environment

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Death and devastation.Heavy rains in southern Brazil they provoked massive floods and landslides in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil.More than half of the state's 497 cities were affected by the storms, with roads and bridges destroyed in several areas.The storms also caused landslides and the collapse of a hydroelectric dam near the town of Bento Gonçalves, killing 30 people.Authorities said a second dam in the area was also at risk of collapsing due to rising water levels. “It is the fourth environmental disaster of this type in a year, after the floods of July, September and November 2023.Flooding across the state has surpassed that recorded during the historic deluge of 1941,” remember AP.The Guaiba River, which runs through the city of 1.4 million inhabitants, he reached the record level of 5.3 meters. “Residents of several...

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. It took a red spot on the European Space Agency (ESA) cartography and a podium placement in a ranking of little relevance, as if it were an Olympics competition, to make the poor air quality of the Po Valley news.Which isn't so much news, it's everyday life in certain periods of the year and should be newsworthy due to its periodicity.But it is enough to make people talk about a systemic issue once again in terms of emergency and inevitability and trigger the angry reaction of mayors and the usual brawl of comments which in the end only generate noise and confusion, shifting attention from the real crux of the matter :namely that air pollution is “an important public health issue that seriously threatens the well-being of people and our environment”, as stated just last October by Maria Neira, Director of the Environment, Climate Change and Health Department of the W...

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The columns of tractors that have blocked the roads of France and Germany in recent weeks are nothing new.They are just the latest wave of a growing protest by European farmers against some decisions by national and European governments to protect nature from pollution generated by agricultural production and livestock farming.For some of them, already in difficulty due to the energy crisis and the consequences of the pandemic, paying higher taxes for the pollution produced is unsustainable.Others say they feel overwhelmed by bureaucracy and that they are unheard and misunderstood by city dwellers who eat the food they grow without knowing where it comes from.In agricultural giants such as the Netherlands and France, farmers have expressed frustration at pressure from governments to produce less, after years of encouragement to produce more. “In recent years we have exp...

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. European countries must end the repression and criminalization of peaceful climate protests and act urgently to reduce emissions in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C, he has declared the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst. At the end of a year-long investigation, which included gathering evidence from several European countries, Forst said the crackdown on peaceful environmental activists around the world poses a grave threat to democracy and human rights.All states involved in the UN expert's investigation into environmental defenders have joined the Aarhus Convention, which holds that peaceful environmental protest is a legitimate exercise of the public's right to participate in decision-making processes and that those who participate must be protected.Yet the response to peaceful environmental pr...

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. What is the future of the planet?In what direction is global warming going?Is there hope to avoid the worst?Are we still in time to stop the rise in temperatures?It's causing a lot of discussion survey of Guardian which asked 380 climate scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) what they predict for the future of our planet.According to the majority of experts contacted, by 2100 global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels, almost half a global warming of 3°C, while just 6% believe that the 1.5°C agreed with the Paris Agreement in 2015. The limit of 1.5°C has been indicated by the international community as a threshold beyond which not to go in order to avoid it the triggering of dangerous chain effects which could irreparably damage some ecosystems of our planet with catastrophic consequence...

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. 2023 will be remembered as the hottest year ever, the year of extreme weather events, heat waves, droughts, devastating fires, floods, the year of the criminalization of climate activists and one of the United Nations Climate Change most controversial ever he brought at the beginning of the end of the era of fossil fuels, without however putting their gradual elimination on paper. The agreement reached at COP28 and our future In early 2023, the International Energy Agency (IEA) spoke peak oil, gas and coal consumption will be exceeded for the first time before 2030.“It's not a question of 'if', but 'how soon' - and the sooner it happens, the better for all of us,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA.According to a scenario proposed by the International Energy Agency, based on the policies declared by the governments of various states around the wo...

What will happen to the Green Deal in light of the results of the European elections on 9 June?This is what many experts, activists and citizens concerned about the advance of far-right parties in France and Germany and the contraction of support for the Greens which in 2019 were the fourth force in the European Parliament, also driven by the driving force of the Fridays for Future and the student climate strikes.At the time, the newly elected President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, he declared to MEPs: “If there is one area where the world needs our leadership, it is climate protection…We don't have a minute to waste.The faster Europe moves, the greater the benefit for our citizens, our competitiveness and our prosperity." "Climate:2019 was the year of awareness, 2020 is the decisive year to intervene", we headlined on January 1, 2020. In these five years everything has changed.In between there were the pandemic, the lockdow...