Climate change worsened deadly Africa floods, scientists say

Agence France-Presse
October 23, 2024 

Men building a make-shift levee amid floods in Messawi, Sudan earlier this year (AFP)

Human-caused climate change worsened floods that have killed hundreds of people and displaced millions in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan this year, according to a study published on Wednesday.

The intense rainy season has unleashed a humanitarian crisis across large areas of the Sahel region bordering the Sahara desert.

A new analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists found warming driven by the use of fossil fuels had exacerbated the flooding in Sudan.

The researchers also said climate change would have made this year's torrential rains around five to 20 percent more intense across the Niger and Lake Chad basins, citing a previous WWA study of similar floods in 2022.

"This is only going to keep getting worse if we keep burning fossil fuels," said Clair Barnes from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.

Speaking at a briefing ahead of the study's publication, she said such downpours "could happen every year" if global temperatures increase to two degrees Celsius (35.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.


"It's pretty serious," she said.

- Downpours and storms -

Global warming is not just about rising temperatures -- the extra heat trapped in the atmosphere and seas has knock-on effects and can result in more intense downpours and storms.


The researchers said there was a clear link between the extreme rainfall and a warming planet.

In the study, they focused on war-torn Sudan, where millions of displaced people have been uprooted by conflict and driven into flood-prone areas.

The scientists used modelling to compare weather patterns in our world and one without human-induced warming, and found that month-long spells of intense rainfall in parts of Sudan had become heavier and more likely due to climate change.


At the current 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming, they said similar periods of rainfall are expected to occur on average about once every three years, and have become about 10 percent heavier due to climate change.

- 'Incredibly concerning' -

"These results are incredibly concerning," said Izidine Pinto, one of the study's authors and a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.


He warned that "with every fraction of a degree of warming, the risk of extreme floods will keep increasing", and called for the UN's COP29 climate summit to "accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels" when it meets in Azerbaijan next month.

Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at Imperial's Centre for Environmental Policy, said the floods underscored the need for a loss and damage fund for nations devastated by climate change.

A key meeting ahead of COP29 earlier this month ended with countries making little progress over how to finance a deal for poorer nations.


"Africa has contributed a tiny amount of carbon emissions globally, but is being hit the hardest by extreme weather," Kimutai said.

The role of climate change in the floods was compounded by other human-made problems, the researchers said, and they called for better maintenance of dams and investment in early warning systems.

Wild animals can experience trauma and adversity too

The Conversation
October 23, 2024 

Marmot (Jean Christophe Verhaegen:AFP)

Psychologists know that childhood trauma, or the experience of harmful or adverse events, can have lasting repercussions on the health and well-being of people well into adulthood. But while the consequences of early adversity have been well researched in humans, people aren’t the only ones who can experience adversity.

If you have a rescue dog, you probably have witnessed how the abuse or neglect it may have experienced earlier in life now influence its behavior – these pets tend to be more skittish or reactive. Wild animals also experience adversity. Although their negative experiences are easy to dismiss as part of life in the wild, they still have lifelong repercussions – just like traumatic events in people and pets.

As behavioral ecologists, we are interested in how adverse experiences early in life can affect animals’ behavior, including the kinds of decisions they make and the way they interact with the world around them. In other words, we want to see how these experience affect the way they behave and survive in the wild.

Many studies in humans and other animals have shown the importance of early life experiences in shaping how individuals develop. But researchers know less about how multiple, different instances of adversity or stressors can accumulate within the body and what their overall impact is on an animal’s well-being.

Wild populations face many kinds of stressors. They compete for food, risk getting eaten by a predator, suffer illness and must contend with extreme weather conditions. And as if life in the wild wasn’t hard enough, humans are now adding additional stressors such as chemical, light and sound pollution, as well as habitat destruction.

Given the widespread loss of biodiversity, understanding how animals react to and are harmed by these stressors can help conservation groups better protect them. But accounting for such a diversity of stressors is no easy feat. To address this need and demonstrate the cumulative impact of multiple stressors, our research team decided to develop an index for wild animals based on psychological research on human childhood trauma.

A cumulative adversity index

Developmental psychologists began to develop what psychologists now call the adverse childhood experiences score, which describes the amount of adversity a person experienced as a child. Briefly, this index adds up all the adverse events – including forms of neglect, abuse or other household dysfunction – an individual experienced during childhood into a single cumulative score.

This score can then be used to predict later-life health risks such as chronic health conditions, mental illness or even economic status. This approach has revolutionized many human health intervention programs by identifying at-risk children and adults, which allows for more targeted interventions and preventive efforts.

So, what about wild animals? Can we use a similar type of score or index to predict negative survival outcomes and identify at-risk individuals and populations?

These are the questions we were interested in answering in our latest research paper. We developed a framework on how to create a cumulative adversity index – similar to the adverse childhood experiences score, but for populations of wild animals. We then used this index to gain insights about the survival and longevity of yellow-bellied marmots. In other words, we wanted to see whether we could use this index to estimate how long a marmot would live.

A marmot case study

Yellow-bellied marmots are a large ground squirrel closely related to groundhogs. Our research group has been studying these marmots in Colorado at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory since 1962.



A marmot wearing an ear tag. Xochitl Ortiz Ross

Yellow-bellied marmots are an excellent study system because they are diurnal, or active during the day, and they have an address. They live in burrows scattered across a small, defined geographical area called a colony. The size of the colony and the number of individuals that reside within varies greatly from year to year, but they are normally composed of matrilines, which means related females tend to remain within the natal colony, while male relatives move away to find a new colony.

Yellow-bellied marmots hibernate for most of the year, but they become active between April and September. During this active period, we observe each colony daily and regularly trap each individual in the population – that’s over 200 unique individuals just in 2023. We then mark their backs with a distinct symbol and give them uniquely numbered ear tags so they can be later identified.

Although they can live up to 15 years, we have detailed information about the life experiences of individual marmots spanning almost 30 generations. They were the perfect test population for our cumulative adversity index.

Among the sources of adversity, we included ecological measures such as a late spring, a summer drought and high predator presence. We also included parental measures such as having an underweight or stressed mother, being born or weaned late, and losing their mother. The model also included demographic measures such as being born in a large litter or having many male siblings.

