to climate change.
“The drought in the south of Iraq, the record level temperatures,
desertification, and sand storms have led to economic challenges that resulted
in a larger level of poverty and internal displacement.” He urged the gulf
countries to act as a unified bloc, and condemned the aggressive attack on
Gaza.
Updated
at 08.43 EST
9h
ago
07.36
EST
‘Planetary
emergency’: droughts, the deadliest of disasters
Damian
Carrington
Damian
Carrington
Droughts
supercharged by global heating are “an unprecedented emergency on a planetary
scale”, according to a UN report released on Friday at Cop28, leading to food
shortages and famine.
While
other climate impacts such as heatwaves, wildfires and floods often hit the
headlines, droughts are often silent disasters, the report said, and “the
massive impacts of human-induced droughts are only starting to unfold”.
The
report is from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which is an
international agreement on good land stewardship. It says “few if any hazards
claim more lives, causes more economic loss and affects more sectors of
societies than drought”.
Ibrahim
Thiaw, UNCCD executive secretary, said: “Unlike other disasters, droughts
happen silently, often going unnoticed and failing to provoke an immediate
public and political response. This silent devastation perpetuates a cycle of
neglect, leaving affected populations to bear the burden in isolation.”
“With
the frequency and severity of drought events increasing, as reservoir levels
dwindle and crop yields decline, as we continue to lose biological diversity
and famines spread, transformational change is needed,” he said.
Extreme
droughts that have wrecked the lives of millions of people in Syria, Iraq and Iran
since 2020 would not have happened without human-caused global heating, a
recent study found. The climate crisis also made the record drought across the
northern hemisphere in summer 2022 at least 20 times more likely, scientists
have calculated. Without human-caused global heating, the event would have been
expected only once every four centuries.
“Several
countries already experience climate-change-induced famine,” said the UNCD
report. “Forced migration surges globally; violent water conflicts are on the
rise; the ecological base that enables all life on Earth is eroding more
quickly than at any time in known human history.”
The
report cited a string of scientific findings:
120
million people are people expected to experience extreme drought even if global
temperatures are restricted to 1.5C. Current policies are on track for 3C of
heating, meaning extreme drought for 170 million people
In
China, 15-20% of the population face more frequent moderate-to-severe droughts
this century
1.2
million people in the Central American dry corridor are in need of food aid
after five years of drought, heatwaves and unpredictable rainfall the drought
in the La Plata basin of Brazil and Argentina in 2022 was the worst in 78
years, reducing crop production and affecting global markets
The
report notes that those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis are
most exposed: 85% of those affected by droughts live in low- or middle-income
countries.
The
report said better farming techniques, such as drought-resistant crops,
efficient irrigation methods, no-till farming, can reduce the impact of drought
on farmers’ crops and incomes. The International Drought Resilience Alliance,
which was launched at Cop27, by the leaders of Spain and Senegal at Cop27, is
creating political momentum and mobilising money and technology for a
drought-resilient future and now has 34 member nations.
Updated
at 08.47 EST
9h
ago
07.27
EST
Brazil's
Lula: 'it is not possible to face climate change without combating inequality'
Jonathan
Watts
Jonathan
Watts
The
President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said his country was leading by
example: “We have adjusted our climate goals, which are now more ambitious than
those of many developed countries. We have drastically reduced deforestation in
the Amazon and will bring it to zero by 2030,” he said.
Lula,
as he is best known, called for developed countries to invest more to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and to support developing nations who are suffering
from climate impacts.
“The
planet is fed up with unfulfilled climate agreements. Governments cannot escape
their responsibilities. No country will solve its problems alone. We are all
obliged to act together beyond our borders”, he argued.
He
told delegates that the trillions of dollars spent on weapons should be used
against hunger, inequality and climate change: “The world has naturalised
unacceptable disparities in income, gender and race and that it is not possible
to face climate change without combating inequality.”
He
spoke of climate suffering in the Amazon, which is experiencing one of the
“most tragic droughts in its history” while cyclones in the south of Brazil
have left a trail “of destruction and death”.
Although
his energy minister announced yesterday that Brazil will align more closely
with the world’s biggest oil syndicate, Opec, Lula said it was necessary to
“work for an economy less dependent on fossil fuels.”
As
an aside, we have reported on this inequality in our series The Great Carbon
Divide.
Updated
at 08.51 EST
9h
ago
07.10
EST
Helena
Smith
Helena
Smith
A
royal observation that may have gone unnoticed but over in Greece is causing
waves of excitement.
King
Charles’s address has been well received in Athens and not only for his
dramatic call for climate action to save the planet for future generations. The
Greek media has noted with a touch of euphoria that the British monarch was
donning a Greek-motif tie and breast pocket handkerchief – signalling (or so it
has been interpreted) his support for the return to Athens of the Parthenon
marbles in the wake of this week’s row over the antiquities.
King
Charles III makes his opening address at the World Climate Action Summit at
Cop28 in Dubai
King
Charles III makes his opening address at the World Climate Action Summit at
Cop28 in Dubai. Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA
Charles,
who regularly holidays in Greece, the country of his father’s birth, has
frequently spoken of his great love and passion for all things Hellenic. The
king cannot publicly take a stance in the centuries-long row over whether the
2,500-year-old sculptures are better exhibited in the Duveen gallery of the
British Museum or the Parthenon gallery of the Acropolis Museum beneath the
fifth-century BC temple but in this instance his sartorial choice, say Greeks,
appears a little more than symbolic.
Updated
at 08.49 EST
9h
ago
07.06
EST
World
leaders are using their Cop speeches to push other political points.
Gitanas
Nausėda, president of Lithuania, said the Russian president, Vladimir
Putin, has committed “ecocide” in his war against Ukraine and should not be
about to get away with it.
Emmerson
Mnangagwa, the president of Zimbabwe, said “economic sanctions placed on our
country are hindering climate action”. He demanded the lifting of what he described
as the “heinous sanctions”. These sanctions were put in place by the US, UK and
EU in 2022 because of human rights violations such as murdering protesters, and
not respecting democracy and the rule of law.
Updated
at 08.50 EST
10h
ago
06.54
EST
Ursula
von der Leyen calls for world to follow EU with carbon pricing
Ursula
von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, had a focus on “loss and
damage” in her speech. She said:
At
this Cop we will set a decisive step forward to protect the most vulnerable
citizens worldwide. They suffer loss and damage and we will stand by their
side.
She
added: “Global emissions must peak by 2025, we must phase out fossil fuels and
we must reduce methane emissions”
Von
der Leyen said the EU would contribute to the new loss and damage fund, and
that they’ve pledged more than £270m so far. “We must get the fund up and
running and we must do it fast,” she added.
In
terms of private finance, she said: “We need to reform the international
financial system, we need more carbon pricing.”
