italiano
english
français
española
中国
日本の
العربية
Deutsch
한국어
Português
Russian
https://www.valigiablu.it/crisi-climatica-plastica-inquinamento/
- |
The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
A new relationship of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), “Turning off the Tap:How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy” (“Turn off the tap:how the world can end plastic pollution and create a sustainable circular economy”), outlined a roadmap to dramatically reduce plastic pollution.
According to the report – which outlines the scale and nature of the changes needed to create a sustainable, human- and environmentally-friendly circular economy – plastic pollution could be reduced by 80% by 2040 if countries and companies used existing technologies to make significant policy and market changes.
UNEP proposes three types of interventions - reuse, recycling, reorientation and diversification - which imply the transition to a circular economy.This step would result in savings of over one trillion dollars, considering the costs and revenues of recycling.While another $3 trillion would be saved through indirect impacts on health, climate, air pollution, degradation of marine ecosystems and litigation costs.Furthermore, this change could lead to a net increase of 700,000 jobs by 2040, especially in low-income countries, significantly improving the living conditions of millions of workers engaged in informal settings.
However, there is not much time to waste, the report adds.A five-year delay could lead to an increase of 80 million tonnes of plastic pollution by 2040.
“The way we produce, use and dispose of plastic pollutes ecosystems, creates risks for human health and destabilizes the climate,” he commented UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen.
Plastic causes widespread pollution on land and at sea, causing harm to human health and damaging vulnerable marine habitats such as coral reefs and mangroves. According to a 2019 report from the charity Tearfund, between 400,000 and 1 million people die every year in developing countries from diseases linked to plastic and other poorly managed waste.
Plastic production also has a strong impact on climate change, as it is made with fossil fuels such as oil and gas. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), During their life cycle, plastics emit 3.4% of global warming emissions.
UNEP suggests defining and implementing design and safety standards for the disposal of non-recyclable plastic waste and making manufacturers responsible for products that release microplastics.
This is also the position of a recent report, published jointly by the nonprofit Defend Our Health and Bloomberg Philanthropies' Beyond Petrochemicals campaign.PET plastic bottles cause dangerous chemical pollution at every stage of their life cycle and therefore beverage companies such as Coca-Cola should be “held accountable for the supply chain impacts of their plastics,” the report reads. relationship.
“Plastic has a terrible impact on the health of the population,” he declared Mike Belliveau, executive director of Defend Our Health.Belliau urged the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to place tougher limits on the use of toxic chemicals and asked beverage companies to replace at least half of their plastic bottles with container systems reusable and rechargeable by 2030.
The report analyzes the impacts of plastic bottles throughout the supply chain, from the raw materials needed to make them to the point of disposal.While industry trade groups like to tout plastic bottles as “100% recyclable,” 70% of them are sent to landfills or incinerated, causing air pollution that disproportionately affects low-income communities and communities of color, yes reads in the study.Of the remaining 30%, only a third is transformed into new bottles, the rest is wasted during the recycling process or transformed into lower quality plastic products, such as carpet.Furthermore, “with global plastic waste production likely to triple by 2060, there is a risk that recycling infrastructure will not be able to keep pace.”
The first draft of the UN treaty on plastic pollution is expected just this week after countries agreed last December to reach a legally binding agreement by 2024.French President Macron, who called plastic pollution a "time bomb", he urged the States gathered in France at the UNESCO headquarters to put an end to the current "globalized and unsustainable" production model.
However, negotiators meeting in Paris have different ideas on how to eliminate plastics that harm the environment.One of the biggest issues concerns whether the agreement should focus on cleaning up the plastic waste already clogging the world's oceans or whether it should go further, limiting the production of potentially harmful components in polymer products or even imposing a ban on the use of plastic.The United States, one of the largest producers and users of plastic, is so far pushing for the first option, reports Bloomberg.
How podcaster Joe Rogan is fueling climate misinformation on TikTok
A clip of popular podcaster Joe Rogan pushing a conspiracy theory linking global warming to the Earth's magnetic field went viral on TikTok, despite the platform's policies prohibiting climate misinformation.It's just the latest example of how Big Tech companies continue to fuel false and misleading claims about climate change online.
The site Media Matters for America he identified seven TikTok videos promoting the so-called "Adam and Eve" theory, which claims, without evidence, that shifts in the Earth's magnetic poles have long caused massive swings in the planet's climate and other catastrophic events in the past, including floods mentioned in the biblical story of Noah's Ark.