Importantly, we looked only at females, since they are the ones who tend to stay home. Therefore, some of the adversities listed are only applicable to females. For example, females born in litters with many males become masculinized, likely from the high testosterone levels in the mother’s uterus. The females behave more like males, but this also reduces their life span and reproductive output. Therefore, having many male siblings is harmful to females, but maybe not to males.

A yellow-bellied marmot shown on a trail camera in Montana.

So, does our index, or the number of adverse events a marmot experienced early on, explain differences in marmot survival? We found that, yes, it does.

Experiencing even just one adversity event before age 2 nearly halved an adult marmot’s odds of survival, regardless of the type of adversity they experienced. This is the first record of lasting negative consequences from losing a mother in this species.

So what?

Our study isn’t the only one of its kind. A few other studies have used an index similar to the human adverse childhood experiences score with wild primates and hyenas, with largely similar results. We are interested in broadening this framework so that other researchers can adopt it for the species they study.

A better understanding of how animals can or cannot cope with multiple sources of adversity can inform wildlife conservation and management practices. For example, an index like ours could help identify at-risk populations that require a more immediate conservation action.

Instead of tackling the one stressor that seems to have the greatest effect on a species, this approach could help managers consider how best to reduce the total number of stressors a species experiences.

For example, changing weather patterns driven by global heating trends may create new stressors that a wildlife manager can’t address. But it might be possible to reduce how many times these animals have to interact with people during key times of the year by closing trails, or providing extra food to replace the food they lose from harsh weather.

While this index is still in early development, it could one day help researchers ask new questions about how animals adapt to stress in the wild.


Xochitl Ortiz Ross, Ph.D. Candidate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Palestinian seeds join Arctic 'doomsday vault'

Agence France-Presse
October 23, 2024 

The Global Seed Vault (AFP)

A "doomsday vault" in the Arctic designed to safeguard the world's plant diversity has received a new deposit of thousands of seed samples, including Palestinian ones amid war and hunger in Gaza, it said on Wednesday.

Opened in 2008, the Global Seed Vault offers a safety net in case of natural catastrophe, war, climate change, disease or manmade disasters.

More than 30,000 samples from a record 23 organisations in 21 countries were deposited in the vault in Norway's Svalbard archipelago on Tuesday, the Crop Trust, one of the project's partners, said on Wednesday.

Buried inside a mountain near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen Island, about 1,300 kilometers (about 800 miles) from the North Pole, the "Noah's Ark" of food crops is also aimed at preserving plants that can feed a growing population facing climate change.

Launched in 2008 with funding from Norway, the three cold chambers are today home to some 1.3 million varieties of seeds that their owners can withdraw at any moment.

Among those deposited on Tuesday were 21 Palestinian species comprised of vegetables, millet and herbs, provided by the Palestinian non-profit Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC).

According to the Crop Trust, a new delivery of seeds is expected in February from Sudan, a country also ravaged by war and famine.

"Climate change and conflict threaten infrastructure and impact food security for over 700 million people in more than 75 countries worldwide," Crop Trust director Stefan Schmitz said.

"Genebanks are ramping up efforts to back-up seed collections, and we are proud to support them by providing a safe haven in Svalbard," he said in a statement.


The vault is designed to be able to resist catastrophes, located far from conflict zones and placed at an altitude that will protect it from rising sea levels.

Even if the refrigeration system were to fail, the vault would maintain its cold temperature thanks to the permafrost around it.

Trump covertly planning the world’s biggest protection racket

Lindsay Beyerstein
October 23, 2024 

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press, at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 26, 2024. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado

You wouldn’t expect a presidential candidate to make a massive middle class tax hike the centerpiece of his economic platform, but that’s exactly what Donald Trump is doing.

Trump has vowed to slap a 20 percent tax on all imports, a 60 percent tax on all Chinese imports and a 2,000 percent tax on imported cars.

These taxes are known as tariffs. Everything from tequila to video game consoles would cost more. Trump’s tariffs would cost the average family nearly $4,000 a year and rising prices would accelerate inflation.

Trump claims that other countries will pay for the tariffs, but consumers paid for nearly all of the tariffs he imposed in his first term through higher prices.

And then we paid billions more to bail out the farmers who were ruined by the tariffs our trading partners imposed in retaliation.

So why is Trump so keen on taxing imports?

Because the Trump tariffs would create the greatest engine of corruption in history, an institutionalized kleptocracy where import-based business lives or dies by Trump’s favor. Elon Musk’s imported parts might be exempted while GM’s are not.

Congress has given the president sweeping powers to impose tariffs, and critically, to waive those tariffs for a favored few. US imports totaled $3.8 trillion in 2023. The thought of a 34-time convicted felon wielding that kind of power is terrifying. Powerful interests at home and abroad want to save money and gain an edge over their competitors by dodging tariffs. Trump is just the man to make that happen, for a price.


Trump’s business empire creates limitless opportunities for would-be tariff dodgers to convert cash into official acts. In all, Trump’s businesses raked in nearly $2 billion in revenue during his first term, including millions from the governments of China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. If emoluments won’t suffice, there’s always bribery. Trump is credibly accused of taking 200 pounds of cash worth $10 million from Egypt in exchange for a friendlier diplomatic posture towards the autocratic regime.

Trump politicized tariff waivers in his first term.

The Brookings Institution found that “a bewildering array of politically favored importers won tariff relief” during that time. Bibles from China got a waiver because the religious right insisted, but textbooks are still taxed. Now the Trump Bible is made in China, too. Salmon and cod got waivers because powerful Republican senators threw their weight around. Chinese tiki torches got the nod for reasons that remain as murky as a bad fish farm. Governments including China, Russia and Argentina are suspected of granting Trump and his family trademarks worth millions of dollars in the hopes of securing more favorable trade relations.

Technically, the Commerce Department grants the waivers. These concessions are supposed to be based on the national interest, but the process is notoriously opaque and politicized at the best of times.

In a second Trump term, it would become completely corrupt. In the name of fighting an imaginary “Deep State,” Trump plans to purge career civil servants and replace them with maga hacks who will do his bidding. The Heritage Foundation, home of Project 2025, is already flooding federal agencies with Freedom of Information Requests to find out which civil servants aren’t Trumpy enough. Heritage shelled out $100,000 for Project Sovereignty 2025 to draw up a McCarthyite list of civil servants that Heritage President Kevin Roberts considers to be a “deep state of entrenched Leftist bureaucrats.”

If you wondered why JD Vance called on Trump to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” there’s your answer. It’s the mid-level bureaucrats in every federal agency that stand in the way of turning the federal government into a Trump protection racket.

