'Generator' Turns Plastic Trash Into Edible Protein

Two U.S. scientists have won a 1 million euro ($1.18 million) prize for creating a food generator concept that turns plastics into protein.

© Carl Court/Getty Images Japan alone produces around 10 million tons of plastic each year, and three-quarters of it is discarded within 12 months. A new discovery could use microbes to turn it all into food.

Georgina Jadikovskaall, Zenger News

The 2021 Future Insight Prize went to Ting Lu, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Stephen Techtmann, associate professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University, for their project. It uses microbes to degrade plastic waste and convert it into food.

The German science and technology company Merck sponsors the prize. Global plastics production totaled 368 million metric tons in 2019. The only decline in the past 60 years came because the COVID-19 pandemic choked production of goods worldwide as factories sputtered and shipping slowed down.

At least 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world's oceans every year, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

"The winners of this year's Future Insight Prize have created a ground-breaking technology with the potential to generate a safe and sustainable source of food, while reducing the environmental harms associated with plastic waste and traditional agricultural methods," said Belen Garijo, Merck CEO and chair of the executive board.

"We congratulate Ting Lu and Stephen Techtmann for their promising research and hope that the Future Insight Prize will help to accelerate their efforts," he said.

© Statista Global plastics production totaled 368 million metric tons in 2019. Only the COVID-19 epidemic has been able to slow it down. Statista

The two scientists, who call their project a food "generator," focused on finding an efficient, economical and versatile technology that finds a use for plastics that are at the end of their useful life and would otherwise end up in landfills or oceans.

The resulting foods "contain all the required nutrition, are nontoxic, provide health benefits and additionally allow for personalization needs," according to Merck.

The scientists learned to exploit synthetically altered microbes, programming them genetically to convert waste into food.

  Ting Lu, professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, shared the 2021 Future Insight Prize with his research partner Stephen Techtmann, associate professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University, for their technique that converts plastic trash into edible protein. Merck KGaA/Zenger

Lu calls it "microbial synthetic biology." He said "engineered gene circuits" can advance a wide range of biotechnology solutions to future global problems.

"Environmental microbes are capable of catalyzing a wide array of chemical reactions, many of which may have industrial applications," said Techtmann. "My lab studies how complex microbial communities can cooperate to perform functions of industrial interest."

The two scientists say their joint research will allow them "to take the plastic waste generated in the world and turn it into something valuable: food and fuel."

The first winners of the Future Insight Prize, established in 2019, were Pardis Sabeti from Harvard University and James Crowe from Vanderbilt University, for research on how to detect and treat pandemic infectious diseases.

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.

Opinion: Small farms are the future of food systems

Small-scale farmers can play a crucial role in creating sustainable food systems. But more investment is needed, writes Sabrina Elba, UN Goodwill Ambassador for the International Fund for Agricultural Development.



Two years ago, my husband Idris and I traveled to Sierra Leone and met an amazing group of people. Rural men and women who had survived civil war, Ebola, and were eager to get on with their lives. The optimism in the air was palpable and the future seemed bright. Of course, back then we had no idea a pandemic was about to hit.

But the truth is even before COVID-19 began sweeping across the continent, African nations had for months been facing particularly severe difficulties. Countries across southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, were suffering the worst drought in decades, while plagues of locusts in East Africa, the worst in 70 years, had devastated crops, exacerbating existing poverty and threatening food supplies.

Our visit to Sierra Leone taught me something — namely that people are resilient. Whether it is wars, or natural disasters or a horrifying virus, people can rise up from just about anything if they get the right support.

It was on that same trip that I learned about the power of agriculture. How it is the linchpin of communities and how it spurs economic and social development. And it was in Sierra Leone that I learned that if we want to empower women and young people, and truly care for our land and our planet — we need to care about the people who plant the seeds around us, the world's smallholder farmers. They are the custodians of our planet.
Small in size, but large impact

Small farms make a huge contribution to global food security, producing at least 30% of global food. In sub-Saharan Africa, the role of small-scale farms is even more significant, accounting for 80% of the food produced. Globally, around 500 million small-scale farms support the livelihoods of more than two billion people.

Sabrina Elba works for the International Fund for Agricultural Development

Small farms actually have higher crop yields than larger farms, when the landscape conditions are similar. They also have much more biodiversity — not only of crops, but also more insect and animal life along the edges of the fields. Yet many small-scale producers live in climate "vulnerability hotspots" — if they aren't supported to adapt to the impacts of climate change, it will have a devastating impact on rural communities and the global food systems of which they are the backbone.

