Half of the world's population vulnerable to climate change

Climate change will increase diseases, premature deaths and will cause an increase in malnutrition in regions such as Africa or Latin America, warns a new UN report, which confirms that almost half of the world’s population is already vulnerable to global warming

Two women walk through the arid land in Somalia in a file image. EFE / Pablo Tosco

Between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change, underlines the document, which anticipates the possible effects of this global warming on health, food security, cities and other aspects of human life.

In the medium and long term (between 2041 and 2100) the authors of the study anticipate an increase in diseases transmitted through the consumption of food, water and other factors, as well as deaths related to heat waves.

The report thus anticipates an increase in dengue cases, with longer and more geographically widespread epidemics of this disease, which could even make it reach Europe.

It also anticipates more mental health problems, such as anxiety or stress, “especially among children, adolescents, the elderly, and people with underlying conditions.”

At the food level, the report warns about the possible decrease in agricultural production, which could cause malnutrition, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South and Central America.

The report indicates that populations living in coastal areas are especially vulnerable to climate change, with approximately one billion people exposed to long-term extreme weather events.

In the current context, with a global average temperature of approximately 1.1 degrees Celsius above industrial levels, human populations are already being negatively impacted, also economically, with serious damage to sectors such as agriculture, fishing , energy or tourism.

In cities, especially in the most vulnerable informal settlements, climate change has intensified phenomena such as pollution and the so-called “heat islands”, processes that affect key infrastructures such as transport, energy networks, water supply or the sewer.

Climate change has already contributed to health crises, especially in small island states, although it has also been key to the increase in floods and food insecurity in Africa and Latin America.

Experts acknowledge that although non-climatic factors such as geopolitical tensions are still the main drivers of conflicts, in some latitudes they have influenced their duration, severity or frequency.

Flooding in Sana’a, Yemen, in May 2019. EPA/YAHYA ARHAB

US Supreme Court to Weigh Limits to EPA Efforts on Climate Change

WASHINGTON — 

The Supreme Court is hearing a case its conservative majority could use to hobble Biden administration efforts to combat climate change.

The administration already is dealing with congressional refusal to enact the climate change proposals in President Joe Biden’s Build Better Back plan.

Now the justices, in arguments Monday, are taking up an appeal from 19 mostly Republican-led states and coal companies over the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

The court took on the case even though there is no current EPA plan in place to deal with carbon output from power plants, a development that has alarmed environmental groups. They worry that the court could preemptively undermine whatever plan Biden’s team develops to address power plant emissions. Biden has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade.

A broad ruling by the court also could weaken regulatory efforts that extend well beyond the environment, including consumer protections, workplace safety and public health. Several conservative justices have criticized what they see as the unchecked power of federal agencies.

Those concerns were evident in the court’s orders throwing out two Biden administration policies aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19. Last summer, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority ended a pause on evictions over unpaid rent. In January, the same six justices blocked a requirement that workers at large employers be vaccinated or test regularly and wear a mask on the job.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, speaking at a recent event in Washington, cast the power plant case as about who should make the rules. “Should it be unelected bureaucrats, or should it be the people’s representatives in Congress?” Morrisey said. West Virginia is leading the states opposed to broad EPA authority.

But David Doniger, a climate change expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Supreme Court’s consideration of the issue is premature, a view shared by the administration.

He said the administration’s opponents are advancing “horror stories about extreme regulations the EPA may issue in the future. The EPA is writing a new rule on a clean slate.”

The power plant case has a long and complicated history that begins with the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. That plan would have required states to reduce emissions from the generation of electricity, mainly by shifting away from coal-fired plants.

But that plan never took effect. Acting in a lawsuit filed by West Virginia and others, the Supreme Court blocked it in 2016 by a 5-4 vote, with conservatives in the majority.

With the plan on hold, the legal fight over it continued. But after President Donald Trump took office, the EPA repealed the Obama-era plan. The agency argued that its authority to reduce carbon emissions was limited and it devised a new plan that sharply reduced the federal government’s role in the issue.