Updated
at 06.58 EST
10h
ago
06.49
EST
William
Ruto, the president of Kenya, said that his region was already facing the
horrific effects of climate breakdown.
“In
eastern Africa, catastrophic flooding has followed the most severe drought the
region has seen in over 40 years,” he said, adding that studies indicated
droughts were now more than 100 times more likely in parts of Africa than in
the pre-industrial era.
The
extreme weather this year has “seized lives and destroyed communities” as well
as destroying infrastructure and supply chains.
He
added that the world needs to invest in green energy and other infrastructure
in Africa. “A tendency to ignore Africa’s developmental and industrial needs …
is no longer a tenable position. Turning Africa into a green powerhouse is not
just essential for the continent, it is also vital for global
industrialisation, decarbonisation.”
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06.37
EST
David
Cameron, the recently appointed UK foreign secretary (and former prime
minister) seems to be enjoying himself at Cop, shaking hands and beaming his
way around the conference centre. Our environment editor, Fiona Harvey, is, as
we write, sitting just behind him at a press conference and we will find out
from her what he has to say very soon. For now, enjoy these pictures of a very
happy Cameron. He seems delighted to be out of his shed and back on the world
stage.
Updated
at 07.04 EST
10h
ago
06.32
EST
Nina
Lakhani
It’s
now been confirmed that more than 130 prime ministers and presidents today
signed the Cop28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food
Systems, and Climate Action – the first of its kind commitment to adapt and
“transform” food systems as part of broader climate action. But, the
International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (Ipes-Food), an
independent, expert panel on sustainable food systems, points out that the
declaration contains no legally binding commitments. And there are no targets
or clear steps to tackle key climate-related issues such as the crazy amount of
food waste in some countries, the overconsumption of industrially produced meat
and processed foods, and the food industry’s huge fossil fuel footprint.
Lim
Li Ching, co-chair of Ipes-Food and senior researcher for Third World Network
said: “It’s encouraging to see that food systems are finally taking their place
at the heart of climate negotiations and at the highest levels of government.
We cannot meet our global climate goals without urgent action to transform the
industrial food system, which is responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas
emissions and 15% of fossil fuel use. But while this is an essential first
step, the language remains very vague – and specific actions and measurable
targets are conspicuously missing.”
Updated
at 07.10 EST
Support
the Guardian
As
we head into 2024, we’re preparing for one of the most consequential news
cycles of our lifetimes. At the Guardian, we have no billionaire owner, so
we’re free to report rigorously on world events, never manipulated or silenced
by outside influence. Which is why we need your support to raise $1.5m to fund
our reporting next year.
This
live blog is a great way to understand every single minute of a story as it
unfolds. We’ve been publishing our live blogs for more than two decades –
covering huge political moments, conflict and war, natural disasters, sports
matches and so much more.
But
to fund this vital work, we rely on the generosity of readers who are in a
position to pay for news. If you can, please support us with a year-end gift
from just $2. Thank you.
Continue
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10h
ago
06.21
EST
Patrick
Greenfield
Patrick
Greenfield
Zambia’s
president, Hakainde Hichilema, has hit back at suggestions that a wave of
carbon offsetting deals in African countries by a UAE sheikh, which include his
country, are a new “scramble for Africa”.
Speaking
after an EU event on carbon markets alongside Ursula von der Leyen, the Spanish
prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the heads of the World Trade Organization
(WTO), World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Hichilema said his
country lacked expertise on developing carbon projects and needed international
organisations to help.
This
year, the rights over vast tracts of African forest have been sold off in a
series of huge carbon offsetting deals that cover an area of land larger than
the UK to a UAE-based firm called Blue Carbon, with concerns raised about the
previous business dealings of the young Dubai royal behind the agreements.
When
asked about the secretive Blue Carbon deals, Hichilema said they would benefit
local people.
“It
shouldn’t be [a scramble for Africa’s resources]. When someone comes to our
country and brings an idea around carbon, we say that we don’t understand how
to work through this. That is why we have asked the World Bank, the IMF, the
WTO, the African Development Bank to put the technical capacity together,
learning from what the countries of the north have done,” he said.
In
a speech that lacked specifics, Ursula von der Leyen has said carbon markets
and taxation were important for global decarbonisation, including voluntary
carbon markets which have been beset by accusations of poor quality by
scientific research and journalistic investigations.
The
new World Bank president, Ajay Banga, said his organisations would soon be
presenting high-quality forestry projects in three countries that, he hoped,
would help assuage concerns about lack of environmental integrity in forest
carbon projects.
Updated
at 07.21 EST
10h
ago
06.14
EST
Leaders
speeches begin with pleas on Palestine and Pacific islands
Hello,
Helena Horton here, an environment reporter here at the Guardian and I’ll be
blogging throughout the rest of the day. The leaders have started speaking.
Here are a few highlights.
We
are starting with some monarchs – the UK’s King Charles spoke earlier.
Abdullah
II bin Al-Hussein, the king of Jordan linked the climate emergency to the war
happening in Gaza. He said:
“As
we speak the Palestinian people are facing an immediate threat to their lives
and well being. Tens of thousands have been injured or killed in a region
already on the frontline of climate change. The massive destruction of water
makes the environmental threats of water scarcity and food insecurity more
severe.”
He
added that people there are living without clean water and with a bare minimum
of food supplies and points out that climate change exacerbates the destructive
nature of war.
The
monarch asked for more aid to be sent to the most vulnerable and pointed out
that Jordan does not contribute significantly to climate breakdown but is
greatly affected, with water scarcity a real threat.
Tupou
VI, the King of Tonga said it was “painful” for small developing island states
to see that Cop28 “may not be the milestone moment we were all hoping for” and
that progress on the Paris agreement had been far too slow.
Every
year, we hear anguished pleas from those representing small island states who
are literally sinking under the water due to climate breakdown. Unsurprisingly
they have felt ignored as large, wealthy countries continue to belch out fossil
fuels. Tupou said that over 50,000 Pacific island people were displaced every
year as their homes are lost as a result of climate breakdown. He told the
conference: “We are ocean people, the ocean is our lifeblood, it feeds us, is
our mode of transportation and is a deep part of our culture.”
Updated
at 06.24 EST
11h
ago
06.03
EST
Summary
It
has been a busy morning with big name politicians from around the globe
arriving for day two of Cop28.
King Charles addressed delegates telling them
“I pray with all my heart that Cop28 will be [a] critical turning point towards
genuine transformational action.”
The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, arrived
for a flying visit but his decision to push ahead with new oil and gas drilling
in the North Sea and rowing back on key climate measures has not got down well.
A new declaration on transforming food systems
has been agreed, the first Cop resolution which directly tackles the
relationship between what we eat and the changing climate.
Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, was due
to arrive with a cadre of administration officials, including Tony Blinken, the
US secretary of state, and Michael Regan, administrator of the EPA.
My
colleague Helena Horton is taking over the blog now as leaders begin their addresses
to conference
Updated
at 06.27 EST
11h
ago
05.50
EST
Some
reaction to the new declaration on food that my colleague Nina Lakhani reported
on earlier.
Tom
Mitchell, executive director of the International Institute for Environment and
Development, said:
“This
agreement is a tentative first step in addressing one of the thorniest problems
of the climate crisis – our broken food systems. They are responsible for so
many greenhouse gas emissions, from cutting down forests and clearing land for
animal feed, to the emissions of cattle themselves. It’s staggering there has
been no obligation to include this sector in emissions reductions plans for so
long.
“Government
subsidies have long supported the polluting effects of large scale agriculture,
acting as a hidden brake on climate action. These payments should be redirected
in a way that means people and nature can thrive.”
Patty
Fong, from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, said:
“The
declaration doesn’t set out how governments will tackle food emissions, and
makes no reference to fossil fuels, despite food systems accounting for at
least 15% of fossil fuels burned each year –equivalent to the emissions of all
EU countries and Russia combined. This is a glaring omission.
“However,
the commitment to integrate food and farming into domestic climate action plans
is welcome and long overdue. Over 70% of countries’ nationally determined
contributions lack adequate action on food systems – updating them is where
there is real potential to tackle emissions and unlock climate finance.
“Our
more than two dozen philanthropic members and other partners around the world
are working to catalyse much-needed food system transformation that can help to
phase out dependency on polluting fossil fuels in the sector while improving
health, community wellbeing, and biodiversity.”
Updated
at 06.28 EST
11h
ago
05.34
EST
Some
photographs from today at Cop28
King
Charles (left) speaks with the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, as they attend
the opening ceremony of the world climate action summit at Cop28 in Dubai.
King
Charles (left) speaks with the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, as they attend
the opening ceremony of the world climate action summit at Cop28 in Dubai.
Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA
King
Charles talks with emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
King
Charles talks with emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. Photograph:
Amr Alfiky/Reuters
India
prime minister, Narendra Modi, attends a plenary session.
India
prime minister, Narendra Modi, attends a plenary session. Photograph: Peter
Dejong/AP
World
leaders after a family photo session.
World
leaders after a family photo session. Photograph: Anthony Fleyhan/UN press
office/ EPA
Updated
at 06.31 EST
12h
ago
05.04
EST
A
quick analysis shows that while women and girls bear the brunt of the climate
crisis, only 15 out of the 133 world leaders participating in this year’s Cop28
are women.
Last
year, seven out of the 110 world leaders attending Cop27 were women. So
although there has been a welcome increase since last year, at 11%, women are
still significantly underrepresented.
Helen
Pankhurst, senior adviser on gender equality at Care International UK said:
“Yet again, the red carpet is being rolled out for male leaders at Cop and men
dominate among the senior negotiators. How are we going to achieve a fair
outcome in climate negotiations with such inequity at the top? Women and girls
are the most affected by climate change, yet they are silenced. Invisible. This
must change.”
Updated
at 05.19 EST
12h
ago
04.53
EST
More
from Nina Lakhani on the new food declaration
While
far from perfect, the groundbreaking declaration was widely welcomed by
small-scale and Indigenous farmers – who produce a third of the world’s food –
as well as right to food campaigners, consumer associations and small business
groups.
“The
destruction of nature and climate change threatens food security, rural
livelihoods and nutrition, but our food systems also cause a third of global
emissions and are a primary driver of wildlife loss. It’s about time the Cops
put them on the main menu,” said Hilal Elver, a former UN special rapporteur on
the right to food. “Food and agriculture must be at the heart of new climate
plans and funding if we are to meet the Paris agreement and have enough
nutritious food for everyone.”
Esther
Penunia, secretary-general of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable
Development, a regional alliance representing 13 million family farmers, said:
“The declaration is a major milestone on the road towards a more resilient and
sustainable food system. Governments need to work with family farmers networks
to ensure these promises are translated into the concrete policies and funding
needed to support small-scale producers and promote a shift to more diverse and
nature friendly farming, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
says is needed to safeguard food security.”
Other
commitments include a pledge to accelerate and scale science and evidence-based
innovations – including local and Indigenous knowledge – which increase
sustainable agriculture, promote ecosystem resilience and improve livelihoods,
including for rural communities, smallholders, family farmers and other
producers.
It’s
been a long time coming but finally, world leaders seem to be catching on to
the fact that achieving the long-term goals of the Paris agreement will be
impossible without transforming agriculture and food systems. Progress on this
is a key area to watch, especially given the power and influence of the meat,
dairy and industrialized farming conglomerates.
Updated
at 05.22 EST
12h
ago
04.50
EST
Nina
Lakhani
World
leaders have signed a declaration on transforming food systems – the first ever
Cop resolution which directly tackles the symbiotic relationship between what
we eat and the changing climate. The resolution recognises that “unprecedented
adverse climate impacts are increasingly threatening the resilience of
agriculture and food systems as well as the ability of many, especially the
most vulnerable, to produce and access food in the face of mounting hunger,
malnutrition, and economic stresses … [we recognise] the profound potential of
agriculture and food systems to drive powerful and innovative responses to
climate change and to unlock shared prosperity for all.”
The
100+ countries to sign the declaration on sustainable agriculture, resilient
food systems and climate action have committed to including food and land use
in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation
plans by Cop30 in 2025.
Globally,
food systems account for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, with
the vast majority coming from industrialised farming, particularly livestock and
fertilisers. The climate crisis is already impacting agriculture and food
security, as extreme weather events like floods, droughts, heatwaves and
wildfires – and slow-onset impacts like sea level rise and desertification –
fuel high prices and food shortages in countries across the world.
Newest
Previous
4
of 5
Next
Oldest
12h
ago
04.43
EST
As
the Cop28 conference continues, a new study underlines the growing severity of
the fossil fuel driven climate emergency.
Research
by the short-term climate prediction team at the Institute of Atmospheric
Physics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, finds that after the warmest
summer on record we could be heading for a similarly abnormal winter.
Published
in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, the study predicts the
“imminent maturity of a moderate to strong eastern Pacific El Niño” during the
northern hemisphere winter, creating more record-breaking temperatures in the
coming months. It notes that large parts of Asia and most parts of the Americas
are likely to experience an exceptionally warm winter – and gives a 95% chance
that the global average surface temperature for the 2023-24 winter will set a
new historical record.
Updated
at 05.27 EST
12h
ago
04.33
EST
Oliver
Milman
Oliver
Milman
Kamala
Harris, the US vice-president, arrives in Dubai today with a cadre of
administration officials, including Tony Blinken, the US secretary of state,
and Michael Regan, administrator of the EPA.
