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Looking at much of the media reporting ahead of this week's climate conference in Glasgow, you'd think the world was subject to biblical plagues-blasted by fires, floods, hurricanes, drought and disease. But as Bjorn Lomborg has explained recently in these pages, while global warming does pose problems, it is hardly the unmitigated disaster often portrayed. At times, the solutions activists propose can be far worse than what they're trying to prevent.

Humanity has solved much more dangerous problems than climate change over the past century, Mr. Lomborg argues. Even if policy makers do little to slow the rise of global temperatures, it will cost only 2.8% of global gross domestic product a year-a small price compared to that of air pollution, the least of the other major problems mankind has tackled since 1900.

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Opinion | The Real Risks of Global Climate Change

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Looking at much of the media reporting ahead of this week's climate conference in Glasgow, you'd think the world was subject to biblical plagues-blasted by fires, floods, hurricanes, drought and disease. But as Bjorn Lomborg has explained recently in these pages, while global warming does pose problems, it is hardly the unmitigated disaster often portrayed.

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ROME (AP) - Leaders of the world's biggest economies were set to tackle climate change Sunday, the final day of a weekend summit in Rome that is widely expected to set the tone for a major conference on the same issue taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, over the next two weeks.

The Group of 20 countries, which represent more than three-quarters of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, are looking for common ground on how to reduce emissions while helping poor countries deal with the impact of rising temperatures.

If the G-20 summit ends with only weak commitments, momentum could be lost for the larger annual talks in Glasgow, where countries from around the globe will be represented including poor ones most vulnerable to rising seas, desertification and other effects.

The future of coal, a key source of greenhouse gas emissions, has been one of the hardest things for the G-20 to agree on. However, the U.S. and other countries are hoping to get a commitment to end overseas financing of coal-fired power generation, said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview President Joe Biden's plans.

Western countries have moved away from financing coal projects in developing countries, and major Asian economies are now doing the same: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the U.N. General Assembly last month that Beijing would stop funding such projects, and Japan and South Korea made similar commitments earlier in the year.

China has not set an end date for building domestic coal plants at home, however. Coal is still China's main source of power generation, and both China and India have resisted attempts for a G-20 declaration on phasing out domestic coal consumption.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said before the Rome summit that he tried but could not get a commitment on a coal phase-out from Xi, who did not travel to the gathering.

In Glasgow, Johnson said, "we want these leaders ... to focus on the commitments they can make, moving away from the use of fossil fuels, moving away from coal-fired power stations domestically."

Climate campaigners were hoping that rich G-20 countries would take steps to meet a long-standing but yet-to-be-fulfilled commitment to raise $100 billion annually to help developing countries move toward greener economies and adapt to the changing climate.

Prince Charles, a long-time environmentalist, was set to address the G-20 on Sunday.

G-20 leaders also discussed the COVID-19 pandemic and the uneven distribution of vaccines in the world. On Saturday they endorsed a global minimum tax on corporations, a linchpin of new international tax rules aimed at blunting fiscal paradises amid skyrocketing profits of some multinationals.

And after a meeting on the sidelines about Iran's nuclear program, Biden, Johnson, Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Emmanuel Macron made a joint statement expressing their "determination to ensure that Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon."

They also voiced concern that Tehran "has accelerated the pace of provocative nuclear steps" after halting negotiations on a return to the nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

___ Associated Press writers Jill Lawless, Josh Boak, Zeke Miller and David McHugh in Rome contributed to this report.

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G-20 leaders turn to climate change on last day of summit

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ROME (AP) - Leaders of the world's biggest economies were set to tackle climate change Sunday, the final day of a weekend summit in Rome that is widely expected to set the tone for a major conference on the same issue taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, over the next two weeks.

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The costs of doing nothing vastly outweigh the costs of decarbonising a global economy which, since the Industrial Revolution, has been powered by fossil fuels. That may seem self-evident today, when catastrophic fires and floods offer daily reminders of how expensive continued inaction on climate change is. But 15 years ago, that insight was ground-breaking.

The 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, for which I was a senior economist, was the first time a G7 government had used economic analysis to spell out the case for urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A decade and a half on, its conclusions and recommendations are as valid as ever.

The review also exposed the limitations of using conventional economic modelling to answer transformational questions. It prompted an unhealthy race among economists to insert their own cost presumptions to derive contradictory results.

This points to a lingering problem in economics. Conventional models assume economists know beforehand what the costs of new technologies, preferences and behaviour will be in the future. These are the things that will determine the cost of any green transition. In other words, our estimates of the things we are most interested in are predetermined by assumptions that may not be accurate.

The fact is that the technique known as "static cost benefit analysis", the workhorse of economic modelling, was simply not designed to evaluate the large risks and transitions involved in tackling climate change. This matters because conventional approaches have consistently understated the risks from unmitigated climate change and overstated the costs of a low-carbon transition, thereby delaying policy action.

Forecasting the cost of a systemic transition is fiendishly complex. Adopting new, clean technologies early induces creativity and innovation across the whole economy and generates new learning and experience along the way.

It unleashes economies of scale in discovery and production, as businesses make and distribute things more cleverly and efficiently, dramatically lowering costs. This in turn makes deploying new technologies even more attractive, generating a virtuous cycle of innovation, investment and falling costs.

The cost of generating electricity with solar panels and the cost of storing it in lithium-ion batteries has fallen more than 80% over the last decade. Regardless of the need to decarbonise, people are now set to benefit from cheaper electricity and better performing cars than they otherwise would have. Economists never predicted it and the markets alone would never have delivered it.

Climate Change Committee/IRENA (2020) Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2019.

What happened was that renewable energy generation capacity grew faster than anyone expected, because the costs of installing and running renewables fell sharply. And costs fell sharply because capacity grew faster than anyone expected.

Conventional economic models cannot cope with the destabilising dynamics generated by these amplifying feedbacks, so they miss them entirely, together with the rapid cost cutting they entail. As a result, standard economic and energy forecasting models have been demonstrably wrong for decades.

A self-fulfilling prophecy

No cost benefit analysis can adequately answer the question "What will it cost to decarbonise in the long run?" The answer depends on the choices and actions taken today and in the future.

Once a tipping point is reached, such reinforcing feedbacks make the transition to new technology networks a self-sustaining process. If people expect the low-carbon transition will be cost-effective, they will invest in it.

In this way, expectations of rapid transformation become self-fulfilling. This makes credible and predictable government policy vital to provide investors and companies with confidence that a low-carbon future will be a profitable one.

Ambitious policy to generate a clean energy transition could ultimately be costless. After initial investment costs, it would likely generate considerable savings.

And once the clean innovation machine has been switched on and is running, it has the potential to become more efficient, innovative and productive than the conventional alternative. By driving prices for disruptive technologies extremely low, growth in new sectors will have a positive impact on productivity growth.

Rather than embarking on a fruitless attempt to predict the future using the wrong economic tools, our interests are better served trying to steer and design it. The economics profession is in a better position to cope with the risk and uncertainty this entails. Fifteen years on from the Stern Review, we can say with great confidence that the risks of action are far lower than the risks of inaction. More than that, those risks are in our gift to tame.

The global community has it in its power to make a cleaner, more secure and sustainable but also more efficient, innovative and productive economy a self-fulfilling prophecy. As world leaders gather in Glasgow for the latest UN climate summit, the call for action has never been more urgent.

This story is part of The Conversation's coverage on COP26, the Glasgow climate conference, by experts from around the world.
Amid a rising tide of climate news and stories, The Conversation is here to clear the air and make sure you get information you can trust. More.

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Climate change: how economists underestimated benefits of action for decades

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The costs of doing nothing vastly outweigh the costs of decarbonising a global economy which, since the Industrial Revolution, has been powered by fossil fuels. That may seem self-evident today, when catastrophic fires and floods offer daily reminders of how expensive continued inaction on climate change is.

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Your morning cup may depend on solving issues with a crop that both contributes to and is deeply affected by the changing climate.

A cupping session at Los Papales, a coffee farm in Jinotega, Nicaragua. Credit... Inti Ocon/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images

This article is part of a special report on Climate Solutions, which looks at efforts around the world to make a difference.

Wilston Vilchez, a third-generation coffee farmer in the mountains of Nicaragua, has witnessed drastic climatic changes on his 25-acre coffee and cacao farm for years, but when two hurricanes hit within 15 days last year, many other farmers he knows realized they needed to be part of the solution.

"They might be small farmers, but they believe in doing something different that will benefit them all," he said.

Mr. Vilchez, who also manages an agricultural cooperative of about 300 farmers, said that the effects of climate change - rising temperatures, less predictable rainfall, wild swings from drought to flooding, new pests and more - were making it more and more difficult to earn a living from coffee, an experience felt by farmers around the world.

Various organizations and companies are seeking solutions to these challenges. They are helping farmers to improve production and efficiency, developing new strains of beans or farming wild species, and even growing coffee in labs. Producing coffee makes a significant environmental impact - estimates vary, but about 39 gallons of water are needed for one cup, according to UNESCO's Institute for Water Education.

However, people interviewed at these organizations and companies, and experts in the field, said that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be the best way to ensure the future of coffee as we know it (or something close to what we know) and of the planet.

According to a 2014 study, under modest declines of greenhouse gas emissions, about 50 percent of the land with conditions suitable for growing the two main species of coffee, arabica and robusta, which account for 99 percent of commercial supply, "could disappear by 2050." Brazil and Vietnam, major producing countries, would be especially hard hit.

Denis Leonel, the manager of the farm Coqueiro, inspecting coffee crops that were affected by frosts in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in July. Credit... Roosevelt Cassio/Reuters

To the billions of people around the world who rely on drinking coffee (to put it mildly), that forebodes many difficult mornings and possibly rising prices. To the 100 million or so coffee farmers, to say nothing of the tens of millions more who work in transporting, packaging, distributing, selling and brewing coffee, the effects of climate change are making an already precarious existence even more so.

On his farm and across the co-op, Mr. Vilchez works with Blue Harvest, a program from Catholic Relief Services (C.R.S.), started in 2014, which helps Central American coffee farmers restore and protect their water resources, for their benefit and for others who share the watershed downstream.

The program, which built on the organization's earlier work, began as Central America was in the grips of a coffee leaf rust epidemic about a decade ago. Coffee leaf rust is a fungus that decimates coffee plants, often leaving farmers with few choices: cut down their crop and replant, plant something else, or give up the farm. Some have linked the spread of the fungus to climate change because it thrives in warmer conditions with more variable precipitation.

Since climate change is making droughts both more frequent and intense, said Kristin Rosenow, an expert in agricultural development for C.R.S., using water more efficiently and preventing pollution of existing sources are crucially important.

Mr. Vilchez has worked with C.R.S. to restore his soil by planting cover crops. He has also helped other farmers to retain more soil moisture by planting shade trees, a traditional practice, and to employ other low-tech solutions, he said, speaking in Spanish translated by a C.R.S. staff member.

Ms. Rosenow said that these sorts of techniques, among others, like more targeted fertilizer use, had led to an increase of 24 percent in their yields for the farmers, and a 28 percent rise in income, some of which can be attributed to these techniques and some to access to new markets.

Another tactic is planting different varieties that can better withstand both the leaf rust and other climate stressors, according to Hanna Neuschwander, the director of strategy and communications at World Coffee Research.

Next year, World Coffee Research will start a global breeding network, which aims to introduce modern breeding techniques and new varieties in coffee-producing countries to help farmers dealing with new climatic conditions. Based on the information that is obtained, the organization will evaluate how new species perform in different environments around the world, a sort of real-time lab trial.

But there are challenges. When a farmer plants a coffee tree, it takes several years for it to make money. And because coffee trees can live for several decades, a tree that suits today's climate may be completely unsuited to future conditions, said Vern Long, the chief executive of World Coffee Research.

Sacks of coffee in the Zona de los Santos area of Costa Rica. Credit... Jeffrey Arguedas/EPA, via Shutterstock

One possible upside, Ms. Long added: Coffee farmers would not have to expand or move to higher altitudes that may be more suitable in the future but could be heavily forested and biodiverse, leading to loss of carbon sequestration potential and animal and plant habitat.

At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, Aaron Davis, a coffee scientist who also specializes in climate change, is working on a different solution to ensure sustainability: introducing farmers to wild coffee species, which have not been widely cultivated previously, or at all, but are more tolerant of high temperatures and drought.

"Being a botanist and having done work in climatology, I can't emphasize enough that traditionally used species will not be enough," he said. "If you look at climate change models and projections, we need robust resilience and step change, not incremental change."

Maricel Saenz is also interested in step change, but in a different direction. She is the founder and chief executive of Compound Foods, a "beanless" coffee company that aims to produce coffee in a laboratory environment.

A coffee plant in Sierra Leone. Credit... Agence France-Presse, via Royal Botanical Gardens

Ms. Saenz, 29, is from Costa Rica, so naturally coffee and its future are important to her, she said. "It's a really complex situation, because coffee is one of the main victims and contributors to climate change," she said, citing the energy and water required to grow, transport and brew a cup of coffee.

Compound Foods does not grow any coffee - at least, not in the traditional sense. Instead, the company replicates the microbes from actual coffee cherries, which give a cup of coffee its flavor and aroma, Ms. Saenz said. The microbes are grown on their plant-based formula in bioreactors, a fermentation process similar to what happens naturally at a coffee farm.

At the moment, this makes a cold-brew style extract that mimics the flavor, color and smell of real coffee, but with much less energy and water. They plan to distribute this first product through coffee shops next year and, later, to create coffee grounds that can be brewed at home.

When asked about how her company might affect smallholder farmers who grow most of the world's coffee and often struggle to make a living, Ms. Saenz said that she was hoping to compete with the big industrial farmers and to find ways to support the farmers she grew up knowing.

In both the long and short term, that may mean addressing the root cause itself: greenhouse gas emissions.

As Vincent Amodoi, a project coordinator in Uganda for Farm Africa, a British charity that works with farmers, pastoralists and forest communities in East Africa, including coffee growers, said, "For me, climate change should be one of the major focuses for all governments in the world, and that is just not happening."

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Coffee and Climate Have a Complicated Relationship

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Your morning cup may depend on solving issues with a crop that both contributes to and is deeply affected by the changing climate. This article is part of a special report on Climate Solutions, which looks at efforts around the world to make a difference.

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http://www.arirang.co.kr/News/News_View.asp?nseq=238834

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https://news.naver.com/main/read.naver?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=104&oid=091&aid=0007432345

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Scientists confirm presence of plastic in snow in the Alps and the Arctic

An undated handout photo made available by the Alfred Wegener Institut (AWI), Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, on 15 August 2019 shows snow sampling in Tschuggen, Switzerland. The samples are analyzed for microplastic concentrations in the lab. The whole sampling takes place without the use of any plastics to prevent the samples from contamination. Scientists at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute announced on 14 Augsut 2019 that even in remote regions such as the Arctic and the Alps the snow is polluted with microplastics (MPs); with varnish, rubber, polyethylene, and polyamide particles dominating overall, indicating significant contamination of the atmosphere. Experts believe that microplastic, defined as particles below 5mm in size, is blown about by winds and transported long distances through the atmosphere and snow to the Arctic sea. Researchers collected snow samples from the Arctic (Svalbard) and in populated (Heligoland, Bremen and Bavaria in Germany) and remote (Tschuggen and Davos in Switzerland) European sites. EPA/JUERG TRACHSEL/WSL-INSTITUT HANDOUT -- MANDATORY CREDIT: JUERG TRACHSEL/WSL-INSTITUT FUER SCHNEE- UND LAWINENFORSCHUNG SLF -- HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES

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▶네이버 [연합뉴스] 채널 구독 ▶뭐 하고 놀까? #흥

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Scientists confirm presence of plastic in snow in the Alps and the Arctic An undated handout photo made available by the

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https://www.econotimes.com/Bottle-fed-babies-may-consume-millions-of-microplastic-particles-our-research-suggests-1594491

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Microplastics can now be found in almost every environment on Earth, but scientists know surprisingly little about how the products we use every day shed these tiny plastic particles.

If you drink from a plastic water bottle or eat out of a microwaveable container today, there's a good chance that you're using polypropylene. Polypropylene is thought to be safe and suitable for lots of different applications - which is why it's the most widely used plastic in food preparation.

Another place you'd expect to find polypropylene is in baby feeding bottles. We generally assume that bottles made from this plastic are rigid and stable when they're sterilised with hot water and shaken while preparing formula. But in new research, we've shown that baby formula preparation with polypropylene bottles exposes infants around the world to an average of one million microplastic particles per day.

This is an astoundingly large increase on previous estimates. Earlier studies had suggested that adults and children in the US were exposed to between 74,000 and 211,000 particles over the course of an entire year, through the food they eat, the water they drink and the air they breathe.
Microplastics in formula feeding
Like many research projects, our investigation began with a chance observation and conversation. One day a colleague was preparing instant noodles in a plastic container. The container looked rigid to start with, but after he poured hot water in it, it changed to become more malleable and soft. We were curious and wondered whether microplastics might be released in the process.

We did a quick test in our lab and found that the container released over one million microplastics per litre of hot water. We began testing other polypropylene containers, such as plastic bottles, with liquids at room temperature and found very few microplastic particles were released with each litre, from none at all to a few hundred. Heat, it seemed, was the problem.

We wanted to design an experiment that could test how a single polypropylene product responds to regular heating, and hit upon the idea of using baby feeding bottles. Through a survey of bottles in 48 regions and covering 78% of the world population, we found that polypropylene baby feeding bottles account for 83% of the global market.

We decided to test these bottles by choosing ten polypropylene baby bottles and following the World Health Organization's 2007 guidelines for preparing bottle feeding formula at home. We tested how many microplastics were released while following these steps, including cleaning, sterilising and mixing liquids in each of the ten bottles, and found that they released up to 16 million particles per litre of 70°C water. The majority of these microplastics were smaller than 20 micrometres and were flake-like with a coarse surface, and an average thickness one-tenth of their width.

When the temperature of the water was raised from the recommended 70°C to 95°C - the temperature of recently boiled water - the release of microplastics increased from six million particles per litre to 55 million. The sterilisation process alone - in which the bottle is disassembled and placed in a pan full of 95°C water - increased microplastics release by at least 35%.

We felt we had a really comprehensive scientific approach. We rigorously adhered to the WHO procedure, used control tests, repeated the test with different liquids and across different temperatures multiple times and used statistical analysis to determine if our results were significant. But we also sent our methodology and sample products to an independent lab for them to verify. They came back with similar results, and so we can be confident in our findings - as shocking as they might seem.
How to reduce exposure
Given how widespread the use of polypropylene bottles is and the large quantity of microplastics released in our experiment, we decided to take our research a step further. We estimated how exposed 12-month-old infants are likely to be in 48 regions across the world by comparing the average release rates of microplastics from feeding bottles, the market share of plastic bottles, rates of bottle feeding and how much milk babies tend to drink daily. From this, we concluded that infants are likely to consume an average of 1.6 million polypropylene microplastic particles each day.

We don't want to be alarmist. We don't fully understand the risks to human health through exposure to these tiny plastic particles yet, but this is an area of research that we, and other teams, are actively pursuing.

In the meantime, there are ways to reduce a child's exposure to microplastics during formula feeding. We are looking at coatings that can prevent microplastics being release during use and filters that could prevent microplastics entering our water supplies.