Trump’s tariff plan would give him discretion to play favorites over trillions of dollars of trade. We know he’d follow through because he played favorites with tariffs in his first term. The second time around, he will vastly increase the amount of goods subject to tariffs and purge the civil service of anyone who might oppose his bid to reward his friends and punish his enemies.

How Trump's billionaires are hijacking affordable housing

Thom Hartmann
October 24, 2024 


Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City, U.S., October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

America’s morbidly rich billionaires are at it again, this time screwing the average family’s ability to have decent, affordable housing in their never-ending quest for more, more, more. Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Denmark have had enough and done something about it: we should, too.

There are a few things that are essential to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that should never be purely left to the marketplace; these are the most important sectors where government intervention, regulation, and even subsidy are not just appropriate but essential. Housing is at the top of that list.

A few days ago I noted how, since the Reagan Revolution, the cost of housing has exploded in America, relative to working class income.

When my dad bought his home in the 1950s, for example, the median price of a single-family house was around 2.2 times the median American family income. Today the St. Louis Fed says the median house sells for $417,700 while the median American income is $40,480—a ratio of more than 10 to 1 between housing costs and annual income.

In other words, housing is about five times more expensive (relative to income) than it was in the 1950s.

And now we’ve surged past a new tipping point, causing the homelessness that’s plagued America’s cities since George W. Bush’s deregulation-driven housing- and stock-market crash in 2008, exacerbated by Trump’s bungling America’s pandemic response.

And the principal cause of both that crash and today’s crisis of homelessness and housing affordability has one, single, primary cause: billionaires treating housing as an investment commodity.

A new report from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis. They summarize in their own words:

— Billionaire-backed private equity firms worm their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities.
— Global billionaires purchase billions in U.S. real estate to diversify their asset holdings, driving the creation of luxury housing that functions as “safety deposit boxes in the sky.” Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets.
— Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people. Nationwide there are 16 million vacant homes: that is, 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person.
— Billionaire investors are buying up a large segment of the short-term rental market, preventing local residents from living in these homes, in order to cash in on tourism. These are not small owners with one unit, but corporate owners with multiple properties.
— Billionaire investors and corporate landlords are targeting communities of color and low-income residents, in particular, with rent increases, high rates of eviction, and unhealthy living conditions. What’s more, billionaire-owned private equity firms are investing in subsidized housing, enjoying tax breaks and public benefits, while raising rents and evicting low-income tenants from housing they are only required to keep affordable, temporarily. (Emphasis theirs.)

It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of the homelessness these billionaires are causing. Rarely, though, do you hear about the role of Wall Street and its billionaires in causing it.

The math, however, is irrefutable.

Thirty-two percent is the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires are making a killing.


As the Zillow study notes:
“Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32 percent [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….”

And wherever housing prices become more than three times annual income, homelessness stalks like the grim reaper. That Zillow-funded study laid it out:
“This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability — the share of income people spend on rent — crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”

This trend is massive.


As noted in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street,” in just one suburb (Spring Hill) of Nashville:
“In all of Spring Hill, four firms … own nearly 700 houses … [which] amounts to about 5% of all the houses in town.”

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.
“On the first Tuesday of each month,” notes the Journal article about a similar phenomenon in Atlanta, investors “toted duffels stuffed with millions of dollars in cashier’s checks made out in various denominations so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their buying spree with trips to the bank…”

The same thing is happening in cities and suburbs all across America; agents for the billionaire investor goliaths use fine-tuned computer algorithms to sniff out houses they can turn into rental properties, making over-market and unbeatable cash bids often within minutes of a house hitting the market.


After stripping neighborhoods of homes young families can afford to buy, billionaires then begin raising rents to extract as much cash as they can from local working class communities.

In the Nashville suburb of Spring Hill, the vice-mayor, Bruce Hull, told the Journal you used to be able to rent “a three bedroom, two bath house for $1,000 a month.” Today, the Journal notes:
“The average rent for 148 single-family homes in Spring Hill owned by the big four [Wall Street billionaire investor] landlords was about $1,773 a month…”

As the Bank of International Settlements summarized in a 2014 retrospective study of the years since the Reagan/Gingrich changes in banking and finance:

“We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risk-taking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties, pitting Main Street against Wall Street. … We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.”

It’s a fancy way of saying that billionaire-owned big banks and hedge funds have made trillions on housing while you and your community are becoming destitute.

Ryan Dezember, in his book Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare, describes the story of a family trying to buy a home in Phoenix. Every time they entered a bid, they were outbid instantly, the price rising over and over, until finally the family’s father threw in the towel.
“Jacobs was bewildered,” writes Dezember. “Who was this aggressive bidder?”

Turns out it was Blackstone Group, now the world’s largest real estate investor run by a major Trump supporter. At the time they were buying $150 million worth of American houses every week, trying to spend over $10 billion. And that’s just a drop in the overall bucket.


As that new study from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies found:
“[Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s] Blackstone is the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021.
“Blackstone owns 149,000 multi-family apartment units; 63,000 single-family homes; 70 mobile home parks with 13,000 lots through their subsidiary Treehouse Communities; and student housing, through American Campus Communities (144,300 beds in 205 properties as of 2022). Blackstone recently acquired 95,000 units of subsidized housing.”

In 2018, corporations and the billionaires that own or run them bought 1 out of every 10 homes sold in America, according to Dezember, noting that:
“Between 2006 and 2016, when the homeownership rate fell to its lowest level in fifty years, the number of renters grew by about a quarter.”

And it’s gotten worse every year since then.


This all really took off around a decade ago following the Bush Crash, when Morgan Stanley published a 2011 report titled “The Rentership Society,” arguing that snapping up houses and renting them back to people who otherwise would have wanted to buy them could be the newest and hottest investment opportunity for Wall Street’s billionaires and their funds.

Turns out, Morgan Stanley was right. Warren Buffett, KKR, and The Carlyle Group have all jumped into residential real estate, along with hundreds of smaller investment groups, and the National Home Rental Council has emerged as the industry’s premiere lobbying group, working to block rent control legislation and other efforts to control the industry.

As John Husing, the owner of Economics and Politics Inc., told The Tennessean newspaper:

“What you have are neighborhoods that are essentially unregulated apartment houses. It could be disastrous for the city.”