Harris
will “highlight the administration’s historic achievements” in combating the
climate crisis when she addresses Cop28 tomorrow, according to a US state
department official. A new US rule limiting methane emissions is expected to be
unveiled tomorrow, to chime with the visit.
Other
developments have been less flattering for the Americans, however. Joe Biden
himself is skipping Cop28 (he took part in the essential business of lighting
the White House Christmas tree yesterday) and his administration is auctioning
off large tracts of public land for oil and gas drilling during the summit.
At
Cop, the pledge made by the US, the world’s leading economy, to the loss and
damage fund was just $17.5m (£13.8m), a figure described as “embarrassing” by
climate campaigners. A group of Republican lawmakers are making the trip to
Dubai, meanwhile, where they will push a contrary message – that Biden is
waging a war on American energy and that China is being let off too easily in
emissions cuts.
Updated
at 05.28 EST
12h
ago
04.11
EST
Helena
Horton
Helena
Horton
One
may think former prime minister Boris Johnson would have relished the chance to
make an appearance at Cop. Last year he was widely credited with forcing Rishi
Sunak, who had just become prime minister, into going by announcing his
appearance. You’ll remember Sunak banned the king from going and planned on
skipping it himself, before U-turning.
However,
friends of Johnson tell us he isn’t going this year, despite registering and
hoping to, because of the timings for the Covid inquiry. He’s due to appear
next week and is going over his evidence to prepare for what are likely be some
gruelling days of interrogation.
He
would probably much prefer addressing international groups at Cop, where he is
quite well-respected because of his enthusiastic hosting of Cop26, where pledges
for international finance and halting deforestation were made, and for his
public pronouncements on the climate crisis (which did not always match with
his policy). Johnson, who is still said to partly blame Sunak for his downfall,
would also probably have enjoyed usurping the prime minister’s appearance,
particularly as Sunak’s standing on climate has arguably diminished even since
last year, what with his net zero rollback, frequent use of private jets and
descriptions of climate experts as “zealots”.
Updated
at 04.24 EST
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12h
ago
04.08
EST
My
colleague Damian Carrington is picking up more frustration with the UK’s stance
on climate action under Sunak.
A
British veteran of UN climate talks has told me: “It doesn’t matter what Sunak
says today.” He said the delegates at Cop28 told him they have seen what the
prime minister has done at home: pushed new oil and gas licences and delayed
measures on electric cars and home heating. “We used to be a climate leader.
Now we are going backwards.”
13h
ago
04.05
EST
Nina
Lakhani
It’s
a big day for food and agriculture at Cop28, with the first ever major
statement by world leaders on food and climate expected this afternoon, with
more than a hundred countries expected to commit to transforming their food and
agricultural systems. The fact that it’s taken so long for a Cop commitment on
food is remarkable given that industrialized agriculture and food systems are
both a cause and casualty of global heating – and could also play a major role
in mitigation.
Like
everything at Cop, the expected commitment seems to have been watered down a
fair bit, but overall small scale farmers, Indigenous groups and right to food
campaigners seem quite positive about what’s to come. Stay tuned for more
details.
Updated
at 04.25 EST
13h
ago
04.03
EST
Downing
Street has also been forced to defend the decision for Sunak, King Charles and
the foreign secretary, David Cameron, to all fly to the climate conference on
three separate private jets.
A
No 10 spokesperson said: “It is in line with the government’s position that we
are not anti-flying. We do not seek to restrict the public from doing so and
it’s important the UK has strong attendance at Cop28 given we continue to be a
world leader in tackling climate change.”
Updated
at 04.26 EST
13h
ago
03.55
EST
King's
climate warnings 'meaningless' unless UK government acts, say climate action
groups
Reaction
to King Charles’s speech is already coming in and it is mainly taking aim at
Rishi Sunak’s record on climate.
Izzie
McIntosh, from Global Justice Now said: “King Charles’s dire warnings are
meaningless unless the UK government backs them up with actions. Instead, Rishi
Sunak has been rolling back net zero plans, expanding North Sea oil and gas,
and is now fiddling the figures on climate finance. Rich polluting countries
saying the right thing while doing the wrong thing has become all too familiar
over 30 years of climate summits – the only difference this time is that in
Charles and Rishi it’s a deceitful double act.”
Zahra
Hdidou, from ActionAid UK said:
“We
welcome King Charles’s keynote speech at Cop and his continued dedication
towards climate action … The irony should not be lost that the king is flanked
at the summit by two men who remain committed to climate wrecking policies. On
one side we have a prime minister who has gone on record as saying he wants to
“max out” North Sea oil and gas – and stands accused by former colleagues as
being ‘uninterested’ in environmental policies. And on the other side, the king
is joined by a foreign secretary who swiftly abandoned his own promise to lead
the greenest government on record just three years after being elected in
2010.”
Updated
at 05.21 EST
13h
ago
03.44
EST
King
Charles said the world was facing a dark choice and asks how dangerous are we
prepared to make it for future generations.
He
said humans were carrying out a vast, frightening experiment, changing every
ecological condition, all at once, at a pace that far outstrips nature’s
ability to cope.
The
conference was an unmissable opportunity to keep common hope alive, he said. “I
can only urge you to meet it with ambition, imagination, and a true sense of
the emergency we face.”
He
said delegates should remember what the indigenous world view taught us “that
we are all connected. Not only as human beings, but with all living things and
all that sustains life … The earth does not belong to us, we belong to the
Earth.”
King
Charles III speaks during the opening ceremony at the Cop28 UN climate summit
in Dubai.
King
Charles III speaks during the opening ceremony at the Cop28 UN climate summit
on Friday in Dubai. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP
Updated
at 03.54 EST
13h
ago
03.35
EST
King
Charles tells Cop28 summit 'our own survivability will be imperilled' unless we
'restore nature's economy'
King
Charles is addressing the conference now. He says he was touched to be asked to
speak at the opening of COP21 in Paris, which culminated in the landmark Paris
Agreement, and adds “I pray with all my heart that COP28 will be another
critical turning point towards genuine transformational action at a time when,
already, as scientists have been warning for so long, we are seeing alarming
tipping points being
reached.”
He
says we are seeing alarming tipping points being reached and that is greatly
worried that we are so far off track in efforts to address the climate crisis.
“Unless
we rapidly repair and restore nature’s economy, based on harmony and balance,
which is our ultimate sustainer, our own economy and survivability will be
imperilled.”
Updated
at 03.43 EST
13h
ago
03.32
EST
Damian
Carrington
Damian
Carrington
The
prominent climate scientist, Dr Friederike Otto, at Imperial College London,
has a simple message for Cop28.