Small-scale agriculture is facing multiple challenges, including the need to feed a growing population on diminishing yields caused by the degradation of arable land, natural resources and biodiversity. Continued global temperature rises could cut crop yields by more than 25%, while more frequent extreme weather events will have devastating effects on farmers' land, livelihoods and food security.

We need to build the adaptive capacity of rural women and men to enable them to tackle our climate emergency and ensure Africa's long and short-term stability and progress.


Watch video03:08 Young farmers change the face of Zimbabwe's agriculture

Investing in the future

With the right kind of support, Africa has the ability to feed the world. Progress in African agriculture has been impressive — production is up 160%over the past 30 years, far above the global average of 100%. Yet there is vast room for improvement. Only 1.7% of climate finance goes to small farms. This is a tiny fraction of the billions needed to build greater resilience in both farming practices and food chains.

Without a safe and secure food system, without crop biodiversity and pollinators, we could all face food scarcity. This year, Germany, the UK and other governments have the opportunity to prevent a further hunger crisis by increasing their funding to sustainable agriculture through the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). With $1.55 billion (€1.32 billion), the IFAD can double its impact by 2030 and help more rural communities recover from the pandemic and rebuild their lives.

If countries act now and scale up their climate finance and food security commitments with a focus on small-scale producers, they are investing in the farms and food of the future. If they do not act, we will face more, and more frequent crises, in the years ahead.

Sabrina Elba is a model, activist and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Key UN climate science talks open amid floods, fires


Issued on: 26/07/2021 - 

Experts say the IPCC climate science report is "going to be a wake-up call" 

Robyn Beck AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Nearly 200 nations start online negotiations Monday to validate a UN science report that will anchor autumn summits charged with preventing climate catastrophe on a planetary scale.

Record-smashing heatwaves, floods and drought across three continents in recent weeks, all amplified by global warming, make the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment more than timely.

"It's going to be a wake-up call, there's no doubt about that," said Richard Black, founder and senior associate of the London-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.


The report, he noted, comes only weeks ahead of a UN General Assembly, a G20 summit, and the 197-nation COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

The world is a different place since the IPCC's last comprehensive assessment in 2014 of global heating, past and future.

Lingering doubts that warming was gathering pace or almost entirely human in origin, along with the falsely reassuring notion that climate impacts are tomorrow's problem, have since evaporated in the haze of deadly heatwaves and fires.

Another milestone since the last IPCC tome: the Paris Agreement has been adopted, with a collective promise to cap the planet's rising surface temperature at "well below" two degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) above late-19th century levels.

Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels, methane leaks and agriculture has driven up the thermometer 1.1 degrees Celsius so far, and emissions are rising sharply again after a brief, Covid-imposed interlude, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The 2015 treaty also features an aspirational limit on warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, with many parties no doubt assuming this goal could be safely ignored.

But an IPCC special report in 2018 showed how much more devastating an extra 2 degrees Celsius would be, for humanity and the planet.#photo1

- Low-balling the danger -

"1.5 Celsius became the de facto target" -- and proof of the IPCC's influence in shaping global policy, IPCC lead author and Maynooth University professor Peter Thorne told AFP.

Scientists have calculated that greenhouse gas emissions must decline 50 percent by 2030, and be phased out entirely by 2050 to stay within range of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A third sea change over the last seven years is in the science itself.

"Today we have better climate projection models, and longer observations with a much clearer signal of climate change," climatologist Robert Vautard, also an IPCC lead author and director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, told AFP.

Arguably the biggest breakthrough is so-called attribution studies, which for the first time allow scientists to rapidly quantify the extent to which climate change has boosted an extreme weather event's intensity or likelihood.

For example, within days of the deadly "heat dome" that scorched Canada and the western US last month, the World Weather Attribution consortium calculated that the heatwave would have been virtually impossible without manmade warming.

But after-the-fact analysis is not the same as foresight, and the IPCC -- set up in 1988 to inform UN climate negotiations -- has been criticised by some for low-balling the danger, a pattern that Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes has called "erring on the side of least drama".

- 'Transformational change' -

From Monday, representatives from 195 nations, with lead scientists at their elbow, will vet a 20 to 30-page "summary for policymakers" line by line, word by word.

The virtual meeting for this first instalment -- covering physical science -- of the three-part report will take two weeks rather than the usual one, with the document's release slated for August 9.

Part two of the report, to be published in February 2022, covers impacts.

