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EXCERPT: As climate change intensifies, scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about how animals will cope with a more unpredictable world. One way to gain insight is by studying how animals have already responded to natural climate fluctuations. But for long-lived, social animals like humans and other primates, gathering this kind of evidence takes time.
BELEM, Brazil — A fire briefly spread through pavilions being used for U.N. climate talks in Brazil and prompted evacuations Thursday on the next-to-last day of the conference, and officials said 13 people were treated for smoke inhalation.
Organizers said the fire was controlled in about six minutes. Fire officials ordered the evacuation of the entire site for the conference, known as COP30, and the venue remained closed for about seven hours following the fire.
Attendees trickled back into the COP30 venue after it reopened. Some posed for pictures in the nighttime glow of the signage at the entrance. Others returned to rooms further from the pavilions to resume negotiations or to retrieve belongings that had been left behind. Security staff were stationed behind metal barricades to keep people out of the pavilions and a curtain veiled off the area that the blaze had destroyed.
The heads of state of about 50 countries are expected in the Amazonian city of Belem for a summit on Thursday and Friday, before the annual UN Conference of Parties (COP) climate negotiations that open next week. Almost every nation is participating aside from the United States, with President Donald Trump having branded climate science a “con job”.
from www.france24.com
The world faces a “new reality” as we have reached the first of many Earth system tipping points that will cause catastrophic harm unless humanity takes urgent action, according to a report released by the University of Exeter and international partners.
With ministers gathering ahead of the COP30 summit, the second Global Tipping Points Report finds that warm-water coral reefs—on which nearly a billion people and a quarter of all marine life depend—are passing their tipping point.
Climate change threatens Europe’s resources, European Union warns – India Today Source Link Excerpt:
The European Environment Agency said biodiversity in Europe is declining due to unsustainable production and consumption, especially in the food system.
Due to over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and invasive alien species, more than 80 per cent of protected habitats are in a poor or bad state, it said,
“The degradation of our natural world jeopardises the European way of life,” the agency said in its report: “Europe’s environment 2025”.
“Europe is critically dependent on natural resources for economic security, to which climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat.”
But governments are grappling with other priorities including industrial competitiveness, and negotiations on EU climate targets have stoked divisions between richer and poorer countries.
EU country set to ban movement of sheep and goats | World | News– www.express.co.uk Source Link Excerpt:
The government of an EU country is threatening to impose a strict ban on the movement of sheep and goats as it battles a deadly virus. Greece has seen an outbreak of smallpox in its herds of goats and sheep, which has led to tens of thousands of animals being slaughtered.
Data from Greece’s Ministry of Agriculture shows that over 260,000 sheep and goats have been culled in the twelve months to August. Some 1,100 farms have been forced to shut after reporting cases of the highly contagious disease. Although the virus cannot spread to humans, the health crisis could see prices for mutton and goat’s meat steeply rise.
The outbreak also threatens to deal a huge blow to the export of feta – Greece’s trademark salty cheese made from goat and sheep’s milk.
In an attempt to bring the outbreak under control, the government announced on Monday a 10-day plan.
Officials have called on stockbreeders to tighten biosecurity measures for their flocks, as well as ordering vets to step-up on site inspections at farms.
Additionally the government has urged local officials to establish disinfection points to control the movement of flocks across the country.
UN says strong chance average warming will top 1.5 degrees celsius in next 4 years– timesofindia.indiatimes.com Source Link Excerpt:
The United Nations warned on Wednesday that there is a 70 per cent chance that average warming from 2025 to 2029 would exceed the 1.5 degrees celsius international benchmark.The planet is therefore expected to remain at historic levels of warming after the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024, according to an annual climate report published by the World Meteorological Organization, the UN’s weather and climate agency.”We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record,” said the WMO’s deputy secretary-general Ko Barrett.”Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels — and to pursue efforts to peg it at 1.5 degrees celsius.The targets are calculated relative to the 1850-1900 average, before humanity began industrially burning coal, oil and gas, which emit carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas largely responsible for climate change.The more optimistic 1.5 degrees celsius target is one that growing numbers of climate scientists now consider impossible to achieve, as CO2 emissions are still increasing.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The UN’s highest court is handing down a historic opinion on climate change Wednesday, a decision that could set a legal benchmark for action around the globe to the climate crisis.
After years of lobbying by vulnerable island nations who fear they could disappear under rising sea waters, the U.N. General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice in 2023 for an advisory opinion, a non-binding but important basis for international obligations.
A panel of 15 judges was tasked with answering two questions. First, what are countries obliged to do under international law to protect the climate and environment from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions? Second, what are the legal consequences for governments when their acts, or lack of action, have significantly harmed the climate and environment?
“The stakes could not be higher. The survival of my people and so many others is on the line,” Arnold Kiel Loughman, attorney general of the island nation of Vanuatu, told the court during a week of hearings in December.
In the decade up to 2023, sea levels have risen by a global average of around 4.3 centimeters (1.7 inches), with parts of the Pacific rising higher still. The world has also warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times because of the burning of fossil fuels.
Puerto Rico withdrew its $1 billion climate lawsuit against the oil and gas industry on Friday following the Trump administration’s move to block two states from seeking legal damages for similar alleged environmental damages.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, the territory’s government said in the notice that it “voluntarily dismisses this entire case,” with no further elaboration as to why. President Donald Trump has repeatedly condemned state-level climate policies that impact domestic energy production, and on April 30, his Department of Justice (DOJ) filed two separate lawsuits against Hawaii and Michigan after both states considered filing similar complaints against the oil and gas industry.
“This dismissal adds to the growing momentum among federal and state courts holding that states and municipalities cannot use state laws to sue over climate change,” Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP, counsel for Chevron Corporation wrote in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “These claims are precluded and preempted by federal law and must be dismissed under clear U.S. Supreme Court precedent.”
Trump’s Energy Secretary Offers Africa Freedom From Biden’s Climate Imperialism– americanactionnews.com Source Link Excerpt:
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has signaled a change that could mean the difference between life and death for millions in Africa. Speaking at the “Powering Africa Summit” in Washington, D.C., Wright told leaders of a continent of 1.5 billion people that the Trump administration “has no desire to tell you what to do with your energy system.” This is a departure from the Biden regime, which was aligned with much of the Western climate juggernaut imposing Green New Dealism on developing countries that couldn’t afford it and stood to suffer by it.
“It’s a paternalistic post-colonial attitude that I just can’t stand,” Wright said of the climate evangelism that sought to force others to abandon fossil fuels and adopt largely useless technologies like solar and wind energy.
UN says strong chance average warming will top 1.5 degrees celsius in next 4 years– timesofindia.indiatimes.com