We've also developed a set of procedures for sterilising bottles and preparing formula feeds while reducing your exposure to microplastics from polypropylene bottles. The four quickest and easiest steps are:

1. Rinse sterilised feeding bottles with cool, sterile water.

2. Always prepare formula in a non-plastic container.

3. After formula has cooled to room temperature, transfer it into the cooled, sterilised feeding bottle.

4. Avoid rewarming prepared formula in plastic containers, especially with a microwave oven.

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Bottle-fed babies may consume millions of microplastic particles, our research suggests - EconoTimes

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Microplastics can now be found in almost every environment on Earth, but scientists know surprisingly little about how the products we use every day shed these tiny plastic particles. If you drink from a plastic water...

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https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/08/more-masks-than-jellyfish-coronavirus-waste-ends-up-in-ocean

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'Covid waste': disposable masks and latex gloves turn up on seabed - video

Conservationists have warned that the coronavirus pandemic could spark a surge in ocean pollution - adding to a glut of plastic waste that already threatens marine life - after finding disposable masks floating like jellyfish and waterlogged latex gloves scattered across seabeds.

The French non-profit Opération Mer Propre, whose activities include regularly picking up litter along the Côte d'Azur, began sounding the alarm late last month.

Divers had found what Joffrey Peltier of the organisation described as "Covid waste" - dozens of gloves, masks and bottles of hand sanitiser beneath the waves of the Mediterranean, mixed in with the usual litter of disposable cups and aluminium cans.
Seascape: the state of our oceans

A glut of discarded single-use masks and gloves is washing up on shorelines and littering the seabed

The quantities of masks and gloves found were far from enormous, said Peltier. But he worried that the discovery hinted at a new kind of pollution, one set to become ubiquitous after millions around the world turned to single-use plastics to combat the coronavirus. "It's the promise of pollution to come if nothing is done," said Peltier.

In France alone, authorities have ordered two billion disposable masks, said Laurent Lombard of Opération Mer Propre. "Knowing that ... soon we'll run the risk of having more masks than jellyfish in the Mediterranean," he wrote on social media alongside video of a dive showing algae-entangled masks and soiled gloves in the sea near Antibes.

The group hopes the images will prompt people to embrace reusable masks and swap latex gloves for more frequent handwashing. "With all the alternatives, plastic isn't the solution to protect us from Covid. That's the message," said Peltier.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, environmentalists had warned of the threat posed to oceans and marine life by skyrocketing plastic pollution. As much as 13 million tonnes of plastic goes into oceans each year, according to a 2018 estimate by UN Environment. The Mediterranean sees 570,000 tonnes of plastic flow into it annually - an amount the WWF has described as equal to dumping 33,800 plastic bottles every minute into the sea.

These figures risk growing substantially as countries around the world confront the coronavirus pandemic. Masks often contain plastics such as polypropylene, said Éric Pauget, a French politician whose region includes the Côte d'Azur.

Gloves, masks and bottles of hand sanitiser have been collected around France's Côte d'Azur. Photograph: Courtesy Operation Terre-Mer

"With a lifespan of 450 years, these masks are an ecological timebomb given their lasting environmental consequences for our planet," he wrote last month in a letter to Emmanuel Macron, calling on the French president to do more to address the environmental consequences of disposable masks.

Earlier this year the Hong Kong-based OceansAsia began voicing similar concerns, after a survey of marine debris in the city's uninhabited Soko Islands turned up dozens of disposable masks.

"On a beach about 100 metres long, we found about 70," said Gary Stokes of OceansAsia. One week later, another 30 masks had washed up. "And that's on an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere."
Microplastics found in greater quantities than ever before on seabed
Curious to see how far the masks had travelled, he began checking other nearby beaches. "We're finding them everywhere," he said. "Ever since society started wearing masks, the cause and effects are being seen on the beaches."

While some of the debris could be attributed to carelessness, he speculated that the lightweight masks were at times also being carried from land, boats and landfills by the wind.

"It's just another item of marine debris," he said, likening the masks to plastic bags or straws that often wash up on the city's more remote shorelines. "It's no better, no worse, just another item we're leaving as a legacy to the next generation."

Still, given the likelihood that porpoises and dolphins in the region could mistake a mask for food, he was bracing himself for a grim find. "We're constantly getting them washing up dead and we're just waiting for a necropsy when we find a mask inside," he said. "I think it's inevitable."

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'More masks than jellyfish': coronavirus waste ends up in ocean

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A glut of discarded single-use masks and gloves is washing up on shorelines and littering the seabed

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https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/01/weather/weather-news-subtropical-storm-wanda-hurricane-update-drought-relief-aurora-wxn/index.html

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The last hurricane name is being used and the season isn't over yet | CNN

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With one month to go before Atlantic hurricane season shuts down for 2021, we've just used the last name on our list - Wanda.

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Most Irish households have serious concerns about air pollution but fewer than a third would support traffic restrictions or congestion charges to fight the problem.

y contrast, nearly three quarters favour stricter controls on industrial and energy-production activities.

A majority of Irish householders have serious concerns over climate change, air and water pollution and plastic waste, a new survey from the Central Statistics Office reveals.

In the first of four reports published today to coincide with the UN Climate Conference taking place in Glasgow this week, the CSO's report on "Environmental Concerns Quarter 3 2021" found that over 79pc of Irish households rate water pollution as a very important environmental concern.

Plastic waste was equally cited as a very important environmental concern by 74pc of Irish households, followed by air pollution cited by 72pc of Irish households.

Climate change was also rated as an important environmental concern by 69pc of households.

The lack of urban green spaces was also cited as an important issue for 60pc of urban householders, yet only 39pc of rural householders cited it as an issue.

Yet despite concerns over air pollution, just 29pc of Irish households said they would support traffic restrictions - such as congestion charges or low emission zones - to ease pollution in cities while a majority of householders in rural areas (69pc) said they would have no alternative form of transportation if fuel taxes went up by 10pc.

However, 73pc of respondents said they supported stricter pollution controls on industrial and energy-production activities while 54pc said they supported greater financial incentives for low emission products yet only 35pc of respondents cited stricter controls on emissions from transport vehicles as a possible solution. Just 7pc of householders said they would support stricter controls on residential heating.

Meanwhile, just 16pc of respondents considered their homes to be energy efficient, while only 19pc said they would invest in energy efficiency measures with just under a third of householders (31pc) stating that the cost to upgrade their home energy efficiency was not affordable.

The survey sample included a representative mix of owner-occupied, private rented and local authority rented dwellings. Households from every county were included in the survey.

CSO statistician Clare O'Hara said: "The report found that 73pc of households would support stricter air pollution controls on industrial and energy-production activities as the most effective means of tackling problems of air quality. In contrast, only 29pc of households supported the introduction of traffic restrictions such as congestion charges and low emission zones in polluted cities."

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Irish people very concerned about air pollution but just a third support traffic restrictions or congestion charges to fight it

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Most Irish households have serious concerns about air pollution but fewer than a third would support traffic restrictions or congestion charges to fight the problem. y contrast, nearly three quarters favour stricter controls on industrial and energy-production activities.

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https://nypost.com/2021/10/22/amid-air-quality-concerns-districts-embrace-electric-buses/

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An electric school bus, leased by Beverly Public Schools in Beverly, Mass., rests in a bus yard, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, in Beverly, Mass. AP

BOSTON - For several years, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools had toyed with replacing some of its 1,000 diesel buses with cleaner electric vehicles. But school leaders said the change would be too costly.

Then 12-year-old student Holly Thorpe showed up at a school board meeting to tout the benefits of going electric and returned to encourage the district to apply for a state grant.

Two years on, the school board on Wednesday approved a district plan to use state money to replace up to 50 diesel buses with electric models over the next several years.

Thorpe is overjoyed the district is making the switch. "It wasn't imaginary any more," she said. "It just wasn't like an idea. It was coming to life."

The transition is part of a small but growing movement led by parents, students and lawmakers to purchase electric school buses to improve the health of students and cut planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions.

Roughly 25 million children ride school buses every year. And though only about 1 percent of 480,000 U.S. school buses are electric, there are signs the push to abandon diesel buses is gaining momentum:

Late last year, the World Resources Institute announced a $37.5 million Bezos Earth Fund grant to help electrify all school buses in the country by 2030. The nonprofit will work over the next five years on the project with school districts, communities, environmental justice groups, utilities, bus manufacturers and policymakers.

This year, a suburban Maryland district became the country's largest to commit to going completely electric. It plans to replace 1,442 diesel buses by 2035. The first 326 electric ones will be leased from Massachusetts-based Highland Electric Transportation.

California, the country's electric school bus leader, has funded the purchase of 1,167 and budgeted for another 1,000 over the next three fiscal years.

"This is an opportunity to make sure that we are doing all we can to protect kids health," said California Energy Commission member Patty Monahan. "Some of these kids in parts of Los Angeles are on the bus for an hour, two hours a day. So we want to make sure that they are breathing clean air."

At Twin Rivers Unified School District in Northern California, where diesel buses have been replaced by 40 electric buses and 34 that run on compressed natural gas, officials say clouds of dirty air have disappeared.

"One of the drivers said 'I can't believe the change I'm seeing in my lifetime,'" said Tim Shannon, the district's director of transportation services. "He said 'I used to have to hold a handkerchief over my face to walk through the yard because of the thick diesel soot.'"

The electric buses are 60 percent cheaper to operate and will pay for themselves over time, Shannon said.

Some districts are planning to sell excess energy from batteries back to the grid, a move welcomed by utilities who themselves have launched programs to buy electric school buses. This summer, a school bus in a Massachusetts district delivered power back to the grid.

Efforts to replace diesel school buses are driven by the fact that children are more susceptible to health impacts of air pollution. Exposure to diesel exhaust, according to the EPA, can lead to asthma and respiratory illnesses and worsen heart and lung ailments, especially in children and the elderly.

A study of school buses in Washington state found using cleaner fuels or upgrading older diesel reduced children's exposure to airborne particles by as much as 50 percent and improved their health. Their findings suggest a nationwide switch to cleaner school buses could result in around 14 million fewer absences each year. The researchers at the universities of Washington and Michigan did not examine electric buses, which produce less local pollution than those using fossil fuels.

Lead author Sara Adar, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, said older diesel buses resulted in children in the Seattle area "getting higher levels of air pollution during their commute."

"The pollutants those kids were experiencing also did seem to be linked to worse health," she said. "We saw kids' lungs weren't quite as healthy."

Diesel school bus engines are much cleaner, since the EPA implemented standards that required them to produce 90 percent less particulate matter. The EPA also has awarded $55 million to replace more than 2,700 old diesel school buses since 2012 and announced in October that $17 million more would be available.

With the improved standards, the diesel industry argues that switching to electric won't significantly reduce emissions or address concerns about global warming - especially since electricity for buses still often comes from fossil fuels. They note that more than 54 percent of school buses are newer models with far fewer emissions.

"School districts should be able to choose the bus type and technology that works for them," said Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum. "Some may find electric buses a good fit while others will stick with diesel and utilize low-carbon renewable fuels to cut their carbon footprint and other emissions."

Advocates point out that nearly half of diesel buses are older ones that produce dangerous pollutants and are much more expensive to maintain. But they acknowledge the challenge is getting districts with older buses funds to transition to electric ones, which often cost three times more.

Many districts are eyeing funding from several bills in Congress.

The nearly $1 trillion infrastructure bill includes $5 billion for electric and hybrid school buses. Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a former preschool teacher who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor & Pensions, and other advocates want $5 billion more for electric school buses in President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion rebuilding plan.

Several congressional bills would provide billions more for electric school buses.

Some states, including Florida and Virginia, are buying electric buses with billions of dollars from the Volkswagen settlement of its diesel emissions cheating scandal.

Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district will use $11.6 million from the settlement to start buying electric buses, but said a full transition would be impossible without federal help.

"If we as a nation prioritize environmental protection, the reduction of greenhouse gases, the maximization of new technologies that reduce our dependency on carbon fuels, then the federal investment must incentivize these transitions with actual funding," he said. "And that's exactly what our country needs. That's exactly what Miami needs."

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Amid air quality concerns, districts embrace electric buses

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Roughly 25 million children ride school buses every year. And though only about 1 percent of 480,000 U.S. school buses are electric, there are signs the push to abandon diesel buses is gaining mome...

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https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/ppe-masks-gloves-coronavirus-ocean-pollution/

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COVID-19

Millions of masks are being thrown away every day. Image: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

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How face masks, gloves and other coronavirus waste is polluting our ocean

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Coronavirus waste has become a new form of pollution as millions of single-use personal protective equipment (PPE) is ending up in our ocean.

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https://nypost.com/2021/10/20/46-dead-after-heavy-rains-landslides-in-northern-india/

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Submerged cars are seen at a flooded hotel resort as extreme rainfall caused the Kosi River to overflow at the Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand, India. AP

LUCKNOW, India - At least 46 people have died and several are missing after floods triggered by heavy rains hit the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, officials said Wednesday.

Rescuers worked through the night to retrieve bodies stuck in debris and to evacuate those in vulnerable areas, said S A Murugeshan, secretary of the state's disaster management. On Tuesday, officials said 22 people were killed by the rains.

The mountainous state has seen incessant rains for the past three days, flooding roads, destroying bridges and causing landslides in which several homes were washed away. The situation has prompted help from more than 2,000 members of the paramilitary and civil police.

The Indian Meteorological Department said the rains were likely to recede in Uttarakhand on Wednesday, but warned of more heavy downpours in the country's northeastern and southern regions.

The majority of the deaths in Uttarakhand were reported in the picturesque town of Nainital, where 28 people were killed on Tuesday, said Murugeshan. Most of the deaths were caused by homes and buildings collapsing in the torrential rains, he added.

In Mukteshwar, a popular hill station in the state, five laborers died when a wall collapsed on their shanty. In another hilly town, Ramgarh, nine members of a family died as the rains washed away their home, the official said.

Videos shared on social media showed the Ganges River bursting its banks at Rishikesh, and the scenic Nainital Lake overflowing with floodwaters.

Experts say the magnitude of the rains has been staggering. Uttarakhand saw 17.8 centimeters (7 inches) of rain in the first few weeks this month, but recorded nearly 58 centimeters (22.8 inches) within just 22 hours on Tuesday, said Bikram Singh, the director of the Meteorological Center in Dehradun, the state's capital city.

He said climate change has not only increased the frequency of the rains, but also their intensity.

India has seen worrisome rains across several regions this week. Flooding and landslides caused by downpours over the week have killed at least 39 people in the southern Kerala state, which is on high alert for more rains in the coming days.

Landslides and floods are common in India's Himalayan north. Scientists say they are becoming more frequent as global warming contributes to the melting of glaciers there.

In February, flash floods killed nearly 200 people and washed away houses in Uttarakhand. In 2013, thousands of people were killed in floods there.

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46 dead after heavy rains, landslides in northern India

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At least 46 people have died and several are missing after floods triggered by heavy rains hit the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, officials said Wednesday.

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The report highlights dire consequences for health, the economy, biodiversity and the climate. It also says a drastic reduction in unnecessary, avoidable and problematic plastic, is crucial to addressing the global pollution crisis overall.

To help reduce plastic waste at the needed scale, it proposes an accelerated transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies, the removal of subsidies and a shift towards more circular approaches towards reduction.

Titled From Pollution to Solution: a global assessment of marine litter and plastic pollution, the report shows that there is a growing threat, across all ecosystems, from source to sea.

Solutions to hand

But it also shows that there is the know-how to reverse the mounting crisis, provided the political will is there, and urgent action is taken.

The document is being released 10 days ahead of the start of the crucial UN Climate Conference, COP26, stressing that plastics are a climate problem as well.

For example, in 2015, greenhouse gas emissions from plastics were 1.7 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent; by 2050, they're projected to increase to approximately 6.5 gigatonnes. That number represents 15 per cent of the whole global carbon budget - the​​ amount of greenhouse gas that can be emitted, while still keeping warming within the Paris Agreement goals.

Recycling not enough

Addressing solutions to the problem, the authors pour cold water on the chances of recycling our way out of the plastic pollution crisis.

They also warn against damaging alternatives, such as bio-based or biodegradable plastics, which currently pose a threat similar to conventional plastics.

The report looks at critical market failures, such as the low price of virgin fossil fuel feedstocks (any renewable biological material that can be used directly as a fuel) compared to recycled materials, disjointed efforts in informal and formal plastic waste management, and the lack of consensus on global solutions.

Instead, the assessment calls for the immediate reduction in plastic production and consumption, and encourages a transformation across the whole value chain.

It also asks for investments in far more robust and effective monitoring systems to identify the sources, scale and fate of plastic. Ultimately, a shift to circular approaches and more alternatives are necessary.

Making the case for change

For the Executive Director of UNEP, Inger Andersen, this assessment "provides the strongest scientific argument to date for the urgency to act, and for collective action to protect and restore our oceans, from source to sea."

She said that a major concern is what happens with breakdown products, such as microplastics and chemical additives, which are known to be toxic and hazardous to human and wildlife health and ecosystems.

"The speed at which ocean plastic pollution is capturing public attention is encouraging. It is vital that we use this momentum to focus on the opportunities for a clean, healthy and resilient ocean", Ms. Andersen argued.

Growing problem

Currently, plastic accounts for 85 per cent of all marine litter.

By 2040, it will nearly triple, adding 23-37 million metric tons of waste into the ocean per year. This means about 50kg of plastic per meter of coastline.

Because of this, all marine life, from plankton and shellfish; to birds, turtles and mammals; faces the grave risk of toxification, behavioral disorder, starvation and suffocation.

The human body is similarly vulnerable. Plastics are ingested through seafood, drinks and even common salt. They also penetrate the skin and are inhaled when suspended in the air.

In water sources, this type of pollution can cause hormonal changes, developmental disorders, reproductive abnormalities and even cancer.

Economy

According to the report, there are also significant consequences for the global economy.

Globally, when accounting for impacts on tourism, fisheries and aquaculture, together with the price of projects such as clean-ups, the costs were estimated to be six to 19 billion dollars per year, during 2018.

By 2040, there could be a $100 billion annual financial risk for businesses if governments require them to cover waste management costs. It can also lead to a rise in illegal domestic and international waste disposal.

The report will inform discussions at the UN Environment Assembly in 2022, where countries will come together to decide a way forward for more global cooperation.

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Plastic pollution on course to double by 2030

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Plastic pollution in oceans and other bodies of water continues to grow sharply and could more than double by 2030, according to an assessment released on Thursday by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). |

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Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been named yet again as the world's biggest plastic polluters, according to the latest global brand audit report. It marks the fourth consecutive year that the two corporations have topped the list. Break Free From Plastic's audit also showed Unilever has risen to become the third-largest plastic polluter.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are the world's top plastic polluting companies for the fourth year in a row, the latest edition of Break Free From Plastic's brand audit report shows. Unilever, which is serving as a sponsor for the upcoming COP26 climate conference, has risen to become the third biggest plastic polluter since the annual audits began in 2018.

Last year, the organisation named Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé as the top three plastic polluting corporations.
Read: Half of ocean plastic waste is takeaway food packaging, study finds
Brand Audit 2021

Break Free From Plastic's brand audit drew on data from more than 11,000 volunteers across 45 countries participating in over 440 beach cleanups. Overall, the citizen action initiative collected more than 330,000 pieces of plastic.

Nearly 20,000 products found littered on coastlines were Coca-Cola branded-a figure that tops more than the pollution caused by the next two firms, PepsiCo and Unilever, combined.

It puts into question the authenticity of Coca-Cola's latest pledge to collect one bottle for every one sold, and the effectiveness of the scheme in curbing the company's enormous plastic footprint. The firm has been named the number one polluter for four years in a row.

