The central problem for COP28: Where will all this money come from? “What used to be available at Libor plus 50 (basis points) or Libor plus 100 is not available at those rates any more”

King Charles III meets with Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan President of the United Arab Emirates at a bilateral meeting at Expo City in Dubai, during the COP28 summit on 30 November 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The King is visiting Dubai to attend COP28 UAE, the United Nation's Climate Change Conference. Photo: Andrew Matthews / Getty Images

December 3, 2023

The central problem for COP28: Where will all this money come from? “What used to be available at Libor plus 50 (basis points) or Libor plus 100 is not available at those rates any more”

By David Blackmon 3 December 2023 (Forbes) – As the UN convenes its COP28 Conference in Dubai amid the conclusion of another year during which the global community used record amounts of coal, oil and natural gas, concerns are mounting about the future direction and prospects for success of the energy transition. Much of the […]

Screenshot from “Honest Government Ad: COP31 🇦🇺 & the Pacific”, by The Juice Media, showing the rapid, record-breaking decline of Antarctic sea ice in 2023. Photo: The Juice Media

December 3, 2023

Video: Honest Government Ad: COP31 🇦🇺 and the Pacific – “Let this major fossil-fuel exporter that’s cockblocked climate action for decades co-host a crucial summit with the most climate-vulnerable nations in the world while ignoring their pleas to stop harming them”

1 August 2023 (The Juice Media) – Hello. Bonjour. Ciao stronzi. Namaste. Ham maadarachod hain. I’m from the Australien Government with a message to the world. As cities bake, fires rage, reefs die, jet streams weaken, and 6-Ligma events cause climate scientists to shit their dacks, many are wondering if we’ve finally broken our favourite […]

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore speaks during an interview with Reuters at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 3 December 2023. Photo: Amr Alfliky / REUTERS

December 3, 2023

Al Gore slams COP28 climate summit host UAE, says its emissions soared – “He should not be taken seriously. He’s protecting his profits and placing them in a higher priority than the survival of the human civilization”

By Valerie Volcovici 3 December 2023 DUBAI (Reuters) – Climate advocate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on Sunday slammed the UAE – host of the COP28 climate summit – saying its position as overseer of international negotiations on global warming this year was an abuse of public trust. The comments, made to Reuters […]

Sultan al-Jaber speaks during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai. Photo: Amr Alfiky / Reuters

December 3, 2023

COP28 president says there is “no science” behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels – UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil, and gas would take world “back into caves”

By Damian Carrington and Ben Stockton 3 December 2023 (The Guardian) – The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal. Al Jaber also said a phase-out […]

Map of ensemble mean trends in ocean temperature and ice-shelf basal melting in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) for the Paris 2°C scenario. Temperature is averaged over the depth range 200–700 m. Trends are calculated at each point using annually averaged fields from 2006–2100. White regions indicate no significant trend. The Amundsen Sea region visualized here (latitude–longitude projection) is outlined in red in the inset map of Antarctica (polar stereographic projection). The black dashed line shows the 1,750 m depth contour of the continental shelf break and the blue dashed line outlines the continental shelf region used for analysis. Labels denote ice shelves (G, Getz; D, Dotson; Cr, Crosson; T, Thwaites; P, Pine Island; Co, Cosgrove; A, Abbot). Graphic: Naughten, et al., 2023 / Nature

November 10, 2023

The climate contradiction that will sink us – “We already have a refugee crisis; I shudder to think what would happen if everyone living within two meters of sea level would be displaced.”

By Zoë Schlanger 10 November 2023 (The Atlantic) – You’d be forgiven for thinking that the fight against climate change is finally going well. The clean-energy revolution is well under way and exceeding expectations. Solar is set to become the cheapest form of energy in most places by 2030, and the remarkable efficiency of heat pumps is driving their own uptake […]

Percent prevalence of undernourishment, 2015-2022. Data: FAOSTAT Suite of Food Security Indicators, cited 12 July 2023. Graphic: Gallup

September 10, 2023

Hunger, food insecurity still higher than before pandemic – At the global level, there was no progress toward reducing food insecurity in 2022

30 August 2023 (Gallup) – Although hunger at the global level stopped rising in 2022, the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report shows that it is still increasing in many places around the world and that levels of both hunger and food insecurity remain higher today than they were before the pandemic. […]

Alain-Richard Donwahi in May 2017, in Abidjan. Mr. Donwahi is a former Ivory Coast defence minister who led the 2022 UN COP15 summit on desertification. Photo: Sia Kambou / AFP

August 20, 2023

Global heating likely to hit world food supply before 1.5°C, says UN expert – “Climate change is a pandemic that we need to fight quickly. See how fast the degradation of the climate is going – I think it’s going even faster than we predicted.”

By Fiona Harvey 12 August 2023 (The Guardian) – The world is likely to face major disruption to food supplies well before temperatures rise by the 1.5C target, the president of the UN’s desertification conference has warned, as the impacts of the climate crisis combine with water scarcity and poor farming practices to threaten global […]

Daily global surface air temperature, 1940-2023. July 2023 was the hottest July on record. The chart shows average global air temperature at 2 metres above the surface (land and sea). Data: Copernicus/ERA5. Graphic: The Guardian

August 5, 2023

“The era of global boiling has arrived,” says UN chief as July 2023 set to be hottest month on record – “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.”

By Ajit Niranjan 27 July 2023 (The Guardian) – The era of global warming has ended and “the era of global boiling has arrived”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said after scientists confirmed July was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record. “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And […]

Map showing the Global Peace Index for 2023. In the period 2022-2023, deaths from global conflict increased by 96 percent to 238,000. 79 countries witnessed increased levels of conflict including Ethiopia, Myanmar, Ukraine, Israel, and South Africa. The global economic impact of violence increased by 17 percent or $1 trillion, to $17.5 trillion in 2022, equivalent to 13 percent of global. Conflicts became more internationalised, with 91 countries now involved in some form of external conflict, up from 58 in 2008. GDP Graphic: IEP

July 23, 2023

Conflict deaths in 2023 at highest level this century – Conflicts are becoming more internationalised, with 91 countries now involved in some form of external conflict, up from 58 in 2008

LONDON, 28 June 2023 (IEP) – Today marks the launch of the 17th edition of the Global Peace Index from international think-tank, the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP). Key results Impact of the war in Ukraine on peacefulness The 17th edition of the annual Global Peace Index (GPI) [pdf], the world’s leading measure of peacefulness, reveals […]

A man carries his mother as he arrives at an emergency ward at a hospital in Ballia District in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, 21 June 2023. Photo: Adnan Abidi / REUTERS

July 2, 2023

Climate nears point of no return as land, sea temperatures break records, experts say – “We’ve run out of time because change takes time”

By David Stanway 30 June 2023 SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach, climate experts say, with nations failing to set more ambitious goals despite months of record-breaking heat on land and sea. As envoys gathered in Bonn in early June […]

Desdemona Despair

Tag: United Nations