“Climate
change is already destroying lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems around the
world. Until we radically cut carbon emissions, extreme weather events will
become more frequent and intense. That means there is a human rights imperative
to phasing out fossil fuels.
“Despite
their carefully crafted, green-washed talking points, fossil fuel companies
will not save the world. Since 2021, we’ve known that no new gas and oilfields
could be developed if the world is to keep warming to 1.5C. But fossil fuel
companies continue to expand their operations, ignoring the suffering of
millions of people around the world, so they can make more money.”
“Climate
negotiations need to be highly sceptical of the influence and involvement of
big oil.”
Cop28
is being run Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of an oil company planning a huge
expansion in production. He says his background is an advantage in bringing
everyone to the climate table.
Previous5 of 5
My
colleague Nina Lakhani has
more on yesterday’s loss and damage agreement.
As the second
day gets under way, the president of the G77 plus China group – the bloc of 135
developing countries which played a key role in yesterday’s historic resolution
on operationalising the loss and damage fund – said the decision sent a clear
political message.
“It was a
milestone in terms of creating a positive mood for the very, very complex
process on the GST [global stock take] that we had ahead of us now. But the
fund needs to be filled up. The pledges announced were a welcome sign, but they
were just pledges and must materialise as soon as possible. And we expect much,
much more because of the impact of loss and damage in developing countries,”
said ambassador Pedro Pedroso of Cuba.
Yesterday’s
pledges by UAE, Germany, the UK and Japan amounted to almost $439m for the
start-up loss and damage fund – not nothing but a drop in the ocean compared
with the $400bn a year of climate related irreversible losses being incurred.
Further pledges
are likely as world leaders take to the stage today and tomorrow, but some
countries have an inglorious track record on repacking existing funding
commitments into new pledges – and a move towards providing loans rather than
grants. “We have seen a lot of recycling of money by developed countries like
the UK outrageously changing its methodology on climate finance. We’re not
naive and we’ll keep a check on that.”
Future loss
and damage will depend on the success of climate mitigation and climate adaptation
measures, which all depend on the global stocktake and climate finance
negotiations under way.
“Mitigation,
adaptation, supporting technology and capacity building are all interconnected
with each other – and loss and damage. In the context of the GST, there has to
be the recognition that the means of implementation is the single most
important cross-cutting factor that will enable developing countries to
transition justly to another development model. So we will be watching the
negotiations on the GST very closely,” said Pedroso.
·
·
Updated at
03.31 EST
From my
colleague Damian Carrington.
Bad news for
Rishi Sunak as he arrives in Dubai today: the UK’s own North Sea regulator has
concluded the new annual oil and gas licensing
rounds Sunak is forcing are unnecessary. The North Sea
Transition Authority, which is charged with maximising oil and gas extraction,
said a mandatory annual process was not needed and undermined its independence.
This was the “unanimous view” of the NSTA board, as the Financial Times reported.
Tessa Khan,
at campaign group Uplift, said the NSTA minutes showed the government “pressed
ahead with a policy that will do significant damage to the UK’s reputation and
efforts to tackle climate change globally, despite being told by the body in
charge of licensing that it is completely unnecessary”. The Labour leader, Keir
Starmer, who, like Sunak, is attending Cop28, has ruled out new licences if
elected, and called Sunak’s move a “gimmick”.
Sunak’s
announcement was widely criticised and runs counter to the International Energy
Agency’s statements that all new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with net
zero goals, and the consensus of scientists that most oil and gas reserves must
stay in the ground to restrict global heating to 1.5C.
·
·
Updated at 03.13 EST
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Remind me on
New Years Eve
My colleague
Patrick Greenfield reports that the loss and damage commitments – money being
pledged to poorer countries to help them deal with the costs of the climate
crisis – are continuing today after yesterday’s landmark agreement. Canada has
committed $60m to the fund, environment minister Steven Guilbeault announced
outside his country’s pavilion.
That brings
the initial size of the fund to US$489m. €225m ($245m) has already been
committed by the EU, including US$100m from Germany. There is also £60m ($75m)
from the UK, $24.5m from the US and $10m from Japan.
·
·
A little more
from my colleague Aletha Adu on what Sunak said when he landed in UAE this
morning.
Asked who he
meant when he said he was “not in hock to ideological zealots” over climate
change, the UK prime minister told broadcasters in Dubai: “Perhaps the people
protesting outside my house recently. “But there are people who think we should
get to net zero without any regard to the cost on ordinary families. I don’t
think that’s right. “I think we’ve got to be cognisant of the impact of this on
ordinary families up and down the country.”
Sunak
declined to single out China when asked which countries need to do more to
tackle climate change, and heaped praise on Cop28 host the United Arab Emirates.
Pressed on
whether Beijing should do more, the prime minister told reporters in Dubai:
“Everyone collectively needs to do more to make sure that we do reduce
emissions sufficiently.”
Quizzed on
scepticism over a major oil producer hosting the summit, he said: “I actually
commend the UAE for their leadership. “They’ve been particularly strong on the
issue of climate finance.”
The UK has “a
great story to tell” at the Cop28 climate conference in Dubai, Sunak has said.
Challenged over whether his rollback of climate ambition at home makes it
harder to push other countries to do more, the prime minister told
broadcasters: “We have got an incredible track record in decarbonising in the
UK, faster than any other major economy. We should be really proud of that. “And
I’ll be proud of that record at my meetings later today.”
He said other
countries were “deeply appreciative” of the support that they were receiving
from the UK to help them with the transition.
·
·
Updated at
02.44 EST
Sultan Al Jaber,
the UAE president of Cop28, is addressing the conference now
urging delegates to be flexible and to work together during the negotiations.
He says it is essential global south countries do not have to chose between
development and climate action. “let this be the Cop when we deliver on our
promises [of financial support to the those in the global south]” he told
delegates.
He says the
next two weeks will not be easy, adding everyone understands the gravity of the
situation now they need to accelerate progress and push a “positive can do
attitude.”
“Let’s
delivery some good news to the world.”
·
·
While we are
waiting for day 2 of Cop28 to get going this is good read
on what it is all about and why it matters from my colleague Fiona Harvey
What is Cop28 and why does it
matter?
·
·
Rishi Sunak,
the UK prime minister, talks to media from the roof of the British embassy in
Dubai before attending the Cop28 summit. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
·
·
Updated at
02.24 EST
Damian
Carrington
My colleague
Damian Carrington reports that the arrival of the world’s leaders at today’s
conference is adding an extra challenge for delegates.. . and journalists.
Cops are
always a marathon for delegates, long days and long walks around the huge
sites. But today is an ultra-marathon for the thousands of attendees. The short
walk from the metro to the venue was blocked off, a security mounted for the
world leaders arriving today. That meant a trek in the sun to even enter the
site. And once in, more barricades have been erected to cordon off the
presidents and prime ministers, turning 5 minute trots into 30 minute slogs.