PepsiCo, the second-largest polluter, made it onto the top-three ranking for the third consecutive year in 2021. Unilever, on the other hand, rose up the ranks this year to number 3, a finding that Break Free From Plastic described as "particularly insulting" given it is serving as a principal partner for COP26 in November.

Plastic is not only one of the world's biggest sources of landfill waste, coastline and shoreline pollution and wildlife and biodiversity degradation, it is also a major contributor to emissions. Currently, 99% of all plastic is made from fossil fuels.
Read: UN photography exhibit and global report puts 'forever' plastic waste under spotlight
Just last week, leading health and environmental experts warned that the planet only has 9 years left to tackle the plastic crisis before "irreversible" damage is done.

'Stop this addiction to plastic'

Commenting on the results, plastics campaign regional coordinator at Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Abigail Aguilar, said: "It's not surprising to see the same big brands as the world's top plastic polluters for four years in a row."

"These companies claim to be addressing the plastic crisis, yet they continue to invest in false solutions while teaming up with oil companies to produce even more plastic. To stop this mess and combat climate change, multinationals like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Unilever must end their addiction to single-use plastic packaging and move away from fossil fuels."
All images courtesy of Unsplash, unless otherwise credited.
Emma Priestland, global corporate campaigns coordinator at Break Free From Plastic, echoed the sentiment, blasting large companies' lack of transparency and commitment to finding "real solutions" to the crisis.

"We cannot continue to rely on fossil fuels, including the significant amount of fossil fuels that are or will be turned into plastic. FMCGs need to reveal the extent of their plastic footprint, reduce it significantly by setting and implementing ambitious targets, and reinvent their packaging to be reusable and plastic-free."

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Coca-Cola and PepsiCo Blasted As World's Top Plastic Polluters For 4th Straight Year

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Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been named yet again as the world's biggest plastic polluters, according to the latest global brand audit report. It marks the fourth consecutive year that the two corporations have topped the list. Break Free From Plastic's audit also showed Unilever has risen to become the third-largest plastic polluter.

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Every year, around 200,000 tons of plastic waste make its way into the oceans from the shores of Korea.

The number comes from a report by the Korea Maritime Institute last year, which found that as much as 990,000 tons of trash are leaked into the ocean from Korea every year. Of that, around 20 percent was estimated to be plastic.

That's enough plastic to be hauled off by 13,000 dump trucks.

To find out more about the situation of plastic waste in Korea, the JoongAng Ilbo recently met with a team of researchers at Pukyong National University who have been tracing the movement of plastic waste across the streams and waters of the country.

"Heungnam Beach, east of Geoje Island, is one of the top plastic waste hot spots on the southern coast of Korea," said Yoon Hong-ju, professor of spatial information engineering at the university.

Yoon and his team have been following the movement of plastic waste across the nation and along the shorelines by attaching GPS-tracking devices to some of the pieces of plastic over the past 15 years.

According to his team, a lot of the plastic discarded in the Han River tend to move into the Yellow Sea, and a lot of the discarded plastic in Nakdong River flow into the East China Sea. The currents can then move the marine debris thousands of miles across the borderless big blue.

"During the rainy season, plastic waste can fall into the Nakdong River, move through the estuary, and float toward Jeju Island or the East Sea," Yoon said. "Some can even end up at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Ocean."

The JoongAng Ilbo joined Yoon in attaching a GPS-tracking device to a plastic bottle on June 1 and leaving it afloat in the waters south of Gadeok Island, south of Busan. In three days, the bottle had floated towards Geoje Island, located farther west of Gadeok Island, and ended up on the western shore of Gadeok by June 4.

In another experiment, the JoongAng Ilbo with Yoon attached a GPS-tracking device to a plastic bottle on June 1 and discarded it at the southern end of Nakdong Stream, near the tip of Busan. By June 21, the bottle had traveled north and into the waters east of North Korea, then floated south again to be found near the Dokdo islets in the East Sea, traveling some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) total.

As seen through the experiments, a lot of the plastic, once in water, often end up back on the shorelines.

Last year, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries collected some 138,000 tons of marine debris by picking up the trash along the shorelines - around 45 percent more than was collected in 2018. Of the debris collected, 83 percent were plastic.

By international standards, Korea's shores are some of the most polluted in terms of plastic waste.

According to a study on microplastic pollution of river beds by R. Hurley and others published in Nature Geoscience in 2018, the level of microplastics, or small plastic pieces less than 5 millimeters long, found in the western coastal areas of Incheon and Gyeonggi ranked second in the world. The level of microplastics found in the southern tip of Nakdong River was third highest in the world.

To prevent the flow of plastic into the oceans, the government installed filtering devices in some streams, such as K-Water's filtering facility in Incheon, located where the Gulpo Stream meets with the Gyeongin Ara Waterway.

When the JoongAng Ilbo visited the site on June 1, some 10 workers on site were gathering the trash that was caught in the filtering device suspended in the stream. Among the trash being pulled out of the water were plastic bottles, cans, a hula-hoop and pieces of Styrofoam.

"We empty the filtering device once every 10 days, or whenever there has been heavy rain," a worker on site told the JoongAng Ilbo. "Today we've collected enough trash that could fill some 70 large bags."

The trash collected this way are dried and either recycled or incinerated.

Gimpo, Gyeonggi, also houses a facility to collect trash from the waters, along with two others in Yeongdeungpo District, western Seoul.

But part of the problem with plastic lies within the massive production of plastic goods, not only in Korea but around the world. And many are not recyclable.

A study by Roland Geyer of the University of California and others published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2017 found that approximately 6.3 billion tons of plastic waste had been generated around the world as of 2015.

Of them, only around 9 percent had been recycled, 12 percent was incinerated, and 79 percent was accumulated in landfills or elsewhere.

The team projected that if the no improvements are made in the rate of production of plastics and waste managements, roughly 12 billion tons of plastic waste will be in landfills or the natural environment by 2050.

"From the starting point in goods production, we need to think about the goods' recyclability," said Hong Soo-yeol, a civic activist and author of several books on waste management. "It is imperative for companies producing plastic goods to produce goods with high recyclability, and to minimize additional plastic productions."

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries announced last month a plan to reduce Korea's plastic waste in the oceans by 60 percent by 2030, and to have zero plastic waste from Korea in the oceans by 2050. For this, the ministry will be installing additional filtering devices in streams.

Local governments will be pitching into the plan.

"We are currently reviewing the best locations and methods to install these filtering facilities," said Jang Jeong-gu, an official at the Incheon city government working on environmental conservation in the city, adding that hasty installations could lead to adverse effects such as floods or destruction of the natural habitats of wild species.

BY KANG CHAN-SU, CHUN KWON-PIL AND JEONG JONG-HOON [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]

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Korea's shores have more plastic than most, much goes to ocean

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Every year, around 200,000 tons of plastic waste make its way into the oceans from the shores of Korea. The number comes from a report by the Korea Maritime Institute last year, which found that as much as 990,000 tons of trash are leaked into the...

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On September 16, when Subhash Chandran, a scuba diver, along with four others, went for their first underwater clean-up post the lockdown at Rushikonda beach in Visakhapatnam, they found floating in the seabed N-95, surgical and cloth masks and other biomedical waste. The divers removed over 1,500 kg of waste over three rounds till September 27.

The Rushikonda beach was recommended by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for the coveted "Blue Flag" certification on September 19, the International Coastal Cleanup day. The eco-label is given to the cleanest beaches in the world meeting stringent environmental and safety criteria.

Over the years, there has been a 70% decline in marine species with many figuring as endangered species in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. The single-use plastic protective gears are a new threat to aquatic lives.

Chandran, the founder of the scuba diving centre Platypus Escapes, had removed 17,000 kg of wet plastic over 57 days in November, last year. "It is an ocean of plastic and biomedical waste, flowing through open drainage systems from hospitals and litter on the beach," he said.

According to the World Health Organization, every month the world needs 89 million plastic medical masks and 1.6 million protective goggles, which are made of polypropylene and may take even 500 years to degrade in the ocean.

Around 10, 000 discarded masks, 1050 gloves and PPE kits were found on Mumbai's Juhu beach in a cleanup drive during May-August. Photo credit: Prasant Barik, Aahwahan Foundation

While flamingos flocked to a locked-down Mumbai and a nilgai was reported to have walked on an empty road in Uttar Pradesh, the jubilation over nature having an edge over mankind stops short right there. "In our Mumbai's Juhu beach clean-up drives during May-August, we found 10,000 masks, 1,050 gloves and PPE kits discarded along the coastline," claimed Braja Kishore Pradhan, founder, Aahwahan Foundation.

Chennai's polluted lakes

The National Green Tribunal had taken suo moto cognizance of indiscriminate dumping of biomedical waste in water bodies in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, earlier this year.

"On July 6, panic-stricken fishermen from the Thiruchinakuppam road in Tiruvottiyur, Chennai found masks, syringes, blood bags and testing equipment dumped along the seacoast. Biomedical waste has also been traced in the Anakaputhur and Manivakkam lakes (in Chennai)," said Prabhakaran, an environmental engineer at Poovulagin Nanbargal, an environmental group. "The water bodies in Vandalur, Otteri Nalla, Porur, Maduravoyal, Muttukadu and Puzhal had always been dumping grounds for medical supplies."

"Before Covid-19, a government hospital bed would generate around half-a-kg of biomedical waste per day which has now gone up to 3 kg to 5 kg (per day)," said Prabhakaran. "Though the city leads the biomedical waste generation in the state, the handling capacity is only 25%."

Ezhilan Nanganathan, a consultant physician said that while medicos take appropriate precautions in managing waste from Covid-19 wards, it is the biomedical waste generated from infected persons under home care that needs utmost focus.

A senior official from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board stated that reckless dumping along water bodies by clinics, smaller hospitals and pharmacies has escalated in the last seven months.

"We have identified two pharmaceutical companies among the violators," said the official. "We cannot operate CCTVs everywhere as illegal dumping happens at odd hours in isolated, open spaces and water bodies. TNPCB [state Pollution Control Board] officials are working round-the-clock with manpower crunch as most districts have a single officer with just two engineer subordinates to assist."

"Monitoring and penalising offenders can only help to a degree. Inculcating responsibility and accountability among the public and stakeholders is more important," the official said.

Poovulagin Nanbargal had sent its recommendations to the Tamil Nadu government demanding that at least one Common Bio-Medical Waste Treatment and Disposal Facility be set up per district. They stated that nearly 47 tonnes of medical waste is produced every day in the state but there were only 11 facilities that could handle a maximum of 34 tonnes of waste as per pre-pandemic figures.

According to the Central Pollution Control Board, Tamil Nadu had generated 401.29 tons of biomedical waste in August and engaged only eight Common Bio-Medical Waste Treatment and Disposal Facilities. N Mahesan, chief engineer, solid waste management, Chennai Corporation was unavailable for comment.

Medical waste was found dumped in Pettaikulam near Thisayanvilai town, Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu on August 14, this year. Photo credit: Poovulagin Nanbargal

Waste segregation and management

"We need to constitute a separate collection and disposal system for masks and gloves at source, without leakages," said Swati Singh Sambyal, an independent waste management expert. "States like Goa and Kerala had a relatively better segregation system in place even before the pandemic and added just another vertical. The strengthening of Panchayati Raj institution, effective communication till the grassroots, decentralisation of responsibilities and funding are crucial."

"Small and medium enterprises must be incentivised and more emphasis laid on local initiatives," said Swati Singh Sambyal, an independent waste management expert. "Around 70% of marine litter is a result of mismanagement on land."

"Biomedical waste disposal is not lucrative enough for hospitals since they have to pay recyclers and therefore, some of them go for illegal dumping," noted Anil Choudhary from the Green Waves Environmental Solutions, Telangana. A senior official from the Central Pollution Control Board said that it is upon the state pollution boards to keep the violators in check.

"The waste that we see ashore is only the tip of the iceberg as ocean beds end up taking the brunt," said Bharath Bangera, a Clean Kundapura Project volunteer, Udupi district, Karnataka. "We removed 1,000 kg of plastic in Kodi beach in a four-week cleanup drive since July. There weren't many masks as villagers prefer cloth over single-use masks."

Kodi beach, Udupi district, Karnataka. Photo credit: Clean Kundapura Project Volunteers

Covid-19 has also backfired the significant wins over plastic waste. "The quarantine centres in Trivandrum have switched from stainless steel utensils to plastic cups and plates," said Shibu Nair, India Coordinator, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives- Asia Pacific. "No one is disputing the importance of keeping frontliners well-protected but it is time to go beyond single-use plastic safeguards and come up with environment-friendly and sustainable alternatives."

"Reusable masks, gloves and frequent handwash should become the norm," said Shibu Nair. "PPEs can be sterilised, washed, reused later to be shredded and recycled."

Marine litter

It is estimated that Asian rivers are responsible for 86% of the total global plastic emission to the ocean. An ongoing United Nations Environment Programme project started out last year studying plastic litter entering the Ganga river and as a second phase it will survey the types of single-use plastics that had increased due to Covid-19.

"The CounterMEASURE project aims to find how plastic waste enters river Ganga and the types of single-use plastics that had increased due to Covid-19," said Atul Bagai, who heads the United Nations Environment Programme's India office. The United Nations has designated 2021-2030 as the "Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development".

"We have seen plastic debris in microscopic planktons, which form the basis of marine food chain but the quantum of plastic that has made it to the system of larger predatory fish like sharks, tuna and snappers is unknown," said Naveen Namboothri, a marine biologist. Abandoned fishing nets are also deadly for marine lives and they constitute the majority of plastic pollution in oceans, last year's report by Greenpeace had stated.

"Right now I am treating four turtles, which were entangled in nets and had their limbs amputated due to the strangulation," said Dr Shantanu Kalambi, a veterinarian with the Reef Watch Marine Conservation Centre in Kundapur. "A large piece of plastic was found in one of them too. Consuming plastic can injure their internal organs and unable to feed, they die in pain and starvation."

"Lockdown or not, we continue to have dolphins and turtles, landing dead ashore," said Dr Shantanu Kalambi. "Oil spill is also another concern."

The divers removed more than 1,500 kg of waste over three rounds of cleanup at the Rushikonda beach, Visakhapatnam. Photo credit: Platypus Escapes, Visakhapatnam

India joined the United Nations Environment's "Clean Seas Campaign" in 2018. The first step towards the goal was to frame a National Marine Litter Policy by studying marine pollution on the country's 7,500-km coastline. "The work on formulating the policy got stalled due to lockdown," said MV Ramana Murthy, Director, National Centre for Coastal Research. "Marine litter is threatening to change the entire ecosystem as once debris enter the sea, we lack resources to clean-up. Plastic and biomedical waste littered near river mouths, get washed down the waterways and end up in ocean beds during monsoons."

"While it is dangerous for aquatic lives, it also makes marine food unsafe as once microplastics enter the human chain, they could be carcinogenic in the long-term," said Murthy. "There have been sporadic developments in Chennai and Pondicherry on filtering plastics in the estuaries just before they enter the sea but marine litter issues can be tackled only through a collective discourse by all states along the coastline. Unless there are proactive measures to ensure awareness and nil littering by people, the high-budget river cleaning projects will only be a temporary solution."

According to M Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, there is a need to conduct studies on PPE and mask litter. "Research has been initiated to find the effects of the pandemic on marine ecosystem," he said. "The way forward is to estimate the source and also investigate how marine litter is reaching the ocean. There should also be policies to control at source by augmenting biomedical waste treatment facilities and improving the collection system to meet the increased load of marine litter."

India's discourse is dominated by terrestrial issues, with a bare understanding of coasts. "Oceans make up three-fourths of the earth's surface, produce 50% of the oxygen we need to survive and are a large carbon sink," said Puja Mitra, founder, Terra Conscious, Goa. "Protection of the marine ecosystem has to begin by addressing the concerns of coastal communities, developing marine tourism guidelines, funding research on marine species, restoring beach habitats and stopping port expansions handling hazardous cargo in biodiversity-rich areas, home to key marine species such as cetaceans, sea turtles, corals etc."

This article first appeared on .

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Used plastic masks and gloves are making their way into water bodies across India

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Inadequate biomedical waste treatment plants and an ineffective waste disposal system in the country is posing a serious threat to marine species.

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Consumer Behaviour and Plastic Waste - Plastic Soup Foundation

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Campaigns based on consumer behaviour are flourishing to fight against plastic waste pollution. But what does it mean, and does it work? Learn more.

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https://nypost.com/2021/10/19/climate-report-africas-rare-glaciers-soon-to-disappear-2/

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According to a report from the World Meteorological Organization and other agencies, Africa's rare glaciers are set to disappear within the next two decades due to climate change. AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File

NAIROBI, Kenya - Africa's rare glaciers will disappear in the next two decades because of climate change, a new report warned Tuesday amid sweeping forecasts of pain for the continent that contributes least to global warming but will suffer from it most.

The report from the World Meteorological Organization and other agencies, released ahead of the UN climate conference in Scotland that starts Oct. 31, is a grim reminder that Africa's 1.3 billion people remain "extremely vulnerable" as the continent warms more, and at a faster rate, than the global average. And yet Africa's 54 countries are responsible for less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The new report seizes on the shrinking glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda as symbols of the rapid and widespread changes to come. "Their current retreat rates are higher than the global average. If this continues, it will lead to total deglaciation by the 2040s," it says.

Massive displacement, hunger and increasing climate shocks such droughts and flooding are in the future, and yet the lack of climate data in parts of Africa "is having a major impact" on disaster warnings for millions of people, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said at Tuesday's launch.

Estimates of the economic effects of climate change vary across the African continent, but "in sub-Saharan Africa, climate change could further lower gross domestic product by up to 3% by 2050," Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko with the African Union Commission writes in the report. "Not only are physical conditions getting worse, but also the number of people being affected is increasing."

By 2030, up to 118 million extremely poor people, or those living on less than $1.90 a day, "will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat in Africa if adequate response measures are not put in place," Sacko adds.

Already, the UN has warned that the Indian Ocean island nation of Madagascar is one where "famine-like conditions have been driven by climate change." And it says parts of South Sudan are seeing the worst flooding in almost 60 years.

Despite the threats ahead to the African continent, the voices of Africans have been less represented than richer regions at global climate meetings and among the authors of the crucial Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific assessments. African participation in IPCC reports has been "extremely low," according to Future Climate for Africa, a multi-country research program.

The costs ahead are huge. "Overall, Africa will need investments of over $3 trillion in mitigation and adaptation by 2030 to implement its (national climate plans), requiring significant, accessible and predictable inflows of conditional finance," the WMO's Taalas said.

"The cost of adapting to climate change in Africa will rise to $50 billion per year by 2050, even assuming the international efforts to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius."

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Climate report: Africa's rare glaciers soon to disappear

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NAIROBI, Kenya - Africa's rare glaciers will disappear in the next two decades because of climate change, a new report warned Tuesday amid sweeping forecasts of pain for the continent that contribu...

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Did you know that South Korea joined the ranks of the world’s most populated countries? Korea used to be one of the cleanest countries in the world, but now it’s one of the most polluted. The reasons are clear. South Korea is filled with coal plan

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https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/24/us/plastic-pollution-ocean-covid-waste-trnd/index.html

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Conservationists warn Covid waste may result in ‘more masks than jellyfish’ in the sea

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Beaches on the French Côte d’Azur like Cannes or St. Tropez are among the most coveted vacation spots worldwide, but now the coronavirus pandemic has left an abundance of pollutants in the water: discarded masks and gloves.

