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Rusting boats in the sand in Muynak, Uzbekistan. Muynak was once a thriving port on the Aral Sea but is now a desert town since the sea disappeared. Carolyn Drake/Magnum

ReflexionesNaturaleza, ,  

Walking toward the shrinking remnants of what used to be the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was like entering hell.

All around was a desert devoid of life, aside from scrubby saxaul trees. Dust swirled in 110-degree Fahrenheit heat under a throbbing red sun. I reached the edge of one of the scattered lakes that are all that remain of this once-great body of water. I took off my shoes and waded in. The water was so full of salt that it felt viscous, not quite liquid.

In the nearby town of Muynak, black-and-white newsreels in the local museum and pictures in the family photo albums of residents tell of better times.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNaturaleza,

Nobody should have any illusions about the urgency of the climate challenge. The science is clear and people are experiencing the effects first-hand—in the form of floods, fires, bleached coral reefs, heatwaves, storms and crop failures. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has “very high confidence” that things will get worse.

In this age of polarisation, the world desperately needs good news. And COP28 is an opportunity for all countries to come together to address an issue that affects everybody. It can, and should, deliver some good news.

The COP28 Global Stocktake is all but certain to provide a worrying assessment of where we are.…  Seguir leyendo »

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In a world starved of good news on climate, it is welcome that investment in clean energy has grown exponentially and is now running at almost double the rate of investment in all new fossil fuels. This year solar alone will receive more capital than new oil-and-gas production. As a result of these dramatic shifts, global carbon emissions from energy use may peak next year.

But even as the arc of global emissions is finally beginning to bend, much more will be required to reach climate justice. First, clean-energy investment must rise from $1.8trn this year to around $4.5trn a year by the early 2030s.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Later this month leaders and officials from around the world will gather in Dubai for the COP28 climate-change summit. High on their agenda will be closing the gap between global climate goals and progress towards them. A recent “global stocktake” report from the UN found that global greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising, and that national pledges to cut these collectively fall far short of what is needed to keep average global temperatures within 2°C of pre-industrial levels, as set out in the 2015 Paris agreement, let alone the more ambitious 1.5°C objective.

Delivering deeper emissions cuts will be difficult, even amid record-breaking heat and various government initiatives calling for stepped-up climate action and financing.…  Seguir leyendo »

Crop spraying in Ens, The Netherlands. (Photo by Sjoerd van der Wal/Getty Images)

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This year’s international climate change conference, COP28, will be the first such conference to have a major focus on food, which the UAE as COP28 president sees as important aspect of its agenda.

This is long overdue: food systems are responsible for about a third of all greenhouse gases produced by human activity. Modern farming methods are the most significant drivers of biodiversity loss. In turn, the world’s ability to provide healthy diets (‘food security’) is threatened by the impacts of climate change, with severe weather like storms and drought affecting the ability to produce and transport food.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine have also emphasized the global food system’s lack of resilience, and how easily events drive up food prices.…  Seguir leyendo »

Las secuelas del huracán Otis en una carretera cerca de Acapulco, México. Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

ReflexionesNaturaleza,  

A medida que nos acercamos al invierno, hay una buena noticia para las personas que tiemblan al pensar en el frío y viven en el hemisferio norte: es probable que las temperaturas sean más cálidas.

Pueden agradecérselo al patrón meteorológico cíclico conocido como El Niño.

Pero para otras partes del planeta, el pronóstico no es agradable. Para algunas regiones podría ser desastroso. Es probable que aumenten las precipitaciones en Sudamérica y que se produzcan sequías graves en Australia, Indonesia y partes del sur de Asia. Ya se han producido inundaciones mortales en Perú e India, y en Australia, donde es primavera, las autoridades advierten de una temporada de incendios especialmente peligrosa este verano.…  Seguir leyendo »

The aftermath of Hurricane Otis along a highway near Acapulco, Mexico. Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

ReflexionesNaturaleza,  

As we head toward winter, the good news for those who shiver at the thought of cold weather is that temperatures are likely to be warmer for people who live in the nation’s northern tier.

You can thank the cyclical weather pattern known as El Niño for that.

But for other parts of the planet, the forecast is not nearly so agreeable. For some regions, it might be disastrous. Increased rainfall is likely in South America and severe drought in Australia, Indonesia and parts of southern Asia. Already there has been deadly flooding in Peru and India, and in Australia, where it is spring, officials are warning of an especially dangerous fire season this summer.…  Seguir leyendo »

Lahaina, Hawaii, in the aftermath of the wildfire. Go Nakamura for The New York Times

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The August wildfire that roared through the town of Lahaina in Hawaii burned so hot that some of the dead were effectively cremated, their bones combusting to unidentifiable ash. Other bodies may have been lost in the Pacific Ocean, into which many of those fleeing the inferno were forced to plunge. As of Sept. 22, 97 people have been confirmed dead, but the Maui Police Department still lists 22 people as missing.