Delegates now
have to trudge much further to get into the centre Photograph: Damian
Carringotn
·
·
Updated at
01.48 EST
Rishi Sunak, King Charles and other world
leaders fly in to Cop28
World leaders
and assorted dignitaries are due to fly in to Cop28 today including UK prime
minister Rishi Sunak and
King Charles. My colleague Alehta Adu is with the prime minister
and says he has just touched down.
Prime
minister Rishi Sunak talks to journalists during his flight to Dubai to attend the
Cop28 climate change summit. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
King Charles,
a long time campaigner on climate issues, is due to give a “call to arms” in
his opening statement to the conference. Sunak on the other hand will have his
work cut out defending a series of policy moves – including a decision to push
ahead with new oil and gas licences in the north sea – that have been widely
condemned by climate experts and campaigners.
Sunak’s new
foreign secretary David Cameron, whisked away from his shepherd’s hut to the
avenues of Dubai Photograph: Patrick Greenfield
·
·
Updated at
02.28 EST
Good morning.
This is Matthew Taylor, on the second day of the Conference of Parties 28th
climate change summit, or Cop28.
The Guardian
will be liveblogging the negotiations throughout, as always, and we look
forward to your contributions: please email me on
matthew.taylor@theguardian.com with thoughts and suggestions. Helena Horton
(helena.horton@theguardian.com) will be taking over later on.
Today will
see the formal opening ceremony, where the world’s leaders will be addressing
the conference. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is flying in from the UK,
as is the leader of the opposition Sir Keir Starmer.
Yesterday saw
significant developments at the conference as a deal on a fund for loss and damage
was finally done after many years of discussion; we lost count of the number of
people who called it historic.
A quick
summary of yesterday’s events with the loss and damage fund to help countries
deal with the impacts of climate breakdown the big news of the day;
·
The UAE immediately pledged $100m to
the fund, and was followed by contributions from the EU, led by
Germany, the UK, the US and Japan, though the US in particular were criticised
for their relatively modest pledge
·
The
World Meteorological Organization said that 2023 would be the hottest year ever
recorded. UN secretary-general António Guterres responded to the news by
saying “We are living through climate collapse in real time”
·
A
representative of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said coal is, and will
continue to be, an important part of India’s energy needs
Let’s see
what today brings.
ATTACHMENT OLD.1
FROM
COUNTRY LIVING
82 Happy Thanksgiving Quotes to Toast to Gratitude and Gathering
Express the thankfulness in your
heart by sharing these warm words with family and friends.
KATIE BOWLBY AND TERRI ROBERTSONUPDATED: OCT 31, 2023 12:05
PM EST
The season of Thanksgiving is
officially here. But as you think about Thanksgiving greetings to send to family and friends or,
perhaps, prepare a toast to share at your gathering, the right words can elude
you. What to do? Say it with a Thanksgiving quote.
From thoughts about gratitude to funny Thanksgiving sayings and sentiments about what it
means to gather 'round, this collection brings together inspirational words
from famous authors, poets, celebrities, chefs, and more. And there's no need
to fear your hand getting tired from writing—or a dreaded "TL;DR"
response to your Thanksgiving Instagram caption—because these warm Thanksgiving
quotes are short enough for all kinds of sharing.
After all, this time of year can
be a little hectic, whether you’re traveling, planning the Thanksgiving menu, or decorating the house. So, make life just a bit easier by
turning to these quotes (complete with images!) when spreading Turkey Day
wishes far and wide. For even more ideas, you can also check out our
collections of classic Thanksgiving poems, Thanksgiving Bible verses, and (on the humorous side), Thanksgiving jokes.
Now for our favorite Happy
Thanksgiving quotes, which, we hope, will soon become your favorites too.
CatLane//Getty Images
1
Marcie, A
Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
“We should just be thankful for
being together. I think that’s what they mean by Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown.”
Anna Bogush//Getty Images
2
Amy Grant
“Thanksgiving Day is a good day to
recommit our energies to giving thanks and just giving.”
CatLane//Getty Images
3
Thomas Merton
“To be grateful is to recognize
the Love of God in everything.”
Advertisement - Continue Reading
Below
4
Lionel
Hampton
"Gratitude is when memory is
stored in the heart and not in the mind."
5
Rumi
"Wear gratitude like a cloak,
and it will feed every corner of your life."
6
Maya Angelou
"Let gratitude be the pillow
upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer."
7
Will Arnett
"I am happy because I'm
grateful. I choose to be grateful. That gratitude allows me to be happy."
8
Oprah
Winfrey
"True forgiveness is when you
can say, 'Thank you for that experience.'"
9
Roy T.
Bennett
"Be thankful for everything
that happens in your life; it’s all an experience."
Advertisement - Continue Reading
Below
Getty Images
10
Lindsey
Bareham
“Good mashed potato is one of the
great luxuries of life.”
Country Living
11
Nora
Ephron
“The turkey. The sweet potatoes.
The stuffing. The pumpkin pie. Is there anything else we all can agree so
vehemently about? I don’t think so.”
Getty Images
12
Rick Riordan
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned
over the eons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how
tempting they make it.”
13
Jonathan
Safran Foer
"Thanksgiving is the
meal we aspire for other meals to resemble."
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14
Elie Wiesel
“For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart
each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile.”
Country Living
15
Johannes A.
Gaertner
“To speak gratitude is courteous
and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude
is to touch Heaven.”
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16
Randy Pausch
"Showing gratitude is one of
the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other."
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17
Henry Van
Dyke
"Gratitude is the inward
feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express
that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.”
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18
Hausa Proverb
"Give thanks for a little,
and you will find a lot."
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19
Robert Caspar
Lintner
"Thanksgiving was never meant
to be shut up in a single day."
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20
Gerald Good
"If you want to turn your
life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily."
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21
J.A. Shedd
"He who thanks but with the
lips thanks but in part; the full, the true Thanksgiving comes from the
heart."
22
Catherine
Pulsifer
"Give thanks not just on
Thanksgiving Day, but every day of your life. Appreciate and never take for
granted all that you have."
23
Margaret
Cousins
"Appreciation can change a
day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is
necessary."
24
Franz
Grillparzer
"Drink and be thankful to the
host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need
it."
Design: Rebekah Lowin
25
Daniel Humm
"What I love about
Thanksgiving is that it’s purely about getting together with friends or family
and enjoying food. It’s really for everybody, and it doesn’t matter where
you’re from."
26
Unknown
"There is always, always
something to be thankful for."