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Eco-Coach - Sustainability Strategy, Supply Chain and Employee Engagement

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In honor of World Oceans Day - June 8, in case you weren't aware - this week's post is about reducing plastics at work. As I'm sure you've heard, there is a serious plastics pollution problem globally. According to the Ocean Conservancy, 8 million metric tons of plastics enter our oceans annually. That is in addition to the estimated 150 million metric tons that are currently circulating in our waterways.

Plastics are everywhere - not only in the oceans, on our streets but also in our bodies, and each of us can take steps to address this issue. Many large corporations are starting to take action - mainly at the behest of their investors and customers - but the verdict is still out whether they are serious about it or not.

Since small businesses make up the majority of employers in most countries, it is a great opportunity to step up and lead. If you work or own a small business, whether that is brick and mortar or virtual, there are many things you can do to contribute to the solution. Below are 10 ideas; no matter what business you work in, you and your colleagues are likely is coming into contact with these types of plastics, either at work or at home.
1. Get rid of any and all plastic bags.
Some cities in the US have bans on single use plastic bags - Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and New York - while other cities, including Washington DC, charge fees for plastic bags. In addition, some countries have taken the lead in banning plastics altogether - a few countries in Africa have led the way, and the latest as of this writing was Canada, which is looking to ban single use plastics as early as 2021 . Don't wait until you're forced to do it, go ahead and get ahead of the game. If you're a retail store, you can offer reusable bags, a discount for customers bringing their own bags, provide cardboard boxes that would otherwise get recycled, or do something creative as an alternative.
2. Replace K-cups with an old-fashioned coffee machine.
K-cups are convenient, I get it. However, according to the Story of Stuff, the number of K-cups in landfill could wrap around the planet 10 times. That's not a pretty visual, not to mention that right now, they are not even recyclable. Even though Keurig Green Mountain's president has said they would make the K-cups from #5 polypropylene plastic by 2020 so they can theoretically be recycled, only about a third of recycling programs in the US accept this kind of plastic, not to mention that people actually need to recycle them. So, cut them out.
3. Opt out of plastic straws - use paper, metal or silicone, or just skip them altogether.
Over 500 MILLION plastic straws are used each day in the United States, according to the Plastic Pollution Coalition. In case you are wondering what that means in terms of the Earth's circumference, that's enough straws to wrap around the Earth 2.5 times per DAY. So, skip the straws - and if you want to take more steps and encourage your local partners, suppliers, vendors, etc... to also take action, check out the Last Plastic Straw .
4. Encourage staff to bring in homemade lunches.
Ready-made meals come in a lot of plastic packaging. This is the case with the frozen food from your grocery store as well as meal kits, which have grown in popularity (though meal kits apparently aren't as wasteful as originally thought if you take into account packaging and food waste). Providing access to a microwave and refrigerator at the very least will encourage your colleagues to bring in homemade food more often. You may also want to have fresh fruits available as a perk if that is within your organization's budget, to encourage healthier eating.
5. Provide reusable take-out containers to use when going out to lunch.
According to the NRDC, single-use food and beverage packaging is one of the largest sources of the 270,000+ tons of plastic pollution in the oceans. One option to address this at work is to encourage your colleagues to take reusable containers with them when they go out to lunch. To make this easier, if you have the capacity, you could have some reusable take-out containers in the kitchen for them to grab before they go. This, of course, would take some getting used to, as with any behavior change, but it will avoid adding more trash to the landfill.
6. Replace plastic water bottles with a cooler or filter and get rid of the vending machines.
According to the Earth Day Network, Americans purchase about 50 billion water bottles per year, averaging about 13 bottles per month for every person in the U.S. So instead of offering plastic bottles, offer filtered water. Vending machines also make it easier to access those plastic bottles, so get rid of those and think about creative ways to offer drinks to your colleagues and staff. The bonus - most of the drinks in those plastic bottles aren't healthy anyway, so this will help everyone get healthier!
7. Offer reusable utensils and plates instead of plastic or paper alternatives.
Reusable plates and utensils are cheaper in the long-run, though of course that means that you need to have access to a dishwasher. That being said, the logistics of coordinating turning on the dishwasher at night, and emptying it in the morning are small compared to the amount of trash generated. Unfortunately, there really is no such thing as a sustainable disposable product, so while it may be nice to have bamboo plates available for guests and visitors, reusable dishware is still the greenest alternative.
8. Select products from suppliers and manufactures that use minimal packaging.
Buy in bulk wherever possible, in concentrated amounts if available (think cleaning agents), and overall minimize packaging. Ask your suppliers about plastic-free or reduced plastic options for items that you purchase in high quantities and that may be specific to your industry. You may think that you're too small of an organization to make a difference, but if enough small businesses start asking about alternatives, your suppliers will start thinking about ways to meet those requests.
9. Buy reusable pens.
This seems like a small part of a bigger issue - and it is. That being said, according to the EPA, Americans throw away 1.6 Billion disposable pens every year. Pens are ubiquitous in more organizations and homes, and we don't give them much thought, but they have a short lifespan then get tossed - and sometimes they get tossed even if they're still working. So, consider providing higher-end pens that can be refilled, and/or discouraging the ordering of pens until the ones that are available are used, especially if you are in a business that uses pens more than computers. And, instead of throwing them in the trash, consider getting Terracycle's Zero Waste Box if it's within your organization's budget.
10. Use refillable containers for soap and other toiletries.
Whether you work or run a café, office-based business or hotel, you likely have soap and other toiletries available in the bathrooms. These often come in plastic containers, which may or may not be reused. One option is to replace them with refillable containers - but do make sure the container isn't made up of non-recyclable plastic - or preferably, is not plastic period.

Like any other aspect of going green and environmental sustainability, reducing plastic use and waste at your organization is a journey. Educating yourself and your colleagues is key to ensuring that this is successful in the long term. Getting everyone involved, asking them to take a pledge, such as the Clean Seas pledge , and making it fun with go a long way to changing behaviors.

If you feel like your organization is close to zero waste (i.e. less than 10% of your waste goes to landfill), you may also want to apply for the TRUE zero waste certification from the US Green Building Council.

If you are thinking about 'going green', be sure to download our free sustainability checklist , which can enable you to get a snapshot of what your organization is already doing and provide additional actions you can take.

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10 Ways Small Businesses Can Reduce Plastics - Eco-Coach - Sustainability Strategy, Supply Chain and Employee Engagement

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In honor of World Oceans Day - June 8, in case you weren't aware - this week's post is about reducing plastics at work. As I'm sure you've heard, there is a serious plastics pollution problem globally. According to the Ocean Conservancy, 8 million metric tons of plastics enter our oceans annually.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/marine-pollution/

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Image

stockphoto-graf/shutterstock

Marine pollution is a growing problem in today's world. Our ocean is being flooded with two main types of pollution: chemicals and trash.

Chemical contamination, or nutrient pollution, is concerning for health, environmental, and economic reasons. This type of pollution occurs when human activities, notably the use of fertilizer on farms, lead to the runoff of chemicals into waterways that ultimately flow into the ocean. The increased concentration of chemicals, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, in the coastal ocean promotes the growth of algal blooms, which can be toxic to wildlife and harmful to humans. The negative effects on health and the environment caused by algal blooms hurt local fishing and tourism industries.

Marine trash encompasses all manufactured products-most of them plastic-that end up in the ocean. Littering, storm winds, and poor waste management all contribute to the accumulation of this debris, 80 percent of which comes from sources on land. Common types of marine debris include various plastic items like shopping bags and beverage bottles, along with cigarette butts, bottle caps, food wrappers, and fishing gear. Plastic waste is particularly problematic as a pollutant because it is so long-lasting. Plastic items can take hundreds of years to decompose.

This trash poses dangers to both humans and animals. Fish become tangled and injured in the debris, and some animals mistake items like plastic bags for food and eat them. Small organisms feed on tiny bits of broken-down plastic, called microplastic, and absorb the chemicals from the plastic into their tissues. Microplastics are less than five millimeters (0.2 inches) in diameter and have been detected in a range of marine species, including plankton and whales. When small organisms that consume microplastics are eaten by larger animals, the toxic chemicals then become part of their tissues. In this way, the microplastic pollution migrates up the food chain, eventually becoming part of the food that humans eat.

Solutions for marine pollution include prevention and cleanup. Disposable and single-use plastic is abundantly used in today's society, from shopping bags to shipping packaging to plastic bottles. Changing society's approach to plastic use will be a long and economically challenging process. Cleanup, in contrast, may be impossible for some items. Many types of debris (including some plastics) do not float, so they are lost deep in the ocean. Plastics that do float tend to collect in large "patches" in ocean gyres. The Pacific Garbage Patch is one example of such a collection, with plastics and microplastics floating on and below the surface of swirling ocean currents between California and Hawaii in an area of about 1.6 million square kilometers (617,763 square miles), although its size is not fixed. These patches are less like islands of trash and, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, more like flecks of microplastic pepper swirling around an ocean soup. Even some promising solutions are inadequate for combating marine pollution. So-called "biodegradable" plastics often break down only at temperatures higher than will ever be reached in the ocean.

Nonetheless, many countries are taking action. According to a 2018 report from the United Nations, more than sixty countries have enacted regulations to limit or ban the use of disposable plastic items.

National Geographic Society

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Marine pollution is a combination of chemicals and trash, most of which comes from land sources and is washed or blown into the ocean. This pollution results in damage to the environment, to the health of all organisms, and to economic structures worldwide.

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Seoul's Namsan Tower is blanketed in thick smoke. (Yonhap)

Over 20 percent of air quality predictions in Seoul issued by the Environment Ministry's National Institute of Environmental Research last year were incorrect, said Rep. Choi Do-ja of Bareun Mirae Party, who obtained the data from the ministry Sunday.

According to Choi's press release, 487 of the 2,384 predictions for the next day's PM10 and PM2.5 density levels -- density of particulate matter smaller than 10 and 2.5 micrometers in diameter, respectively -- were incorrect in the country where air quality often deteriorates to hazardous levels.

From January to March last year, the weather body's two-day forecast for particulate matter density maintained 25.9 percent of inaccuracy (151 out of 584 predictions), while its one-day forecast maintained 9.3 percent inaccuracy.

Overall, 973 out of 6,568 predictions in the same period turned out to be inaccurate in forecasting the level of fine particulate density.

"Amid growing fear and stress over fine dust, the government should at least raise the accuracy of forecasting air quality so that people can be prepared," Choi said in the press release.

To tackle the problem of the air pollution, President Moon Jae-in raised South Korea's concern about air pollution -- that mostly comes from China -- and asked for close cooperation to fight it during talks with Chinese special envoy Yang Jiechi on March 30.

The constant exposure to particulate matter that goes directly to the lungs can increase the risk of lung cancer, experts warn.

By Bak Se-hwan (sh@heraldcorp.com)

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Over 20 percent of air quality predictions last year incorrect: report

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Seoul's Namsan Tower is blanketed in thick smoke. (Yonhap) Over 20 percent of air quality predictions in Seoul issued by the Environment Ministry's National Institute of Environmental Research last year were incorrect, said Rep. Choi Do-ja of Bareun Mirae Party, who obtained the data from the ministry Sunday.

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Ocean pollution: 11 facts you need to know

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With each passing year, we expose the ocean to more pollutants, from trash to chemicals. Fortunately, it’s not too late to clean up our act.

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[Photo by Coway Co.] South Korea's leading water and air purifier making and rental firm, Coway Co., is fast expanding its global presence.

According to Coway on Thursday, overseas sales of its air purifiers in full 2016 gained 50 percentage points from a year ago and its sales have grown steadily in 30 countries including China, the U.S., Germany, Sweden, Russia and India.

In particular, the Korean company has been in the spotlight as a dominant player in the Swedish air purifier market where it first entered in 2011. In the Northern European country, which is famous for its clean air and natural environment, about 20 percent of its population suffers from allergic diseases due to pollen problems. According to Swedish independent testing and research company Testfakta in April last year, Coway topped the list of 10 best air purifier brands sold in the country, helping demand for the Korean air purifier soar.

It has remained No.1 air purifier in Prisjakt, the biggest Swedish e-commerce site, in terms of sales for six months in a row since October.

Its performance in smog-ridden China, the largest air purifier market in the world, is more noticeable. Since the company first made a foray into the market in 2009, its sales in China have continued to rise, with last year's sales 17 times higher than that of 2009.

Coway is also expanding its presence in the Southeast Asian market including Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and India. In Taiwan, where the air purifier market is expanding as fine dust and air pollution has become major social issues since last year, its sales have soared 150 percent last year from the previous year. Taiwan is now emerging as a major exporting country for Coway as its air purifier sales have more than doubled in the first three months of this year from a year ago. In India, where the problem of air pollution has been serious, demand for air purifiers has increased mainly in the urban areas such as New Delhi.

In the U.S., Coway has seen sales of its air purifiers increase through popular distribution channels such as Amazon, Wal-Mart and Home Depot. In January, Coway unveiled its new air purifier 'Airmega' drawing keen attention in the market.

The company said it will pursue a customized global strategy tailored to meet each country's circumstances and enhance its brand awareness to further expand its presence overseas.

[ⓒ Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]

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S. Korea's Coway cheers brisk sales of its air purifiers overseas

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Photo by Coway Co.] South Korea's leading water and air purifier making and rental firm, Coway Co., is fast expanding its global presence. According to Coway on Thursday, overseas sales of its air purifiers in full 2016 gained 50 percentage points from a year ago and its sales have grown steadily in 30 countries including China, the U.S., Germany, Sweden, Russia and India.

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파란색 북극곰 지구 온난화 포스터-1

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https://thecommonwealth.org/marine-pollution

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Ocean Pollution: Causes, Effects, Solutions | TDS

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The impacts of ocean pollution are far-reaching. Take a look at the causes of ocean pollution, its effects, and the steps needed to combat it.

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Our resources share the knowledge gathered by IUCN's unique global community of 18,000+ experts. They include databases, tools, standards, guidelines and policy recommendations. We author hundreds of books, assessments, reports, briefs and research papers every year.

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https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/melting-antarctica-glacier-named-glasgow-ahead-of-un-climate-summit-4388762.html

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A glacier in far-away Antarctica has been formally named Glasgow Glacier in honour of this Scottish city hosting the high-level UN climate summit which formally opened on Sunday, kicking off two weeks of intense diplomatic talks on curbing global warming.

The 100-km long body of ice, which has been experiencing rapid melting, was formally named by researchers at the University of Leeds to mark the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a stark reminder of why such an urgent action is needed.

"By naming this glittering giant of nature after the city where humankind will gather to fight for the future of the planet, we have a stark reminder of what we are working to preserve," British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. "Glasgow represents our best chance. Just as the G-20 shares a collective responsibility to act, so the solutions are in our hands. I hope countries will gather next week in a spirit of responsibility and ambition so we can keep the goal of 1.5 degrees alive," Boris Johnson asserted.

Besides Glasgow, the eight newly named glaciers are Geneva, Rio, Berlin, Kyoto, Bali, Stockholm, Paris and Incheon - all named after cities hosting important UN climate meetings.

PhD Researcher Heather Selley, from Leeds' School of Earth and Environment, has identified 14 glaciers in the Getz Basin of West Antarctica that are thinning by an average of 25 per cent between 1994 and 2018 due to climate change.

Her study, published in February 2021, found that 315 gigatonnes of ice were lost from the region in the last 25 years.

In essence, this is equivalent to 126 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of water.

Heather Selley and Dr Anna Hogg had requested that the nine unnamed glaciers in the study be named after locations of major climate treaties, reports and conferences, the most recent being the one named after the Glasgow summit.

Her proposal was submitted by the UK government and supported by the UK Antarctic Place-names committee.

The names will now be added to the International Composite Gazetteer for Antarctica, for the use on maps, charts and future publications.

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News and IPL 2022 Live Updates here.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI)

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Melting Antarctica Glacier Named 'Glasgow' Ahead of UN Climate Summit - News18

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Besides Glasgow, the eight newly named glaciers are Geneva, Rio, Berlin, Kyoto, Bali, Stockholm, Paris and Incheon - all named after cities hosting important UN climate meetings.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/satellites-show-worlds-glaciers-melting-faster-ever-rcna791

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Glaciers are melting faster, losing 31 percent more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier, according to three-dimensional satellite measurements of all the world's mountain glaciers.

Scientists blame human-caused climate change.

Using 20 years of recently declassified satellite data, scientists calculated that the world's 220,000 mountain glaciers are losing more than 328 billion tons (298 billion metric tons) of ice and snow per year since 2015, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature. That's enough melt flowing into the world's rising oceans to put Switzerland under almost 24 feet (7.2 meters) of water each year.

The annual melt rate from 2015 to 2019 is 78 billion more tons (71 billion metric tons) a year than it was from 2000 to 2004. Global thinning rates, different than volume of water lost, doubled in the last 20 years and "that's enormous," said Romain Hugonnet, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich and the University of Toulouse in France who led the study.

Half the world's glacial loss is coming from the United States and Canada.

Alaska's melt rates are "among the highest on the planet," with the Columbia glacier retreating about 115 feet (35 meters) a year, Hugonnet said.

Almost all the world's glaciers are melting, even ones in Tibet that used to be stable, the study found. Except for a few in Iceland and Scandinavia that are fed by increased precipitation, the melt rates are accelerating around the world.

The near-uniform melting "mirrors the global increase in temperature" and is from the burning of coal, oil and gas, Hugonnet said. Some smaller glaciers are disappearing entirely. Two years ago, scientists, activists and government officials in Iceland held a funeral for a small glacier.

"Ten years ago, we were saying that the glaciers are the indicator of climate change, but now actually they've become a memorial of the climate crisis," said World Glacier Monitoring Service Director Michael Zemp, who wasn't part of the study.

The study is the first to use this 3D satellite imagery to examine all of Earth's glaciers not connected to ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctic. Past studies either only used a fraction of the glaciers or estimated the loss of Earth's glaciers using gravity measurements from orbit. Those gravity readings have large margins of error and aren't as useful, Zemp said.

Ohio State University's Lonnie Thompson said the new study painted an "alarming picture."

Shrinking glaciers are a problem for millions of people who rely on seasonal glacial melt for daily water and rapid melting can cause deadly outbursts from glacial lakes in places like India, Hugonnet said.

But the largest threat is sea level rise. The world's oceans are already rising because warm water expands and because of melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, but glaciers are responsible for 21 percent of sea level rise, more than the ice sheets, the study said. The ice sheets are larger longer term threats for sea level rise.

"It's becoming increasingly clear that sea level rise is going to be a bigger and bigger problem as we move through the 21st century," said National Snow and Ice Data Center Director Mark Serreze.

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Satellites show world's glaciers melting faster than ever

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Glaciers are melting faster, losing 31 percent more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier, according to three-dimensional satellite measurements.

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https://www.texasdisposal.com/blog/ocean-pollution-causes-effects-and-prevention/

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Ocean Pollution: Causes, Effects, Solutions | TDS

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The impacts of ocean pollution are far-reaching. Take a look at the causes of ocean pollution, its effects, and the steps needed to combat it.

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https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/why-are-glaciers-and-sea-ice-melting

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Since the early 1900s, many glaciers around the world have been rapidly melting.

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Global Climate Change, Melting Glaciers

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Green and Beige Earth Day Line Illustration Poster

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orests and nature are centre stage at Cop26. On the second day of the Glasgow summit, world leaders are announcing a commitment to halting and reversing deforestation. As the second largest source of greenhouse gases after energy, the land sector accounts for 25% of global emissions, with deforestation and forest degradation contributing to half of this.