That’s a common pattern in the aftermath of disasters. In Morocco, families are still desperately searching for hundreds of loved ones after a devastating earthquake, while thousands in Libya are missing after two dams collapsed in a heavy rainstorm.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Occidental, an American oil major, recently agreed to buy Carbon Engineering, a Canadian carbon-removal company, for $1.6bn. The deal underlines big oil’s growing interest in carbon-capture technologies, which suck carbon dioxide from the air. What does it mean for the climate?

Suppose a trucker dumped a load of manure on your front lawn and then demanded a fee to haul it away. Big oil made the fuel that is cooking our planet, so the idea that it might profit from cleaning it up strikes many people as obscene.

Critics argue that big oil is using carbon removal as a tool to protect its core business.…  Seguir leyendo »

We Thought We Were Saving the Planet, but We Were Planting a Time Bomb

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At first, it looked like a sunset. It was just after five o’clock in June. I was running in Toronto beside Lake Ontario when I stopped to glance at my watch and noticed that the sky was no longer blue but a rusted orange. It took only a few breaths to realize the bonfire smell in the air was the drifting product of faraway wildfires.

It’s quite possible you had a similar experience this summer: The plumes of gases and soot from Quebec and northern Ontario that plagued Canada also blanketed the American Midwest and East Coast. But as I watched the sun burn a hole in the horizon, I had an additional realization: Thirty years ago, I did something that probably helped fill the sky with smoke.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iron Dust Could Reverse the Course of Climate Change

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For a while it seemed switching to clean energy might be enough to stave off climate catastrophe. But even though the United States has cut coal-fired electricity use from 50 percent to 19.5 percent in the past 20 years, the growth of coal in the rest of the world and the rising demand for energy overall — not to mention the extreme weather we are all experiencing — make it clear that we desperately need another solution.

As crazy as it might sound, geoengineering the oceans by adding iron — in effect, fertilizing them — may offer the best, most effective and most affordable way not just to slow the march of global warming but to reverse its course by directly drawing carbon out of the atmosphere.…  Seguir leyendo »

Hundreds of climate demonstrators marched through Berlin during last September's Global Climate Strike. The next one will take place this Friday, September 15. Monika Skolimowska/dpa/picture alliance/Getty Images

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My 12-year-old son is cutting school on September 15 — an act of non-violent civil disobedience that his mother and I approve of entirely.

In fact, we’re skipping work to go with him and about a third of his 7th grade to the Global Climate Strike in Berlin — one of hundreds of climate marches happening in cities around the world this Friday and over the weekend.

For five years now — since the 15-year-old Greta Thunberg sat out Friday classes in Stockholm, Sweden, setting in motion a worldwide mass movement — elementary and high school students have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands to call out politicos and the entire adult world for failing so egregiously to confront the climate crisis.…  Seguir leyendo »

Forests Are No Longer Our Climate Friends

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Canadian wildfires have this year burned a land area larger than 104 of the world’s 195 countries. The carbon dioxide released by them so far is estimated to be nearly 1.5 billion tons — more than twice as much as Canada releases through transportation, electricity generation, heavy industry, construction and agriculture combined. In fact, it is more than the total emissions of more than 100 of the world’s countries — also combined.

But what is perhaps most striking about this year’s fires is that despite their scale, they are merely a continuation of a dangerous trend: Every year since 2001, Canada’s forests have emitted more carbon than they’ve absorbed.…  Seguir leyendo »

'1.5 Degrees' is projected on the Eiffel Tower on 11 December 2015 in Paris, France. Photo by Getty Images.

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The target of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels has been a totemic threshold ever since the 2015 Paris Agreement, indicating whether climate change is within manageable limits, whatever the political rhetoric.

In June 2023, the global temperature temporarily passed the threshold, with heatwaves, wildfires and flooding affecting every part of the world.

With COP28 approaching, scientists, journalists, and politicians are proclaiming either ‘keep 1.5 alive’, ‘1.5 is dead’, or ’every fraction of a degree matters’.

However, both the ‘keep 1.5 alive’ and ‘1.5 is dead’ narratives may be missing the point.

