Evidence Indicates There’s Another Planet the Size of Mars in Our Solar System

If it's there, the rumored Planet 9 may have company.

By  Brad Bergan

Sep 27, 2021

A rogue planet with a flash of an eclipsed star, and a cosmic background.




             

Our solar system has more surprises in store.

The eight official planets aren't the only ones that survived the formation of our solar system, and the Earth might have another sister planet lurking somewhere in interstellar space, in a "third zone" of the solar system, according to a recent paper published in the journal Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

This means that, if Planet 9 is out there, it might have a Mars-sized company.

Computer simulations hint at a Mars-sized twin beyond Neptune

The new study examines data from the mysterious third zone of the solar system, and suggests that, beyond Neptune, there might be something the size of Mars lurking in the darkness. Modern astronomy categorizes all known planets in our solar system into three types. You're on one of the first, since the Earth is one of the four rocky inner planets that orbit the sun within the main asteroid belt that separates Mars and Jupiter. The second group is the outer solar system, and is also the realm of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. These accumulated unspeakably large quantities of gas and ice around what scientists suspect are rocky cores.

But the third region of our solar system lies beyond what we typically include in casual conversation about the local planets. Out beyond Neptune is the realm of dwarf planets like Pluto, Sedna, Eris, and even tinier bodies, like comets. But this is all wrong, according to the researchers of the recent study. "It seems unlikely that nature created four giant planet cores, but then nothing else larger than dwarf planents in the outer solar system," said Kathryn Volk from the University of Arizona and Brett Gladman, of the University of British Columbia, in the study. To fully grasp how the solar system came into being, scientists employ computer simulations to see if special initial conditions or events might evolve into a solar system like ours.

The hypothetical rogue world isn't Planet 9

Multiple models that most closely approximate our real solar system start with at least one extra planet in a baffling position, according to Volk and Gladman. These models hint that the outer solar system used to house one or more rocky planets, roughly the size of Earth or Mars, in addition to the colossal gas and ice giants we now have. But over time, the interaction of these rocky wanderers with the outsized gravity fields of the gas giants nudged them into a far-out orbit, or even on an exit trajectory, away from the entire neighborhood. "I agree that it is likely that a Mars planet was there initially," said Planetary Scientist David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute, in an Inverse report. "[B]ut the question is whether it has survived and if we have any evidence for it."

"Our simulations found that in about half of the cases" of simulated solar systems like ours, "all of the Mars-scale planets in the outer solar system were ejected into interstellar space," said Astrophysicist Scott Tremaine, of the Institute for Advanced Study, in the Inverse report. "But in the remaining half, one 'rogue' planet was left in an orbit similar to that of the detached population of the Kuiper Belt objects." If this novel rogue planet exists, it won't be Planet 9, which is a much larger body some scientists suspect exists even farther in space beyond Neptune. But while more modeling could help us pin down where the Mars-sized rogue is lurking, ultimately the only proof will be: To find it.

COPS SACRFICE SPIRIT ANIMAL
Rare white stag killed by police after running through Merseyside streets

FOR THE SAKE OF AUTOMOBILES

Maya Wolfe-Robinson
Mon, 27 September 2021

A rare white stag was killed by police on Sunday evening after it spent hours running through a Merseyside town, despite animal welfare experts urging officers to let it find its way home.

Merseyside police say that they were unable to find an organisation who could help safely recover the deer from Bootle, and so were forced to euthanise it out of concerns for motorists.

The first report of the white deer – which, according to the British Deer Society are normally of the unusual fallow species – was made to police at 8.45am on Sunday morning, before it was spotted on several busy roads in Bootle town centre.


Paula, an NHS worker from Crosby, filmed the stag galloping past a car showroom. She told the Liverpool Echo that she spotted the stag fleeing a police officer on her way into work.

“It must have been quite scared and I genuinely have no idea where it was from,” she said.

Police said they later secured it inside an industrial estate, where it was assessed by a vet who monitored its welfare and attempted to help the armed response officers to control it. A spokesperson for Merseyside police said they were unable to find assistance to safely recover the deer – despite making “several inquiries” – and “as the hours went by the deer became more distressed”.

