Category Archives: Climate crisis

Cop26 will be ‘rich nations stitch-up’ if poorer countries kept away by Covid

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Environmental activists demand delay to Glasgow climate talks if costs and travel restrictions block attendance of those worst-hit

The Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow should be postponed until the government can ensure that the talks won’t be a “rich nations stitch-up”, a diverse coalition of international organisations has said.

With less than two months to go before the talks, the Climate Action Network (CAN), a global alliance of more than 1,500 civil society organisations, is warning that many delegates from the global south will be unable to attend due to vaccine inequity and prohibitive quarantine costs.

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Climate impact of a transatlantic flight could cost global economy $3,000

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Economic cost of climate crisis has cut 37% from global GDP this century, say researchers

A return flight from the UK to New York could cost the global economy more than $3,000 (£2,170) in the long run, owing to the effects of the climate crisis, according to a report.

Researchers examined the economic cost of the climate crisis and found it would cut about 37% from global GDP this century, more than twice the drop experienced in the Great Depression.

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Europe’s top 25 banks failing on green pledges, campaigners warn

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ShareAction says lack of plans to tackle climate crisis and biodiversity loss casts doubts on banking’s sustainability pledges

Europe’s 25 largest banks are still failing to present comprehensive plans that address both the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, putting their sustainability pledges in doubt, campaigners have warned.

While some lenders such as NatWest are demonstrating leadership on specific issues – such as net zero targets and policies restricting financing for new fossil fuel – research by investment campaign group ShareAction found none of the banks it reviewed were taking action across all key areas.

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‘Lost generation’: education in quarter of countries at risk of collapse, study warns

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Covid, climate breakdown, poverty and war threaten return to school after pandemic kept 1.5bn children out of classes

The education of hundreds of millions of children is hanging by a thread as a result of an unprecedented intensity of threats including Covid 19 and the climate crisis, a report warned today.

As classrooms across much of the world prepare to reopen after the summer holidays, a quarter of countries – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – have school systems that are at extreme or high risk of collapse, according to Save the Children.

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Health journals make joint call for urgent action on climate crisis

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Editorial in publications worldwide urges leaders to take measures to stop ‘greatest threat to public health’

More than 200 health journals worldwide are publishing an editorial calling on leaders to take emergency action on climate change and to protect health.

The British Medical Journal said it is the first time so many publications have come together to make the same statement, reflecting the severity of the situation.

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‘People try to stop us speaking up’: Angelina Jolie’s lessons from young activists

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The actor’s latest project is a book to teach teenagers their rights. Here, she sits down with four young people to hear what they’re fighting for

• Read an interview with Jolie here

Angelina Jolie How do you feel the older generation are handling things?

Christina Adane, 17, a British anti-poverty campaigner, originally from Ethiopia If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have said they had failed us and left us with a bunch of problems. I still feel that way at times, but I think cross-generational communication is crucial when fighting issues like racial and climate justice. It’s easy to fall into the mentality of us v them, youth v old people in power. But loads of older people want to help us. So it’s about connecting with decision-makers and ensuring they are listening, so they can represent us where we are not represented – in government, at meetings at the top of companies. We need to work with the older generation.

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‘Climate crisis is here’ says Biden in week of storms, floods and wildfires

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The president warned that ‘we need to act now’ as trail of destruction blighted west, south and north-east

The widespread destruction caused by extreme weather coast to coast, with Hurricane Ida spreading devastation from Louisiana to New York while record wildfires scorch California, prompted Joe Biden to level with America this week, saying it was “yet another reminder that … the climate crisis is here”.

“We need to be much better prepared. We need to act,” Biden said in a speech on Thursday at the White House.

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Opec member urges oil producers to focus more on renewable energy

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Iraqi minister and International Energy Agency chief urge oil producing countries to move away from fossil fuel dependency

The finance minister of Iraq, one of the founding members of the global oil cartel Opec, has made an unprecedented call to fellow oil producers to move away from fossil fuel dependency and into renewable energy, ahead of a key Opec meeting.

Ali Allawi, the deputy prime minister and finance minister of Iraq, has written in the Guardian to urge oil producers to pursue “an economic renewal focused on environmentally sound policies and technologies” that would include solar power and potentially nuclear reactors, and reduce their dependency on fossil fuel exports.

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‘I’ve never said we should plant a trillion trees’: what ecopreneur Thomas Crowther did next

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The ecologist admits ‘messing up’ in the past, but says his Restor project will be ‘a Google Maps of biodiversity’, showing the impact of restoration – from a forest to your own back garden

Listen to our podcast: Can we really solve the climate crisis by planting trees? – part one

Thomas Crowther understands more than most the danger of simple, optimistic messages about combating the climate crisis. In July 2019, the British ecologist co-authored a study estimating that Earth had space for an extra trillion trees on land not used for agriculture or settlement. Its implications were intoxicatingly hopeful. By restoring forests in an area roughly the size of China, the press release accompanying the paper suggested two-thirds of all emissions from human activities still present in the atmosphere could be removed.

The study, led by Jean-François Bastin, a postdoctoral researcher at Crowther’s lab in ETH Zürich, Switzerland, was the second most featured climate paper in the media in 2019, according to one analysis. It inspired the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, launched last year after Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff read the paper on the recommendation of Al Gore, the former US vice-president. The Time magazine owner told everyone he could about the research: chief executives, friends and world leaders, even convincing climate sceptic Donald Trump to back the WEF initiative with a multibillion tree commitment.

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Make historic campaign to ban leaded petrol ‘blueprint to phase out coal’, says UN

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Hailing end to toxic fuel additive, Guterres says same commitment is needed to eliminate other pollutants

The UN secretary general and environmentalists have welcomed a declaration by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on the end of leaded petrol in the face of years of “underhand” opposition.

As Algeria became the last country to stop selling the toxic fuel last month, the two-decade campaign to ban it has been called a “milestone for multilateralism”.

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‘Everything is changing’: the struggle for food as Malawi’s Lake Chilwa shrinks

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The livelihoods of 1.5 million people are at risk as the lake’s occasional dry spells occur ever more frequently

• All photographs by Dennis Lupenga/WaterAid

There was a time when the vast Lake Chilwa almost disappeared. In 2012 it had been extremely hot in southern Malawi, with little rain to fill the rivers that ran into the lake.

“Many fishermen were forced to scramble for land near the lake banks, while others had to migrate to the city,” says Alfred Samuel. “We could barely feed our children because the lake could not provide enough fish, or water for rice growing.”

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‘Use your £11bn climate fund to pay for family planning,’ UK told

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More than 60 NGOs call for spending rule change, saying people on frontline of climate crisis want greater access to reproductive healthcare

The UK government has been urged to open up its £11bn pot of climate funding to contraception, as research from low-income countries shows a link between poor access to reproductive health services and environmental damage.

In a letter to Alok Sharma, president of the UN Cop26 climate conference, an alliance of more than 60 NGOs has called for the funding eligibility rules to be changed to allow projects concerned with removing barriers to reproductive healthcare and girls’ education to access climate funds.

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