1.5°C matters – it represents a level of heating beyond which critical ‘tipping points’ may be breached.…  Seguir leyendo »

The conflict in South Sudan is just one of many around the world where climate impacts – in this case the worst flooding in 60 years – are acting as a crisis magnifier.

MundoÁfricaReflexionesNaturaleza,

African leaders aren’t just pleading for help on climate change, they’re offering solutions too – but as they do so it’s critical to understand the role the issue is playing in fuelling conflict, and to develop solutions with that in mind.

Kenya is preparing to rally support for this green vision at the Africa climate summit, which opens today in Nairobi. It is also expected to focus on green investments and urge richer countries to follow through on their financial promises. But discussions about climate change can no longer afford to overlook matters of peace and stability.

At the summit for a “New Global Financing Pact” in Paris in June, Kenya’s President William Ruto proposed the establishment of a green global bank – a multilateral development bank funded by global carbon taxes.…  Seguir leyendo »

Quito, 14 de agosto de 2023: la comunidad indígena Waorani se manifiesta a favor del referéndum para poner fin a la explotación petrolera en el parque nacional Yasuní. Martin Bernetti/AFP

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En un referéndum celebrado el domingo 20 de agosto, unos 13 millones de ecuatorianos decidieron que el país prescindiría de las ganancias económicas derivadas de la explotación del bloque 43, situado en gran parte en el Parque Natural Yasuní y responsable del 12 % de la producción nacional de petróleo del país.

La pérdida de ingresos fue el principal argumento esgrimido por el gobierno saliente. La petrolera nacional Petroecuador estimaba en 14 500 millones de euros las pérdidas que supondría detener el proyecto en veinte años.

Pero los ecologistas relativizaron las cifras esgrimidas, alegando que no tenían en cuenta la gran fluctuación de los precios del petróleo, los costes de producción y, sobre todo, los daños causados a los ecosistemas.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘We must strengthen our democracy if we are to protect our planet.’ Photograph: José Jácome/EPA

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Days ago, voters in Ecuador approved a total ban on oil drilling in protected land in the Amazon, a 2.5m-acre tract in the Yasuní national park that might be the world’s most important biodiversity hotspot. The area is a Unesco-designated biosphere reserve and home to two non-contacted Indigenous groups. This could be a major step forward for the entire global climate justice movement in ways that are not yet apparent.

This vote is important not only for Ecuador and for the Indigenous peoples in the Yasuní, who now have hope of living in peace in perpetuity. It is also a potential model for how we can use the democratic process around the world to help slow or even stop the expansion of fossil fuels to the benefit of billions of people.…  Seguir leyendo »

French philosopher, political activist and not-quite-Catholic Simone Weil’s philosophy demanded she put everything on the line. Photograph: Photo 12/Alamy

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Nero fiddled while Rome burned. The saying takes on new meaning after the hottest July ever, devastating wildfires in Greece and Canada, and the declaration by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, that we’ve left behind “global warming” for “global boiling”.

But this time our Neros – AKA governments – aren’t the only ones shirking their responsibilities. What are the rest of us doing while the world burns?

Feel helpless yet? Me too. The climate crisis calls for a radical rethink of our cushy, carbon-heavy lives and our collective willingness to make sacrifices for future generations. But raised in a world of comfort and convenience, I get annoyed when there’s no wifi.…  Seguir leyendo »

Women huddle after gendarmes used water cannon and teargas against them during clashes over deforestation in Ikizkoy, Muğla province, Turkey. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

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This summer, as Rhodes was ravaged by wildfires and the world witnessed the destruction of precious trees and fragile ecosystems, on the opposite shore in Turkey, only miles away, ancient forests were being felled for the sake of more coal, more profit. But what the energy company hadn’t reckoned with was the resistance of local women.

Akbelen, in the province of Muğla, is a woodland of about 730 hectares (1,800 acres) that provides a natural habitat for a diverse range of flora and fauna. It is this beautiful place that YK Energy, a private energy company, has been aiming to occupy in order to expand an open-pit lignite mine to supply a thermal power plant.…  Seguir leyendo »

It Is No Longer Possible to Escape What We Have Done to Ourselves

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On the drive to our cottage here in June, my wife and I collided with the dense wall of Canadian wildfire smoke. The clear spring air began turning a sickly orange in the Adirondack Mountains, the sun was reduced to a red spot, and by the time we reached Montreal the skyline was barely visible from across the St. Lawrence River. On that day, June 25, Montreal had the worst air quality in the world.

Up at our lake, we soon learned to track the sheets of smoke online as they swept across Canada, down into the United States and even across the Atlantic Ocean.…  Seguir leyendo »