But why do forests matter to the climate, and how can we halt deforestation?

What is a forest?

There are an estimated three trillion trees on Earth. Some form part of enormous forest ecosystems like the Congo rainforest, while others stand in sparsely populated landscapes such as on the edges of the Sahara desert. Of the 60,000 known tree species, nearly a third are threatened with extinction, according to a recent assessment.

Scientists cannot decide on a single definition of a forest due to disagreements over tree density, height and canopy cover. But the Food and Agriculture Organization's version is commonly used: "Land with a tree canopy cover of more than 10% and area of more than 0.5 hectares." Forest covered almost a third of the world's landmass in 2020, with more than half found in just five countries: Russia, Brazil, Canada, the US and China. The taiga - also known as northern boreal forest - is the world's largest, stretching around the northern hemisphere through Siberia, Canada and Scandinavia.

Temperate, tropical and boreal are the three main types of forest that include a great diversity of ecosystems: cloud forest, rainforest, mangrove swamps, and tropical dry forest, among many others.

Why do forests matter for the climate?

Forests are among the most biodiverse places on the planet and form an enormous carbon store, regulating the world's weather and climate. They hold about 861 gigatons of carbon - equivalent to nearly a century's worth of annual fossil fuel emissions at the current rate - and absorbed twice as much carbon as they emitted in the last two decades. More carbon is stored in soil (44%) than living biomass (42%), with the rest found in dead wood (8%) and forest litter (5%). Forests like the Congo basin rainforest - the world's second largest - affect rainfall thousands of miles away around the Nile. Billions of humans rely on forests for food, building materials and shelter.

But they are being cleared at a relentless pace. About 10% of tree cover has been lost since 2000, according to Global Forest Watch. Although estimates vary, the land sector is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for around a quarter of emissions, according to the IPCC, of which deforestation is a major component. Many scientists say it will not be possible to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels without halting deforestation.

"There are two main points on forests and carbon," says Yadvinder Malhi, a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford. "Forests are a carbon store, meaning that when you deforest, you're releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. The other thing is that intact forests have been shown to be a carbon sink, absorbing carbon over time. And if our sink is disappearing, you're losing the service that the biosphere provides - an assumption that such a sink will continue is built into almost all of our climate model scenarios for this century."

Do all forests store the same amount of carbon?

No. Old-growth forests that are free from human industrial interference and pollution are especially important for the climate and biodiversity. They are called primary forests and are ancient, carbon-dense ecosystems bursting with life such as parts of the Amazon, the Białowieża Forest in Poland and Papua New Guinea. With some of the largest trees and the biggest variety of life, conservationists place extra emphasis on their protection from logging, wildfires and human industry as they only account for one-third of the planet's forest cover. Young or recovering forests store much less carbon and can sometimes take several years before they become effective sinks.

There is a lot of risk of a domino effect. If we don't protect forests, people will migrate, there will be climate refugees

Robert Nasi, Center for International Forestry Research

Tropical rainforests, mangrove and peat swamp forests - such as those found in south-east Asia - play a disproportionally important role in regulating the climate due to the amount of carbon they store, their cooling effect and the protection they provide from flooding. Boreal forests, which are covered in snow for large parts of the year, reflect more heat back into the atmosphere and have a net warming effect on the climate. Agricultural tree plantations with very few species are much less carbon-dense and support much less life.

What is deforestation?

Deforestation is the human-driven conversion to another land use of a forest, such as cattle ranching or soya bean production, that is often clearcut with machinery then burnt. It is not the same as logging: trees can be selectively taken out of a standing forest. Deforestation has gone hand in hand with human development for centuries. Nearly all the temperate rainforest that once covered large parts of the British Isles was cleared for agriculture, roads and human settlements, for example.

As well as being a major source of carbon emissions, land use change is the primary driver of biodiversity loss, which scientists warn is driving the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth. From space, deforestation often follows a "fishbone pattern" where land is cleared along the edges of roads and rivers. Over time, the fishbone fills in as more of the forest is cleared. On a large scale, the process can become self-perpetuating, such as the Amazon switching from rainforest to savannah, as so much of it has been destroyed.

This aerial view reveals a 'fishbone' pattern of deforestation in the state of Rondônia in western Brazil, which has become one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon. Photograph: MODIS/Terra/Nasa

Last year, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, Indonesia and Peru were the top five countries for tropical primary forest loss. About 12m hectares (30m acres) of tree cover was lost in the tropics. This includes 4.2m hectares of primary forests, an area the size of the Netherlands, releasing the equivalent to the annual emissions of 570m cars.

Why do people clear forests?

While there are many local factors, experts say the main reason is financial: forests are worth more dead than alive in monetary terms. In Brazil, large parts of the Amazon have been cleared for beef production. In Indonesia, forests and peatlands have been cleared and drained for oil palm plantations. In other areas, coffee, cocoa, bananas, pineapples, coca leaves and subsistence farming have driven land-clearing. Most deforestation hotspots are in tropical regions, which are also profitable areas for farming.

"The largest factor is the expansion of agricultural industries: cattle ranching, soya bean farming and oil palm," says Malhi. "A second factor is poverty. In many parts of Africa, such as Madagascar, where there is demographic pressure, a lot of poor, rural settlers are just looking to make a living on the frontier as populations increase. The same is true in parts of South America and south-east Asia."

Can we really stop deforestation?

It will not be easy, but there are reasons to be hopeful. Alongside the commitment from world leaders in Glasgow at Cop26, it is hoped big producers and consumers of commodities linked to deforestation will sign up to eradicating them from the global supply chain. China - one of the world's largest consumers - is taking deforestation more seriously and is looking at "greening" its supply chain.

Elephants walk through an area cleared for an oil palm plantation in Borneo in 2019. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/WWF-UK

"We really need to start thinking about forest loss - especially tropical forest loss - in the same way people are now talking about coal," says Frances Seymour, a forest and governance expert at the World Resources Institute (WRI). "There was a big celebration that China had committed to no longer financing new coal abroad. But we need to be looking for similar commitments from all countries to stop financing projects that lead to deforestation abroad."

Are there any examples we can learn from?

Costa Rica is the only tropical country to successfully halt and reverse deforestation. It did so, in part, with payments from an ecosystem services programme that put an economic value on standing forests and biodiversity. The country won the first Earthshot prize this year for the scheme, reversing one of the highest deforestation rates in Latin America in the 70s and regrowing large areas of forest.

On a larger scale, Brazil had considerable success at reducing deforestation in the Amazon in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Environmental laws, improved surveillance of slash-and-burn illegal logging and a soya moratorium in the Amazon were credited with the fall. However, there have since been large spikes in deforestation in the world's largest rainforest under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. Indonesia has had success in recent years slowing deforestation with a palm oil expansion moratorium, although experts warn it is fragile for the same reasons: the economic incentives to clear forest have not changed.

A UN scheme that provides financial incentives to protect forests - known as Redd+ - has been agreed by countries. It allows developing countries to sell carbon credits to preserve carbon sinks. Although there is still division over the rules for carbon markets, it is hoped these will be sorted at Cop26. Countries like Gabon, with low deforestation rates and large forest cover, say that they also need funding to protect forests. Gabon is the chair of the African group of negotiators for Cop26.

Why are indigenous communities so important for stopping deforestation?

Studies show indigenous communities are the best protectors of forests. Many landscapes thought to be wilderness have actually been managed by indigenous communities for centuries. This year, a UN review of more than 250 studies found that in Latin America, deforestation rates were lower in their territories than elsewhere. Despite this, many indigenous and tribal peoples face persecution, racism and violence.

In July, a two-year trial using remote sensors to alert indigenous communities in Peru to early deforestation found a decrease in tree loss of 37% overall for both years, compared to the control group. Researchers say that if this was scaled up, it could have a big effect on reducing deforestation.

A member of the Ticuna ethnic group in forest in the Amazon region of Colombia. Studies have shown that indigenous communities are the best protectors of forests. Photograph: Mayela Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

Jessica Webb, senior manager for global engagement at Global Forest Watch, says: "A third of the Amazon rainforest falls within approximately 3,300 formally acknowledged territories of indigenous peoples. Based on modelling we did with our partner Rainforest Foundation US, as a result of this study, we predict that an additional 123,000 hectares a year of deforestation could be prevented by scaling this approach to other communities within the Amazon. It would be the equivalent of taking 21m cars off the road for a year."

Can satellites protect forests?

Ecosystem monitoring is experiencing a technological revolution. Deforestation is easier to track through a dataset developed by researchers at the University of Maryland, Nasa and Google. As image resolutions improve, we are close to being able to monitor deforestation in real time.

But "there are still gaps on being able to monitor restoration and degradation", says Crystal Davis, director at the Land & Carbon Lab, a WRI initiative that aims to provide information on how the world can meet climate and biodiversity commitments and the needs of 10 billion humans. "We also need a better understanding of the accuracy of global datasets. They are not consistent across geography," she says.

What about reforestation?

The world needs to restore forests to meet climate and biodiversity goals. But scientists say halting deforestation is an urgent task as it emits carbon immediately whereas it takes decades for nature to recover and sequester carbon. Primary forests that have stood for thousands of years cannot be replaced by tree-planting schemes.

What if we don't stop deforestation?

Cutting emissions from fossil fuels is the most urgent task to avoid more global heating. But if the world continues to lose forests, we risk triggering tipping points with unintended consequences. The Amazon could turn into savannah, boreal forests could die back and carbon stores that took thousands of years to sequester could be released. What this would mean for food security, weather systems and millions of other species is unlikely to be good news, experts warn.

Robert Nasi, head of the Center for International Forestry Research, says: "We would have climatic change that is cascading: the drying of the Amazon, the Congo Basin ... there is a lot of risk of a domino effect. If we don't protect the forests, people will migrate, there will be climate refugees."

With thanks to:
Crystal Davis, director at the Land & Carbon Lab
Frances Seymour, distinguished senior fellow, World Resources Institute
Luiz Amaral, director, global solutions for commodities and finance, World Resources Institute
Robert Nasi, director general at the Center for International Forestry Research
Yadvinder Malhi, professor of ecosystem science at the University of Oxford
Jessica Webb, senior manager for global engagement at Global Forest Watch

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What is deforestation - and is stopping it really possible?

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orests and nature are centre stage at Cop26. On the second day of the Glasgow summit, world leaders are announcing a commitment to halting and reversing deforestation. As the second largest source of greenhouse gases after energy, the land sector accounts for 25% of global emissions, with deforestation and forest degradation contributing to half of this.

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The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a 3 million-year high in 2020

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The findings add to a sense of urgency ahead of the COP26 climate talks, which begin in Glasgow, Scotland on Sunday. There are expectations for some G20 nations that have not increased their ambitions since Paris to do so ahead of COP26.

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Antarctica has exceeded 20C for the first time, after researchers logged a temperature of 20.75C on an island off the coast of the peninsula.

Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP they had "never seen a temperature this high in Antarctica".

But he warned the temperature, logged on 9 February, was just one reading and not part of a long-term data set.

The continent also hit a record last week, with a temperature reading of 18.3C on the Antarctic Peninsula.

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This latest reading was taken at a monitoring station on Seymour Island, part of a chain of islands off the same peninsula, at the northernmost point of the continent.

Although the temperature is a record high, Mr Schaefer emphasized that the reading was not part of a wider study and so, in itself, could not be used to predict a trend.

"We can't use this to anticipate climatic changes in the future. It's a data point," he said. "It's simply a signal that something different is happening in that area."

How fast is Antarctica warming?

According to the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO), temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by almost 3C over the past 50 years, and that about 87% of the glaciers along its west coast have "retreated" in that time.

Over the past 12 years, the glaciers have shown an "accelerated retreat", it adds.

Last month was also Antarctica's warmest January on record.

The previous record for the entire Antarctic region - which includes the continent, islands and ocean that are in the Antarctic climatic zone - was 19.8C, logged in January 1982.

Last July, the Arctic region hit its own record temperature of 21C, logged by a base at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.

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Antarctica temperature exceeds 20C for first time

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Antarctica has exceeded 20C for the first time, after researchers logged a temperature of 20.75C on an island off the coast of the peninsula. Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP they had "never seen a temperature this high in Antarctica".

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Where’s winter? A number of countries just witnessed their warmest January ever recorded | CNN

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It’s not just you – January was toastier than usual for many parts of the world.

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1. Stop Eating (or Eat Less) Meat

The single most effective action you can take to combat climate change is to stop eating meat. Just limiting your meat consumption can make a huge difference. Greenhouse gas emissions from agribusiness are an even bigger problem than fossil fuels. So while we often talk about cutting our reliance on fossil fuels - and this is still critically important - we rarely discuss the worst culprit. Red meat is particularly to blame, consuming 11 times more water and producing 5 times more emissions than its poultry counterparts. You don't have to become a vegetarian, but eating meat less frequently (the average American eats 8.5 ounces of meat per day!) will significantly help the environment. To get a single pound of beef, it takes over 5,000 gallons of water - as the number one consumer of freshwater in the world, animal agriculture is drastically increasing the problem of water scarcity. Don't forget to inform others: many people simply don't know about the connection between meat and climate change.

You might be surprised to learn that all electronics suck energy when they're plugged in, EVEN IF they're powered down. In the U.S. alone, "vampire power" is responsible for draining up to $19 billion in energy every year. Anytime a cord is plugged into a socket, it's drawing energy - so although your device isn't charging, you're still contributing to your carbon footprint. Simple solution? Leave your electronics unplugged at all times, unless you're actually using them.

Choose to walk, bike, or take the bus - leave the car at home, and you'll be making an easy decision with immediate results. Many people are opting to bike to work, especially with bike lanes becoming more prevalent. Cities are finally investing in the necessary infrastructure to make it easier not to own a car. There are over 65 million cyclists in the United States, a number that has risen dramatically over the past five years. Increasing populations have made effective public transportation more necessary than ever, and options like subways, trains, buses, and rapid transit continue to grow. Many new bus routes are even turning to hybrids, solar power, and other eco-friendly alternatives. In the U.S., public transportation saves 37 million tons of carbon emissions every year. Cities are also increasing walkability, with architects incorporating more outdoor and green spaces, and new buildings focused on green infrastructure and community engagement.

4. Don't Buy "Fast Fashion"

Many major clothing retailers practice what is known as "fast fashion" - selling an endless cycle of must-have trends at extremely low prices. Have you ever wondered how it's possible to pay only $4 for that t-shirt? In this consumer society, we think of fashion as disposable - after all, if I only pay $4 I might not think twice about throwing it away. Heaps and heaps of clothing ends up in the landfill, often to justify buying the latest styles. We're talking over 15 million tons of textile waste - with quantity over quality, fast fashion retailers can charge next to nothing for items that are mass-produced. They push these garments to sell by creating more fashion "cycles" or "seasons" - where there used to be 4 per year, there's now often 12 to 15. There's also the issue of contamination: almost half of our clothing is made with cotton, and unless it's labeled as "organic" cotton, there's a high chance that it's genetically modified cotton sprayed with lots of pesticides (including known carcinogens). This can be damaging to neighboring non-GMO crops, cause water contamination, reduce biodiversity, and have negative impacts on human health. Don't forget that anything made overseas has a huge environmental impact - from the physical act of shipping a product across the ocean, to the chemical runoff from garment factories ( leather tanneries are particularly bad). As if that's not enough, fast fashion is an industry still largely propped up by child labor. Toxic to the environment, detrimental to human rights - who needs it? Try alternatives like re-purposing old clothing, choosing locally handmade garments, buying vintage, or participating in clothing swaps with family and friends.

Whether you live in a house or an apartment, planting some greens is a quick and easy way to reduce your carbon footprint. We all know plants absorb carbon dioxide - a beneficial relationship for humans, that we should all be seeking to nurture. Plant some bee-friendly flowers, a few trees, or a vegetable garden. Balcony gardens are great for urban dwellings. Cities often need to reduce the "urban heat island" effect - basically, cities tend to be hotter than rural areas because of vast pavement areas, concrete buildings, and increased human activity. Creating more spaces for plants, grasses, and trees can mitigate this effect and lead to better cooling, which will be a necessity with worsening climate change. Help avoid the "heat island" effect by planting trees for shade, or maybe try a green roof or community garden.

Whenever possible, try to eat local, in-season produce. Sticking to foods that are grown locally, in your own city or surrounding area, helps to reduce the carbon footprint created by shipping foods from elsewhere. A general rule for where something is grown? The closer to you, the better. When a fruit or vegetable can be grown in your own backyard, or a local farm, the environmental cost is significantly reduced. Just imagine the journey that food from a distant country has to take - by plane, ship, train, or truck, the produce must stay cooled, so it doesn't spoil, and has usually been picked way too early (resulting in not-so-great quality, and fewer nutrients). Small farms are more likely to adopt beneficial soil-care practices and maintain borders for local wildlife, and eating locally-grown food supports your local economy and promotes food security. It's equally important to eat organic produce, which hasn't been sprayed with toxic pesticides and other environmentally detrimental chemicals. Don't forget to avoid processed foods: processed and packaged foods are often bad for your health, not just the environment. Processing plants are major polluters, and their products contribute to health epidemics like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Choose whole foods that are better for the planet, and better for your own longevity.

New is not always better - the traditional method of line-drying your clothing is much better for the environment. One dryer load uses 5 times more electricity than washing - by simply line-drying your clothes, you can save 1/3 of their carbon footprint. Unfortunately, line-drying seems to be America's least favorite way to save energy - despite the fact that running a clothes dryer is equivalent to turning on 225 light bulbs for an hour. Europeans, on the other hand, are excellent at this (95 percent of Italians don't even own a dryer) - it might be time to follow their lead, especially considering the tumble dryer is one of the top energy-consuming appliances (not to mention the leading cause of appliance-related house fires).

Anyone can make these simple changes: they're easy to implement, and are immediately effective in reducing your carbon footprint. Our actions and choices ultimately make a difference, and we all share the responsibility to do whatever we can to address climate change, big or small.

BEFORE YOU GO

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7 Instant Ways To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

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1. Stop Eating (or Eat Less) Meat The single most effective action you can take to combat climate change is to stop eating meat. Just limiting your meat consumption can make a huge difference. Greenhouse gas emissions from agribusiness are an even bigger problem than fossil fuels.

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By Kenneth Macdonald
BBC Scotland Science Correspondent

Glaciers in the Arctic are shrinking by as much as 300m a year, a Scottish-based research team has found.

The researchers from the Scottish Association for Marine Science near Oban used robot submarines to study glaciers in the west of the Svalbard archipelago in the Norwegian Arctic.

SAMS scientists have been studying the area's glaciers for two decades.

Dr John Howe, leading the team, said the Arctic was probably warming faster than any other part of the planet.

He said: "There have been studies by satellite looking at the loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

"But we're interested in the role of glaciers, and in particular why glaciers are retreating and how they behave under these warmer conditions."

Dr Howe's team found Svalbard's glaciers are retreating by as much as 300m each year.

This is not merely the result of rising air temperatures. A relatively warmer ocean and local conditions in the fjords are also having an effect.

"Warm water that used to be there is now washing the front of the glacier," Dr Howe says.

"The warm water is there because of the shape of the seabed.

"Water is able to get into the fjords, and that warmer water is promoting the collapse and therefore the retreat of this ice."

That ice melts when it gets warm is no surprise but, writing in the journal Marine Geology, the team say they found an unexpected consequence.