A leaked draft obtained by AFP warns that climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades even if planet-warming carbon pollution is tamed, and calls for "transformational change" lest future generations face far worse.

Part three, to be unveiled the following month, examines solutions for reducing emissions.#photo2

Based almost entirely on published research, the report under review this week will likely forecast -- even under optimistic scenarios -- a temporary "overshoot" of the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.

There will also be a new focus on so-called "low-probability, high-risk" events, such as the irreversible melting of ice sheets that could lift sea levels by metres, and the decay of permafrost laded with greenhouse gases.

"Feedbacks which amplify change are stronger than we thought and we may be approaching some tipping point," said Tim Lenton, Director of the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute.

© 2021 AFP

London, UK: Thunderstorms cause flash flooding, submerging roads and some train stations

Severe thunderstorms caused flash flooding across London on Sunday afternoon, sparking major transport delays.

© Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images Thunderstorms flooded roads and parts of the Underground rail system in London on Sunday, July 25.

London Metropolitan Police said the flooding had caused "severe disruption" on the North Circular Road, one of the major roads surrounding central London.

Several London Underground train stations were heavily flooded, disrupting services.


The "significant flooding" affected services across the transport network," a Transport for London (TfL) spokesperson said in a statement emailed to CNN.

Multiple stations on the rail network known as the Tube were closed, according to the TfL website.

"With multiple bus routes on diversion and some Tube and rail services affected and stations closed, we strongly advise that customers check for the latest information before they travel to ensure they have a safe and smooth journey," the TfL spokesperson said.

Two London-area hospitals, Newham University Hospital and Whipps Cross University Hospital, were affected by the rains.

Video: Passengers trapped inside submerged subway as China battles deadly floods (CNN)

A spokesperson for Barts Health NHS Trust told CNN in a statement that both hospitals are experiencing operational issues due to the heavy rainfall.

"We are working closely with our local partners to resolve the issues and maintain patient care and -- while services remain available for people in an emergency -- patients are asked to attend alternative hospitals where they can, to help us put solutions in place as quickly as possible," the spokesperson said.

In the Worcester Park area, social media video emerged of cars stuck in the floodwaters and rescue boats working in the area.

The London Fire Brigade said in a tweet that it had received hundreds of calls reporting flooding across London.

"We have now taken more than 600 calls to flooding incidents, including flooding to roads & properties, reports of ceilings collapsing & vehicles stuck in water. Crews used specialist water rescue equipment to rescue five people from a car stuck in flood water in #WorcesterPark," the brigade said.

CNN meteorologist Gene Norman said that the storms that erupted over London and southern England on Sunday came on the heels of record heat on Friday.

"That very warm air collided with an area of low pressure near northern France. This resulted the slow-moving storms the produced the deluges and prompted the UK Met Service to issue an Amber alert for storms with 75 to 100 millimeters (3 to 4 inches) of rain expected," he said. "A half-dozen flood warnings remain in effect as runoff causes rivers to rise. The heaviest of the rain should move out by Monday morning."

Norman said unofficial reports estimated some locations around London received 60-92 millimeters (2.3 to 3.6 inches) of rain in an hour on Sunday.

"The tell-tale signature of this kind of flooding is that the storms formed and moved repeatedly over the same areas, basically, raining faster than it can drain," he said.

© Victoria Jones/PA Images/Getty Images A pedestrian walks through a flooded area in St James's Park in central London on Sunday.

© Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images A car is pushed through floodwaters in London's Nine Elms district.

Extreme weather smashes records as scientists convene for UN climate talks




Issued on: 26/07/2021 -
Text by: NEWS WIRES|

Video by: Robert PARSONS

Nearly 200 nations start online negotiations Monday to validate a UN science report that will anchor autumn summits charged with preventing climate catastrophe on a planetary scale.

Record-smashing heatwaves, floods and drought across three continents in recent weeks, all amplified by global warming, make the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment more than timely.

"It's going to be a wake-up call, there's no doubt about that," said Richard Black, founder and senior associate of the London-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

The report, he noted, comes only weeks ahead of a UN General Assembly, a G20 summit, and the 197-nation COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

The world is a different place since the IPCC's last comprehensive assessment in 2014 of global heating, past and future.

Lingering doubts that warming was gathering pace or almost entirely human in origin, along with the falsely reassuring notion that climate impacts are tomorrow's problem, have since evaporated in the haze of deadly heatwaves and fires.

Another milestone since the last IPCC tome: the Paris Agreement has been adopted, with a collective promise to cap the planet's rising surface temperature at "well below" two degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) above late-19th century levels.

Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels, methane leaks and agriculture has driven up the thermometer 1.1 degrees Celsius so far, and emissions are rising sharply again after a brief, Covid-imposed interlude, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The 2015 treaty also features an aspirational limit on warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, with many parties no doubt assuming this goal could be safely ignored.

But an IPCC special report in 2018 showed how much more devastating an extra 2 degrees Celsius would be, for humanity and the planet.

Low-balling the danger

"1.5 Celsius became the de facto target" -- and proof of the IPCC's influence in shaping global policy, IPCC lead author and Maynooth University professor Peter Thorne told AFP.

Scientists have calculated that greenhouse gas emissions must decline 50 percent by 2030, and be phased out entirely by 2050 to stay within range of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A third sea change over the last seven years is in the science itself.

"Today we have better climate projection models, and longer observations with a much clearer signal of climate change," climatologist Robert Vautard, also an IPCC lead author and director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, told AFP.

Arguably the biggest breakthrough is so-called attribution studies, which for the first time allow scientists to rapidly quantify the extent to which climate change has boosted an extreme weather event's intensity or likelihood.

For example, within days of the deadly "heat dome" that scorched Canada and the western US last month, the World Weather Attribution consortium calculated that the heatwave would have been virtually impossible without manmade warming.

But after-the-fact analysis is not the same as foresight, and the IPCC -- set up in 1988 to inform UN climate negotiations -- has been criticised by some for low-balling the danger, a pattern that Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes has called "erring on the side of least drama".

'Transformational change'

From Monday, representatives from 195 nations, with lead scientists at their elbow, will vet a 20 to 30-page "summary for policymakers" line by line, word by word.

The virtual meeting for this first instalment -- covering physical science -- of the three-part report will take two weeks rather than the usual one, with the document's release slated for August 9.

Part two of the report, to be published in February 2022, covers impacts.

A leaked draft obtained by AFP warns that climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades even if planet-warming carbon pollution is tamed, and calls for "transformational change" lest future generations face far worse.

Part three, to be unveiled the following month, examines solutions for reducing emissions.

Based almost entirely on published research, the report under review this week will likely forecast -- even under optimistic scenarios -- a temporary "overshoot" of the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.

There will also be a new focus on so-called "low-probability, high-risk" events, such as the irreversible melting of ice sheets that could lift sea levels by metres, and the decay of permafrost laded with greenhouse gases.

"Feedbacks which amplify change are stronger than we thought and we may be approaching some tipping point," said Tim Lenton, Director of the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute.

(AFP)

Scientists fear for wildlife in Ontario's boreal forest as wildfires get more frequent and intense
Logan Turner 

© Liam Cowan/WCS Canada More intense, frequent wildfires driven by climate change could have serious implications for the wildlife of northern Ontario's boreal forest, including the wolverine, a threatened species in the province, says wildlife researcher Matt…

As wildfires continue to burn through northern Ontario's great expanse of boreal forest, smothering the deep greens and blues of the land, experts are keeping an eye on the hundreds of animal species living within.

Although the 2021 fire season has already been one of the worst in the past decade, this year's fires aren't the most worrying — it's those yet to come.

"Animals are adapted to wildfire. Some animals head to the water and others escape ahead of the fire," said Connie O'Connor, director of the Ontario Northern Boreal Program for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) of Canada.

But as summers in northwestern Ontario become warmer and drier — something O'Connor and others have linked to climate change — fires are becoming more frequent, larger, hotter and more intense.

"My fear as a wildlife scientist is that these fires are going to get to the stage where it is too much for animals' natural adaptations to fire to handle any more, that it's going to kind of overwhelm them."
Water

O'Connor, an aquatic scientist by training, said many people don't really think about the relationship between fish and forest fires, but fish have certain adaptations to deal with fires, like naturally seeking in deeper, cooler places in the water systems.

"The ash that goes into the water, in the long term, it can even be a benefit to fish because it can increase the nutrients in the water for little aquatic bugs and stuff to grow."

But as industrial activities and the construction of new roads and dams continue to reshape parts of the boreal forest, and hotter temperatures possibly decrease water levels, O'Connor said, there could be increased "acute fish kills." That's because the same waterways and deep areas the fish have historically relied on would cease to exist, she said.

Then, firefighting efforts could harm fish species, "because the actual fire retardants can be toxic for them and those foam fire suppressants on top of water can block the oxygen."
Land

Before his work as a wildfire researcher, Matt Scrafford was a wildland firefighter on the front lines of the fires.

