Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid, Spain on 11 December 2019. Photo: Cristina Quicler

Five reasons the COP25 climate talks failed – “The world is screaming out for climate action but this summit has responded with a whisper”

25 December 2019 (AFP) – The climate summit in Madrid earlier this month did not collapse — but by almost any measure it certainly failed. Five years after the fragile UN process yielded the world’s first universal climate treaty, COP25 was billed as a mopping-up session to finish guidelines for carbon markets, thus completing the […]

The geographic breakdown of each percentile of the global distribution of income evolved, 1990-2016. In 1990, 33 percent of the population of the world’s top 0.001 percent income group were residents of the United States and Canada. In 2016, 5 percent of the population of the world’s top 0.001 percent income group were residents of the Russian Federation. Data: Alvaredo, et al., 2018, based on data from the World Inequality Database http://WID.world. Graphic: UNDP

2019 Human Development Report says unchecked inequality growth may trigger a “new great divergence” in society not seen since the Industrial Revolution – “This is the new face of inequality”

BOGOTÁ, 9 December 2019 – The demonstrations sweeping across the world today signal that, despite unprecedented progress against poverty, hunger, and disease, many societies are not working as they should. The connecting thread, argues a new report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is inequality. “Different triggers are bringing people onto the streets — […]

Extinction Rebellion activists wear nooses around their necks in protest outside of the COP25 climate talks congress in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, 14 December 2019. The marathon international climate talks ended with no agreement on carbon markets. Photo: Manu Fernandez / AP Photo

Longest UN climate talks end with no deal on carbon markets – “Regressive governments put profit over the planetary crisis and the future of generations to come”

By Frank Jordans and Aritz Parra 15 December 2019 MADRID (AP) – Marathon international climate talks ended Sunday with major polluters resisting calls to ramp up efforts to keep global warming at bay and negotiators postponing the regulation of global carbon markets until next year. Those failures came even after organizers added two more days […]

A woman looks at a World globe at the COP25 climate talks congress in Madrid, Spain, Friday, 13 December 2019. Officials from almost 200 countries scrambled to reach an agreement at a United Nations climate meeting amid growing concerns that key issues may be postponed for another year. Photo: Paul White / AP Photo

UN climate talks in limbo as rifts among countries remain – “I’ve been attending these climate negotiations since they first started in 1991, but never have I seen the almost total disconnection we’ve seen here”

By Frank Jordans 14 December 2019 MADRID (AP) – Chilean officials presiding over this year’s U.N. climate talks said Saturday they plan to propose a compromise to bridge yawning differences among countries that have been deadlocked on key issues for the past two weeks. With the meeting already into extra time, draft documents presented overnight […]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg photographed on the shore in Lisbon, Portugal, 4 December 2019. She was named TIME magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year on 11 December 2019. Photo: Evgenia Arbugaeva / TIME

Climate activist Greta Thunberg named TIME magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year

By Charlotte Alter, Suyin Haynes, and Justin Worland 11 December 2019 (TIME) – Greta Thunberg sits in silence in the cabin of the boat that will take her across the Atlantic Ocean. Inside, there’s a cow skull hanging on the wall, a faded globe, a child’s yellow raincoat. Outside, it’s a tempest: rain pelts the boat, ice […]

Global pattern in the cumulative development of coastal hypoxia in the periods before 1969, 1970-1989, and 1990-2015. Each red dot represents a documented case related to human activities. Green dots are sites that have improved. Since the 1960s, the global number of hypoxic systems has about doubled every ten years up to 2000. Data: Based on Diaz and Rosenberg (2008), Diaz, et al. (2010), and Conley et al. (2011). Graphic: Laffoley and Baxter, 2019 / IUCN

Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn

By Fiona Harvey 7 December 2019 MADRID (The Guardian) – Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an unprecedented rate, with “dead zones” proliferating and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously depleted, as a result of the climate emergency and intensive farming, experts have warned. Sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species were […]

Extinction Rebellion protesters in Madrid during the COP25 climate summit in December 2019 hold a banner that reads, “Oceans are rising. So are we.” Photo: Javier Barbancho / Reuters

UN climate talks failing to address urgency of crisis, says top scientist – “There is a risk of disappointment in the UN process because of the inability to recognise that there is an emergency”

By Fiona Harvey 8 December 2019 MADRID (The Guardian) – Urgent UN talks on tackling the climate emergency are still not addressing the true scale of the crisis, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has warned, as high-ranking ministers from governments around the world began to arrive in Madrid for the final days of negotiations. […]

GHG emissions in GtCO2e materials production by material and by the first use of materials. In 2015, the production of materials caused GHG emissions of approximately 11.5 GtCO2e, up from 5 GtCO2e in 1995. The largest contribution stems from bulk materials production, such as iron and steel, cement, lime and plaster, other minerals mostly used as construction products, as well as plastics and rubber. Two thirds of the materials are used to make capital goods, with buildings and vehicles among the most important. While the production of materials consumed in industrialized countries remained within the range of 2–3 GtCO2e, in the 1995–2015 period, those of developing and emerging economies have largely been behind the growth. In this context, it is important to keep in mind the discussion about the point of production and points of consumption. Graphic: UNEP

World must cut carbon emissions by 7.6 percent every year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target – “It is very disturbing that in spite of the many warnings, global emissions have continued to increase and do not seem to be likely to peak anytime soon”

GENEVA, 26 November 2019 (UNEP) – On the eve of a year in which nations are due to strengthen their Paris climate pledges, a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report warns that unless global greenhouse gas emissions fall by 7.6 per cent each year between 2020 and 2030, the world will miss the opportunity to […]

Globally averaged CO2 mole fraction (a) and its growth rate (b) from 1984 to 2018. Increases in successive annual means are shown as shaded columns in (b). The red line in (a) is the monthly mean with the seasonal variation removed; the blue dots and line depict the monthly averages. Observations from 129 stations have been used for this analysis. Graphic: WMO

Greenhouse gas concentrations in atmosphere reached yet another high in 2018

GENEVA, 25 November 2019 (WMO) – Levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached another new record high, according to the World Meteorological Organization. This continuing long-term trend means that future generations will be confronted with increasingly severe impacts of climate change, including rising temperatures, more extreme weather, water stress, sea level rise […]

A house burns in the Kincade Fire on 23 October 2019 as a metal sculpture of an animal looks on. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / SF Chronicle

U.S. formally begins to leave the Paris climate agreement

By Rebecca Hersher 4 November 2019 (NPR) – The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. The withdrawal will be complete this time next year, after a one-year waiting period has elapsed. “We will continue to work with our global partners to enhance resilience […]

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