A plume of cold, fresh meltwater had been expected to protect the front of the glacier from the warmer seawater.

Instead it floats on the surface of the ocean, drawing seawater to the front of the glacier and accelerating the melting process.

The research has immediate implications for wildlife, fisheries and shipping.

But Dr Howe says there are even bigger considerations as the research adds to science's understanding how a warming Arctic is driving change in the sea level.

"If you lose the Greenland ice cap, which is currently pinned by the glaciers, there's this notional seven metre rise in sea levels," he said.

To make the detailed measurements underpinning the Svalbard study, the team had to get their instruments as close as possible to the point where the glaciers meet the ocean.

But as glaciers melt they "calve" great chunks of ice into the sea, causing huge waves. That's not the sort of thing to keep the health and safety-conscious happy.

So SAMS has been using something that has transformed their work in recent years: a robot.

It has a fleet of them, some with wings that 'glide' through Arctic waters for months and beam their data back by satellite.

This one, though, is distinctive.

"It's like a yellow torpedo, a submarine," says Dr Howe.

"It can 'fly' close to the glacier front and make these measurements while the boat stays a good kilometre away - safely away from the falling ice."

If the warming of the Arctic continues, robot subs may not be needed. As the glaciers retreat, Dr Howe warns they will no longer meet the sea at all.

"Rather than being dominated by a white-blue walls of ice at the head of the fjord, it'll be a river."

SAMS is based at Dunstaffnage, near Oban, and is part of the University of the Highlands and Islands.

The work was funded by the Norwegian Research Council and led by the Norwegian Polar Institute.

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Climate change: Arctic glaciers 'shrinking by 300m each year'

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By Kenneth Macdonald BBC Scotland Science Correspondent Glaciers in the Arctic are shrinking by as much as 300m a year, a Scottish-based research team has found. The researchers from the Scottish Association for Marine Science near Oban used robot submarines to study glaciers in the west of the Svalbard archipelago in the Norwegian Arctic.

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Air pollution: Even worse than we thought - WHO

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The WHO is slashing recommended maximum limits of key pollutants as evidence of danger mounts.

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Ocean pollution: 'Stop polluting our oceans or face disaster' warns WWF

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The world's biggest conservation charity is calling on the UN to commit to ending plastics leaking into the world's oceans by 2030.

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Uppada, a coastal village in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, is known for its unique weaving tradition.

But its existence is under threat because of rising sea levels.

Several people have been displaced as heavy coastal erosion has broken their houses and damaged properties.

They are now settling further away from the coast.

Climate researchers say the neighbouring city of Kakinada - just 16 miles away - could also be submerged in 80 years.
Video by Shankar Vadishetti and Ravi Pedapolu. Edited by Sangeetham Prabhakar More on climate summit

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The Indian village that could disappear under water

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Uppada, a coastal village in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, is known for its unique weaving tradition. But its existence is under threat because of rising sea levels. Several people have been displaced as heavy coastal erosion has broken their houses and damaged properties.

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Where’s winter? A number of countries just witnessed their warmest January ever recorded | CNN

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It’s not just you – January was toastier than usual for many parts of the world.

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Fire and forest loss ignite concern for Brazilian Amazon's jaguars

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In August 2019, an unprecedented number of fires ripped through the Brazilian Amazon, sparking worldwide interest in reports of burning rainforest. In fact, the majority of blazes were on land that had already been stripped of forest. According to a report from the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), at least 1,250 square kilometers [...]

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https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/climate/g20-nations-air-pollution-mortality-2-million-deaths/?amp=1

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From the vault: G20 nations contribute to two million air pollution deaths annually

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Study suggests air pollution caused by G20 nations’ consumption has deadly effects.

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-change-siberia-heat-wave-more-likely-global-warming-arctic

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Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ

A version of this article appears in the August 15, 2020 issue of Science News.

Carolyn Gramling is the earth & climate writer. She has bachelor's degrees in geology and European history and a Ph.D. in marine geochemistry from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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Climate change made Siberian heat wave at least 600 times more likely | Science News

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Siberia's six-month heat wave during the first half of 2020 would not have happened without human-caused climate change, researchers find.

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Paper giants' expansion plans raise fears of greater deforestation in Indonesia

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JAKARTA - Activists are warning of "severe environmental and social risks" from plans by two of the world's largest paper companies to significantly expand their operations in Indonesia. Both Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) have been linked with the degradation and burning of carbon-dense peat forests in Sumatra [...]

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초록색 및 흰색 Griddy 큰 서체 일반적인 개인 SDG Instagram 게시물

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/curbing-air-pollution-could-prevent-millions-of-deaths-in-north-america-over-next-50-years-1.6232730

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Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.
Curbing climate change and improving air quality could provide greater health benefits in our lifetime than previously thought, potentially preventing millions of deaths and hospitalizations in the U.S. alone during the next half-century, new research suggests.

The paper from a team at Duke University in Durham, N.C., was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal on Monday. It is based on an analysis of more than 40 studies on air pollution and human health, coupled with climate modelling and simulations available through NASA.

The researchers found that, over the next 50 years, limiting global warming to no more than 2 C could prevent roughly 4.5 million premature deaths and several million more hospitalizations and emergency room visits across the U.S. - when compared to a scenario where climate change is left "largely unmitigated."

Those rapid, short-term benefits stem primarily from air quality improvements and outweigh any associated costs, the researchers wrote. They estimated this could lead to "tens of trillions of dollars" in benefits from avoided deaths.

Have questions about COP26 or climate science, policy or politics? Email us: ask@cbc.ca. Your input helps inform our coverage.

Lead author Drew Shindell, a professor in the division of earth and climate sciences at Duke University, said he was surprised the results "were just so enormous."

"We think of our air as being relatively clean in North America," he said. "And so one of the things I think is so incredible is how many people are still affected by our air quality, even though it's so much better than it was decades ago."

The striking predictions, according to Shindell, suggest human actions to curb air pollution now can make a difference in both the long and short term.

"Fewer children going to the hospital with asthma attacks, fewer elderly people dying of respiratory illnesses or heart attacks," he said.

"I think most anywhere that takes action to mitigate climate change can expect to see enormous benefits very, very rapidly ... if the whole world co-operates, then of course, we also solve the climate crisis."
WATCH | Improving air quality could prevent millions of deaths in North America:

Health benefits 'larger' than previously estimated

Climate change mitigation, the new paper noted, "involves a global transition to low carbon energy, energy efficiency, low demand for carbon-intensive goods and services, and a reduction in emissions of non-CO2 climate-altering pollutants."

The research was published while global leaders are gathering in Glasgow for the COP26 climate summit, which has a to "secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach."

The Conference of Parties (COP), as it's known, meets every year and is the global decision-making body set up in the early 1990s to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and subsequent climate agreements.

On Monday during the summit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada will impose a hard cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector, in hopes of curbing the growth of one of the country's largest industries to help hit that global goal.

The target is rooted in the 2015 Paris Agreement, when close to 200 countries committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming to well below 2 C - and preferably below 1.5 C - compared to the pre-industrial era.

The Duke University analysis incorporated those targets, and while it was centred on only one country, both Shindell and outside climate researchers who weren't connected with the study say there are takeaways for the rest of the world - Canada included.

"Addressing the climate crisis in Canada means eliminating the use of fossil fuels within decades. So when we do that, we get those same kinds of benefits that they found in this U.S. study," said Laura Tozer, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Toronto.

A rapid shift to a 2 C pathway could reduce the premature death toll tied to air pollution by 40 per cent in just a decade, the research team found, with broader health benefits of cleaner air "far larger than previously estimated" when it comes to reducing hospitalizations and emergency visits tied to respiratory conditions.

Hitting that target could also maintain productivity and prevent major crop losses, the paper continued.

"Considering these additional benefits of emissions reductions, benefits outweigh costs even in the near-term," the authors wrote.

Ian Mauro, executive director of the Prairie Climate Centre, called the paper a "breakthrough" study that overturns notions of climate change being a long-term, global issue, as opposed to one where rapid, regional initiatives can spark better outcomes in the not-so-distant future.

"This study actually shows when you take local action, there are local benefits that contribute to solving that global problem," he said. "It starts with cities, it starts with towns, it starts with big industry."

Canada already facing climate change impacts

Throughout Canada, the influence of climate change on people's health and well-being is already being felt at a local level, even beyond the direct impact of air pollution.

In the Maritimes, coastal towns are now vulnerable to fierce storms and rising sea levels, with the ocean potentially rising up to 2.5 metres around Nova Scotia within the next 80 years.

In Western Canada, communities have been ravaged by wildfires. Roughly 1,600 fires burned nearly 8,700 square kilometres of land this year in B.C. alone, as a "heat dome" claimed 595 lives, set scorching temperature records and burned down the town of Lytton within minutes.

And in the North, rapidly melting permafrost is threatening people's livelihoods, elevating the risk of wildfires and flood warnings, and releasing toxic mercury that's now showing up in slightly elevated levels in whitefish, a dietary staple in some communities.

"Mercury is kind of the zenith of the number one quantifiable physical health-altering issue that we can see with climate change right now," said Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm, of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in northern Yukon.

Avoiding those kinds of dire impacts should be a pressing concern for governments of all levels, experts and advocates warn.

But while Shindell's research showed clear short-term health and economic benefits of mitigating climate change, he acknowledged his team's forward-looking approach does enter "uncharted territory."

The modelling was meant to offer a middle-of-the-road look at a range of potential scenarios, though determining specific local outcomes can be trickier. Still, he said, it offers a hopeful take on what's possible within our lifetimes.

"We often hear in climate change that it's expensive to do something," said Shindell. "But it's more expensive not to do anything."

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Curbing air pollution could prevent millions of deaths in North America over next 50 years | CBC News

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Curbing climate change and improving air quality could provide greater health benefits in our lifetime than previously thought, potentially preventing millions of deaths and hospitalizations in the U.S. alone during the next half-century, new research suggests.

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Ocean pollution: 11 facts you need to know

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With each passing year, we expose the ocean to more pollutants, from trash to chemicals. Fortunately, it’s not too late to clean up our act.

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In our monthly feature, Then and Now, we reveal some of the ways that planet Earth has been changing against the backdrop of a warming world. For decades, deforestation has been seen as a leading cause of environmental damage. Now, the full cost that losing our tree cover is having on the world's climate is being realised, and politicians are taking notice.

If there was a poster-child of environmental degradation, surely it is deforestation.

The removal of trees - for example, through logging or fires - has, for many decades, been listed as one of the main factors behind nature loss and environmental harm.

In recent years, the loss of tree cover around the world has also been firmly linked to the increasingly volatile changes to the climate.

Plants and trees absorb up to a third of our CO2 emissions from the atmosphere each year. Yet, as we fell vast swathes of primary forests around the globe, we are reducing our planet's ability to lock away, or sequester, the harmful gas that is released from burning fossil fuels.

According to the UN, an estimated 420 million hectares (one billion acres) of forest have been lost through conversion to other land uses since 1990 - that is an area roughly equivalent to the size of Libya.

However, campaigns to protect forests have had an impact during the past three decades. UN data suggests the rate of deforestation between 2015 and 2020 was an estimated 10 million hectares per year, down from 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s.

While the issue of deforestation is taken very seriously at a global level, the implementation of strategies and policies to reduce deforestation ultimately rests with national governments.

At this level, the track record is much more patchy. For example, Brazil - for a succession of governments - seemed to be heeding international advice and deforestation rates had been falling steadily since 2004.

However, scientists writing in Nature journal last year listed the Brazilian Amazon deforestation rate for the previous 12 months as the highest in a decade.

Campaigners said the deforestation rate had accelerated since Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil's president in 2019. They said Mr Bolsonaro's policy of favouring agriculture and mining within the Amazon rainforest was to blame.

It illustrates that international efforts to protect these valuable habitats are meaningless unless there is support from national governments.

In recent years, trees have become a well-trodden solution for policymakers grappling with the threat posed by climate change.

The ability of trees to sequester carbon is a very popular topic within the political arena. They are a well-known facet of the global carbon cycle, removing millions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.

Therefore, policies that promote and encourage the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees are billed as a vital part of the shift to sustainability, and a key part of the solutions-based approach to tackling the climate crisis facing the planet.

Growing solutions?

However, there are a number of potential hurdles or limitations.

Firstly, can we be sure that we are planting more trees than we are losing?

Are the new saplings being offered enough protection to ensure they make it to being mature specimens? It is only once that a tree reaches maturity so that it can fully absorb CO2 - on average, about 21kg each year.

What species are being planted to sequester carbon? Are they fast-growing or slow-growing? How long do they live? What happens when they die? Will the timber be used for materials and construction or will it be left to rot, releasing the carbon it had locked away from the atmosphere?

It has also been identified in a number of studies in urban areas that tree planting schemes are struggling to keep up with the number of trees felled in the name of development.

Secondly, as only mature trees can make a meaningful contribution to sequestering carbon, it will take many decades for a sapling to reach maturity.

Therefore, the trees we are planting today will only be making a meaningful difference to the volume of CO2 in our atmosphere in half a century's time.

A famous Chinese saying suggests that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.

However, it adds, the second best time is today - so there is still hope.

As another popular saying states: better late than never.

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Then and now: Why deforestation is such a hot topic

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Trees are part of the solution for climate change, but are we felling more than we are planting?

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Air pollution was responsible for 1.1 million deaths across Africa in 2019, with more than half of those fatalities associated with household (indoor) pollutants, according to a study recently published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

"Furthermore, air pollution is costing African countries billions [of dollars] in gross domestic product and can be correlated to a devastating loss in the intellectual development of Africa's children," researchers found.

Edmond Sanganyado, an associate professor of environmental science at Shantou University in China, agreed. Sanganyado was not a part of the new research but said that if African communities did not address air pollution, the results would be catastrophic.

More than 350 million African children live in households that use solid fuels, mostly wood and coal, for cooking and heating. Sanganyado, who is also president of the Zimbabwe Young Academy of Sciences, said emissions from these solid fuels were the main causes of indoor air pollution.

" While use of electrical stoves has helped to reduce indoor air pollution, the gains are now being reversed due to the current electricity shortage in most sub-Saharan African countries."

"This is quite heartbreaking because air pollution affects intelligence in children," he said.

"We think policymakers in African countries need to be concerned about rising levels of air pollution, about the rising levels of disease and death that are already resulting from these increases in pollution and the very great economic losses that their countries will suffer if air pollution continues to increase unchecked," said Boston College professor of biology Philip Landrigan, coauthor of the new study.

Sanganyado said a shift away from wood and coal and toward solar and wind could help reduce the hazard. Household air pollution has fallen over the past 10 years, the study found, although ambient (outdoor) air pollution has increased.

"While use of electrical stoves has helped to reduce indoor air pollution, the gains are now being reversed due to the current electricity shortage in most sub-Saharan African countries," Sanganyado said.

Reliance on Fossil Fuels

"A lot needs to be done to mitigate the effects of pollution, especially on vulnerable groups such [as] children, the sick, and the elderly."

Farai Maguwu, director of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance in Harare, Zimbabwe, added that the report lifts the lid on a silent killer whose catastrophic impacts are growing with each passing day, thanks to an overreliance on fossil fuels. Maguwu was not involved in the new report.

"Places like Hwange [Zimbabwe], where there is a 920-megawatt thermal power generation station, choke [the air] with sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and coal ash.... A lot needs to be done to mitigate the effects of pollution, especially on vulnerable groups such [as] children, the sick, and the elderly," Maguwu said.

Landry Ninteretse, regional director of the environmental organization 350Africa.org, said fossil fuel combustion contributed to both indoor and outdoor air pollution and had to be significantly reduced if the continent wanted to save African populations from preventable diseases.

"The most common health impacts of coal plants include lung damage, breathing problems, renal complications, effects on the nervous system, pulmonary effects, cardiovascular diseases, and an increased potential for cancer," Ninteretse said.

Measurement and Mitigation

Sanganyado said that before Africa developed strategies and technologies to reduce air pollution, there was a widespread need to accurately and regularly measure indoor and outdoor air quality.

"The first step to fight air pollution is to build real-time air monitoring stations across Africa," he said. "Just like with COVID-19, daily monitoring will help us identify hot spots and develop preventive measures. We cannot understand the impact of air pollution or develop effective strategies to combat air pollution if we do not have reliable real-time air quality monitoring," he said.

Addressing the current situation does not have to require significant investments in technology or capital, Sanganyado said. Nature-based mitigation strategies, such as conservation of grasslands and forests, can financially compete with costly air purification technologies.

"This should be good news for African cities; planting trees and having greenbelts throughout the city could help reduce air pollution," he said.

In addition, Ninteretse supported a strong, rapid push for solar and wind power by governments and development partners across Africa. Developing renewables is likely to reduce air pollution, stimulate sustainable and safe growth, and improve the livelihoods of more than half a billion residents of sub-Saharan Africa who live without any electricity at all, he said.

-Andrew Mambondiyani (@mambondiyani), Science Writer

This news article is included in our ENGAGE resource for educators seeking science news for their classroom lessons. Browse all ENGAGE articles, and share with your fellow educators how you integrated the article into an activity in the comments section below.

Citation: Mambondiyani, A. (2021), Air pollution killed a million people in Africa in 2019, Eos, 102, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO210565. Published on 25 October 2021.

Text © 2022. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Air Pollution Killed a Million People in Africa in 2019 - Eos

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Experts say nature-based mitigation strategies and investment in renewables could reduce both indoor and outdoor air pollution and stimulate sustainable and safe growth.

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More than 100 world leaders have promised to end and reverse deforestation by 2030, in the COP26 climate summit's first major deal.

Brazil - where stretches of the Amazon rainforest have been cut down - was among the signatories on Tuesday.

The pledge includes almost £14bn ($19.2bn) of public and private funds.

Experts welcomed the move, but warned a previous deal in 2014 had "failed to slow deforestation at all" and commitments needed to be delivered on.

Felling trees contributes to climate change because it depletes forests that absorb vast amounts of the warming gas CO2.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the global meeting in Glasgow, said "more leaders than ever before" - a total of 110 - had made the "landmark" commitment.

"We have to stop the devastating loss of our forests," he said - and "end the role of humanity as nature's conqueror, and instead become nature's custodian".

The two-week summit in Glasgow is seen as crucial if climate change is to be brought under control.

Some of the funding will go to developing countries to restore damaged land, tackle wildfires and support indigenous communities.

Governments of 28 countries also committed to remove deforestation from the global trade of food and other agricultural products such as palm oil, soya and cocoa.

These industries drive forest loss by cutting down trees to make space for animals to graze or crops to grow.

More than 30 of the world's biggest financial companies - including Aviva, Schroders and Axa - have also promised to end investment in activities linked to deforestation.

And a £1.1bn fund will be established to protect the world's second largest tropical rainforest - in the Congo Basin.

Prof Simon Lewis, an expert on climate and forests at University College London, said: "It is good news to have a political commitment to end deforestation from so many countries, and significant funding to move forward on that journey."

But he told the BBC the world "has been here before" with a declaration in 2014 in New York "which failed to slow deforestation at all".

Hope and challenges ahead

There are reasons to be cheerful about the proposed plan to limit deforestation, specifically the scale of the funding, and the key countries that are supporting the pledge.

It is also very positive that it will try to reinforce the role of indigenous people in protecting their trees. Studies have shown that protecting the rights of native communities is one of the best ways of saving forested lands.

But there are significant challenges.

Many previous plans haven't achieved their goals. In fact, deforestation has increased since a similar pledge was launched in 2014.