As Zillow found:
“The areas that are most vulnerable to rising rents, unaffordability, and poverty hold 15 percent of the U.S. population — and 47 percent of people experiencing homelessness.”

The loss of affordable homes also locks otherwise middle class families out of the traditional way wealth is accumulated — through home ownership: over 61% of all American middle-income family wealth is their home’s equity.

And as families are priced out of ownership and forced to rent, they become more vulnerable to homelessness.

Housing is one of the primary essentials of life. Nobody in America should be without it, and for society to work, housing costs must track incomes in a way that makes housing both available and affordable.

Singapore, Denmark, New Zealand, and parts of Canada have all put limits on billionaire, corporate, and foreign investment in housing, recognizing families’ residences as essential to life rather than purely a commodity. Multiple other countries are having that debate or moving to take similar actions as you read these words.

America should, too.

Elizabeth Weir, trailblazer in N.B. politics, reflects on Holt victory

CBC
Thu, October 24, 2024 

Elizabeth Weir, a former NDP leader in New Brunswick, says with Susan Holt's election win, 'It's a time to celebrate.' (CBC - image credit)


For Elizabeth Weir, Monday's election is one to remember.

"My reaction and my emotion was simply a combination of joy and relief: quite clearly joy to see that historic moment of a woman being elected as our premier and honestly relief that the previous government was gone," Weir said, in an interview with CBC Radio's Shift.

Weir served as New Brunswick's NDP leader from 1988 to 2005 and was the party's only MLA from 1992 until 2005.


Premier-designate Susan Holt is one of a record 17 women to win seats in this election, something Weir said matters.

"Well, it matters because the issues that shape women's lives, the policies of our legislature, the legislation that they adopt can so deeply affect women's lives," she said of Holt's win.

Susan Holt made history as the first woman to be elected premier of New Brunswick.

Susan Holt has made history as the first woman to be elected premier of New Brunswick. (Patrick Morrell/CBC News)

During her time in the legislature, Weir was known for her quick wit in the daily question period and her skill during contentious debates.

She left elected politics when former premier Bernard Lord appointed her as the first president and chief executive officer of Efficiency New Brunswick.

Weir has spent time travelling around the world training others in democratic governance and oversight, working with parliamentarians, political party activists and social leaders.

She has worked with the United Nations and with the National Democratic Institute, an international non-governmental organization based out of Washington that works in 55 countries.

Here at home, she has advocated for more representation of women in politics through the Women for 50% organization, where she is one of the founders.

Weir called out the outgoing Higgs government over its handling of issues such as Policy 713 and abortion access.

"So women need to be decision-makers to make those changes, so it matters big time."

Weir said she feels fortunate to have had the example of the women who came before her, such as Brenda Robertson, who was the first woman elected to the New Brunswick legislature, in 1967, and later was the first woman to hold a cabinet position.


Brenda Robertson, New Brunswick's first female MLA, has died at the age of 91.

Brenda Robertson, who died in 2020, was the first woman elected to the New Brunswick legislature. (Submitted by the Robertson family )

She also pointed to Alexa McDonough, the first woman to lead a major party in Nova Scotia, becoming leader of the province's NDP in 1980, and later going on to lead the federal party.

"There was no women's bathroom in the Nova Scotia legislature for MLAs to use. If you can ... imagine that," Weir said.

"So I really benefited. They would provide me advice, support. We were in different parties. Sometimes I would work collaboratively with them."

Weir also said she gives credit to former premier Richard Hatfield, who governed from 1970 to 1987, for appointing women in his caucus to cabinet.

Former Nova Scotia NDP leader Alexa McDonough pauses while taking questions from the media during a news conference in Halifax on, June 2, 2008, after announcing that she would not be seeking re-election in the next federal election.

In 1980, the NDP's Alexa McDonough became the first woman to lead a major political party in Nova Scotia. (Mike Dembeck/The Canadian Press)

"And so when I came, you know, there really was a very different atmosphere than the kind of hostility that Alexa encountered in a neighbouring province in Nova Scotia," Weir said.

"And so, I see it as I also have an obligation to help women in different ways to continue to make those changes."

There's no silver bullet to achieving gender equality, Weir said, but there have been gains.

"I just kept thinking of all those little girls around the province watching Susan give her speech on election night and what a profound change and impact that can have," Weir said.

"It's a time to celebrate. You know, we don't have good news in politics all the time and this is certainly it."


Holt's historic N.B. win also sees record number of women, several francophones elected

CBC
Wed, October 23, 2024 at 3:00 a.m. MDT·5 min read

Premier-designate Susan Holt will have nine other women in her Liberal caucus, 19 francophones and at least four bilingual members, like her. (Patrick Morrell/CBC News - image credit)


New Brunswick's election outcome is historic, not only because Liberal Leader Susan Holt became the first woman in the province to win the premier's job but also because of the number of women and French-speaking candidates elected.

There will be a record 17 women in the legislative assembly — 10 Liberals, six Progressive Conservatives and one Green.

That's 34 per cent of members, up from 14 women in 2020, 11 in 2018 and only eight in 2014.

More francophone and bilingual candidates were also elected in the only officially bilingual province in Canada.

Among the Liberals, 19 of the 31 MLAs are francophone, while a number of others are bilingual, including premier-designate Holt.

Premier-designate Susan Holt surrounded by her three daughters, Paige, Brooke and Molly on the evening of her historic victory.

Premier-designate Susan Holt surrounded by her three daughters, Paige, Brooke and Molly on the evening of her historic victory. (Patrick Morrell/CBC)

"This is a historic moment for me and for all the little girls in the room who can dream and know that this is not an impossible goal," Holt, 47, told a large crowd of supporters in Fredericton Monday evening as her three young daughters looked on.

Her majority-government win over outgoing Progressive Conservative premier Blaine Higgs comes just two years after she became the first woman to win the New Brunswick Liberal leadership and 18 months after she was elected to the legislature in a byelection.

"I didn't know it would be me that would be achieving this," she told CBC on Tuesday.

"But I've been wanting to see women leadership in our province, like in so many other provinces across Canada and around the world.

"So I'm humbled that I have this honour and this opportunity."

Credits trailblazers

During her bilingual acceptance speech, Holt paid tribute to the trailblazing women who came before her, including Brenda Robertson, the first woman elected to the New Brunswick Legislature in 1967 and the first woman to serve in cabinet; Shirley Dysart, the first woman to serve as the leader of a political party in New Brunswick when she was appointed interim leader of the Liberals in 1985 and the first female Speaker; and Elizabeth Weir, the first elected female leader of a political party in New Brunswick, serving as NDP leader from 1988 to 2005.

