Sunny climate, stormy climate | Edition #1
Hello! Welcome to the first edition of Sunny climate, Stormy climate - your weekly dose of climate news
Every week I will bring to you five stories, three on the stormy side - concerning news that tells us the damaging effects of climate change on our every day lives and two on the sunny side - some green shoots, optimistic news that tells us all is not yet lost.
Why am I doing this?
Over the last few years, the impact of climate change on our daily lives has felt increasingly severe be it with extreme rainfall events that have put a stop to daily life, or record high temperatures with heat waves becoming more frequent and intense. I have been curious about these incidents, the reasons behind them and what the future may look like if we continue down this path. As I began exploring this space, I come across many stories that I thought were worth sharing. My inspiration behind the newsletter is to increase awareness regarding climate change, how it affects us and what we can do it about it.
So now on to the first edition!
Stormy news
1. Severe heat waves engulfed Asia with several countries reporting record high temperatures. China reported record temperatures in several locations including Chengdu, Nanjing and other areas in the Yangtze River delta region. In Bangladesh, temperatures in Dhaka soared over 40 degree Celsius making it the hottest day in 56 years. Several states in India saw the met department issuing an orange warning of a severe heat wave with schools shutting down in a few states on account of the extreme temperatures. In an unfortunate incident, 14 people died due to a sun stroke after attending an award ceremony held in the outdoors in Navi Mumbai. The heat waves in this region that are getting longer and more intense have been long linked to climate change that is causing the average surface temperatures to increase.
2. World ocean temperatures reached a record high leading to marine heatwaves across the globe. NoAA (national oceanic and atmospheric administration) showed the avg. ocean surface temperature to be 21.1 deg c since the start of April beating the previous record of 21 deg c set in April 2016. Increasing ocean temperatures has many cascading effects including ice melting, sea level rising, ocean acidifciation and coral bleaching.
3. US approved a major oil project in Alaska - The Biden administration approved a major oil project in Alaska in March. Called ‘The Willow project’, It was announced in 2017 and is led by energy giant ConocoPhillips. It is located inside the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska and is expected to produce 600 mn barrels of oil over its lifetime and generate 9.2 mn tons of carbon di oxide every year (equivalent of 2 mn gas powered cars on the road). The project is being fiercely opposed by environmental groups as it is contradiction with the need to more rapidly away from fossil fuels to combat climate change.
Sunny news
4. UNGA (United National General Assembly) passed a resolution asking the ICJ (International Court of Justice) to give a clarification on countries role and obligation in taking action to prevent climate change. The worlds countries (UN member states) have signed multiple agreements to address the impact of climate change. For instance, the Paris 2015 agreement where they agreed that they will take steps to keep the increase in temperature to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. However, these are not legally binding and it is not clear what happens if countries do not take actions to meet the goals that they signed up for. Consequently, progress on some of these goals has been rather slow. In March, the UN general assembly passed a resolution that said that asks the ICJ to clarify what is the legal stance here and what consequences will the countries have to bear if they do not meet the defined targets/ goals. This is the first time the legal obligation of countries will be explicitly clarified.
5. UN high seas treaty signed - High seas are the worlds oceans that do not come under the territory of any country. While every country has laws on what can and can’t be done in the seas that are that countries territories, there was so far no legally binding agreement on the rules of operation in the high seas. 2/3rds of the worlds waters are classified as ‘high seas’ and up till now only 1% of these waters have been protected. This has resulted in a lot damage to these waters - indiscriminate fishing, deep sea bed trawling etc. This is a landmark agreement that aims to bring at least one third of these waters into protected regions by 2030 by converting them into marine protected areas.
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Awesome start! Keep it going :)
Great work!