27
Joyce Giraud
"Thanksgiving is one of my
favorite days of the year because it reminds us to give thanks and to count our
blessings. Suddenly, so many things become so little when we realize how
blessed and lucky we are."
28
Yogi Bhajan
"An attitude of gratitude
brings great things."
29
John F.
Kennedy
"We must find the time to
stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives."Design: Rebekah Lowin
30
Charles
Dickens
"Reflect upon your present
blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of
which all men have some."
Design: Rebekah Lowin
31
Maya Angelou
"Be present in all things and
thankful for all."
32
Amy Leigh
Mercree
“Thanksgiving is a joyous
invitation to shower the world with love and gratitude.”
Design: Emily Schiff-Slater
33
Wilbur D.
Nesbit
“Forever on Thanksgiving the heart
will find the pathway home.”
Design: Emily Schiff-Slater
34
Norman
Vincent Peale
“The more you practice the art of
thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for.”
35
Willie Nelson
“When I started counting my blessings,
my whole life turned around.”
36
James E.
Faust
“The thankful heart opens our eyes
to a multitude of blessings that continually surround us.”
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37
Maya Angelou
“When we give cheerfully and
accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”
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38
Charlie Brown
“What if today, we were just
grateful for everything?”
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39
W. Clement
Stone
“If you are really thankful, what
do you do? You share.”
40
Bruce
Wilkinson
“A moment of gratitude makes a
difference in your attitude.”
41
David
Steindl-Rast
“It is not joy that makes us
grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”
42
Marcus
Samuelsson
"I love Thanksgiving because
it's a holiday that is centered around food and family."
43
Wale Ayeni
“Be thankful for what you have.
Your life is someone else’s fairy tale.”
44
William Blake
"The thankful receiver bears
a plentiful harvest."
45
David O.
McKay
“Thankfulness is measured by the
number of words. Gratitude is measured by the nature of our actions.”
46
G.K.
Chesterton
“Thanks are the highest form of
thought, and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
47
Jonathan
Safran Foer
“Thanksgiving is the holiday that
encompasses all others. All of them, from Martin Luther King Day to Arbor Day
to Christmas to Valentine’s Day, are in one way or another about being
thankful.”
48
Henry David
Thoreau
“I am grateful for what I am and
have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.”
49
Sterling K.
Brown
Always have an attitude of
gratitude."
50
Anonymous
"When you love what you have,
you have everything you need."
51
Oprah Winfrey
"Be thankful for what you
have; you'll end up having more."
52
Nigel
Hamilton
"Thanksgiving is a time of
togetherness and gratitude."
53
Marcus Tullius
Cicero
“Gratitude is not only the
greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
54
Frank A.
Clark
"If a fellow isn't thankful
for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to
get."
55
E.P. Powell
“Thanksgiving day is a jewel, to
set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day,
and leave out the gratitude."
56
Wilbur D.
Nesbit
"Forever on Thanksgiving Day
the heart will find the pathway home."
57
Katrina Mayer
"Thanksgiving isn't just a
day. It's a way we can live our lives every day."
58
H.A. Ironside
"We would worry less if we
praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and
dissatisfaction."
59
Neal A.
Maxwell
"We should certainly count
our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count."
60
Elbert
Hubbard
"I would rather be able to
appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to
appreciate."
61
Meister
Eckhart
"If the only prayer you ever
say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough."
62
John F.
Kennedy
"As we express our gratitude,
we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but
to live by them."
63
Albert
Einstein
"There are only two ways to
live your live. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other as is though
everything is a miracle."
64
Robert Holden
"The real gift of gratitude
is that the more grateful you are, the more present you become."
65
Melody
Beattie
"Gratitude unlocks the
fullness of life."
66
Eckhart Tolle
"Acknowledging the good that
you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance."
67
Neale Donald
Walsh
"The struggle ends when
gratitude begins."
68
William
Shakespeare
"Small cheer and great
welcome makes a merry feast."
69
William
Arthur Ward
"Feeling gratitude and not
expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."
70
Oscar Wilde
"After a good dinner, one can
forgive anybody, even one's own relations."
71
Betty Smith
"Look at everything as though
you were seeing it for the first or the last time, then your time on earth will
be filled with glory."
72
Theodore
Roosevelt
"Let us remember that, as
much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage
comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds."
73
W.T. Purkiser
"Not what we say about our
blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving."
74
Frederick
Keonig
"We tend to forget that
happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but
rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have."
75
Seneca
"Nothing is more honorable
than a grateful heart."
76
John Wooden
"Things turn out best for
people who make the best of the way things turn out."
77
William
Faulkner
"Gratitude is a quality
similar to electricity: It must be produced and discharged and used up in order
to exist at all."
78
Thorton
Wilder
"We can only be said to be
alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."
79
Marcel Proust
"Let us be grateful to people
who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls
blossom."
80
William
Arthur Ward
"Gratitude can transform
common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary
opportunities into blessings."
81
Unknown
"It is not happy people who
are thankful. It is thankful people who are happy."
82
Ernest
Hemingway
"Now is no time to think of
what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is."
ATTACHMENT OLD.2 - FROM
US WEEKLY
HOW KELSEA BALLERINI, JILL DUGGAR AND MORE STARS ARE CELEBRATING
THANKSGIVING 2023
By Miranda Siwak Updated
on: November 24, 2023
Kelsea Ballerini, Jill Duggar and
more celebrities are celebrating Thanksgiving with their loved
ones.
Ballerini, 30, helped prepare her festive meal,
documenting her cooking journey via her social media. “Godspeed to everyone who
is too stubborn to look up directions and cooking squash for the first time,”
the country singer quipped via her Instagram Story on Wednesday, November 22.
Mindy Kaling
Kaling brought her two kids, Kit
and Spencer, to New York City for the holiday. They watched the Macy’s parade
from their hotel window.
Andy Cohen,
Tayshia Adams and Luke Gulbranson
Cohen snapped a selfie from the
parade stands, where he was seated
beside reality TV crossover couple Adams and Gulbranson.
Eric Decker
and Jessie James Decker
The pregnant country singer belted
out her new holiday song “Tangled in Tinsel” on Balsam Hill’s festive float in
NYC. Eric and their eldest three kids, Vivianne, Eric Jr. and Forrest, joined her on
the float’s carousel.
Clare Crawley
and Ryan Dawkins
The former Bachelorette and her
husband, who are currently expecting baby No. 1 via surrogate, shared a smooch
after running a Turkey Trot.
ATTACHMENT OLD.3 - FROM
HOLA
HOW THE STARS ARE
CELEBRATING THANKSGIVING IN 2023 (UPDATING): SOFIA VERGARA, LAUREN SANCHEZ, EVA
LONGORIA AND MORE
BY DANIEL NEIRA -LOS ANGELES NOVEMBER 22, 2023 2:51 PM EST
Thanksgiving is in
full swing around the country, with many people already preparing to reunite
with their friends and family for a special evening. And while we wait for a
delicious holiday dinner, some of our favorite celebrities are getting ready in
different ways.
