LONDON, February 27, 2021 − The world’s big oil and mining companies emit vast amounts of climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. By extension, the actions of these corporate giants stand accused of contributing to floods and droughts and other climate-related disasters around the globe, extremely costly in both human and financial terms. Our suggestion, which […]
Climate News Network
Posted inWorld
Europe warns of Brazilian trade boycott over fires
SAO PAULO, September 21, 2020 − There was international concern over the forest fires which swept the Amazon last year. This year’s devastation looks set to be still more severe. And it won’t go without vigorous protest, and possible action: a Brazilian trade boycott. Six EU countries and the UK have sent an open letter to […]
Posted inEnviro
How to save economy and climate together
LONDON, May 7, 2020 − The warnings are stark. With the Covid-19 crisis wreaking global havoc and the overheating atmosphere threatening far worse in the long term, especially if governments rely on the same old carbon-intensive ways, both economy and climate will sink or swim together. “There are reasons to fear that we will leap from […]
Posted inWorld
Nuclear power ‘cannot rival renewable energy'
LONDON, January 15, 2020 – Nuclear power is in terminal decline worldwide and will never make a serious contribution to tackling climate change, a group of energy experts argues. Meeting recently in London at Chatham House, the UK’s Royal Institution of International Affairs, they agreed that despite continued enthusiasm from the industry, and from some […]
Posted inWorld
Australia ablaze: Up close and in your face
Jan. 14, 2020: One of today’s most respected climate scientists is Michael Mann. On 1 January The Guardian published his eyewitness account of what Australia’s catastrophic bushfires are doing, and why. This is what he wrote. SYDNEY, 1 January, 2020 − I am a climate scientist on holiday in the Blue Mountains, watching climate change […]
Posted inWorld
Bank of England unveils climate stress test
LONDON, 1 January, 2020 – The warming world means climate stress now permeates every part of society. And so an entire financial system which has underpinned the growth of a global economy largely dependent on fossil fuels must be reoriented to deal with what is fast becoming a full-blown crisis. A campaign to halt or […]
Posted inWorld
Starvation may force nations to war
DELHI, 26 September, 2019 − A stark warning that the exposure of more and more people to water scarcity, hunger and outright starvation may lead to the “failure of fragile states and regional conflicts” has been given by the United Nations as it attempts to galvanise governments into halting the spread of deserts before more […]
Posted inUS
Why Next Monday’s UN Climate Action Summit Matters
Sept. 16, 2019 – This story originally appeared in The Nation. It is republished here as part of the Climate News Network’s partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. As world leaders converge on New York City for the United Nations […]
Posted inUS
Climate denial is reported more than science
LONDON, August 26, 2019 − Rich and poor countries see the challenge of the growing crisis quite differently: for the wealthy it revolves around climate denial, while for those in poverty it’s a matter of life and death. In the developing world, climate news is presented by the media as an international problem. In the […]
Posted inWorld
Bolsonaro’s legal bonfire fuels Amazon inferno
SÃO PAULO , August 26, 2019 − The dry season in Brazil is only just beginning, but fires are raging throughout the rainforest, leaving an Amazon inferno, and heavy palls of sooty smoke engulfing towns and cities. The images of huge patches of Earth’s largest tropical forest being reduced to charred ashes and blackened tree […]
Posted inUS
Cheap renewables will price out oil on roads
LONDON, August 19, 2019 − The days of oil as a fuel for cars, whether petrol or diesel, are numbered − because the economies offered by wind and solar energy and other cheap renewables, combined with electric vehicles, are irresistible, a French bank says. BNP Paribas Asset Management calculates that oil majors like Exxon, BP […]
Posted inEnviro
Changing rainfall poses dilemma on dams
LONDON, May 23, 2019 – For the builders of hydro-electric schemes – usually multi-billion dollar projects involving vast amounts of complex engineering work – changing rainfall is a serious problem. With climate change either on the horizon or already happening in many regions of the world, rainfall patterns, on which hydro schemes ultimately depend, are […]
Posted inWorld
Irish schools fail to teach climate change
DUBLIN, May 10, 2019 – There’s a yawning gap in Irish schools, say the country’s legislators: they’re just not telling the new generation what it needs to know about climate change, although young people in many countries are on the march, protesting against governments’ inaction on the mounting problems associated with the issue. Inspired in […]
Posted inLife
Henry David Thoreau’s notes show climate impact on plants
LONDON, March 27, 2019 – Henry David Thoreau, author of the memoir Walden, or Life in the Woods, in 1854, did more than just observe the oaks, the aspens, the “golden-rods, pinweeds and graceful wild grasses”: he left precise writer’s notes on the natural world he found during his wilful exile in the Massachusetts wilderness. […]
Posted inWorld
Chernobyl’s legacy imperils hundreds of thousands of lives
LONDON, Feb. 25, 2019 – The risk of an accident with civil nuclear power may be small, but when an accident does happen the impact may be immense, as a new book on Chernobyl’s legacy makes clear. The nuclear industry promotes its technology as a key way of battling climate change. A nuclear reactor can […]
Posted inWorld
‘Eternal’ Swiss snow is melting faster
LONDON, Sept. 21, 2018 – Parts of Europe’s alpine mountain chain are undergoing accelerating melting, as the “eternal” Swiss snow thaws ever faster, threatening both the skiing industry and the nation’s water supply. Over a period of only 22 years, thousands of satellite images have provided irrefutable evidence that an extra 5,200 square kilometres of […]
Posted inWorld
Confusion reigns over China’s energy policy
BELGRADE, SERBIA, 7 May, 2018 – It’s quite easy these days to find yourself muddled over China’s energy policy: it does seem often to amount to tackling domestic pollution and climate change, but chasing lucrative contracts abroad, despite the environmental impact. With the US under Donald Trump indicating it wants to withdraw from the Paris […]
Posted inWorld
Rising temperatures cut economic output
LONDON, Sept. 4, 2017 – We are hot, we are tired, and we work less. Rising temperatures caused by climate change not only threaten to destroy many of the world’s ecosystems on which animal and human life depend, but heat increases in the workplace will also lead to a significant drop in economic productivity. Ongoing […]
Posted inLife
Book Review: A new era dawns and it won’t be human-friendly
LONDON, April 3, 2017 – Clive Hamilton’s book Defiant Earth – the fate of humans in the Anthropocene is not for the faint-hearted. Basically, its thesis is that the Earth – and us along with it – is going down the tubes. Our rampant, irrational use of the planet and its resources, including our exploitation of […]
Posted inWorld
Legislators attempt to mine Amazon’s riches
SAO PAULO, March 2, 2017 – Environment campaigners in Brazil say attempts by legislators to reduce the extent of protected land in Amazonia are driven by a determination to exploit the region’s mineral wealth. They fear that a bill about to be introduced in the national congress that proposes cutting conservation areas in the south […]