Entries from Byline Portal tagged with 'Climate Change'
Q&A: Climate Change Front and Centre in Cuban Development Model
by Ivet González, IPS, Italy - Each of Cuba’s 168 municipalities faces the challenge of designing its own strategic development to minimize the impact of problems caused by global warming, and Cuba's ongoing reform aims to empower local governments legally,...
Let's Cut Our Carbon!
by Sue Supriano, WINGS, Canada - Environmental Law Professor Mary Wood from University of Oregon talks about the urgency of cutting climate emissions so that by mid-century, when today's children are in their 40s, earth will still be habitable. She...
The Global Climate Crisis & Animal Agriculture: Doha and Beyond
by Mia MacDonald, Civil Eats, USA - Climate change poses significant threats to ecosystems and biodiversity as well as human health, especially in low-income nations. Practically every stage of meat, egg, and dairy production exacerbates these problems, and holistic solutions...
‘Open Your Eyes,’ Typhoon-Hit Philippines Tells Climate Meeting
by Mariette le Roux, Jakarta Globe, Indonesia - The Philippines urged bickering UN climate negotiators in Doha on Thursday to take heed from the deadly typhoon that struck the archipelago this week and wake up to the realities of global...
Former Irish President Mary Robinson: Climate Change the Biggest Human Rights Issue of Our Time
by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, USA - We have to take into account the injustice of the fact that it’s the fossil fuel growth in the United States, Europe and other developed parts of the world, which has contributed to...
Mental Health, Another Victim of Climate Change
by Patricia Grogg, IPS, Italy - “The city looked as if it had been bombed. On the way to my office, I passed people who had the same shocked look on their faces as I did. We would look at...
To Change Our Direction, It’s Time to Follow Nature’s Lead
by Sarah van Gelder, Yes!, USA - It takes humility to recognize that what we’ve called progress isn’t always for the better. Sometimes nature’s original idea was a better one....
Coastal Erosion Reaches Alarming Levels in Vietnam
by Thuy Binh, IPS, Italy - For the last decade, many families in this southwestern Vietnamese province have been uprooted at least once every two years – but this is not due to economic or political upheaval. Rather, extreme weather...
Tomorrow Is Too Late for Adaptation to Climate Change
by Patricia Grogg, IPS, Italy - Researchers studying the impact of climate change in Cuba estimate that 577 communities in the country will be exposed to floods, due to a rising sea level and the swell caused by increasingly intense...
No Nation Immune to Climate Change - World Bank
by Anna Yukhananov, AlertNet, UK - "We will never end poverty if we don't tackle climate change. It is one of the single biggest challenges to social justice today."...
Biodiversity Protection Needs Community Input
by T.V. Padma, SciDev, UK - A pledge to increase support for biodiversity targets in developing countries is welcome, but care for indigenous people is vital too....
We Are Not Powerless to Confront Climate Change
by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, USA - Millions of victims of Superstorm Sandy remain without power, but they are not powerless to do something about climate change. The media consistently fail to make the link between extreme weather and global...
Superstorm ‘Sandy’ Tells Us Why the Climate Change Denial Must Stop
by Sunita Narain, India Environment Portal, India - The 2012 presidential elections have been remarkable in its deafening silence over climate change. This time the 'C' word has not been uttered. Even now, with this extreme weather event throwing life...
Against the Destruction of the World and the Climate by Greed
by Rebecca Solnit, The Nation, USA - You can blame it all on greed: the refusal to do anything about climate change, the attempts by the .01 percent to destroy our democracy, the constant robbing of the poor, the resultant...
Sri Lanka's Poor under the Weather
by Amantha Perera, Asia Times, Hong Kong - The old adage "nature is the great equalizer" no longer holds true in countries like Sri Lanka, where the poor bear the brunt of extreme weather events....
In the Land of the Pizzly
by Laura Höflinger, Der Spiegel, Germany - The melting Arctic ice has brought polar bears and grizzly bears together and their hybrid offspring, known as "pizzlies," have been detected on Canadian islands. It is a trend that is happening with...
5 Issues This Election Should Be About, and One to Drop
by Sarah van Gelder, Yes!, USA - Cutting through the campaign rhetoric and attack ads, here are five issues we believe should be at the center of the 2012 election, plus one that has no place in the public sphere....