There are often disputes between donors and recipients - Norway suspended funding for an Amazon fund in 2019 in an argument with Brazil's president.

There are also major questions over how a major financial pledge could be effectively policed.

How can funders verify that forests are actually being protected without spying from satellites or challenging national sovereignty in some way?

And question marks also hang over a key plank of the new plan, which is to try to remove the link to deforestation from consumer goods sold in developed countries.

One aspect is eating meat from animals, raised on imported soy grown on cleared lands. Will governments push companies and consumers to eat less meat to save the world's most important forests?

Ecologist Dr Nigel Sizer called the agreement "a big deal" - but that some will find the target of 2030 disappointing.

"We're facing a climate emergency so giving ourselves another 10 years to address this problem doesn't quite seem consistent with that," said Dr Sizer, a former president of the Rainforest Alliance.

"But maybe this is realistic and the best that they can achieve."

The New York Declaration on Forests was a voluntary and legally non-binding agreement on deforestation in 2014

It aimed to half deforestation by 2020, and halt it by 2030 - and 40 governments eventually signed up. But some key countries like Brazil and Russia weren't among them

But the agreement failed, a report in 2019 found, saying deforestation was still continuing at an alarming rate

The deal's signatories include a number of key countries.

Asked whether leaders like Brazil's Mr Bolsonaro could be trusted to abide by the pledge, the UK's Environment Secretary George Eustice said "we should be really positive when countries engage".

"Last time there was an attempt at getting such a commitment on forests [in 2014], Brazil didn't take part, neither did Russia, neither did China.

"Brazil, they've really engaged with us on this agenda. It's a big step for them."

But pressed on whether the agreement will be enforceable, Mr Eustice said: "It doesn't go as far into talking about enforcement mechanisms and so forth, that's not the nature of these agreements."

He said what was different about this pledge in particular is that there is "the finance to back [it] up".

US President Joe Biden said he was "confident" the global pledge could be met, telling world leaders: "All we need to do is summon the will and do what we know is right. We can do this."

He said the US would lead by example, and announced it would spend $9bn (£6.6bn) to conserve and restore forests.

COP26 climate summit - The basics

Climate change is one of the world's most pressing problems. Governments must promise more ambitious cuts in warming gases if we are to prevent greater global temperature rises.

The summit in Glasgow is where change could happen. You need to watch for the promises made by the world's biggest polluters, like the US and China, and whether poorer countries are getting the support they need.

All our lives will change. Decisions made here could impact our jobs, how we heat our homes, what we eat and how we travel.

But many people living in the Amazon, including in its urban areas, depend on the forest for their livelihoods and they need support in finding new incomes, she added.

Prince Charles told COP26 delegates that nations had to "honour" the rights of indigenous people as they were "experienced custodians" of their habitats. And speaking to members of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities - representing 24 countries with tropical rainforests - he said: "We've got to work harder to save your forests, for all our sakes."

Tuntiak Katan, from the Coordination of Indigenous Communities of the Amazon Basin, welcomed the deal, saying that funds should be invested in supporting indigenous communities who are able to manage and protect forests.

Mr Katan, an indigenous Shuar from Ecuador, told the BBC indigenous communities globally protected 80% of the world's biodiversity but faced threats and violence.

"For years we have protected our way of life and that has protected ecosystems and forests. Without us, no money or policy can stop climate change," he said.

One of the biggest causes of forest loss in Brazil is to grow soy beans, much of which goes to China and Europe for animal feed for pigs and chickens, said Dr Sizer.

"We all end up consuming that, unless we're strict vegetarians and we don't eat soy. It's a very serious problem that we're all connected with."

Trees are one of our major defences in a warming world. They suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, acting as so-called carbon sinks. They absorb around one third of global CO2 emitted each year.

Under present targets, the world is on track for warming of 2.7C by 2100 - which the UN says would result in climate catastrophe.

Currently an area of forest the size of 27 football pitches is lost every minute.

Depleted forests can also start to release CO2. If too many trees are cut down, scientists are worried that the planet will reach a tipping point that will set off abrupt and unpredictable climatic change.

Also on the second day of the two-week climate summit:

The COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow in November is seen as crucial if climate change is to be brought under control. Almost 200 countries are being asked for their plans to cut emissions, and it could lead to major changes to our everyday lives.

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COP26: World leaders promise to end deforestation by 2030

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More than 100 nations - including Brazil, Russia and Indonesia - sign COP26's first major deal.

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https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/05/weather/record-global-january-2020-temperature-trnd/index.html

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It’s not just you – January was toastier than usual for many parts of the world.

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How We Can Keep Plastics Out of Our Ocean | National Geographic

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Demand for meat is contributing to deforestation, but there are ways the world can fix it

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Countries such as the UK, Germany and Spain all contribute to more deforestation through imported goods than they regrow through afforestation in their own countries

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Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest rose 43% in April from the same month a year ago, preliminary government data showed on Friday, the second consecutive monthly rise as destruction picked up ahead of the annual burning season.

In the first four months of 2021, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon totaled 1,157 square kilometers, an area nearly the size of Los Angeles and down 4% from a year earlier, according to national space research agency Inpe.

Brazil is under intense international pressure led by the United States to rein in destruction of the world's largest tropical rainforest, critical in curbing catastrophic climate change because of the vast amount of greenhouse gas absorbed.

At a leaders summit last month organized by the United States, President Jair Bolsonaro committed to increase funding for environmental enforcement and to end deforestation by 2030.

But U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, which is in talks to possibly fund Brazilian conservation efforts, says it expects immediate action to reduce deforestation this year.

Illegal logging and forest fires have soared since Bolsonaro took office in 2019, with deforestation hitting a 12-year high in 2020, government data showed.

"Biden doesn't want to be in a position where it looks like he is being too soft on Brazil when it comes to the environment," said Anya Prusa, a senior associate for the Brazil Institute at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

The overall trend in deforestation matters more than a single month, Prusa added.

"If deforestation goes back up, if we see again significant forest fires in the Amazon in August and September this year, it will make it harder for the U.S. to continue talking to Brazil."

Bolsonaro's press representatives referred questions to the vice president's office.

The Vice Presidency said in a statement that the data was designed to help authorities rapidly respond to deforestation, adding that comparing single months from different years was not appropriate and only longer term comparisons should be made.

Negotiations with the United States continue normally, the statement said.

Early months of the year, when intense rains prevent loggers from easily working in the forest, have limited impact on the Amazon's overall annual deforestation rates, as destruction peaks in the drier season from May to October.

Deforestation in the month of July 2020 alone was higher than the four months of January to April combined this year.

Immense clouds during the rainy season also hide fresh deforestation from government satellites. Cloud cover in the region ranged from 26% to 48% in the first four months of the year, far higher than the 17% to 32% seen in the same period of 2020.

Any deforestation hidden early in the year is registered by satellites in subsequent months when the clouds clear.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Destruction of Brazil's Amazon rainforest speeds up for 2nd straight month

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Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest rose 43% in April from the same month a year ago, preliminary government data showed on Friday, the second consecutive monthly rise as destruction picked up ahead of the annual burning season.

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Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ

A version of this article appears in the August 15, 2020 issue of Science News.

Carolyn Gramling is the earth & climate writer. She has bachelor's degrees in geology and European history and a Ph.D. in marine geochemistry from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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Climate change made Siberian heat wave at least 600 times more likely | Science News

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Siberia's six-month heat wave during the first half of 2020 would not have happened without human-caused climate change, researchers find.

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© Shutterstock / LanaElcova

Childhood cancers have increased by more than a fifth in 10 years as experts link the rise in cases to air pollution.

As world leaders prepare to gather in Scotland to limit damaging emissions and slow global warming, Scottish figures reveal a 21% increase in childhood cancers between 2010 and 2019.

Professor Denis Henshaw, former scientific director at charity Children with Cancer UK, said research is urgently needed to establish the impact of pollution, particularly exhaust fumes, on children and mothers-to-be.

He said scientists must work to establish if children diagnosed with cancer, or their mothers when pregnant, had been exposed to air pollution.

The incidence of leukaemia in young Scots has risen from 27 cases in 2010 to 41 in 2019, an increase of more than 50%, according to a report into childhood cancers released by Public Health Scotland.

The figures show a 30% increase in the number of girls diagnosed with cancer compared with a 13% rise among boys.

The report into diagnostic trends in children, aged 14 and under, stated: "The annual number of new cancers in children has generally increased over time.

For all children, the increase was almost 21% between 2010 and 2019. The increase in boys at 12.8%, was smaller and may be a chance finding but the increase in girls was 30.1%, larger and unlikely to be due to chance."

Henshaw said the rise in air pollution is almost certainly a contributory factor. He said: "You have to consider what is changing and it is not our genetics but our environment, in particular air pollution from the increase in the number of cars on our roads during that time.

"It has to be a major contributor in the rise of cancer in children."

A Scottish Government consultation document on the need for cleaner air last week revealed almost a third of Scotland's streets have higher levels of toxic particle air pollution, caused mainly by traffic, than they did before the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2018, Health Protection Scotland estimated that air pollution caused around 1,700 deaths in Scotland every year while the number of vehicles on UK roads increased during that time from 34 million to 38.4 million.

As Cop26 begins next week and world leaders hammer out agreements to curb emissions and the need to speed the change to greener, electric transport, Henshaw said air pollution was a factor in the rising number of childhood cancer diagnoses: "Vehicle exhaust and diesel cars are a major factor, I believe. While we consider the impact on climate change we must examine what it is doing to our health, especially that of our children.

"The rise in cancer in children is worrying and should absolutely be on the agenda of Cop26.

"The highest number of childhood cancers are leukaemias and other blood cancers which together account for 40% and the peak age is very young children, under five. From that we can deduce that they have been exposed either in the womb or shortly after birth - the children or their mothers. We also have to look at what is in our food.

"The rise in cancer in girls is also of concern and merits investigation. We must examine the origins of the child and its mother during pregnancy and see what part their environment played in the cancer. The placenta is seen as a barrier but pollutants cross it to the baby. Lead is an example."

© Andrew Cawley

Henshaw's fears over pollution as a cancer driver in children are mirrored by Professor Catherine Metayer, of Berkeley School of Public Health in the US. Cases of childhood cancers have also risen there.

She studied environment and diet factors in the rise of childhood leukaemia and stated that population-based studies have provided enough evidence to start prevention by reducing exposure to multiple harmful chemicals from various sources. Her studies cite the contribution of pollution to cancer in children.

She also advocates an increase in healthy diet during pregnancy, and breastfeeding.

She believes that chemicals pass the placenta and damage the foetus's blood cells and also that germ cells in sperm before conception may play a role. Dr Robert Hughes, a clinical research fellow into early childhood development at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an adviser to the Clean Air Fund, agreed more research was needed on air pollution and cancer.

He said: "There is certainly a growing awareness of the way in which air pollution affects us all from cradle to grave. This rise in childhood cancer and the suggestion that air pollution plays a part certainly merits more investigation.

"That said, we do not need any more reasons to act now to reduce the levels of air pollution in our towns and cities, as we already have good evidence that cleaner air can make us - and our children - healthier in several ways. For example, cleaner air will result in lower risk of babies being born too small or prematurely, healthier lung growth, and lower risk of asthma and other childhood illnesses. Pollution levels also seem to affect brain development and learning in children too."

The Scottish Government said it last month published its first cancer care strategy for young people, backed by an investment of £6m.

It said: "We are committed to making sure the necessary support for physical and mental health is available to all who need it, when they need it."

On the issue of air quality, it said: "Improving air quality and in turn the health of our people and planet is an urgent priority for this Government and we are taking action across the board. We work closely with local authorities to tackle air pollution issues and fund measures outlined in their Air Quality Action Plans."

The danger

Jack had blood taken. Then, just hours later, our GP turned up at the door- Mother Natasha Hunter

It is six years ago now but Natasha Hunter remembers her little boy's diagnosis like it was delivered yesterday.

Jack Hunter, now eight, is in remission from leukaemia but Natasha, 36, and Stuart, 39, from Perth remember how their fears escalated after their GP arrived at their door with the results of a blood test taken a few hours earlier at the surgery.

"Jack had been ill for a few weeks, feeling listless and sleepy and I went back and forward to our GP," said Natasha.

"Then when bruises started appearing on his arms I asked for him to be examined by a paediatrician but was told an appointment could take six months.

"A blood test was taken and hours later our GP appeared at the door telling us Jack had to go to the children's hospital at Ninewells, Dundee, to see a specialist.

"I was working as a carer then and knew immediately that this could mean cancer. The test results confirmed doctors' suspicions and Jack entered the world of childhood cancer where children have to undergo serious chemo treatment to try to survive. The side-effects of chemo at two means Jack now has a marked loss of concentration, loss of muscle tone in his hands and feet and other physical problems.

"His acute lymphoblastic leukaemia was initially resistant to the usual protocol so higher doses were needed so the side-effects have been more pronounced. This is what it took to live and Jack had to endure it.

"We have two older children who had to accept us disappearing to hospital at short notice when Jack had setbacks after he left hospital. The whole family experiences fear and uncertainty.

"It takes years to summon up the courage to tell the world what we have all been through with Jack's leukaemia but it is important that people know.

"If pollution is driving childhood leukaemia then surely it must be on the agenda for the Cop26 meeting in Glasgow."

Jack is three years into remission and working hard at school despite the legacy of his cancer and treatment.

Remembering Ruby: Parents say resource is needed to prevent more terrible loss

© D C Thomson & Co Ltd

More than 80% of children survive cancer but the legacy of treatment can have devastating effects on their quality of life and age expectation.

The loss of those who do not survive inflicts the saddest, cruellest grief for parents, according to hospital pharmacy manager Claire Stewart.

She and husband Andy lost their daughter, Ruby, to a soft tissue tumour which first appeared as a lump on her ankle when she was only four.

Diagnosed in September 2017, the cancer was metastatic alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma.

Despite arduous treatment, Ruby did not reach her seventh birthday.

The number of patients suffering this type of cancer has increased since 2010.

In tribute to their daughter, who remained relentlessly upbeat despite her illness, her parents founded the Be More Ruby charity to raise awareness of childhood cancers and to drive for research into treatment.

"Ruby was diagnosed at stage 4 and, while her aggressive cancer may not have been successfully cured, I know of other parents whose children's cancers have not been detected earlier and that can make a considerable difference to survival and severity of treatment," said Claire, from Perthshire.

"GPs are the first port of call for parents worried about symptoms in their children and so we must ensure an adequate level of teaching of childhood cancers is given both at undergraduate and post-graduate GP training.

"While child cancer is rare, it is devastating to every child and its family and merits no less attention than other diseases of childhood.

"What is woefully inadequate are the resources devoted to the research and treatment of paediatric cancers, compared with those in adults.

"Survival of other cancers more common in adults has risen significantly."

She points to astronaut Neil Armstrong's daughter Karen Anne, who died from a childhood brain tumour called a DIPG which is still incurable 52 years later. She asks why, decades after putting a man on the moon, survival after diagnosis is still less than a year.

"Those lost years of life for our children need addressing urgently."

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Air pollution blamed as childhood cancer in Scotland climbs by 21% in ten years

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Scientists fear pollution is the most likely factor fuelling 21% increase in the number of children in Scotland being diagnosed with cancer.

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https://news.fsu.edu/news/2021/09/02/study-shows-the-impact-of-deforestation-and-forest-burning-on-biodiversity-in-the-amazon/

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A new study authored by researchers from Florida State University and the University of Arizona is offering the first quantitative assessment of how lax deforestation policies, drought and forest fires have impacted biodiversity in the Amazon River basin.

FSU Assistant Professor of Geography Xiao Feng worked on the study published today in Nature while at the University of Arizona. Feng said the amount of data used in the study is unparalleled.

"This has been a huge collection of data and an unprecedented informatics effort associated with biodiversity data, and that allowed us to make these interconnections visible," Feng said.

The study used records of more than 14,500 plant and vertebrate species to create biodiversity maps of the Amazon basin, a region about eight times the size of Texas. Overlaying the maps with historical and current observations of forest fires and deforestation over the past two decades allowed the team to quantify the cumulative impacts on the region's species.

Researchers found that, since 2001, between 40,000 and 73,400 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been impacted by fires. Those fires have affected 95% of all Amazonian species and as many as 85% of the region's species that have been identified as threatened.

Brian Enquist, professor at the University of Arizona's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said that biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem go hand in hand.

Enquist, the study's senior author, said that deforestation policies have fueled increasing rates of deforestation that have deprived the Amazon of valuable time to recover.

Regulations enacted in Brazil in the mid-2000s slowed forest destruction, but a change in government in 2019 coincided with loosening policies that reversed this trend. In 2019, fires impacted between 1,640 to 4,000 square miles of forest, making it one of the most extreme years for biodiversity impact since deforestation limits were enforced in 2009.

"Policy has had a direct and enormous influence on the pace at which biodiversity across the entire Amazon has been affected," Enquist said. "Even with policies in place, which you can think of as a brake slowing the rate of deforestation, it's like a car that keeps moving forward, just at a slower speed. But in 2019, it's like the foot was let off the brake, causing it to accelerate again."

The Amazon basin supports around 40% of the world's remaining tropical forests and plays a crucial role in regulating Earth's climate via crucial ecosystem services such as scrubbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere.

The area is a reservoir of the planet's biodiversity, providing habitats for one out of every 10 of the planet's known species. Scientists have estimated that in the Amazon, 1,000 tree species can populate an area smaller than a half square mile.

The research was made possible by strategic investment funds allocated by the Arizona Institutes for Resilience at UArizona and the university's Bridging Biodiversity and Conservation Science group. Additional support came from the National Science Foundation's Harnessing the Data Revolution program . Data and computation were provided through the Botanical Information and Ecology Network , which is supported by , the NSF's data management platform led by UArizona.

This release was published in cooperation with the Office of University Communications at the University of Arizona.

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Study shows the impact of deforestation and forest burning on biodiversity in the Amazon - Florida State University News

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A new study authored by researchers from Florida State University and the University of Arizona is offering the first quantitative [...]

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https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/11/us/methane-climate-change/index.html

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Scientists say this invisible gas could seal our fate on climate change | CNN

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Slashing carbon dioxide emissions is critical to ending the climate crisis. But, for the first time, scientists emphasized the need to control a more insidious culprit: methane.

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climate change: antarctica just registered its hottest temperature ever recorded - cnn

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Antarctica just registered its hottest temperature ever

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Argentinian scientists measured the hottest temperature ever recorded on the Antarctic continent Friday, beating the previous record set in 2015. It's another ominous sign of the rapid warming happening across the planet.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day

Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org (formerly Earth Day Network)including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.

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Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG (formerly Earth Day Network)[1] including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.[2][1][3] The official theme for 2023 is Invest In Our Planet.[4][5]

Earth Day

Significance

Support for environmental protection

Begins

1970

Date
April 22

Next time

April 22, 2024

Frequency

Annual

In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day". Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single-day protest in human history. Key non-environmentally focused partners played major roles. Under the leadership of labor leader Walter Reuther, for example, the United Auto Workers (UAW) was the most instrumental outside financial and operational supporter of the first Earth Day.[6][7][8] According to Hayes: "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!"[9] Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in recognition of his work.[10]

The first Earth Day was focused on the United States. In 1990, Denis Hayes, the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international and organized events in 141 nations.[11][12][13] On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and 120 other countries. This signing satisfied a key requirement for the entry into force of the historic draft climate protection treaty adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Numerous communities engaged in Earth Day Week actions, an entire week of activities focused on the environmental issues that the world faces.[14] On Earth Day 2020, over 100 million people around the world observed the 50th anniversary in what is being referred to as the largest online mass mobilization in history.[3] A similar but separate event, World Environment Day, is organized by the United Nations and observed annually on June 5.