New York, 21 other mainly Democratic states, the District of Columbia and some of the nation’s largest cities sued over the Trump plan. The federal appeals court in Washington ruled against both the repeal and the new plan, and its decision left nothing in effect while the new administration drafted a new policy.

Adding to the unusual nature of the high court’s involvement, the reductions sought in the Obama plan by 2030 already have been achieved through the market-driven closure of hundreds of coal plants.

The Biden administration has no intention of reviving the Clean Power Plan, one reason Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, argues the court should dismiss the case.

Some of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving 40 million people, are supporting the Biden administration along with prominent businesses that include Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla.

A decision is expected by late June.

Alaska Worries for Its Salmon Run as Climate Change Warms Arctic Waters

Anchorage, Alaska — 

With marine heat waves helping to wipe out some of Alaska’s storied salmon runs in recent years, officials have resorted to sending emergency food shipments to affected communities while scientists warn that the industry’s days of traditional harvests may be numbered.

Salmon all but disappeared from the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) Yukon River run last year, as record-high temperatures led to the fish piling up dead in streams and rivers before they were able to spawn. A study published Feb. 15 in the journal Fisheries detailed more than 100 salmon die-offs at freshwater sites around Alaska.

Those losses meant that, even as temperatures were milder in 2021, the Yukon River salmon runs remained so anemic that both Alaska and Canada were forced to halt their salmon harvest to ensure enough fish survived to reproduce for another year.

“Alaska is known for salmon and being cold,” said Vanessa von Biela, a U.S. Geological Survey research biologist and lead author of the study on the 2019 die-offs. Now “we have basically the problems that have been known for a long time at the lower latitudes.”

The collapsed Yukon River salmon harvests delivered financial blows to both commercial fishers and indigenous communities, which traditionally stockpile the fish as a year-round food staple.

Commercially, the river’s salmon fishers altogether earned a mere $51,480 for their 2020 harvest, before the harvest was canceled in 2021. By comparison, they earned $2.5 million in 2019 and $4.67 million in 2018.

Last month, the U.S. commerce secretary declared a disaster for the Yukon River fishery for both years, making federal relief funds available.

The state sent emergency fish shipments last year from the more plentiful salmon in Bristol Bay and elsewhere.

Scientists mostly have blamed ocean warming, with a series of heat waves in the Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean from 2014 to 2019 affecting salmon living in the sea before their return to spawning grounds.

While the heat waves have passed, their effects have not, said fisheries scientist Katie Howard with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “We’re still seeing the residual effects,” she told a state legislative committee in Anchorage earlier this month.

Climate change may also be affecting salmon diets, with young salmon possibly filling up on nutrition-poor food like jellyfish as warmer waters in the Bering Sea drive away the more nutritious zooplankton the fish eat normally.

“In my opinion, the salmon are starving with climate change,” said Brooke Woods, the chair of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission from the Athabascan village of Rampart.

But the impact on freshwater habitats is also getting a closer look.

Previous research led by von Biela on the rivers, streams and lakes where salmon spend their early and late life stages, the team found that Chinook salmon show heat stress at temperatures above 18 Celsius (64.4 Fahrenheit), and start dying above 20C.

Alaskan Yukon water temperatures in the past ranged between 12C and 16C, with Canadian monitoring sites upriver measuring even cooler waters. But in 2019, temperatures on the Alaskan side were above 18C for 44 consecutive days, the February study found.

The warming impact can be muted by climate-driven glacier runoff, which feeds cooler water into rivers and streams.

Scientists expect salmon will gradually shift to new areas within Alaska, with profound effects for people who depend on the fish for their livelihoods, diet and culture.

“Salmon will find a way,” von Biela said. “But it is going to be hard for communities that are in places where there might not be salmon anymore.”

Race Excluded as White House Rolls Out Climate Justice Screening Tool

The Biden administration has released a screening tool to help identify disadvantaged communities long plagued by environmental hazards, but it won’t include race as a factor in deciding where to devote resources.

