Yet another country announces their intention to end the sale of fossil fuel cars. First it was France, then the United Kingdom and now it is China. Bloomberg has reportedthat the Chinese authorities have been looking a timeline for phasing out the sale of fossil fuel vehicles according to the Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Xin Guobin. On paper this move should be significant. China is one of the World’s largest automobile markets with over 28 million vehicles sold last year. China is in line with an industry that is rapidly improving electric cars and many will see the news as positive. The problem with China’s ban on fossil fuel cars is that it doesn’t do anything to solve the root cause of air pollution in its cities. It grabs headlines but instead China, England and France should be focusing on rethinking how we use our cities.
Jane Gleeson-WhiteSunday 10 September 2017 02.14 BST
James Thornton’s specialty is suing governments and corporations on behalf of his only client – the Earth – and he’s very good at it. In his four decades of legal practice across three continents, he’s never lost a case.
Pope Francis to World Leaders: 'Listen to the Cry of the Earth'
Pope Francis, who has a strong belief in the science of climate change, called upon world leaders on Wednesday to "listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, who suffer most because of the unbalanced ecology."
Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew I, the head of the Orthodox Christian Church, will issue a joint message to commemorate the annual "World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation" on Friday, the Associated Press reported.
Image captionElectric vehicles produPlans to promote electric vehicles in the UK do not go far enough to tackle air pollution, according to a leading government adviser.
Writing in the Guardian, Prof Frank Kelly said fewer cars, not just cleaner ones, were the key to cleaner air.
Electric cars produce particulates from their tyres and brakes which are linked to serious health problems.
Prof Kelly said that London should lead the way in promoting non-polluting transport policies.
ROME, Jun 5 2017 (IPS) - Now that president Donald Trump has announced the withdrawal of the world’s largest polluter in history—the United States, from the Paris Accord, perhaps one of the most specific warnings is what a United Nations independent expert on rights and the environment has just said: “We should be fully aware that we cannot enjoy our basic human rights without a healthy environment.”
Speaking in Geneva ahead of the World Environment Day on Monday 5 June, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, John H. Knox, said “We should all be alarmed at the accelerating loss of biodiversity on which healthy ecosystems depend.”
We depend on healthy natural ecosystems for so much – nutrition, shelter, clothing, the very water we drink and the air we breathe, Knox reminded. “And yet, natural forest area continues to decline, marine ecosystems are increasingly under siege, and estimated populations of vertebrate animals have declined by more than half since 1970.”
On March 1 1954, on Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, the US military detonated the world’s first lithium-deuteride hydrogen bomb, a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The radiation blew downwind, to the southeast, and irradiated the residents of Rongelap and Utirik atolls, and the crew of tuna boat Fukuryu Maru, “Lucky Dragon.”
by Rex Weyler - 5 May, 2017 at 1:30http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/nuclear-weapons-power-Chernobyl-Fukushima-danger/blog/59326/Blogpost
On March 1 1954, on Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, the US military detonated the world’s first lithium-deuteride hydrogen bomb, a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The radiation blew downwind, to the southeast, and irradiated the residents of Rongelap and Utirik atolls, and the crew of tuna boat Fukuryu Maru, “Lucky Dragon.”
The islanders and fishing crew suffered radiation sickness, hair loss, and peeling skin. Crew member, Aikichi Kuboyama, died six months later in a Hiroshima hospital. Island children, suffered lifelong health effects, including cancers, and most died prematurely. The Lucky Dragon sailors were exposed to 3-5 sieverts of radiation.
One sievert will cause severe radiation sickness leading to cancer and death. Five sieverts will kill half those exposed within a month (like the workers who died at Chernobyl within the first few week). Ten sieverts will kill any human being. Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims received 150 Sieverts. Even microorganisms perished.
Castle Bravo nuclear weapons test on Bikini Atoll
Today, inside the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactor-2, the melting core releases 530 sieverts per hour, enough to kill a human instantly and melt steel robotic equipment within two hours.
The Bhumia tribal community practices sustainable forestry: these women returning from the forest carry baskets of painstakingly gathered tree bark and dried cow dung for manure. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2017 (IPS) - Indigenous women, while experiencing the first and worst effects of climate change globally, are often in the frontline in struggles to protect the environment.
A forum organized by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) brought together indigenous women from around the world to discuss the effects of climate change in their communities and their work towards sustainable solutions.
APRIL 4, 2017NEWS OUTLET THE GUARDIAN @GUARDIANAUTHOR ARTHUR NESLEN @ARTHURNESLEN130
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Nine environmental groups are challenging the use of money earmarked by the United Nations for “innovative and transformational” climate adaptation projects to build or refit large hydroelectric dams associated with severe damage to ecosystems and Indigenous communities, as well as elevated greenhouse gas emissions.
Signatories include Friends of the Earth, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Foundation, and the Centre for International Environmental Law, The Guardian reports. The groups particularly object to plans to spend more than US$136 million from the UN’s Green Climate Fund on big dams in Nepal, Tajikistan, and the Solomon Islands.
The GCF, The Guardian recalls, was set up “to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020 for poor countries looking for innovative and transformational projects. These were supposed to promote ‘paradigm shifts’ to clean and climate-resilient energy, in the context of the UN’s sustainable development goals.”
Against that standard, “to use the Fund to build mega-dams ignores the risk they pose to ecology as well as climate,” the groups argue.
“Large dams are not suited to adapt to climate risks because they alter seasonal patterns, by storing floods and increasing dry period flows,” said Andrea Rodriguez, a senior attorney for the Inter-American Association for Environmental Defence. “Large infrastructure does not guarantee development or climate solutions.”
Many international agencies categorize hydropower as a clean renewable energy source because it emits no CO2 from water running through turbines to generate electricity. “But critics say this fails to take into account up to a billion tonnes of greenhouse gases created by dams each year,” The Guardian notes, “as well as the damage often inflicted on carbon sinks, and hydropower’s vulnerability to shifts in climate.” The dams in both Tajikistan and Nepal, for example, depend on water from dwindling mountain glaciers.
President of the Caribbean Development Bank Dr. Warren Smith says the bank is giving high priority to addressing the fallout from climate change in the region. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Apr 4 2017 (IPS) - From tourism-dependent nations like Barbados to those rich with natural resources like Guyana, climate change poses one of the biggest challenges for the countries of the Caribbean.
Nearly all of these countries are vulnerable to natural events like hurricanes.
“Why is this such a big deal? The Caribbean is facing a climate crisis, which we need to tackle now - with urgency.” --Dr. Warren Smith
Not surprisingly, the climate change threat facing the countries of the Caribbean has not gone unnoticed by the region’s premier financial institution, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).