"We would often see animals running from these fires," he said. "I mean, we've had snowshoe hares running basically over top of us, or you'd see deer running, or chipmunks or squirrels … you'd see them fleeing the fires."

Mobile land species can often get out of the way of the fires, Scrafford said, but the problem is these forest fires are massive and changing the entire composition of landscapes.

"There's really not a lot of places for these animals to go, in the sense that these systems are filled up with animals to begin with, and there's not vacant territories everywhere for these animals to get pushed out."

Add in the disturbances to the boreal forest caused by forestry, mining and other human activity, and "you just get really high levels of disturbance," Scrafford added. That would create more competition for limited resources, and some species will inevitably suffer as a result.

The researcher points to the elusive species he studies: the wolverine, a threatened species in Ontario.

"We see so many instances of wolverines with missing eyes, and missing ears and missing sides of their skull … they really beat each other up," said Scrafford. "It's because there's fierce competition for habitat and there's fierce competition for the females."

Wolverines are territorial, and while they have large "home ranges," he said, all the disturbances could pit the few hundred wolverines against one another for disappearing habitats.

While he hasn't seen that happen yet, it's something Scrafford is keeping a close eye on as his research continues.

"There's definitely a relationship between this increased frequency of forest fires, and the severity of these fires and some negative effects on the wolverines."
Air

Even some of the most mobile of animals — birds — will be affected by the increasingly intense and frequent wildfires, said Claire Farrell, an associate conservation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

There is the natural forest fire regime, Farrell explained, where forest fires create patches of burned areas that later regrow.

"When you picture the forest, it's actually a mosaic of different ages of forests, different types of forest interspersed with lakes and wetlands. Because that mosaic is so different, different species of birds rely on those patches of habitat."

Some of Farrell's previous research focused on the nightjar, a family of birds that was previously considered to be one of Ontario's fastest declining species. She said nightjars actually use the large, open burn patches created by forest fires to fly around and catch large insects.

"As climate change is increasing the intensity and severity of forest fires, theoretically speaking, that would create more burned open stands for them, which they use to catch a lot of insect prey."

However, she warned that many other bird species, like the ovenbird, rely on old growth forest patches as habitat, and those areas could decrease with growing wildfires.

Farrell said people in northern First Nations have reported seeing new species shifting their ranges as they adapt to or find new habitats, and have stopped seeing some species that were always known to be there.

Echoing O'Connor and Scrafford, Farrell said there are still a lot of unknowns about how climate change, wildfires and other human-caused disturbances will cumulatively affect the wildlife of northern Ontario's boreal forest.

"That's something that we're keeping an eye on," she added.

Action on climate change can provide a shot in the arm for the global economy, economist says


Charles Dumas, chief economist at U.K.-based investment research firm TS Lombard, said that action on climate change is often criticized as moving too slowly.

However, with governments increasing spending to aid their post-Covid economies, they may start catching up.

 

© Provided by CNBC An employee with Ipsun Solar installs solar panels on the roof of the Peace Lutheran Church in Alexandria, Virginia on May 17, 2021.

Ramping up investment in policies and technologies to tackle climate change could play a significant role in the global economy's recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

In a recent note, Charles Dumas, chief economist at U.K.-based investment research firm TS Lombard, said that action on climate change is often criticized as moving too slowly. However, with governments increasing spending to aid their post-Covid economies, they may start catching up.

A key tenet of this is the ever-decreasing cost of electricity per megawatt hour, according to figures from TS Lombard, with costs of solar, offshore and onshore wind dropping over the last 10 years, while gas and coal have remained largely the same.

"Effectively by 2030 the cost of renewable electricity is going to be half that of coal and gas sourced electricity," Dumas told CNBC.

These trends will bring many of the various pledges to reach net zero more closely in sight.

The fatal floods in Germany in recent weeks have put the impacts of climate change firmly in the spotlight again but they are only the latest in a series of devastating extreme weather events of late, including

COP26 priorities

Amid this backdrop, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26, will meet in Glasgow in November. It will mark one of the most significant multilateral meetings on climate since the Paris agreement.

Dumas said that as COP26 approaches, governments need to understand their key priorities, and among them should be infrastructure investments as numerous technological and engineering challenges continue to obstruct renewable energy.

"I think the intermittency problem is pretty serious and it's not just that the sun goes down at night," Dumas said.

Video: Why climate change could lead to a financial crisis (and what we can do about it (CNBC)

In the case of solar power, output can be mixed depending on the location of infrastructure like solar farms.