The RSPCA said that it advised officers to leave the deer to make its own way home, explaining that deer sightings in urban areas are becoming increasingly common.

But the police said that there was “no option to let the deer wander as it could be a danger to motorists and members of the public in the area”, particularly as the hours of darkness approached.

“As a result a decision was made in the early evening to euthanise the deer,” Merseyside police said in a statement.

The RSPCA said that where public safety is a consideration, it is a decision for the police. One option could have been to sedate the animal, and move it to a safer place to be released, but that would have taken some caution in a public area to avoid the deer being startled and running when hit by the anaesthetic dart. “This could create a bigger public safety and animal welfare issue,” the animal welfare organisation added.

A spokesperson said: “Although deer traditionally live in forests, moors and parkland, they are becoming more common in urban environments across the UK. We do see deer in city centres – they usually live in large park areas but will follow canal paths and tramlines to make their way in and out of the cities.”

Videos and photos appeared on social media showing the white deer, going through a park and then on an industrial estate.

In 2019, a deer was spotted in Manchester city centre, running through the busy Oxford Road area and swimming in the canal. An RSPCA spokesperson at the time said it managed to get free and run away from officers.

A 1988 Climate Warning Was Mostly Right

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- On a 98-degree June day in Washington in 1988, physicist James Hansen told a U.S. Senate committee that “global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.” Hansen, at the time director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, elaborated that “with 99% confidence we can state that the warming during this time period is a real warming trend.”

Those assertions made headlines around the world, and can be said to have started the public and political discussion over global warming (the scientific discussion was already well under way) that continues to this day. They also caught Hansen some flak from fellow climate scientists who thought he had expressed himself with more certainty than warranted. Indeed, the scientific paper on which Hansen based his testimony, which he wrote with seven co-authors and was published that August in the Journal of Geophysical Research, cautioned that it was not yet certain that the warm temperatures of the 1980s were the product of the greenhouse effect.

Still, the paper did speculate that it might become clear soon, and provided detailed forecasts (which Hansen also discussed briefly in his Senate testimony) of how much global temperatures could be expected to rise under three emissions scenarios. The annual forecasts ran through 2019, meaning that we can now judge in full how on-target they were.

As benchmarks I’ve used the global land-ocean temperature averages maintained by NASA’s Goddard Institute, where Hansen held the top job until 2013 — but also, because I know I will get emails from readers asserting that NASA can’t be trusted, those of Berkeley Earth. The latter organization was founded in 2010 by a University of California at Berkeley physicist who was somewhat dubious of the NASA data (and got a big chunk of its early funding from the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which has a history of backing climate-change skeptics). As you can see below, its temperature estimates, while lower than NASA’s, aren’t much lower.

Scenario A, which assumed that the greenhouse-gas emissions-growth rates of the 1970s and 1980s would “continue indefinitely,” turns out to have been way off on the high side. Scenario C, which envisioned “draconian emission cuts,” is way off on the low side. But Scenario B, in which greenhouse-gas emissions-growth rates slowed “such that the annual increase of the greenhouse climate forcing remains approximately constant at the present level” is definitely in the ballpark.

In 1988, Hansen and his co-authors termed Scenario B “perhaps the most plausible of the three cases,” so it does seem like the fairest one to judge them by. Scenario B turns out to have quite accurately predicted the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide through 2019. Its temperature forecast nonetheless came out a little high because it overestimated the atmospheric concentrations of methane — which have proved extremely hard to predict — and of chlorofluorocarbons, which began to level off and then decline more quickly than pretty much anyone expected after the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Correct for that, as Zeke Hausfather of UC Berkeley, the Breakthrough Institute and Berkeley Earth and his three co-authors did in a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters last month,(2) and “the results are consistent with the observations.” That is, the model used by Hansen and his co-authors in 1988 did a good job of predicting how much warming would be caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, it just failed to predict with perfect accuracy what those concentrations would be. Hausfather and his co-authors made similar corrections to 15 other detailed warming forecasts made from 1970 through 2007 and found that all but three had proved “skillful” in extrapolating temperature changes from greenhouse-gas concentrations. As Gavin Schmidt, Hansen’s successor at the Goddard Institute and one of Hausfather’s co-authors, put it in a blog post summarizing the results: “Gosh, maybe we know something about climate after all!”