Administration officials told reporters Friday that excluding race will make projects less likely to draw legal challenges and will be easier to defend, even as they acknowledged that race has been a major factor in terms of who experiences environmental injustice.

The decision was harshly challenged by members of the environmental justice community.

“It’s a major disappointment and it’s a major flaw in trying to identify those communities that have been hit hardest by pollution,” said Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University in Houston and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

President Joe Biden has made combating climate change a priority of his administration and pledged in a sweeping executive order to “deliver environmental justice in communities all across America.” The order, signed his first week in office, sets a goal that the 40% of overall benefits from climate and environment investments would go to disadvantaged communities. The tool is a key component for carrying out that so-called Justice40 Initiative.

Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, said the tool will help direct federal investments in climate, clean energy and environmental improvements to communities “that have been left out and left behind for far too long.”

Catherine Coleman Flowers, a member of the advisory council who served on a working group that gave the Biden administration recommendations for the tool, said she agrees with the move to exclude race as an indicator.

She said that this tool is a good start that hopefully will improve with time and that it’s better than creating a tool that includes race as a factor and then gets struck down by the Supreme Court. She said, “race is a factor, but race isn’t the only factor.”

“Being marginalized in other ways is a factor,” she said.

The screening tool uses 21 factors, including air pollution, health outcomes and economic status, to identify communities that are most vulnerable to environmental and economic injustice.

But the omission of race as a factor goes against a deep body of scientific research showing that race is the greatest determinant of who experiences environmental harm, environmental justice experts pointed out.

“This was a political decision,” said Sacoby Wilson, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. “This was not a scientific decision or a data-driven decision.” Wilson has studied the distribution of environmental pollutants and helped develop mapping tools like the one the Council on Environmental Quality released Friday.

This isn’t the first such tool to exist in the United States, or even in the federal government. California, Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey have had tools like this for years. And the Environmental Protection Agency has a similar tool, EJ Screen. Many of those screening tools include some information about the racial makeup of communities along with environmental and health data.

The public has 60 days to use the tool and provide feedback on it. The Council on Environmental Quality also announced Friday that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are working on launching a study of existing tools.

Quad Ministers Pledge Cooperation On 'Coercion,' Climate, COVID

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — 

The United States, Australia, Japan and India on Friday pledged to deepen cooperation to ensure the Indo-Pacific region was free from “coercion,” a thinly veiled swipe at China’s growing economic and military expansion, as their top diplomats convened to also tackle climate change, COVID and other threats.

Foreign ministers of the so-called Quad, the informal grouping of the four countries, vowed to work on humanitarian relief, terrorism, cyber and maritime security and global supply chain challenges.

Despite being outside the group’s scope, an escalating crisis between the West and Russia over Ukraine was also a top agenda item, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken casting Moscow’s build-up as a challenge to the international rules-based order, which he said Quad would work to preserve.

“That includes championing the rights of all countries to choose their own path, free from coercion, and the right to have their sovereignty and territorial integrity respected. Whether that’s here in the Indo-Pacific, in Europe, or anywhere else in the world,” he said in his opening remarks of the meeting.

Blinken arrived in Australia this week as Washington grapples with a dangerous standoff with Moscow, which has massed some 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border and stoked Western fears of an invasion.

Russia denies it has such plans.

The Biden administration wants to show the world its long-term strategic focus remains in the Asia-Pacific and that a major foreign policy crisis in one part of the world does not distract it from key priorities.

Asked by reporters Friday if confrontation with China in the Indo-Pacific was inevitable, Blinken replied “nothing is inevitable.”

“Having said that, I think we share concerns that in recent years China has been acting more aggressively at home and more aggressively in the region,” he said.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the Quad’s cooperation on the region’s COVID response was “most critical,” with cyber and maritime security, infrastructure, climate action and disaster relief — especially after the recent Tonga volcanic eruption — also in focus.

New pledges are unlikely to be announced before a May summit of Quad leaders in Japan that President Joe Biden plans to attend.

Payne also said Ukraine, China and North Korea would also be discussed.