"There's huge variation with sunny days in winter and sunny days in the middle of summer so the intermittency takes on a very big seasonal aspect," Dumas said.

"You can have vicious weather for a long time in the middle of December or January and lo and behold you wouldn't want to be depending on solar power."

Energy transmission could be another bottleneck, he said. While the developing world, including several African nations, has great potential in developing sites for generating solar power, that power needs to move easily.

"The issue of transmission technology is really major. If you want Chad to be the new Saudi Arabia, because of the Sahara Desert there's a lot of sun there, but you want the electricity to be used in Europe then you're talking about some expensive processes and processes needing a lot of research and a lot of further investment."

Storage and carbon capture are all areas that require hefty investment, Dumas added, if governments are to reach their net-zero targets.

"What we need is a very clear public policy lead in order to get anywhere near these net zero promises and I suspect that actually what it's going to be about is a carbon tax, which the Americans may resist but will be necessary," he said.
Job creation

Paul Steele, chief economist at an independent policy research institute called the International Institute for Environment and Development, said that climate action and renewable energy investments will serve the dual purpose of tackling the climate crisis while creating jobs for the post-Covid economy.

"One of the priorities coming out of Covid is to create labor intensive employment. Both in developed and developing countries, you can provide labor intensive employment through renewable energy," Steele said.

One example, he said, was the retrofitting of boilers in homes in the U.K., which would help push the country toward its climate targets and create new jobs while being relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of things.

Steele said that investments to drive a climate-friendly economy cannot be short term or have quick goals.

He pointed to the various government support schemes for the airline industry, which has been battered by the pandemic. Just this week, the European courts gave the nod to a $2.9 billion bailout for Air France-KLM's Dutch business.

Bailout funds like these should be tied to sustainability commitments by the airline industry, he said, but that can be a dicey proposition to get over the line.

"Governments aren't making the connections enough and traditionally treasuries and particularly the ministries of transport are still dominated by road building lobbies and people who like to build highways and increase transport rather than people who want to invest in sustainable alternatives."

Italy: Wildfires rage through Sardinia, forcing evacuations

Tens of thousands of acres have gone up in flames in what Italian officials called "an unprecedented disaster." Spain and France were also battling wildfires.


Firefighters on Sardinia struggled throughout the night to put out the fire

Wildfires raged through the Italian island of Sardinia on Sunday, forcing emergency services to evacuate almost hundreds of people from their homes overnight.

Several aircraft have been deployed to put out what the Nuova Sardegna newspaper called an "enormous fire" that has been destroying fields on the island since Saturday.
What we know about the fires

Firefighters have battled to put out the blaze fanned by southwesterly winds and which, according to authorities, has already ravaged 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) around the historic central-western area of Montiferru.

The island's governor, Christian Solinas, said around 50,000 acres of vegetation had gone up in flames, destroying several houses and killing animals.

Nearly 1,500 people were evacuated across Sardinia, broadcaster Rai News reported on Sunday.

There were no reports of anyone being killed or injured by the fire.

Fires have destroyed tens of thousands of acres in the Italian island of Sardinia

Officials said some 7,500 emergency workers, including members of Italy's forest police and the Red Cross, were helping evacuees and those at risk.

Emergency services managed to stave off enough of the threat on Sunday, allowing some evacuees from the town Cuglieri to return home. However, the threat is still classified as "extreme."

With temperatures expected to remain high on Monday, authorities are warning residents to remain on alert until the fire is fully under control.
'An unprecedented disaster'

Villaurbana's mayor, Paolo Pireddu, who is coordinating the response in his area, told ANSA his town had been "touched by the flames, which are now heading towards Mount Grighine."

"We have put the population on alert with the possibility of evacuating, should there be a need."

Watch video01:58 2020 and 2016 world's hottest years on record

"It is not yet possible to estimate the damage caused by the fires still raging in the Oristanese area, but it is an unprecedented disaster," Solinas told the Nuova Sardegna newspaper.

"We are asking the government for immediate economic support to restore the damage and help affected communities get back on their feet."
France and Greece show 'prompt solidarity'

Two firefighting planes from France and two from Greece arrived in Italy to assist in containing the fires, Italy's civil protection agency said.

Italy's foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, said on Facebook that the agency appealed for aircraft from other European countries.

Janez Lenarcic, the EU's crisis management commissioner, thanked France and Greece for their "prompt solidarity."