Holt also singled out Aldéa Landry, the first Acadian woman named to New Brunswick cabinet in 1987 and first female deputy premier in Frank McKenna's Liberal government.

Aldéa Landry, who made history as deputy premier to Frank McKenna, called Monday's election result "her-storical."

Aldéa Landry, who made history as deputy premier to Frank McKenna, called Monday's election result "her-storical." (CBC)

Landry had tears in her eyes as she watched Holt win.

"The hope, the pride, the emotion, the tears. … It's extraordinary," she said.

Isabelle Thériault, the Liberal MLA for Caraquet, said she's proud the number of women in her caucus had tripled.

"There were only three of us women, now there will be 10 of us. We have several initiatives related to the condition and health of women. I am so excited to be able to make a positive difference for women. It is such a great accomplishment," she said in French.

Major milestone

According to the president of the Regroupement féministe du Nouveau-Brunswick, Geneviève Louise Latour, it's a major milestone.

"What happened [Monday night] has a super important symbolic weight. It has a power," she said.

"At the same time, I don't delude myself, there are still glass ceilings to break, but it was a giant step forward."

Geneviève Louise Latour, executive director of Crossroads for Women said securing long term funding could be a issues. "If we're thinking 70 something sex workers are here in the Greater Mountain area, that's a lot of people to serve and we want to make sure that they all get the same service of quality."

Geneviève Louise Latour said her group intends to hold the Liberal Party accountable for its election commitments, particularly on reproductive justice. (Ian Bonnell/CBC)

Parity in the number of male and female MLAs has not yet been achieved and there are still several obstacles to overcome to attract more women and people from gender minorities into politics, noted Latour.

Holt could also face backlash as a powerful woman in a "boys' club" environment, she said.

Seeks to unify

Holt says she wants to govern in a unifying way, particularly with regard to linguistic differences.

'We want to bring everyone together, like good neighbours," said Holt, who credits New Brunswick's early immersion in large part for her bilingualism.

People "don't want to be divided by language [and] want a government that shows them respect."

After six years of leading the province, Higgs still does not speak French, despite his repeated promises to learn the language.

After the departure of ministers Robert Gauvin, Dominic Cardy and Daniel Allain, the only bilingual members of the Tory caucus left were Minister of Local Government, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for la Francophonie Glen Savoie, Education Minister Bill Hogan and MLA Réjean Savoie.

Hogan admits his party missed opportunities to get closer to the French-speaking and Acadian community.

"There are a lot of things that need to be done in the Progressive Conservative Party to tell these citizens that they are important to us," he said in an interview Tuesday.

French speakers make up a third of the province's population, said Roger Ouellette, a political science professor at the University of Moncton.

The fact Higgs was "unable to reach this population" and still obtain a majority government is an anomaly, he said.

Moncton political scientist Roger Ouellette says 'Higgs is out of touch with the ideology of his own party.'

It's difficult to govern in New Brunswick without the support of French speakers, according to Moncton political scientist Roger Ouellette. (Guy Leblanc/Radio-Canada)

Ouellette believes Holt's unifying strategy has borne fruit.

"The Liberals were able to reach out to francophones, Indigenous peoples, sexual minorities. We have a premier who is fortunate to want to bring the entire province together and, I would say, move toward social peace."

Among her 100 election commitments, which focus largely on health-care, education and cost-of-living challenges, Holt has pledged to appoint a deputy minister to head the Official Languages Secretariat, created last year in response to the 2021 review of the Official Languages Act.

In a news release, the Société de l'Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick welcomed the election of the Liberal Party.

"We look forward to working with the new government team and strengthening the rights of the Acadian and francophone population of our province," president Nicole Arseneau-Sluyter said in a statement.

UCP AUSTERITY 

Alberta pharmacists face fee rollbacks as demand grows and budget soars

the pay rollbacks could lead to service reductions.

CBC
Thu, October 24, 2024 

The fees pharmacists can charge for providing comprehensive annual care plans will drop from $100 to $70. The number of followups they can get paid for have been slashed, too. (Ben Nelms/CBC - image credit)


Pharmacists are pushing back against the Alberta government's plan to cut some of their fees, warning the move could lead to job cuts and ultimately hurt patient care.

Health Minister Adriana LaGrange notified pharmacists of the cuts in a letter on Monday.

She said Alberta's pharmacy services budget is forecasted to go $30 million over its $670-million budget for this fiscal year.


As a result, she is cutting the amount pharmacists are paid for conducting comprehensive annual care plans from $100 to $70.

And the number of followups and medication reviews they can charge for drops from 12 to four per year.

"I'm very frustrated," said Calgary pharmacist Randy Howden.

"One of my colleagues, who I talked to yesterday, was in tears"

Howden, who is past-president of the Alberta Pharmacists' Association said this impacts his work with vulnerable patients, including seniors and people with chronic diseases.

Care plans can involve education and meeting with a patient to discuss diabetes management, for example.

"To have those fees cut is pretty drastic. And then to have the number of followups cut means that if I'm following up with a senior every month, I'm only going to get paid for four months and after that I'm doing it for free," he said.

Margaret Wing worries this could lead to job cuts or pharmacists spending less time with patients.

"That does impact quality," said Wing, CEO of the Alberta Pharmacists' Association.

"If patients can't go to pharmacists and they don't have family doctors available to them, where do they go? They have to go to our hospital system, which is, I think, a challenge."

According to Wing, it's been clear for the last 18 months that pharmacy service spending was trending up.

"This was not a surprise to anyone. The reaction [from government] is a surprise to pharmacists."

She said the budget was set several years ago and demand for pharmacist services has increased since then.

"It doesn't seem to be a very responsive reaction to how much need there is right now from Albertans."

These cuts come at time when the province is struggling with a shortage of family physicians and the government has been messaging that pharmacists can play a key role in primary care.

Fiona Clement, a professor at the University of Calgary in the department of community health sciences, has been awarded the prestigious Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice.

University of Calgary professor Fiona Clement says cutting fees could undermine the government's effort to get pharmacists more engaged in primary care activities for patients. (Riley Brandt/University of Calgary)

"Up until now, all of the messages have been that your pharmacist is one source of some kinds of primary care in a hope to try and address some of the gap that Albertans are experiencing," said Fiona Clement, a professor in the department of community health sciences at the University of Calgary.