It should be noted that seven or eight years ago, after global average temperatures had barely risen for a decade, these warming forecasts weren’t looking quite so accurate. “People were thinking, ‘Something’s going on,’” Schmidt recalled when I paid him a visit this week, with climate scientists trotting out alternative explanations ranging from decadal ocean variability to tiny particles (aka aerosols) in the atmosphere to problems with the temperature record. “Then you have the three warmest years on record in a row, and everybody stops talking about it because it’s stupid.”

I happen to really dislike it when people use the phrase “the science is settled” in reference to climate change. Science, if it’s actually science, should never be entirely settled. Researchers seem to be very much in the early stages of figuring out how to predict greenhouse-gas-induced changes in the climate beyond just increases in global average temperatures — and some of those changes may simply not be predictable. But it’s now been 124 years since Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius hypothesized that higher atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations would bring higher global temperatures, and 50 years since scientists began building detailed climate models around that notion. When James Hansen said in 1988 that he was virtually certain that humans were warming the earth’s climate “he went out on a limb,” Schmidt says now. That limb, however, has yet to break.


To contact the author of this story: Justin Fox at justinfox@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stacey Shick at sshick@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He was the editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

New approach to recycling plastic could change the way we reuse waste

Rob Waugh
·Contributor
Mon, 27 September 2021

Trucks deal with a mountain of rubbish in Bangkok - but could a new recycling method offer hope? (Getty)

Every person will discard two metric tonnes of plastic in their lifetime.

But a study has suggested a new way to deal with plastic waste.

The Swiss research suggests a proof-of-concept idea of a new approach to plastic recycling – inspired by the way nature 'recycles' the components of organic polymers present in our environment.

Proteins inside organic polymers are constantly broken down into parts and reassembled into different proteins.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) believe that this approach could work with plastics too.

Researcher Simone Gavieri wrote: "A protein is like a string of pearls, where each pearl is an amino acid. Each pearl has a different colour, and the colour-sequence determines the string structure and consequently its properties.

"In nature, protein chains break up into the constituent amino acids and cells put such amino acids back together to form new proteins, that is they create new strings of pearls with a different colour sequence."

Read more: Why economists worry that reversing climate change is hopeless

Professor Francesco Stellacci, of EPFL, said: "We selected proteins and divided them up into amino acids. We then put the amino acids into a cell-free biological system that assembled the amino acids back into new proteins with entirely different structures and applications."

Giaveri and Stellacci successfully transformed silk into a protein used in biomedical technology.

Stellacci said: "Importantly, when you break down and assemble proteins in this way, the quality of the proteins produced is exactly the same of that of a newly-synthesised protein. Indeed, you are building something new."

Stellacci said it would take time to develop a working method to recycle plastic in this way.

Read more: A 1988 warning about climate change was mostly right

He added: "It will require a radically different mindset. Polymers are strings of pearls, but synthetic polymers are made mostly of pearls all of the same colour and when the colour is different the sequence of colour rarely matters.

"Furthermore, we have no efficient way to assemble synthetic polymers from different colour pearls in a way that controls their sequence."

Research this year found that thousands of rivers, including smaller ones, are responsible for most of the plastic pollution worldwide.

Previously, scientists believed that 10 large rivers – such as the Yangtze in China – were responsible for the bulk of plastic pollution.

Read more: Melting snow in Himalayas drives growth of green sea slime visible from space

In fact, 1,000 rivers – just 1% of all rivers worldwide – carry most of the plastic to the sea.

The research means that areas like tropical islands are likely to be among the worst polluters, the researchers said.

The study by non-profit organisation The Ocean Cleanup used measurements and modelling to work out that 1,000 rivers worldwide are behind 80% of plastic emissions.

90-Year-Old Fisherman Collects Plastic Pollution From the Ocean for Two Decades

By Claudicet Pena on September 26, 2021


By looking at Wayan Nyo’s eyes and the wrinkles in his face, you can tell almost immediately that he has an interesting story to share. He is a 90-year-old fisherman who lives in Indonesia and is part of a beautiful culture that is extremely passionate about protecting the ocean.