From incredible performances to
last-minute plans, here are some of the ways stars are celebrating this year’s
Thanksgiving.
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Prime and more
Sofia Vergara
Sofia Vergara spent the holiday at
her neighbor’s holiday gathering, radiating and looking effortlessly gorgeous.
The Modern Family star also coordinated the look with
her friends and shared several photos of the party, each capturing how great
she looked.
In her first post of the day, she
shared were she was and thanked her host: “Thanksgiving at the neighbor!❤️❤️🦃🦃🦃 thank u @anastasiasoare I luv u!❤️”
Chayanne
Chayanne turned to Instagram to
convey what he considers to be the essence of the holiday, showcasing not only
his holiday style but also the family table set behind him. He wrote, “The most
important thing about traditions is sharing them with family and friends. Happy
Thanksgiving Day 🦃❤️🇵🇷.”
Brody Jenner
Brody Jenner posted the most
adorable family photo of him and Tia Blanco with his baby.
His post was captioned “Grateful
hearts and full plates! Wishing you all a Thanksgiving surrounded by love,
laughter, and all the delicious moments that make this day special. So much to
be thankful for this year. ❤️”
Lauren
Sanchez
Lauren Sanchez who recently moved
to Miami with her fiancé, Jeff Bezos took the opportunity to share how grateful
she is for her sister Elena.
Jennifer
Garner
In addition to posting about her
holiday cooking, Jennifer Garner also took to Instagram to show how caring she
is by talking about the struggles in Alpaugh, a town in California that grows a
lot of our fruits and veggies.
Even though they’re the ones
putting food on our tables, Alpaugh doesn’t have much fresh food for
themselves. Garner shared she visited the town last week alongside
@cynthiamcfadden and expressed her gratitude for the resilient families,
vibrant community, and the positive impact of @savethechildren in the face of
evident struggles.
Feeling emotional, she also
thanked her mentor:
“And because I am feeling all the
feels today, I am grateful to my mentor at Save the Children of fifteen years,
@markkshriver, who sees the possibility in every tough situation, who is the
ultimate champion for kids in America, and who, when the world is out of whack,
helps me focus on helping however I can, wherever I can and whenever I can.”
Coco Gauff
Tennis champion Coco Gauff took on
the task of making banana bread for the Thanksgiving gathering. The 19-year-old
spent her morning baking and later shared a message with her followers before
enjoying the holiday meal with her family and friends.
Ivanka Trump
Ivanka Trump posted a photo in
both her Instagram feed and her stories of her having a night swing with her
kids. She captioned the post “Night swim with these turkeys!”
Eva Longoria
Eva Longoria chose to spend this
day with loved ones, showcasing her culinary skills by preparing the
traditional festive turkey and pies with her son Santi as her assistant.
Paris Hilton
On Thanksgiving, Paris Hilton
spent time with her baby son, Phoenix, and then shared her gratitude with her
followers, encouraging them to acknowledge a person they are thankful for.
She wrote: #HappyThanksgiving! 🦃
I am so grateful for this beautiful life🥹 This year has brought so many
amazing blessings, the most incredible being becoming a mom.🥰
I am truly so thankful to be surrounded by such an incredible family,
supportive friends and a loving husband.😍 To many more years of love and
thanks! 🍁Tag someone you’re thankful for in
the comments
Allison
Holker Boos (sic)
Allison Holker, the widow of
Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the American freestyle hip-hop dancer and choreographer
famous for being on the Ellen Show, shared a beautiful group photo with her
kids. In the post, she expressed her gratitude for life, friends, and family.
“HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! Hosting
Thanksgiving is one of my absolute favorite things to do. I love bringing loved
ones together to celebrate love, joy and our gratitude for life and the
beautiful relationships we all have. My heart was beaming so bright last night
from being able to squeeze my friends so tightly … we shared in memories … in
smiles and so much laughter. A night I will treasure for ever! 🤎
GOOD FOOD-CONVERSATIONS- HUNGRY HIPPOS- SPOONS- SCAVENGER HUNTS- TALENT SHOW-
CATCH PHRASE - core memories activated!!”
Mariah Carey
The queen of Christmas, Mariah
Carey spent her holiday making comfort food. She shared a video of her making
anointed greens in a kitchen with one of her kids.
Alessandra Ambrosio
Alessandra Ambrosio posted a
stunning photo of her in a bikini in a paradise background with the caption
“Thankful!!! 🕊️🤍✨”
She then posted a follow up photo
with her two kids (Noah Mazur and Anja Ambrosio Mazur) with the words, “Meu
tudo!!! Always G R A T E F U L ❤️🔥”
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel shared a festive
photo featuring himself holding two plump turkey legs in each hand. His caption
read, “It’s twins! Happy Thanksgiving from our wild family to yours.”
Kaley Cuoco
‘The Big Bang Theory’ actress
Kaley Cuoco celebrated the holiday with her 7-month-old daughter, Matilda.
In a sweet Instagram video, she
was amazed when Matilda said ‘mama’ for the first time. Matilda is Cuoco’s
daughter with boyfriend Tom Pelphrey.
Travis Kelce
Travis Kelce will “be feasting on
KFC” by himself, as he revealed on his podcast ‘New Heights with Jason and
Travis Kelce.’ The athlete will not be spending Thanksgiving with his
girlfriend Taylor Swift, while his brother Jason will be spending the day with
his wife and three daughters.
Emma Roberts
The ‘American Horror Story’ star
was all smiles teaming up with Feeding America during the holiday season. The
actress decided to help the organization, joining other volunteers at the Urban
Outreach Center in New York City.
Cher
The iconic singer is set to
perform at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Cher will be performing some of the
songs from her new Christmas album, joining other special guests in the
celebration.
Julie Bowen
The ‘Modern Family’ star joined
forces with Feeding America for a good cause. The actress was photographed
helping to distribute pies in Los Angeles, at the Union Station Homeless
Services in Pasadena.
Taylor Swift
Following her shows in Brazil, the
singer is rumored to be staying in Latin America during the holiday, as she has
a series of performances in São Paulo starting Friday. It seems like Taylor
will be staying in Brazil for the week rather instead of flying back home.
Kourtney
Kardashian and Travis Barker
The reality star and the Blink-182
musician organized a vegan dinner in Los Angeles. The pair invited their
closest friends and family members for a plant-based version of the traditional
holiday, including modified dishes in the menu, such as setian “turkey,” mashed
potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie.
Brandy
Brandy was spotted during the
rehearsals of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The singer will be making an
special appearance onstage.