President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon plant a tree on the White House South Lawn to recognize the first Earth Day.

The seeds that grew into the first Earth Day were planted by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. An ardent conservationist and former two-term governor of Wisconsin, Nelson had long sought ways to increase the potency of the environment as a political issue. The extraordinary attention garnered by Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, the famous 1968 Earthrise NASA photograph of the Earth from the Moon, the saturation news coverage given to the Santa Barbara oil spill[18] and the Cuyahoga River catching fire in early 1969[19] led Nelson to think the time was ripe for an environmental initiative. As a result of interactions with his staff and with Fred Dutton,[20] a prominent Democratic operative who had been Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign manager, Nelson became convinced that environmental teach-ins on college campuses could serve as such a vehicle.[21]

Teach-ins had been held on hundreds of college campuses to debate the war in Vietnam. They generally reflected the divide between those who thought of Vietnam as a bulwark to stop additional countries falling to communism like dominos, versus those who believed that the war was the latest stage of a nationalist, anti-colonialist campaign[22] by Vietnamese who had fought against China, then France, Japan, France again, and now the United States. These debates elevated arguments over the war in the public consciousness and enlisted a generation of student activists.

Nelson asked public interest lawyer Anthony Roisman[23] to establish a non-profit, Environmental Teach-In, Inc., to manage the campaign, and recruited a small board of directors. He asked Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey[14] to co-chair the board to ensure it was bipartisan and bicameral.[15]

On September 20, 1969, Senator Nelson first announced his plans for an "environmental teach-In" in a little-publicized talk at the University of Washington. "I am convinced that the same concern the youth of this nation took in changing this nation's priorities on the war in Vietnam and on civil rights can be shown for the problem of the environment. That is why I plan to see to it that a national teach-in is held."[16]

Senator Nelson went on to encourage teach-ins at many more speeches. A November talk at Airlie House had a New York Times reporter in the audience. The resulting front-page article[17] was a turning point. Letters of inquiry from across the country began to pour into Nelson's Senate office. The article piqued the interest of Denis Hayes, then a graduate student at Harvard. Hayes traveled to Washington, D.C., and arranged a 10-minute visit with Senator Nelson (which stretched into two hours).[24] Hayes returned to Harvard with the charter to organize Boston. After a few days of reference checks,[25] he was asked to drop out of Harvard to become executive director of the national campaign.[26]

As the talented regional coordinators fanned out across the country, however, they immediately encountered two problems. First, by 1970, the concept of "teach-ins" had become passé. Moreover, teach-ins generally involved debates, and no one was pro-pollution. Second, and more troubling, leading activists on college campuses were deeply involved in the anti-war and civil rights movements. They tended to view the environment as a distraction.[26]

The "Earth Day" name

The solution to the first problem came from an unexpected direction. Shortly after the turn of the year, Julien Koenig stopped by the national offices and volunteered to help. Koenig was a Madison Avenue giant. His campaign for Volkswagen, "Think Small," was later cited by Advertising Age as the "greatest advertising campaign of the 20th century."[28]

Over coffee, Hayes confided that the "teach-in" moniker was not working and asked whether Koenig had any ideas. Koenig asked for a few days. A week later, he returned with an assortment of mock-ups for ads, laid out around the announcement of "Ecology Day," "Environment Day," "Earth Day," and "E Day." Koenig said that his personal favorite was Earth Day - in part because April 22 happened to be his birthday, and "birthday" rhymes with "Earth Day."[29] Hayes immediately agreed. Koenig offered to prepare a fully refined ad. Hayes insisted that it include a small coupon soliciting funds for the threadbare operation. Koenig's ad was visually arresting, and perfectly summed up the issues and values, the feisty-but-welcoming tone that the campaign had adopted. Hayes loved it and decided to bet the farm. He committed about half of all the money in the campaign's bank account to buy a full page in the Sunday New York Times opinion section.[30]

The ad was a huge success. Overnight, "Earth Day" became the almost-universally-used name for the upcoming event. The ad generated more than enough revenue to repay its cost, and thousands of potential organizers sent in their names and addresses along with their checks. In future months, magazines and alternative newspapers ran the ad for free, generating still more names and more financial support. The national office started using Environmental Action, rather than Environmental Teach-in, on its letterhead and publications to promote Earth Day.[31]

At this point, Hayes made a far-reaching decision. In those early days, it would have been easy to obtain trademark protection for Earth Day and force compliance with a set of standards by anyone using it. Hayes decided, however, that he wanted the name to be broadly used by anyone who planned to focus on environmental issues that spring.[32]

Walt Kelly created an anti-pollution poster featuring his comic strip character Pogo with the quotation " We have met the enemy and he is us" to promote the 1970 Earth Day. Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action to change human behavior and provoke policy changes.[34]

By far the largest source of funding for the first Earth Day was organized labor. Walter Reuther had led the United Auto Workers (UAW) since 1946, and he was a progressive supporter of civil rights, opposed the war, and championed the environment. He was a founding member of the Coalition for Clean Air, which successfully lobbied for the Clean Air Act of 1970. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, made the first donation to support the first Earth Day in the amount of $2,000 (equivalent to $15,071 in 2022).[37] Under his leadership, the UAW also funded telephone capabilities so that the organizers could communicate and coordinate with each other from all across the United States.[7] The UAW also financed, printed, and mailed all of the literature and other materials for the first Earth Day and mobilized its members to participate in the public demonstrations across the country. According to Denis Hayes, "The UAW was by far the largest contributor to the first Earth Day" and "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!" Hayes further said, "Walter's presence at our first press conference utterly changed the dynamics of the coverage-we had instant credibility."[38]

The Dirty Dozen

The staff of Environmental Teach-In resigned immediately after Earth Day, and most moved directly to a new organization, Environmental Action, with a tax status that permitted lobbying and a more activist stance.[39] EA immediately confronted a problem that had been looming in the background throughout the campaign. Some of the staff had been drawn to the movement through science and culture and felt that politics was inherently dirty and government was irredeemably compromised. This group believed that by living lives of voluntary simplicity, employing tools like those that filled the resolutely-nonpolitical Whole Earth Catalog, they could force the world to adapt to them. Their theory of change was modeled loosely on the southern African Americans who sat at segregated lunch counters, drank from segregated lunch counters, and sat in the front of the bus, it ignored the role of strategic litigation[40] federal legislation, and electoral politics[41] in cementing lasting change.

In order to square the circle, Hayes proposed that the group not endorse any candidates but that it try to defeat 12 of the worst. If having a terrible environmental record became a political liability, it would inevitably lead to better environmental legislation. Haft was selected to coordinate the Dirty Dozen campaign. With just $50,000 to defeat 12 incumbent members of the House, the odds were long.[42]

To improve the odds, the group selected candidates who not only had lousy environmental records-which were plentiful-but who also had won their most recent race by a narrow margin; who were on the wrong side of an important environmental issue in their districts; and who lived in areas where talented Earth Day organizers resided. In the end, seven of the original Dirty Dozen were defeated-five Republicans and two Democrats. And the first to fall was George Fallon, chairman of the hugely powerful House Public Works Committee.[43]

Representative Pete McCloskey, Earth Day co-chair, credits the Dirty Dozen's defeat of key congressional leaders with the unstoppable wave of environmental legislation that immediately followed: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and others.[44]

The University of Michigan teach-in

The focus on pollution

Regional coordinators focused heavily on finding and enlisting the best local leadership in major metropolitan areas. For instance, Hayes flew to Chicago to help organize a subtle coup, replacing a pro-business Earth Day organization with a Saul Alinsky affiliated group called Campaign Against Pollution.[48] CAP abruptly shifted the focus away from recycling to focus on two issues: opposition to a massive proposed freeway program, the Crosstown Expressway, and protesting the uncontrolled air pollution Commonwealth Edison was pouring into Chicago's air-more sulfur pollution than all other companies combined.[49] Although mailings went out to thousands of communities of all sizes, the campaign focused especially hard on large cities.

New York City

In the winter of 1969-1970, a group of students met at Columbia University to hear Denis Hayes talk about his plans for Earth Day. Among the group were Fred Kent, Pete Grannis, and Kristin and William Hubbard. This group agreed to head up the New York City activities within the national movement. Fred Kent took the lead in renting an office and recruiting volunteers. The liberal Republican mayor of New York, John Lindsay, saw the environment as an issue that could help unite his then-troubled city. Moreover, he viewed the environment as a progressive wedge issue that would position him as clearly distinct from President Nixon's ultra-conservative "Southern Strategy,"[50] in a struggle for the soul of the Republican Party. He became fully engaged in supporting the event, and he delegated many of the talented young staff who had been drawn to his administration to help as well.

"The big break came when Mayor Lindsay agreed to shut down Fifth Avenue for the event. A giant cheer went up in the office on that day," according to Kristin Hubbard (now Kristin Alexandre). "From that time on we used Mayor Lindsay's offices and even his staff. I was Speaker Coordinator but had tremendous help from Lindsay staffer Judith Crichton." Mayor Lindsay completely closed down Fifth Avenue to traffic from E. 14th Street to West 59th Street (Central Park)-more than 2 miles-and 14th Street between 3rd and 7th Avenues.[51] An estimated one million participants took part-right in the nerve center of the nation's communications complex.

In addition to shutting down Fifth Avenue, Mayor John Lindsay made Central Park available for Earth Day. In Union Square, the New York Times estimated crowds of up to 20,000 people at any given time and, perhaps, more than 100,000 over the course of the day.[52] Since Manhattan was also the home of NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek, it provided the best possible anchor for national coverage from their reporters throughout the country.[53]

Philadelphia

U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie was the keynote speaker on Earth Day in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. Other notable attendees included consumer protection activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, landscape architect Ian McHarg, Nobel prize-winning Harvard biochemist George Wald, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, and poet Allen Ginsberg.

Mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting the status of environmental issues onto the world stage, Earth Day activities in 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Unlike the first Earth Day in 1970, this 20th Anniversary was waged with stronger marketing tools, greater access to television and radio, and multimillion-dollar budgets.[56]

The official logo of the Mount Everest Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb

Two separate groups formed to sponsor Earth Day events in 1990: The Earth Day 20 Foundation, assembled by Edward Furia (Project Director of Earth Week in 1970), and Earth Day 1990, assembled by Denis Hayes (National Coordinator for Earth Day 1970). Senator Gaylord Nelson, the original founder of Earth Day, was honorary chairman for both groups. The two did not combine forces over disagreements about leadership of combined organization and incompatible structures and strategies. Among the disagreements, key Earth Day 20 Foundation organizers were critical of Earth Day 1990 for including on their board Hewlett-Packard, a company that at the time was the second-biggest emitter of chlorofluorocarbons in Silicon Valley and refused to switch to alternative solvents. In terms of marketing, Earth Day 20 had a grassroots approach to organizing and relied largely on locally based groups like the National Toxics Campaign, a Boston-based coalition of 1,000 local groups concerned with industrial pollution. Earth Day 1990 employed strategies including focus group testing, direct mail fundraising, and email marketing.[56]

The Earth Day 20 Foundation highlighted its April 22 activities in George, Washington, near the Columbia River with a live satellite phone call with members of the historic Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb who called from their base camp on Mount Everest to pledge their support for world peace and attention to environmental issues.[57] The Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb was led by Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mt. Everest (many years earlier), and marked the first time in history that mountaineers from the United States, Soviet Union, and China had roped together to climb a mountain, let alone Mt. Everest.[57] The group also collected more than two tons of trash (transported down the mountain by support groups along the way) that was left behind on Mount Everest from previous climbing expeditions. The master of ceremonies for the Columbia Gorge event was the TV star, John Ratzenberger, from Cheers, and the headlining musician was the "Father of Rock and Roll", Chuck Berry.[57]

Warner Bros. Records released an Earth Day-themed single in 1990 entitled "Tomorrow's World", written by Kix Brooks (who would later become one-half of Brooks & Dunn) and Pam Tillis.[58] The song featured vocals from Lynn Anderson, Butch Baker, Shane Barmby, Billy Hill, Suzy Bogguss, Kix Brooks, T. Graham Brown, The Burch Sisters, Holly Dunn, Foster & Lloyd, Vince Gill, William Lee Golden, Highway 101, Shelby Lynne, Johnny Rodriguez, Dan Seals, Les Taylor, Pam Tillis, Mac Wiseman, and Kevin Welch. It charted at number 74 on the Hot Country Songs chart dated May 5, 1990.[59]

Earth Day 2020

Earth Day 2020 is the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day.[123] Celebrations included activities such as the Great Global CleanUp, Citizen Science, Advocacy, Education, and art.[124][125][126] The theme for Earth Day 2020 was " climate action".[127] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the planned activities were moved online.[128] Notably, a coalition of youth activist organized by the Future Coalition hosted Earth Day Live, a three-day livestream commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in the United States.[129] Celebratory activities centered around five components: citizen science, volunteering, community engagement, education, and the role of art in furthering the cause.

Earth Day 2021

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the Leaders Summit on Climate

The Biden administration organized a 2021 Leaders' Climate Summit. This virtual Zoom-like meeting featured 40 world leaders and dozens of speakers, including Pope Francis, Xiye Bastida, Danielle Merfeld, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, GE Renewable Energy, Anna Borg, President and CEO, Vattenfall, and Abdullah Subai, Minister of Municipality and Environment, Qatar.[132][133][134]

Earth Day 2022

Earth Day 2023

On Earth Day (22 April) 2023, a collection of images to date of Earth taken from various deep space distances in the Solar System was published.[137]

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Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection.

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Earth Day was founded in 1970 as a day of education about environmental issues, and Earth Day 2022 will occur on Friday, April 22.

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Earth Day was founded in 1970 as a day of education about environmental issues, and Earth Day 2022 will occur on Friday, April 22. The holiday is now a global celebration that's sometimes extended into Earth Week, a full seven days of events focused on green living. The brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson and inspired by the protests of the 1960s, Earth Day began as a "national teach-in on the environment" and was held on April 22 to maximize the number of students that could be reached on university campuses. By raising public awareness of pollution, Nelson hoped to bring environmental causes into the national spotlight.

Earth Day History

By the early 1960s, Americans were becoming aware of the effects of pollution on the environment. Rachel Carson's 1962 bestseller Silent Spring raised the specter of the dangerous effects of pesticides on the American countryside. Later in the decade, a 1969 fire on Cleveland's Cuyahoga River shed light on the problem of chemical waste disposal. Until that time, protecting the planet's natural resources was not part of the national political agenda, and the number of activists devoted to large-scale issues such as industrial pollution was minimal. Factories pumped pollutants into the air, lakes and rivers with few legal consequences. Big, gas-guzzling cars were considered a sign of prosperity. Only a small portion of the American population was familiar with-let alone practiced-recycling.
WATCH: How the Earth Was Made on HISTORY Vault.

Did you know? A highlight of the United Nations' Earth Day celebration in New York City is the ringing of the Peace Bell, a gift from Japan, at the exact moment of the vernal equinox.

Who Started Earth Day?

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962, Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, was determined to convince the federal government that the planet was at risk. In 1969, Nelson, considered one of the leaders of the modern environmental movement, developed the idea for Earth Day after being inspired by the anti- Vietnam War "teach-ins" that were taking place on college campuses around the United States. According to Nelson, he envisioned a large-scale, grassroots environmental demonstration "to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda."

Nelson announced the Earth Day concept at a conference in Seattle in the fall of 1969 and invited the entire nation to get involved. He later recalled:

"The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes and air-and they did so with spectacular exuberance."
READ MORE: How the First Earth Day Was Borne From 1960s Counterculture

Denis Hayes, a young activist who had served as student president at Stanford University, was selected as Earth Day's national coordinator, and he worked with an army of student volunteers and several staff members from Nelson's Senate office to organize the project. According to Nelson, "Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself."

On the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, rallies were held in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and most other American cities, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In New York City, Mayor John Lindsay closed off a portion of Fifth Avenue to traffic for several hours and spoke at a rally in Union Square with actors Paul Newman and Ali McGraw. In Washington, D.C., thousands of people listened to speeches and performances by singer Pete Seeger and others, and Congress went into recess so its members could speak to their constituents at Earth Day events.
READ MORE: How Nixon Became the Unlikely Champion of the Endangered Species Act
The first Earth Day was effective at raising awareness about environmental issues and transforming public attitudes. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, "Public opinion polls indicate that a permanent change in national priorities followed Earth Day 1970. When polled in May 1971, 25 percent of the U.S. public declared protecting the environment to be an important goal, a 2,500 percent increase over 1969." Earth Day kicked off the "Environmental decade with a bang," as Senator Nelson later put it. During the 1970s, a number of important pieces of environmental legislation were passed, among them the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Improvement Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Another key development was the establishment in December 1970 of the Environmental Protection Agency, which was tasked with protecting human health and safeguarding the natural environment-air, water and land.

What Do You Do For Earth Day?

Since 1970, Earth Day celebrations have grown. In 1990, Earth Day went global, with 200 million people in over 140 nations participating, according to the Earth Day Network (EDN), a nonprofit organization that coordinates Earth Day activities. In 2000, Earth Day focused on clean energy and involved hundreds of millions of people in 184 countries and 5,000 environmental groups, according to EDN. Activities ranged from a traveling, talking drum chain in Gabon, Africa, to a gathering of hundreds of thousands of people at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
PHOTOS: Our Changing View of Earth from Space
Today, the Earth Day Network collaborates with more than 17,000 partners and organizations in 174 countries. According to EDN, more than 1 billion people are involved in Earth Day activities, making it "the largest secular civic event in the world."

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Earth Day was founded in 1970 as a day of education about environmental issues, and Earth Day 2022 will occur on Friday, April 22. The holiday is now a global celebration that's sometimes extended into Earth Week, a full seven days of events focused on green living.

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Antarctica has exceeded 20C for the first time, after researchers logged a temperature of 20.75C on an island off the coast of the peninsula.

Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP they had "never seen a temperature this high in Antarctica".

But he warned the temperature, logged on 9 February, was just one reading and not part of a long-term data set.

The continent also hit a record last week, with a temperature reading of 18.3C on the Antarctic Peninsula.

World's biggest iceberg makes a run for it

Journey to the 'doomsday glacier'

Deepest point on land found in Antarctica

This latest reading was taken at a monitoring station on Seymour Island, part of a chain of islands off the same peninsula, at the northernmost point of the continent.

Although the temperature is a record high, Mr Schaefer emphasized that the reading was not part of a wider study and so, in itself, could not be used to predict a trend.

"We can't use this to anticipate climatic changes in the future. It's a data point," he said. "It's simply a signal that something different is happening in that area."

How fast is Antarctica warming?

According to the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO), temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by almost 3C over the past 50 years, and that about 87% of the glaciers along its west coast have "retreated" in that time.

Over the past 12 years, the glaciers have shown an "accelerated retreat", it adds.

Last month was also Antarctica's warmest January on record.

The previous record for the entire Antarctic region - which includes the continent, islands and ocean that are in the Antarctic climatic zone - was 19.8C, logged in January 1982.

Last July, the Arctic region hit its own record temperature of 21C, logged by a base at the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.

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Antarctica temperature exceeds 20C for first time

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Antarctica has exceeded 20C for the first time, after researchers logged a temperature of 20.75C on an island off the coast of the peninsula. Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP they had "never seen a temperature this high in Antarctica".