Country-specific total CO2 emission shares GtC per year of the biggest 5 emitters. Graphic: Nauels, et al., 2019 / PNAS

Just 15 years of post-Paris emissions to lock in 20 cm of sea level rise in the year 2300 – “Emissions today will inevitably cause seas to rise a long way into the future. This process cannot be reversed. It is our legacy for humankind.”

5 November 2019 (PIK) – Unless governments significantly scale up their emission reduction efforts, the 15 years’ worth of emissions released under their current Paris Agreement pledges alone would cause 20 cm of sea-level rise over the longer term, according to new research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). […]

Permanent inundation surfaces predicted by CoastalDEM and SRTM given the median K17/RCP 8.5/2100 sea-level projection. Locations include (a) the Pearl River Delta, China; (b) Bangladesh; (c) Jakarta, Indonesia; and (d) Bangkok, Thailand. Low-lying areas isolated from the ocean are removed from the inundation surface using connected components analysis. Current water bodies are derived from the SRTM Water Body Dataset. Gray areas represent dry land. Axis labels denote latitude and longitude. Graphic: Kulp and Strauss, 2019 / Nature Communications

Flooded Future: New elevation maps triple estimates of global risk from sea-level rise and coastal flooding – “By 2100, land now home to 200 million people could sit permanently below the high tide line”

29 October 2019 (Climate Central) – Sea level rise is one of the best known of climate change’s many dangers. As humanity pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the planet warms. And as it does so, ice sheets and glaciers melt and warming sea water expands, increasing the volume of the world’s oceans. The consequences […]

Map of air pollution in India showing Air Quality Index meters maxed at 999 on 3 November 2019. Graphic: AQICN

India air pollution deteriorates to “hazardous” rating – “Pollution has reached unbearable levels across North India”

3 November 2019 (BBC News) – Air pollution in the north of India has “reached unbearable levels,” the capital Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvid Kejriwal says. In many areas of Delhi air quality deteriorated into the “hazardous” category on Sunday with the potential to cause respiratory illnesses. Authorities have urged people to stay inside to protect […]

People wear masks to protect against “Hazardous” air pollution in Dehli, India, 28 October 2019. Photo: Biplov Bhuyan / Hindustan Times / REX

5 million masks distributed as toxic smog descends on Delhi during Diwali – “Delhi has turned into a gas chamber”

By Guy Davies 1 November 2019 (ABC News) – Five million masks are being distributed throughout schools in Delhi, India, as the chief minister described the city as a “gas chamber” because of the “toxic” air quality. Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, also announced that all schools would be closed in the city […]

Clip from BP’s “Energy Illustrated” web series. Graphic: Spencer Dale / BP

BP chief economist to youth conference: “The haves must remember the have nots”

By Spencer Dale 23 October 2019 LONDON (BP) – It’s a great pleasure to be here this morning. One Young World is a big deal in BP. As you just heard, Bob Dudley is a massive fan. And many friends and colleagues have been delegates in the past and raved about it. So I’ve heard […]

Global variability in nature’s contributions to people, for water quality regulation, coastal risk reduction, and crop pollination. Graphic: Chaplin-Kramer, et al., 2019 / Science

Billions face food, water shortages over next 30 years as nature fails – Study paints “a deeply worrying picture of the societal burdens of losing nature”

By Stephen Leahy 10 October 2019 (National Geographic) – As many as five billion people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are likely to face shortages of food and clean water in the coming decades as nature declines. Hundreds of millions more could be vulnerable to increased risks of severe coastal storms, according to the first-ever model […]

Aerial view of houses inundated by monsoon floodwaters in Prayagraj, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, on 28 September 2019. Photo: Rajesh Kumar Singh

Photo gallery: Flooding in India during heaviest monsoon rainfall in 25 years

By Niha Masih 1 October 2019 NEW DELHI – People using rafts on roads, waterlogged hospitals and shops, food packets being airdropped — this is what life has been like in the northern Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh after heavy rains led to large-scale flooding. India received the heaviest monsoon rainfall in 25 years, […]

A montage of photos that were submitted to the Environmental Photographer of the Year 2019 award. “Journey by Launch” by Azim Khan Ronnie; “Polluted New Year” by Eliud Gil Samaniego, “Remains of the Forest” by J Henry Fair, “Tuvalu Beneath the Rising Tide” by Sean Gallagher, “My Climate Future” by Souray Karmakar, “Looking Beyond What is There” by Graham Earnshaw, “Where the City Ends and the Ships Begin” by Azim Khan Ronnie, and “Tuvalu Beneath the Rising Tide” by Sean Gallagher (second entry). Photo: CIWEM

Photo gallery: Striking images from the 2019 Environmental Photographer of the Year competition – “Climate change is the defining issue of our time and now is the time to act”

23 September 2019 (CIWEM) – The CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year exposes the terrible impacts being wrought on our planet by humans, but also celebrates humanity’s innate ability to survive and innovate, lending hope to us all that we can overcome challenges to live sustainably. [See all of the submissions: Environmental Photographer of the […]

While speaking at the United Nations on 23 September 2019, climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered an impassioned speech during the Climate Action Summit 2019, where she spoke about the dangers of climate change. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” climate activist Greta Thunberg has told world leaders, accusing them of ignoring the science behind the climate crisis: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth - how dare you?” Photo: United Nations / NBC News

Climate activist Greta Thunberg condemns world leaders in emotional speech at UN – “The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you.”

By Oliver Milman 23 September 2019 UNITED NATIONS (The Guardian) – Greta Thunberg has excoriated world leaders for their “betrayal” of young people through their inertia over the climate crisis at a United Nations summit that failed to deliver ambitious new commitments to address dangerous global heating. In a stinging speech on Monday, the teenage […]

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, listens to the meeting introduction before delivering opening remarks while hosting a debate on key human rights issues in the country at ICS—Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa on 29 April 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal. Photo: Horacio Villalobos / Corbis / Getty Images

We are “burning up our future”, UN’s Bachelet tells Human Rights Council – “The world has never seen a threat to human rights of this scope”

9 September 2019 (UN News) – The Human Rights Council opened in Geneva on Monday with a warning from the UN’s top rights official that, with forest fires raging in the Amazon, “we are burning up our future, literally”. In a direct appeal to the forum’s 47 Member States to unite to tackle climate change, […]

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