Throughout his childhood and the decades that followed, Nyo spent his most of his life on the waters. Each day, he would gather his nets and mesh sacks to set his small boat on the coast of Bali. There he would listen to the waves, read the weather, track fish, and learn the rhythm of the ocean currents. The turquoise waters used to be a prime location for fishing; however, for the past 21 years, the fisherman has devoted his life to collecting what feels like a never-ending amount of plastic pollution from the ocea

San Francisco-based director Dana Frankoff decided to document Nyo's cause in a short film titled Voice Above Water. The documentary gives voice to the story of how one human is using his resources to make a difference. The film depicts the journey of one man who turned his trade of fishing into one of cleaning the ocean so that future generations to come will once again be able to fish and feed their families and community.

The short yet powerful film has won a comprehensive list of several awards so far, including the recent First Time Film at the 2021 International Ocean Film Festival and Best Short Documentary at the 2021 San Luis Obispo Film Festival. Frankoff, who is just as passionate about marine conservation and promoting sustainable changes in the world, says that Wayan’s story is a “reminder that if we all play our part we can accomplish something much greater than ourselves.” The fisherman and his commitment to combating water pollution in Indonesia is undoubtedly inspiring.

Watch the trailer for Voice Above Water, a short documentary about a 90-year-old man who turned his trade of fishing into one of cleaning up ocean pollution.

Thunberg slams 30 years of climate 'empty words'

Issued on: 28/09/2021 - 

Speaking just weeks ahead of a crunch UN climate summit in Glasgow, Thunberg accused governments of "shamelessly congratulating themselves" for insufficient emissions cutting pledges and finance promises 

MIGUEL MEDINA AFP

Milan (AFP)

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg opened a youth climate summit on Tuesday by lambasting three decades of government inaction, accusing world leaders of having "drowned" future generations with "empty words and promises".

Speaking weeks ahead of a crunch UN climate summit in Glasgow, Thunberg accused governments of "shamelessly congratulating themselves" for insufficient pledges to cut emissions and promises of financing.

Hurling leaders' own words back at them, the 18-year-old laid bare to delegates at the Youth4Climate event in Milan the gap between words and action.

"There is no Planet B, there is no planet blah, blah, blah," Thunberg said to warm applause.

Echoing a speech by COP26 summit host Boris Johnson in April, she continued: "This is not about some expensive politically correct dream of bunny hugging, or build back better, blah blah blah, green economy, blah blah blah, net zero by 2050, blah blah blah, climate neutral blah blah blah.

"This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words, words that sound great but so far have led to no action, our hopes and dreams drowned in their empty words and promises," said Thunberg.

The three-day event in Milan gathers some 400 youth activists from nearly 200 countries, who will submit a joint declaration to a ministerial meeting at the end of the week as a lead-in to COP26 in November in Glasgow.

"Our leaders' intentional lack of action is a betrayal of all present and future generations," said Thunberg.

She said governments had been "shamelessly congratulating themselves while still failing to come up with the long overdue funding" for developing nations.

COP26 is being billed as vital for the continued viability of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which saw countries commit to limit global temperature rises to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius.

The landmark deal aims for a safer warming cap of 1.5C.

But six years after the accord was struck, countries still haven't agreed how it will work in practice.

Among long-overdue issues still outstanding for COP26 is how each country's carbon cuts will be counted, as well as how the fight against climate change is financed.

Nations already suffering from extreme floods, droughts and storms supercharged by rising seas have called on developed countries at COP26 to make good on a decade-old promise to provide $100 billion each year to help them recover and adapt.

Host Britain says it wants the Glasgow summit to keep the 1.5C temperature goal in play, specifically by seeking a global agreement to phase out coal power.

However the United Nations this month said that the latest round of country emissions reductions plans still puts Earth on course for a "catastrophic" 2.7C of warming.

© 2021 AFP

Youth call time on decades of 'empty' climate promises


Issued on: 28/09/2021 - 

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate called for urgent climate action, as well as funding for vulnerable countries to help them adapt

 Miguel MEDINA AFP

Milan (AFP)

Youth activists on Tuesday called out decades of "empty words and promises" from world leaders as they demanded action -- and money -- to tackle global warming ahead of a pivotal UN climate summit.