"It is surprising to then see the fees being pulled back because one might hypothesize that this will have exactly the opposite effect of more pharmacists engaging in primary care activities for patients."

Clement agrees the pay rollbacks could lead to service reductions.

"It is a business at the end of the day … and that will likely translate into changes to the way people interact with their pharmacist."

In a statement, the health minister's office said Albertans will still have access to pharmacists for care plan assessments and followups.

"The decision to make these changes to these pharmacy services has taken into consideration the financial sustainability of both government and pharmacies, while minimizing the impact to service quality and access to primary care for Albertans," the statement said.

The spokesperson said the government has been meeting with the Alberta Pharmacists' Association to discuss how to address the budget concerns and acknowledge pharmacists have presented other cost-saving options.

"The government will continue to explore the feasibility of implementing the options proposed by the association and pharmacists during upcoming consultation meetings for a new pharmacy funding framework in early November."

The changes will be made through a ministerial order and take effect on Nov. 1.

Palestinian Authority treads tightrope in West Bank crackdown on militants

Ali Sawafta
Thu, October 24, 2024 

World leaders take part in the 79th annual United Nations General Assembly, in New York

By Ali Sawafta

TUBAS, West Bank (Reuters) - In the West Bank city of Tubas, the Palestinian Authority has been rounding up militants who are spoiling for a fight with Israel and challenging its own rule, seeking to show it can help shape the future for Palestinians after the war in Gaza.

President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority (PA) has poured forces into Tubas, saying it aims to quash lawlessness and deny Israel pretexts to raid the city in the occupied territory.


His militant adversaries - Hamas and Islamic Jihad - say the PA is serving Israel's agenda at a time when Israel is going after their fighters in the West Bank as they battle Israel in Gaza, sharpening old divisions between the militants and Abbas.

Residents of Tuba said clashes between the militants and the PA this month involved heavy machine guns and bombs in some of the worst violence they can remember.

It highlights the precarious position of an authority formed in 1994 as a stepping stone to a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital, a prospect that appears as far away as ever, though it has come back into international focus of late as a way to bring peace.

The PA controlled Gaza until 2007, when Hamas routed forces loyal to Abbas, but is now confined to running patches of the West Bank under the eye of Israeli troops.

As Israel presses its Gaza offensive to wipe out Hamas, the United States has said it wants to see the territory and the West Bank unified under a reformed and revitalised PA.

For Abbas, 88, the Tubas campaign is partly about weakening the grip his militant foes have gained over the northern West Bank, in what his Fatah Movement sees as an Iran-backed attempt to undermine their position, according to Fatah officials and security sources.

It is also about disproving critics who view the PA as ineffective - a reputation that has overshadowed diplomatic contacts led by the United States over the role it might eventually play in Gaza, according to a former PA security official and an analyst.

Tubas Governor Ahmed al-Asaad said the PA had decided to strike with "an iron fist" against what he described as lawlessness and anarchy.

Two PA security men have been wounded as their forces fought members of the "Tubas Battalion", an armed group dominated by the Islamic Jihad faction, and detained at least three of its members, including its leader.

STANDOFF

Al-Asaad said the PA was responding to public concern, giving the example of a bomb that had been recently planted near a school - apparently in preparation for an attack on Israeli forces.

"We don't want - under the slogan of resistance or any other slogan - to destroy our country and to destroy Tubas," he said.

"Our approach is clear and is the approach of the President: the approach of peaceful, popular resistance and safeguarding security and order," he told Reuters in an interview.

The Authority has overhauled its operations in a variety of areas, assuaging some of the concern expressed by countries that provide aid.

"On the whole, the revitalisation effort has been pretty well received," a European diplomat said.

On Saturday, dozens of PA security men surrounded a building near Tubas where two Batalion militants were holed up, with one of them, Obada al-Masri, threatening to blow himself up, a source familiar with the incident said.

"We negotiated with him for almost five hours," said his father, Abdel Majid al-Masri, who was called to the scene to help convince his son to surrender.

He said his son eventually agreed after receiving guarantees he would be held in Tubas rather than at another PA jail where he was previously incarcerated and had suffered mistreatment.

Masri expressed relief that his son had been taken into PA custody rather than killed by Israeli forces, which have also been raiding Tubas in search of militants and had previously jailed his son for three years.

His son had chosen "the route of struggle to liberate Palestine", he said, rejecting PA accusations that Battalion members were engaged in lawlessness.

Islamic Jihad condemned the operation, saying PA forces appeared to be aiming to eliminate resistance to Israel and their methods were no different.

LOW-HANGING FRUIT

PA security forces were heavily deployed, with a checkpoint on a road into the city, when Reuters visited Tubas this week, but the city was calm.

Ghaith al-Omari, an expert on PA affairs at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the Tubas campaign was a much-needed attempt by the PA to assert itself in a part of the West Bank where its control had been "practically absent".

"The PA understands that nobody sees it as being capable of running Gaza and everyone cites the fact that they can't even run the northern West Bank," said Omari, formerly an advisor to the Palestinian president.

But he said one operation did not make a reputation, noting that Tubas represented "low-hanging fruit" and militant groups there were weaker than in Jenin, also in the north.

With U.S. support, the 35,000-strong PA security forces were reconstituted after the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza.

Yet the Washington institute said in a July policy note that for PA to assume governance in Gaza it would need extensive recruitment, equipment, vetting, and training, a process it said would take years.

In the West Bank, the biggest issue for Omari was that PA security forces were "really, really unpopular in the north".

A September opinion poll showed 89% of Palestinians in the West Bank want Abbas to resign, and that Hamas has more support than Fatah there. Polls by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research have consistently shown that Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader jailed by Israel, would win any presidential vote.

Omari said: "To do effective security you need both capabilities but also you need credibility and legitimacy."

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Humeyra Pamuk and James Mackenzie; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

World on pace for significantly more warming without immediate climate action, report warns

Seth Borenstein
Thu, October 24, 2024 



The Associated Press

The world is on a path to get 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 Fahrenheit) warmer than it is now, but could trim half a degree of that projected future heating if countries do everything they promise to fight climate change, a United Nations report said Thursday.

But it still won't be near enough to curb warming's worst impacts such as nastier heat waves, wildfires, storms and droughts, the report said.