“More than one authoritarian regime is presenting itself in the current world climate as a challenge. DPRK (North Korea), China as well and they will be part of our discussions today. We strongly support U.S. leadership on these challenges,” she said before a bilateral meeting with Blinken.

Britain said the “most dangerous moment” in the West’s standoff with Moscow appeared imminent, as Russia held military exercises in Belarus and the Black Sea following the buildup of its forces near Ukraine.

The Quad nations have begun holding annual naval exercises across the Indo-Pacific to demonstrate interoperability, and the United States itself conducts freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea.

China has previously denounced the Quad as a Cold War construct and a clique “targeting other countries.”

Blinken’s trip comes after China and Russia declared last week a “no limits” strategic partnership, their most detailed and assertive statement to work together — and against the United States — to build a new international order based on their own interpretations of human rights and democracy.

U.S.-Chinese ties are at their lowest point in decades as the world’s top two economies disagree on issues ranging from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the South China Sea and China’s treatment of ethnic Muslims.

Biden told Asian leaders in October the United States would launch talks on a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. But few details have emerged and his administration has been reluctant to offer the increased market access Asian countries desire, seeing this as threatening American jobs.

Critics say the lack of U.S. economic engagement is a major weakness in Biden’s approach to the region, where China remains to be the top trading partner for many of the Indo-Pacific nations.

Snow Warnings as Winter Olympics Threatened by Climate Change

LONDON — 

The future of the Winter Olympics is under threat because of climate change, according to a new report from Britain’s Loughborough University.

The warning comes as Beijing prepares for the opening of the 2022 Games this week, the first time a city has hosted both the summer and winter events. It also will be the first Winter Olympics to use almost 100% artificial snow, with more than 100 snow generators and 300 snow-cannons working to cover the slopes.

Artificial snow

Zhangjiakou, which lies 200 kilometers northwest of Beijing, will host freestyle skiing and snowboarding, cross-country skiing and ski jumping. Despite the bitter cold – temperatures reached minus 17 degrees Celsius this week – it rarely snows.

Olympic site manager Jacques Fournier is in charge of the snow machines. “Here has no humidity, and it’s very dry, and there’s a lot of wind,” Fournier told Reuters. “So, in that kind of condition, the goal and the target is really to make the snow compact, and to prepare rapidly to not let it [be blown away] by the wind.”

Inherent dangers

Winter resorts have increasingly turned to artificial snow to make up for a lack of natural snowfall. However, a new report from Britain’s Loughborough University warns that athletes’ safety could be at risk.

“In sports like biathlon or cross-country skiing or any of the freestyle events where an athlete is flinging themself into the air flipping around and falling, you would want the surface to be a little softer. And the problem with artificial snow is that it’s about 70% ice, compared to natural snow which is about 30% ice. And so, the surface is much, much harder,” said report co-author Madeleine Orr, a sports ecologist at Loughborough University, in an interview with VOA.

Snow-melt

American snowboarder Taylor Gold is preparing for Beijing. During his first Winter Olympics, in the Russian resort of Sochi in 2014, he recalls the halfpipe melting.

“They were spraying some chemicals on it to try to get it to stay in shape. But if you go back and watch that event, it’s clear, it was really warm. It was not ideal for snowboarding,” Gold recently told Associated Press. “It makes me sad that we need so much man-made snow to sustain winter sports,” he added.

A worker shovels snow in preparation for freestyle ski and snowboard events at Genting Snow Park prior to the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Zhangjiakou, China, Jan. 31, 2022.

American downhill skier Lindsey Vonn, who won three Olympic golds until her retirement in 2019, has trained and competed all over the world. She says snow is becoming harder to track down. “You go to South America, where we use to train every summer, August, September. They’ve had no snow for several years in a row, like none,” Vonn told the Associated Press.

Unsuitable climates

Critics say the climates of both Sochi and Beijing are unsuitable to host the Winter Olympics. But even high altitude, mountain ski resorts that have traditionally hosted the games are at risk because of climate change.