With just weeks to go before the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, seen as crucial to the viability of the Paris climate agreement, campaigners used the opening of a three-day event in Milan to lambast governments' failure to address the crisis.

Swedish wunderkind Greta Thunberg slammed governments for "shamelessly congratulating themselves" for insufficient pledges to cut emissions and promises of financing.

Hurling leaders' own words back at them, the 18-year-old laid bare to delegates at the Youth4Climate event the gap between words and action.

"There is no Planet B, there is no planet blah, blah, blah," Thunberg said to warm applause.

Echoing a speech by COP26 summit host Boris Johnson in April, she continued: "This is not about some expensive politically correct dream of bunny hugging, or build back better, blah blah blah, green economy, blah blah blah, net zero by 2050, blah blah blah, climate neutral blah blah blah.

"This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words, words that sound great but so far have led to no action, our hopes and dreams drowned in their empty words and promises," said Thunberg.

Some 400 youth activists from nearly 200 countries gathered in Milan will submit a joint declaration to a ministerial meeting at the end of the week, as a lead-in to COP26 in November in Glasgow.

"Our leaders' intentional lack of action is a betrayal of all present and future generations," said Thunberg.

She said governments had been "shamelessly congratulating themselves while still failing to come up with the long overdue funding" for developing nations.

Ugandan youth activist Vanessa Nakate echoed Thunberg's exasperation at leaders' lack of urgency.

"How long must children sleep hungry because their farms have been washed away, because their crops have been dried up because of the extreme weather conditions?" she asked attendees.

"How long are we to watch them die of thirst and gasp for air in the floods? World leaders watch this happen and allow this to continue."

- 'Show us the money' -

COP26 is vital for the effective implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which saw countries commit to limit global temperature rises to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius.

The landmark deal aims for a safer warming cap of 1.5C.

But six years after the accord was struck, countries still haven't agreed how it will work in practice.

Among long-overdue issues still outstanding for COP26 is how each country's carbon cuts will be counted, as well as how the fight against climate change is financed.

Nations already suffering from extreme floods, droughts and storms supercharged by rising seas have called on developed countries at COP26 to make good on a decade-old promise to provide $100 billion each year to help them recover and adapt.

COP26 President Alok Sharma told delegates on Tuesday that the summit was a chance for nations to make good on their finance pledges

 MIGUEL MEDINA AFP

COP26 President Alok Sharma told delegates on Tuesday that the summit was a chance for "developed countries to make good on their promise of money to support developing countries dealing with rising impact of climate change".

Host Britain says it wants the Glasgow summit to keep the 1.5C temperature goal viable, specifically by seeking a global agreement to phase out coal power.

However the United Nations this month said that the latest round of country emissions reductions plans still puts Earth on course for a "catastrophic" 2.7C of warming.

"It's time for our leaders to stop talking and start acting, it's time for the polluters to pay, it's time to keep promises," said Nakate.

"No more empty promises, no more empty summits, no more empty conferences. It's time to show us the money."

© 2021 AFP

The Tech Billionaires Taking On Climate Change

By Felicity Bradstock - Sep 27, 2021, 

• Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos have all made commitments in 2021 to fund the fight against climate change
• Some of these tech billionaires are coming under fire for failing to invest in the most effective areas
• Meanwhile, the ‘space billionaires’ are being called out for the high-emissions nature of their favorite hobbies

In recent years we’ve seen several tech billionaires back environmentally friendly innovations in a bid to tackle climate change, but will these famous innovators really be the ones to bring about change?  Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other leading entrepreneurs often make the headlines for their ground-breaking technologies, unexpected ventures, and charitable donations, frequently making investments as large as some countries’ GDPs. More recently, it seems these billionaires are eager to lead the fight against climate change and provide the technology and research necessary to make a difference.

This September, Gates announced that he had secured over $1 billion dollars in funding from seven U.S. firms to combat climate change. The funding from Microsoft, BlackRock, General Motors, American Airlines, Boston Consulting Group, Bank of America, and ArcelorMittal will be managed by his organization Breakthrough Energy, which he established in 2016.