Under every scenario but the “most optimistic” with the biggest cuts in fossil fuels burning, the chance of curbing warming so it stays within the internationally agreed-upon limit "would be virtually zero," the United Nations Environment Programme's annual Emissions Gap Report said. The goal, set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, is to limit human-caused warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The report said that since the mid-1800s, the world has already heated up by 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit), up from previous estimates of 1.1 or 1.2 degrees because it includes the record heat last year.

Instead the world is on pace to hit 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. But if nations somehow do all of what they promised in targets they submitted to the United Nations that warming could be limited to 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the report said.

In that super-stringent cuts scenario where nations have zero net carbon emissions after mid-century, there's a 23% chance of keeping warming at or below the 1.5 degrees goal. It's far more likely that even that optimistic scenario will keep warming to 1.9 degrees above pre-industrial times, the report said.

“The main message is that action right now and right here before 2030 is critical if we want to lower the temperature,” said report main editor Anne Olhoff, an economist and chief climate advisor to the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre. “It is now or never really if we want to keep 1.5 alive.”

Without swift and dramatic emission cuts “on a scale and pace never seen before,” UNEP Director Inger Andersen said “the 1.5 degree C goal will soon be dead and (the less stringent Paris goal of) well below 2 degrees C will take its place in the intensive care unit.”

Olhoff said Earth's on a trajectory to slam the door on 1.5 sometime in 2029.

“Winning slowly is the same as losing when it comes to climate change,” said author Neil Grant of Climate Analytics. “And so I think we are at risk of a lost decade.”

One of the problems is that even though nations pledged climate action in their targets submitted as part of the Paris Agreement, there's a big gap between what they said they will do and what they are doing based on their existing policies, report authors said.

The world's 20 richest countries — which are responsible for 77% of the carbon pollution in the air — are falling short of their stated emission-cutting goals, with only 11 meeting their individual targets, the report said.

Emission cuts strong enough to limit warming to the 1.5 degree goal are more than technically and economically possible, the report found. They just aren't being proposed or done.

The report ”shows that yet again governments are sleepwalking towards climate chaos," said climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, who wasn't part of the report.

Another outside scientist, Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the report confirms his worst concerns: “We are not making progress and are now following a 3.1 degree path, which is, with next to zero uncertainty, a path to disaster."

Both the 3.1 degree and 2.6 degree calculations are a tenth of a degree Celsius warmer than last year’s version of the UN report, which experts said is within the margin of uncertainty.

Mostly the problem is “there's one year less time to cut emissions and avoid climate catastrophe,” said MIT's John Sterman, who models different warming scenarios based on emissions and countries policies. “Catastrophe is a strong word and I don't use it lightly,” he said, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest report saying 3 degrees of warming would trigger severe and irreversible damage.

The report focuses on what's called an emissions gap. It calculates a budget of how many billions of tons of greenhouse gases — mostly carbon dioxide and methane — the world can spew and stay under 1.5 degrees, 1.8 degrees and 2 degrees of warming since pre-industrial times. It then figures how much annual emissions have to be slashed by 2030 to keep at those levels.

To keep at or below 1.5 degrees, the world must slash emissions by 42%, and to keep at or below 2 degrees, the cut has to be 28%, the report, named, “No more hot air... please !” said.

In 2023, the world spewed 57.1 billion metric tons (62.9 billion U.S. tons) of greenhouse gases, the report said. That’s 1,810 metric tons (1,995 U.S. tons) of heat-trapping gases a second.

“There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a video messaged released with the report. “We're playing with fire, but there can be no more playing for time. We're out of time.”

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press

World is on track for a ‘catastrophic’ rise in temperature, UN report says

Julia Musto
Thu, October 24, 2024 

World is on track for a ‘catastrophic’ rise in temperature, UN report says


The world is on track for a “catastrophic” 3.1 degrees Celsius (37.58 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming over preindustrial levels, according to the United Nations. Scientists have warned that there is no safe amount of climate change.

The international organization said that a previous goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) – a threshold set at the 2015 Paris Agreement – will “soon be dead” without an unprecedented global mobilization to limit climate change.

Earth is currently likely to see a global temperature rise of 2.6 degrees Celsius (36.68 degrees Fahrenheit) to 3.1 degrees Celsius, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Although, the exact amount of future warming will depend on steps taken to curb emissions of greenhouse gases produced by the fossil fuel industry.

The UN said its core message is that “ambition means nothing without action.”

“The magnitude of the challenge is indisputable. At the same time, there are abundant opportunities for accelerating mitigation action alongside achieving pressing development needs and Sustainable Development Goals,” it said.

River dwellers carry water on the sandbanks of Brazil’s Madeira river last September. The country was threatened by widespread drought and wildfires this summer. A new UN report details the “catastrophic” rise in temperatures (REUTERS/Bruno Kelly)

The impacts of climate change are already ravaging the globe, bringing more severe wildfires and extreme heat, as well as widespread and devastating flooding.

Scientists have warned that there is no safe amount of climate change, but passing the 1.5-degree threshold would bring impacts to ecosystems that are larger than the world is willing to accept.

“There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters,” António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said in a video. “Around the world, people are paying a terrible price. Record emissions mean record sea temperatures supercharging monster hurricanes; record heat is turning forests into tinder boxes and cities into saunas; record rains are resulting in biblical floods.”

Traffic warden Rai Rogers mans his street corner under the hot sun in Las Vegas, Nevada, in July 2023. Temperatures there reached 106 degrees Fahrenheit. A UN study found the world is on track for a 3.1 degrees Celsius rise in temperatures above preindustrial levels (AFP via Getty Images)

Urgent action taken this decade is essential for trying to minimize the impacts, according to experts. Many areas, including islands, are disproportionately affected by climate change. In an increasingly warming world, those troubles would only grow.

While nations have implemented country-level action plans for meeting these targets up to 2030, the UN report said greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. Last year, they rose by 1.3 percent over 2022 marks.

Across the 19 members of the G20 forum, greenhouse gas emissions increased last year, accounting for 77 percent of global emissions.

A six-fold increase in mitigation investment is needed to achieve net zero, cutting carbon emissions to a small amount that will leave zero of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Even if countries deliver on their climate plans, the report said there would be temperature rises between 2.6 degrees and 2.8 degrees Celsius (37.04 degrees Fahrenheit) over the preindustrial marks.