Lenarcic said that the bloc's Emergency Response Coordination Center "remains in close contact with the Italian authorities to monitor developments on the ground and coordinate any further assistance as needed."
Wildfires burn in Spain and France

Wildfires broke out in northeast Spain on Saturday evening, consuming more than 3,000 acres of woodland in the rural area 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Barcelona.\

High temperatures and strong winds fanned the flames west of Barcelona

Catalan authorities evacuated 28 children and 14 camp counselors from a nearby summer camp.

Around 300 emergency responders, including firefighters and members of the military emergency unit, battled on Sunday to prevent the blaze from moving into inhabited areas.

Meanwhile, a large fire broke out on Saturday in southern France. More than 1,000 firefighters and emergency responders were deployed, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

Darmanin said a firefighting aircraft was also sent to a fire in a forested area between the cities of Narbonne and Carcassonne.

The fire has burned an area of around 2,100 acres. It has affected more than 100,000 households, according to France's electricity operator RTE.

fb, jc/mm (AP, AFP)

Hamburg Fridays for Future honor victims of floods in western Germany

Activists are pushing for new urgent measures after devastating floods in western Germany. They heavily criticized politicians, saying they were indifferent to climate changed-induced consequences.



Hundreds gathered in Hamburg on Friday to pay tribute to flood victims and call on politicians to act immediately to deter the most harmful effects of climate change.

Luisa Neubauer, a leading German climate activist in the Fridays for Future movement most closely associated with Greta Thurnberg, told the dpa news agency: "The climate crisis is here, it is unmistakable."

Climate activist Luisa Neubauer

She said the floods that wrought havoc on western and southern Germany last week showed how "prosperity that has been accumulated over decades" can be washed away in a matter of moments.

Neubauer told dpa that politicians appeared largely oblivious to the effects of climate change. Promises made are not promises kept, she said.

Watch video0 7:15 How green is Germany?

"We also see that these proclamations often vanish into thin air just when it comes to putting them into action," she said.
Hamburg hopes for a future

Neubauer was joined by approximately 500 fellow climate change activists in a march through central Hamburg.

The Fridays for Future march took place in Hamburg against the backdrop of floods in western Germany last week and the ongoing pandemic

The 170 known victims of the floods were remembered with a minute of silence and donations were collected for the survivors.

Floods as a flash of devastation – and hope

Annika Rittmann, spokeswoman for "Fridays for Future" in Hamburg, expressed disappointment in Armin Laschet, the Christian Democrats candidate for chancellor and currently the state premier of North Rhine Westphalia, which saw the worst of the flooding.


At one point while touring the devastation, Laschet was caught on camera laughing with colleagues in the background of a shot as German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivered remark\

Watch video26:05 To the point - Climate catastrophe: Will we ever change our ways?

Claudia Kemfert, an economist at the German Institute for Economic Economic Research (DIW), sees opportunity in the aftermath.

The floods, she said, could lead to positive transformations in society, most notably in terms of preventative projects designed to limit future damages.

"Every euro that we invest now saves 15 euros," she said.

ar/msh (dpa)

America's Black Civil War soldiers seen in rare photo archive

Megan C. Hills, CNN | Oscar Holland, CNN 

© Library of Congress Sergeant Major William L. Henderson and hospital steward Thomas H. S. Pennington.

 Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture A carte de visite of Lieutenant Peter Vogelsang, who served with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.
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As she would later learn, almost 180,000 Black soldiers fought for the North in the name of ending slavery. By the end of the war, a tenth of the Union Army was made up of free African American men.

"When Black soldiers were fighting for their emancipation, they were fighting for not only their own (freedom), but that of their families and other Black people," Willis said in a video interview. "They felt the cause was necessary to fight."

By the end of the war in 1865, 40,000 Black Union soldiers had been killed, of whom three-quarters had died from infection or disease. Many of their individual stories have been lost, but Willis' research uncovered moving tales of Black love, patriotism and bravery. Her recently published book, "The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship," shines a light on these forgotten soldiers and their families through a rich archive of rarely-seen photographs.

"Erasure appears in many ways," said Willis, who is a professor and department chair at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

In the case of thousands of African American Civil War soldiers, she explained, their narratives weren't "hidden" -- they were shared in diaries and letters. Many Black soldiers also paid to have photographic portraits taken that depicted them as patriotic free men. They can be seen dressed in military regalia, posing proudly with the American flag or holding the weapons they fought with.
© Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Tintype of a Civil War soldier. His buttons and belt buckle are hand colored in gold paint. The hand coloring on the buckle reads backward "SU," which when considered that the image is reversed, reads "US," the traditional inscription on Union Civil War be lt buckles. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from the Liljenquist Family Collection, 2011.51.12)

In her book, Willis presents almost 100 of the images, which date from the 1840s to 1860s, alongside family correspondence and news articles, offering an intimate account of the conflict. She also included the stories of Black medical workers, servants and cooks -- including those in the South, where thousands of enslaved African Americans were taken to war as laborers or forced to serve White soldiers.