Gates hopes to drive a “new industrial revolution” through the organization’s Breakthrough Energy Catalyst project, to help the world avoid a climate disaster through investment in carbon capture, green hydrogen, long-duration energy storage, and sustainable aviation fuel. “Half the technology needed to get to zero emissions either doesn’t exist yet or is too expensive for much of the world to afford,” Gates stated, suggesting “Catalyst is designed to change that and provide an effective way to invest in our clean technology future.”

This has been the focus of 2021, with several other tech billionaires getting involved in the battle. Last year, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledged $10 billion to launch his Bezos Earth Fund, which will provide grants to scientists battling climate change. He encouraged other companies to donate to the fund stating that “Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” and “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share.”

Related: Oil Prices Near $80 On Tight Global Supply

And on the same day Gates announced his new funding, Bezos revealed that his Earth Fund would be contributing $1 billion to conserve and protect vulnerable areas of the world. The announcement included statements of support from world leaders such as UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed; British Prime Minister Boris Johnson; Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez; and U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry. 

At the beginning of 2021, Elon Musk joined the ranks of climate change leaders by offering $100 million to the person or organization that could create the most effective carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Elon Musk’s Tesla has led the EV market for years, but now it appears he is also interested in looking for innovative new ways to tackle climate change beyond his EVs.

These kinds of grand public gestures could provide the impetus that the world needs to act on climate change, following recent reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Organisation, which both suggest that an energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives is imminently necessary and not happening fast enough to prevent a crisis. 

But how meaningful are these efforts and will they receive the backing needed from governments and companies around the world to truly tackle climate change? 

But can billionaires really beat climate change?

Several experts suggest that the recent efforts of some of the world’s richest men may be misplaced. For example, San Francisco-based non-profit Project Drawdown reminds us that twelve of the top 20 climate solutions relate to either agriculture or forests, and while Bezos, Gates, and Musk focus on new technologies, funds may be better placed in reforestation projects and agricultural change. Many leading climate change organizations agreed, suggesting that funds should be spread across both new technologies and nature-based solutions.

At the same time, it doesn’t help that these tech billionaires are spending far larger amounts on personal projects that seem to run counter to their climate goals. For example, Musk has recently come under fire for his space ambitions regarding his $74 billion Space X program. Meanwhile, Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic adventures received similar criticism, with Bezos’ trip to space being described as “a spectacle of grotesque wealth.”

When the launch of just one rocket produces as much as 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide, which can remain in the earth’s upper atmosphere for years, the hypocrisy of these apparent ‘climate saviors’ engaging in a space race is clear for all to see. Carbon emissions from rockets are currently substantially lower than those that come from the aviation industry, but making space travel commercial could soon change that.

While the efforts of these tech billionaires to make meaningful change in the battle against climate change are commendable, their pet projects appear to be undermining any climate strategies that they may be pursuing. As for how they choose to invest that funding, questions remain over whether these billions could be better spent elsewhere.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

French Greens choose Yannick Jadot as their candidate for 2022 presidential election

Issued on: 28/09/2021 - 

Yannick Jadot in Nantes, France, on June 24, 2021. 

© Sebastien Salom-Gomis, AFP

Green voters on Tuesday chose former Greenpeace activist Yannick Jadot to be their candidate for France’s April 2022 presidential election.

Jadot won the vote by a narrow margin, winning 51.03% of the votes against 48.97% for the self-styled radical Sandrine Rousseau.

The 54-year old EU lawmaker wants France to devote 20 billion euros ($23.43 billion) per year to the transition to a more environment-friendly economy, progressively end intensive animal farming and establish a new wealth tax.

Born in a village in northern France, Jadot worked a few years for NGOs in Burkina Faso and Bangladesh before getting increasingly involved in politics back home while heading several environment-focused NGOs, including the French branch of Greenpeace.

The French Greens lack the firepower of their German counterparts and no opinion poll sees Jadot as a serious challenger to President Emmanuel Macron.

But the question is whether the self-styled consensus builder, who wants to attract voters beyond the remits of the small Greens party, could emerge as a leader of the fragmented French Left - for that election and beyond - and weigh on the political debate.

(REUTERS)