People ride a tractor amid severe flooding in Feni, Bangladesh, in August 2024. Scientists have warned that there is no safe amount of climate change, but passing the 1.5-degree threshold would bring impacts to ecosystems that are larger than the world is willing to accept. (REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain/File Photo)More

”Nations must collectively commit to cut 42 percent off annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 57 percent by 2035 in the next round of NDCs to achieve the 1.5C goal,” the UNEP cautioned.

The deadline for countries to submit their next plans, known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs, is just a few months away and ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil.. The report said they must “deliver a quantum leap in ambition.”

The publication of these findings also comes just days before the United Nations Climate Change Conference “COP29,” which will be hosted in Azerbaijan’s capital city of Baku.

While 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record, climatologists say it is nearly certain that this year will set a new record.

“We’re being tested. The planet is testing us to see if we can explain things that we didn’t anticipate,” NASA’s chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt told The Independent on Tuesday. “And, we have not yet passed that test.”

With reporting from PA News


World already 'paying terrible price' for climate inaction: Guterres

AFP
Thu, October 24, 2024 at 10:07 a.m. MDT·1 min read


The current pace of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming this century, the UN Environment Programme says


Humanity is 'paying a terrible price' for inaction on global warming, with time running out to correct the course and avoid climate disaster, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Thursday.

A new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says the next decade is critical in the fight against climate change or any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be lost.

The current pace of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century, UNEP said in its latest Emissions Gap report.

And even if all existing pledges to cut emissions were enacted as promised, global temperatures would soar 2.6C above pre-industrial levels -- a still devastating scenario for humanity.

"Either leaders bridge the emissions gap, or we plunge headlong into climate disaster, with the poorest and most vulnerable suffering the most," said Guterres.

"Around the world, people are paying a terrible price."

The call to action, just weeks before the UN COP29 climate summit, follows a streak of destructive and deadly extreme weather in a year expected to be the hottest in recorded history.

The world's poorest have been particularly hard hit, with typhoons and heatwaves in Asia and the Caribbean, floods in Africa, and droughts and wildfires in Latin America.
'Out of time'

UNEP's latest projections blow well past 1.5C, which nations agreed in Paris in 2015 was the safer bet to minimise the worst consequences of a warming planet.

Guterres said wealthy G20 economies in particular would need to show far more ambition in the next round of climate pledges, known as NDCs, which are due in early 2025.

Rather than declining, emissions are still rising, hitting a new record high last year.


Chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C is 'virtually zero' on current trends, UN warns

Sky News
Thu, October 24, 2024 



The chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C is "virtually zero" on current trends, according to the UN's environment body.

This year's Emissions Gap Report finds that emissions of greenhouse gasses in 2023 were the highest on record.

More concerning, the rate of growth since 2022 was nearly twice as fast as in the decade preceding the COVID pandemic.

This comes despite decades of climate talks and a boom in wind and solar power.

The analysis finds that the current trajectory in carbon emissions puts the world on course for a potentially catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century - compared to pre-industrial times.

While emissions in many wealthy countries, including the UK, the US and the EU have peaked, they are not falling anywhere near fast enough to make up for rapidly growing emissions in places like China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.

'Crunch time is here'

"Climate crunch time is here," said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

"We need global mobilisation on a scale and pace never seen before - starting right now, before the next round of climate pledges."

The report urges nations meeting at the UN climate summit next month in Baku, Azerbaijan, to come forward with emissions-cutting commitments that don't continue to ignore the agreement they all signed in Paris in 2015.

The Paris Agreement, signed by 196 countries, pledged to limit global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and try and prevent it from rising beyond 1.5C.

The UNEP analysis of current carbon-cutting commitments finds only one country, Madagascar, has submitted a more ambitious one since last year.

And only a handful are ambitious enough to actually slow global warming.

If all current pledges were implemented in full the world would still warm by between 2.6C-2.8C this century.

Given many countries, including the UK, are yet to implement policies to fully meet their targets, the current trajectory takes the world closer to a potentially catastrophic 3.1C of warming.

"Central warming projections indicate that the chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C would be virtually zero," the report concludes.

'This is a battle we cannot afford to lose'

It's not all bad news however.

An analysis of the cost of measures to reduce emissions finds there is technical potential for cuts of 31 gigatons of greenhouse gasses by 2030 - around half of the total emitted globally in 2023 - and 41 gigatons by 2035.

This "massive effort" to deploy zero-carbon electricity generation like wind and solar and reverse deforestation trends would bridge the gap needed to put the world back on track to keep warming below 1.5C.

However, years of inaction have made this challenge harder, the report finds.

Emission cuts must be 7.5% steeper every year until 2035 to meet 1.5C and 4% annually to keep to 2C.

"Maybe we won't get all the way to 1.5C but 1.6C is a lot better than 1.7C," says Dr Anne Olhoff, the report's lead author.

"Basically, every fraction of a degree matters and this is a battle we cannot afford to lose."

Countries have until 2025 to submit new carbon-cutting pledges under the Paris Agreement.

But to deliver the cuts required, the main challenge - and one that will be central to talks at the upcoming climate summit in Baku - is technical and financial assistance from rich countries to poorer ones that don't bear historical responsibility for global warming.

Progress, says Dr Olhoff, "hinges on immediate and relentless action."

"Most of all, of course, it depends on political leadership."

Trudeau announces massive drop in immigration targets, as Liberals make major pivot

Nojoud Al Mallees and Laura Osman
Thu, October 24, 2024 



OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the government is slashing immigration targets as he admits the government did not get the balance right following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The government had targeted to bring in 500,000 new permanent residents in both 2025 and 2026.

Trudeau however now says the target next year will be 395,000 new permanent residents.


It will fall even lower to 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027.

The change comes after significant criticism of the Liberal government's increases to immigration and the impact of strong population growth of housing affordability.

The government's goal is also to reduce the number of temporary residents to five per cent of the population over the next three years, down from 7.2 per cent in July.

The federal government estimates this will mean the non-permanent resident population will decrease by 445,901 in 2025, 445,662 in 2026 and will increase modestly by 17,439 in 2027.

The moves come after years of rapid increase to the number of new permanent residents in Canada and a ballooning number of people coming to Canada on a temporary basis, which federal ministers have conceded put pressure on housing and affordability.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 24, 2024.

Nojoud Al Mallees and Laura Osman, The Canadian Press