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Tintype of a Civil War soldier. His buttons and belt buckle are hand colored in gold paint. The hand coloring on the buckle reads backward "SU," which when considered that the image is reversed, reads "US," the traditional inscription on Union Civil War be lt buckles. (Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from the Liljenquist Family Collection, 2011.51.12)

Willis' book challenges readers to bear witness to their varied experiences.

"I wanted this book to be kind of a memory album of sorts -- the memory of the individuals who wrote articles in the newspapers or who wrote diaries and diary entries, but also (those) who shared the visual experience of photography," she said.


A new medium

Early cameras first arrived in the United States in 1839, and by the time the Civil War began in 1861, commercial photography was taking off.

Before leaving for war, some soldiers took portraits with loved ones as mementos in the event they didn't return. One picture in Willis' book, set in a romantic brass frame, shows a husband and wife sitting beside each other. Another shows a saber-wielding soldier sitting beside his wife, who is dressed in a voluminous gown.

Commercial photographers also set up temporary studios in tents near the army camps, creating what Willis called "spaces for people to reimagine themselves." Soldiers would sometimes get photos taken to send home to their families, folding them up with love letters or notes sent home from the front lines.

© Library of Congress Portrait of an unidentified African American soldier in uniform, c. 1860s.

"We don't talk about Black love in the 19th century," Willis said. "We talk about survival which is, yes, a part of it. But having an opportunity to see a love story that's a mother and son, or a patriotic story of a man who's interested in his citizenship and freedom -- that kind of love is something I wanted to explore in this book."

While the Union's Black soldiers were fighting for the same cause as their White counterparts, their platoons remained segregated. So, too, were the war's makeshift photography studios. "There were certain days that Black people could go into studios, and on Thursdays and Saturdays at midday, (they) would say, 'coloreds only,'" Willis said. "And then other days were open to Whites."

In the South, meanwhile, African Americans had hardly any opportunity to be photographed -- and not only because of their status in the Confederacy. Early camera equipment was not readily available in Southern states, Willis writes in her book, and the few photographers there raised their fees "to compensate for the high prices of photographic materials and the inflated Confederate dollar."


'Significance of the moment'

The uncovered photographs include ambrotypes, images made on chemically treated glass plates, and tintypes, a much faster innovation that imprinted pictures onto thin metal sheets dipped in a silver nitrate solution. Some of these photographs appear in elaborate protective cases lined with red velvet or brass frames engraved with American flags, eagles and stars.

An early form of paper photograph known as a "carte de visite," which was often used as a formal calling card, was also increasingly popular in the Civil War era. Examples in Willis' book include portraits of famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who served in the Union Army and rescued enslaved people through a secretive network called the Underground Railroad; Nicholas Biddle, a Black man believed to be the first person wounded in the conflict after a racist mob hurled a brick at him; and Thomas Morris Chester, the first African American war correspondent for a major daily newspaper.

© National Archives African American hospital workers, including nurses, at a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, July 1863.

Photographers typically charged between 25 cents and $2.50 ($6 to $60 in today's money), depending on the size of the image, according to Willis' research. There were additional fees for hand-painted details, such as an American flag.

Given that Black Northern soldiers were paid less than their White counterparts -- just $10 per month, with a further $3 deducted for uniforms, compared to the $13 and free clothing enjoyed by White soldiers -- having a photograph taken was relatively expensive. It was thus a "self-conscious act," Willis wrote, adding that it "shows the subjects were aware of the significance of the moment and sought to preserve it."

For Willis, however, the pictures and stories are as much to do with the present as the past. The historian hopes to help younger generations visualize "a broader story" about Black people's role in the Civil War, sharing experiences of Black American history that go beyond the narratives of slavery.

"The absence of those stories dehumanizes young people," she said, adding: "How can they reflect on the past without creating a future for themselves if it's only about a struggle?"

"The Black Civil War Soldier: A History of Conflict and Citizenship," published by New York University Press, is available now

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© Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture A portrait of Harriet Tubman, who rescued enslaved people during the American Civil War.