Free Republic

Thousands of women in Bangladesh will receive financing to develop livelihoods that can withstand the effects of climate change in one of the world's hardest-hit countries, the United Nations said. Women and girls in the disaster-prone coastal districts of Satkhira and Khulna will receive assistance from US$33 million (S$44 million) provided by the UN's Green Climate Fund and Bangladesh's Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs. "The rising sea level is a major threat to these areas," Mamunur Rashid, a climate change specialist at the UN Development Programme (UNDP), said from Dhaka. "Women are disproportionately affected by the impacts," Saleemul Huq,...

We the People call upon Congress to apply immigration priority to the South African Farmers facing systematic land confiscation and murder by their own government. These government sanctioned land confiscations / murders are race related (See here - https://tinyurl.com/y7mfmhco ) and our governments responsibility to act by UN law ( See here - https://tinyurl.com/ya5fn63p ) Must not be ignored. White South African Farmers facing genocide in their home land should be given priority as they not only face extinction in their homelands but also stand as a primary example of the kind of immigrants we would want here in our...

NEW DELHI: A turf battle for national highways has erupted with the department of economic affairs (DEA) seeking to take control of the funding for the highway construction programme. After unsuccessfully pushing for corporatisation of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the DEA has proposed changes in the Central Road Fund (CRF) Act to take control of the allotment of fuel cess for infrastructure projects and to decide the priority of expenditure. So far, the road transport and highways ministry is entitled to get the largest share of the CRF, estimated at 41%. The proposal to use 2.5% of...

The Church offers people 'the soothing remedy of prayer, almsgiving and fasting' during Lent, the Pope said Catholics should use the season of Lent to look for signs and symptoms of being under the spell of false prophets and of living with cold, selfish and hateful hearts, Pope Francis said. Together with “the often bitter medicine of the truth,” the Church – as mother and teacher – offers people “the soothing remedy of prayer, almsgiving and fasting,” the Pope said in his message for Lent, which begins on February 14 for Latin-rite Catholics. The Pope also invited all non-Catholics who...

SEATTLE – When President Trump was candidate Trump, he called climate change a hoax. Since taking the Oval Office, he’s said very little about greenhouse gasses and their impact on the planet. But he did issue a statement that he plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to reduce emissions as a way to stop global warming. But West Coast states are driving in the opposite direction, with designs of erecting a green wall built on taxing carbon. “This is both an economic benefit for the state of Washington and a job creator,” said...

OSLO - Global warming is on track to breach the toughest limit set in the Paris climate agreement by the middle of this century unless governments make unprecedented economic shifts from fossil fuels, a draft U.N. report said. The draft, of a report due for publication in October, said governments will also have to start sucking carbon dioxide from the air to achieve the ambition of limiting temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. “There is very high risk that ... global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” the U.N. panel of experts wrote,...

A trio of recently released economic statistics have boosted Democratic hopes of retaking the majority in the House and Senate later this year. First, in December, private employers increased payrolls by stepping up hiring and reducing layoffs. Second, unemployment among blacks fell to the lowest level since 1972. Third, the number of Americans on food stamps fell by two million. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez labeled these statistics “the starkest of warnings concerning the sad fate in store for average Americans under Republican government. Millions are being forced out of the social safety net so meticulously constructed for them...

The challenge of a possible cholera outbreak is facing Bangladesh as the climate-induced warming of the earth induces the growth for algae and bacteria, experts have observed. The temperature rise in Bangladesh will make possible the growth for various algae and bacteria, leading to more cholera cases in the country, said Dr Md Sirajul Islam, emeritus scientist of International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. Global warming caused by climate change might influence the transmission dynamic of cholera, he added. The environmental microbiologist came up with the observation during his presentation on water treatment as an adaptation option to climate...

The globe is set to start drying out dramatically if global warming isn't stopped. That's the message from a new environmental study published by the journal Nature Climate Change . Over 25% of Earth will start experiencing the effects of "aridificaiton" by the year 2050 if humans don't meet the changes proposed by the Paris climate agreement . The study claims that if the Earth's average temperature goes up by two degrees Celsius over the next 32 years, the planet will start to become a desert. “Our research predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20-30 percent of the world’s...

The Trump administration will reverse course from previous Obama administration policy, eliminating climate change from a list of national security threats. The National Security Strategy to be released on Monday will emphasize the importance of balancing energy security with economic development and environmental protection, according to a source who has seen the document and shared excerpts of a late draft. “Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system,” a draft of the National Security Strategy slated to be released on Monday said. “U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic...