“The northeast of the U.S. for example, and eastern Canada – we are losing significant amounts of snow there,” says Orr. “And then in places like the Rockies and the [European] Alps, we just don’t have quite as much as we used to. So, the challenge moving forward is going to be where can we put these events. And with the Winter Olympics, we’re already kind of there.”

Environmental damage

Orr says artificial snow also causes environmental damage.

“When you put artificial snow in a place that doesn’t have any natural snow at all, like Beijing, you’re putting a whole lot of water into a place where that soil and those plants are not expecting it. And previous research has shown that that can be damaging to local wildlife.”

“But we also expect that when you’re creating that much snow, the energy usage is extraordinary. The amount of water is extraordinary. In this Olympics we’re expecting 49 million gallons [185 million liters] of water to be used – and that’s if things go well. So, if they have a few hot days and need to create a little bit of extra snow to make up and compensate for some melt during the games, we could see that number rise above 50 million gallons [189 million liters],” Orr told VOA.

Carbon-neutral Olympics

The Chinese organizers insist the games will be carbon neutral. All venues are expected to be powered by renewable energy. Ice rinks will use natural CO2 technology for cooling, instead of ozone-damaging hydrofluorocarbons. The organizers say the latest snow machines use 20% less water.

Some athletes prefer artificial snow. “The snow is actually amazing, the man-made stuff. I think because of how cold it is, you have to be really aggressive with how you ride, but you just have to adapt,” said Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, a downhill snowboarder competing for New Zealand at the Beijing Games.

Olympic organizers also will have to adapt. The Loughborough University report warns that by 2050, fewer than half of the resorts that have hosted the Winter Olympics until now will have viable snowfall.

Artificial Snow Warnings as Beijing Olympics Threatened by Climate Change

As Beijing prepares for the opening of the Winter Olympics this week, scientists are warning that the future of the games is under threat – because of climate change. Henry Ridgwell reports. Producer: Marcus Harton

Southern Chile, a natural laboratory to combat climate change | outstanding | Spanish edition

Punta Arenas, Chile, Jan 24 (EFE).- Punta Arenas, a city on the Strait of Magellan in the far south of Chile, used to be a contributor to rising global temperatures due to its coal mining fields.

But today, thanks to the development of green hydrogen plants and sensors to detect global warming, it has become a natural laboratory to combat climate change as part of a project by the International Antarctic Center.

“Magellan is a place where the past, present and future of scientific research on issues such as climate change, biodiversity and sustainable economy meet,” Chile’s minister of science, technology and innovation, Andrés Couve, tells Efe.

As well as being a gateway to Antarctica, Magellan’s rich biodiversity makes it the ideal place for scientists.

Cetaceans, penguins, pumas and a myriad of microscopic life make up its landscape, attracting experts from all over the world.

“It is a pristine ecosystem, the only place in the world without stressors for fauna and flora such as pollution, over-exploitation of soil or the massive use of pesticides,” says Elie Poulin, a French researcher at the Millennium Institute for Biodiversity of Antarctic Ecosystems.

The area’s biodiversity is being used to anticipate global warming in a pioneering research on the only colony of King penguins on the American continent, in Tierra del Fuego, south of Punta Arenas.

“Magellan is an extraordinary geographical experiment where the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Antarctic Ocean meet, but at the same time it is a very fragile place that is susceptible to climate change,” Valeria Souza, a biologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and leader of the study, tells Efe.

Souza analyzes the microbes that live on the feathers of the King penguins.

“The microbes react to changes in the temperature and salinity before the animals themselves. In this way, they warn us of signs of climate change before the rest of us can feel them,” she says.

The strong winds of Chilean Patagonia are another ingredient that is guiding the region to become a forerunner in the fight against climate change.

With wind speeds of over 90 kilometers per hour, the currents are an ideal source of clean green hydrogen and wind power.

Latin America’s largest green hydrogen fuel plant is currently being built near Punta Arenas, aiming to produce 130,000 liters of green fuel per year.

“We have all the ingredients to make this country a leading producer of green hydrogen worldwide and an engine to curb climate change,” Chile’s minister of energy and mining, Juan Carlos Jobet, said. EFE