In a Jan. 18 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Rogan used this conspiracy theory to downplay the climate crisis and calls efforts to address it “a stalemate.”
Taken from a book written in 1965 by Chan Thomas, who worked in the aerospace industry and claimed to be psychic, the "Adam and Eve" theory holds that the Earth's magnetic poles shift every several thousand years.According to Thomas, this shift in turn causes catastrophic events, such as tsunamis.Thomas titled his book "The Story of Adam and Eve", hence the name of the theory.
According to the reconstruction of Media Matters, the book was not available to the public until the CIA declassified 57 pages of it in 2013.Since then, the book has fueled conspiracy theorists, some of whom believe that current extreme weather events are evidence of the veracity of Thomas' claims and that a shift in Earth's magnetic field is approaching.
But these statements are not based on scientific evidence.In fact, NASA reports that large shifts of the planet's magnetic poles have occurred several hundred times in the last 160 million years, but that the available studies "don't show anything relevant, such as apocalyptic events or major extinctions."
In April, TikTok announced it was stepping up enforcement of its new policies that include removing any content about climate change “that undermines established scientific consensus, such as content that denies the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it ”.However, until a few days ago, the videos had not yet been deleted.
Indian workers trapped in a vicious cycle of coal and heat waves
So far, 2023 in India has been less scorching than 2022, when temperatures in New Delhi topped 49°C.However, this year also promises to be among the hottest, generating a vicious circle that pushes to increase electricity consumption to alleviate heat waves and also to increase the demand for fuel from large coal mines.
Despite “significant progress in renewable energy, India, the world's most populous country, still relies on coal for about three-quarters of its energy production and will need it for years to come.The fuel is relatively cheap and, crucially for an energy-importing economy, is easily available domestically.And so Indian workers find themselves trapped, crushed in the yoke of coal and heat waves with all the health and economic productivity costs that come from working in inhumane conditions." it reads in an article by Bloomberg.
The combination of heat and humidity can make some parts of India among the most uninhabitable places in the world, the article continues.In the presence of high humidity, even relatively modest temperatures can compromise the body's ability to cool itself through sweating.And this can lead to fainting, heat exhaustion and heart attacks.
“With the current level of global warming, the heat is exceeding the limit of survival,” explains Fahad Saeed, an expert at Climate Analytics.
The problem is that demand for electricity in India is growing and coal will remain an important part of India's power sector in the coming decades.The Central Electricity Authority estimates it will account for 54% of production in 2030, and the country is still building coal-fired plants.
“This will delay cutting emissions, and that's a big concern, not just for India but for the whole world,” explains Ronita Bardhan, an engineer at the University of Cambridge.“We are not saying that India should completely stop using coal.But probably phasing out and understanding the opportunities and potential of renewable energy, understanding where investments can happen…need further discussion."
Last year, the Modi government raised its targets for energy produced from clean sources, focusing on incentives to increase the production of solar or wind energy and aims to become a global hub for the production of green hydrogen and ammonia.But, at the same time, Delhi has resisted international calls to set precise deadlines for eliminating the use of coal.
United Nations calls for protection of climate activists after crackdown in Germany
“Climate activists – led by the moral voice of young people – continued to pursue their goals even in the darkest days.They need to be protected and we need them now more than ever."After the crackdown on a group of protesters in Germany, the spokesperson of the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, he intervened in an article published by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to ask for the protection of climate activists and their right to demonstrate, in all cases respecting the law and safety.
“Protesters have been instrumental at crucial times in pushing governments and businesses to do much more:global climate goals would already be out of reach without them,” Dujarric added.
In recent weeks, In an investigation against the Last Generation group, which has disrupted city traffic in German cities for months, police raided the homes of Last Generation climate activists, shut down the group's website and froze two bank accounts.The members of the group were accused of having "formed a criminal organization" in the process of planning "new criminal actions".Two of the defendants are suspected of sabotaging the Trieste-Ingolstadt oil pipeline - considered critical infrastructure and therefore subject to special protection - in April last year.No arrests were made.Many commentators and other environmentalists have condemned the crackdown as a disproportionate state response to a peaceful protest.
Throughout 2022, Last Generation has disrupted traffic across Germany as a form of protest against the Government's climate policies.Many conservative politicians have criticized the protests and called for harsh punishments.Chancellor Olaf Scholz had also called the protest actions "completely crazy".
Preview image:Oceana via video frame YouTube