It’s hard to be optimistic about climate action, not in a week when federal scientists reported that “the Arctic shows no sign of returning” to the “reliably frozen region of recent past decades.” Not in a month when California’s wildfires show every sign of burning straight through Christmas. And not in a moment when the federal government keeps scrubbing basic climate information from its websites. But something big is starting to shift. After years of effort from activists, there are signs that the world’s financial community is finally rousing itself in the fight against global warming. A foretaste came last...

‘We have an obligation to redistribute’ The holiday season is upon us, and leave it to an Ivy Leaguer to play the role of the proverbial stick in the mud. Writing in the Yale Daily News, guest columnist Xuan (who uses the pronouns “they” and “them”) invokes the United States’ “legacy of colonialism, exploitation, slavery and genocide” to argue that Americans’ personal charity isn’t “quite enough” nor “all of morality.” They offer examples of a shady used car salesman and a sketchy entrepreneur who, after screwing over people in the past attempt to make good later in life through charitable...

The recent round of U.N. climate negotiations ended Friday in Bonn, Germany. While no important decisions were made on climate finance — transfers from wealthy to poor countries to support climate mitigation and adaptation — the question of who pays for global climate gave rise to heated debates. Trump’s decision leaves the United States alone outside the Paris agreement. While U.S. noncooperation shouldn’t deter other countries from pledging climate action, my recent research with Thijs Van de Graaf shows that it threatens industrialized countries’ promises of climate finance for mitigation and adaptation in poorer countries. If the United States refuses...

UN negotiations on implementing the Paris climate change agreement wrapped up on Friday after two weeks of talks that were slowed down by the United States defending the use of fossil fuels. Delegates reported mixed progress in Germany, with the reemergence of divisions between rich and developing countries. A key stumbling block was on finance for the world’s poorer nations to help them prepare for, and deal with, the fallout from climate change including more frequent and severe superstorms, droughts and land- and crop-gobbling sea level rises. Another obstacle was the insistence of developed nations led by the US that...

A Peruvian farmer won a small but significant legal victory on Monday when a German court said his appeal against energy giant RWE, which he accuses of contributing to climate change that is threatening his Andean home, had merit. After hearing oral arguments from both sides, the higher regional court in the western city of Hamm said Saul Luciano Lliuya’s demand for damages from RWE was “admissible”, paving the way for the case to proceed. Luciano argues that RWE, as one of the world’s top emitters of climate-altering carbon dioxide, must share in the cost of protecting his hometown Huaraz...

BONN, GERMANY - Today, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23), WHO, in collaboration with the UN Climate Change secretariat and in partnership with the Fijian Presidency of the twenty-third Conference of the Parties (COP23), has launched a special initiative to protect people living in Small Island Developing States from the heath impacts of climate change. The initiative has 4 main goals. First, to amplify the voices of health leaders in Small Island Developing States, so they have more impact at home and internationally. Second, to gather the evidence to support the business case for investment in climate change...

With the first week of the UN-sponsored climate talks drawing to a close, the trust deficit between rich industrialised and poor developing countries that has for long marred the negotiations appears to be back in some measure. The co-operative spirit that underpinned the talks at Paris and Marrakech seems to be fast receding. Unlike the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, which requires that beginning in 2020 all countries take measures to tackle climate change, in the pre-2020 period, the onus is on industrialised countries. The pre-2020 actions also includes the voluntary efforts that poor developing countries took on to slowdown...

The failure of wealthy nations to deliver on short-term climate commitments could hinder the rollout of a landmark treaty, a bloc of 134 developing countries, including India and China, warned Thursday at UN negotiations in Bonn. The diplomatic spat has underscored the difficulty of reaching a consensus at the 196-nation talks. "If we do not respect decisions that we have made, then how can we build trust among the parties?" said Chen Zhihua, China's senior negotiator, referring to long-standing pledges by rich nations to enhance financial support and "revisit" targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions before 2020. "And how can...

When a damaging heat wave occurs, how much responsibility do the major greenhouse gas-emitting countries bear? It's a question scientists say they're getting closer to answering at a country-by-country level. As international climate negotiators meet in Germany this week, a team of scientists has published a method for estimating how individual countries' shares of global greenhouse gas emissions over time contributed to the risk of specific extreme climate events, like heat waves, occurring in other countries. The new techniques "make it possible to assign extreme events to human-induced climate change and historical emissions," and "allow losses and damage associated with...

The International Monetary Fund has told rich countries they must do more to help poor nations cope with climate change or suffer from the weaker global growth and higher migration flows that will inevitably result. In a chapter released ahead of the publication of next month’s World Economic Outlook, the Washington-based IMF said low-income countries had contributed little to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and could not afford to tackle the problem from their own meagre resources. “Rising temperatures would have vastly unequal effects across the world, with the brunt of adverse consequences borne by those who can least...