Thirsty South Asia's River Rifts Threaten "Water Wars"
by Nita Bhalla, AlertNet, UK - As the silver waters of the Kishanganga rush through this north Kashmir valley, Indian labourers are hard at work on a hydropower project that will dam the river just before it flows across one...
Biodiversity without Borders
by Patricia Grogg, IPS, Italy - The protection and conservation of biodiversity figure among the most daunting challenges posed by climate change in the Caribbean islands, home to a wealth of endemic species of flora and fauna....
"This Is Just the Beginning": Forest Fires, Deadly Storms, Record Heat Reveal a Changed Climate
by Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now!, USA - The past two weeks have witnessed the worst forest fires in Colorado history, a deadly Mid-Atlantic storm that left 23 dead and four million without power, and a record shattering heatwave across the...
The Elephants in Rio
by Janet Redman, Pambazuka, Kenya - One, infinite growth on a finite planet is an exercise in futility. And two, the 20 percent of the world's population living in North America, Europe, and Japan gobbles up 80 percent of the...
Cuba Develops Crops Adapted to Climate Change
by Ivet González, IPS, Italy - Cabbage, broccoli, carrots, onions and other resistant vegetables are being grown by researchers in Cuba, who for decades have been working to design plants adapted to the tropical conditions in the Caribbean region....
Climate Refugees – Today’s New Reality
by Fabíola Ortiz, IPS, Italy - The continued exodus of Somalis to Kenya and Ethiopia has fuelled the debate on a new issue of global concern: climate refugees, driven from their homes and across borders by extreme weather events....
The Real Reason the Military is Going Green
by Natalie Pompilio, Yes!, USA - Big Oil is a big risk for national security. Can our military—the world's No. 1 oil guzzler—change the politics of climate change?...
Vietnam's Climate Woes Ignite National Strategy
by Vanya Walker-Leigh, Asia Times, Hong Kong - Vietnam, hailed as a development success story for lifting millions out of poverty and staying on track to meet all its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, is seeing its future progress...
Don’t Call Me an Environmentalist
by Lisa Curtis, Grist, USA - Over the past decade, the number of Americans who support the environmental movement has declined, with supporters increasingly split along partisan lines. On the other hand, most Americans strongly support developing clean energy, believe...
Climate Change, the Arctic and the Colonial Imagination
by Krystalline Kraus, rabble.ca, Canada - There is a certain North American arrogance that our 'first world' privilege will buffer us from the effects of climate change, that ‘other' countries such as Bangladesh or small island nations such as the...
Floods Push South Asian Cities to Plan for Climate Change
by Amantha Perera, AlertNet, UK - Experts warn that the effects of climate change, including more extreme weather patterns, could worsen the problems now faced by cities like Colombo and Dhaka, where millions live or commute daily to work. Limited...
Why Climate-Smart Agriculture Won’t Work
by Khadija Sharife, Pambazuka, Kenya - The push behind the newest agricultural ‘revolution’ is driven by many factors ranging from multinationals such as Monsanto, eager to embed the money-making intellectual property of genetically modified seeds, to that of mega-dam proponents....
How Boulder Freed Its Electric Company
by Valerie Schloredt, Countercurrents, India - The city of Boulder, Colo., has won the right to take its power supply—and carbon emissions—away from corporate control. The change for Boulder came in November when voters passed two ballot measures that allow...
Time to Adapt to Climate Change Impact on Women’s Lives
by Mariela Jara, IPS, Italy - This year’s unusually rainy season in Peru is having a negative effect on the wellbeing and health of women in rural areas who are forced, for example, to spend three times as much time...
Peak Energy And Resources, Climate Change, And The Preservation Of Knowledge
by Alice Friedemann, Countercurrents, India - Since there’s nothing that can be done about climate change, because there’s no scalable alternative to fossil fuels, I’ve always wondered why politicians and other leaders, who clearly know better, feel compelled to deny...
Life in an Unhealthy Climate
by Mandi Smallhorne, Mail & Guardian, South Africa - An absence of fresh, clean water in adequate amounts for drinking and washing, coupled with undernourished people add up to a perfect health storm: water-borne diseases like cholera thrive in such...
Rural Women as Decision Makers Viewed as Pivotal to Climate Change Solutions
by Jessica Buchleitner, Women News Network, USA-Bringing rural women’s voices to the decision making table was one of the discussions throughout the recent two week Durban Climate Talks (COP17) which ended on 9 December. One of the conference goals was...
Climate Change Movements: Where Are We Going?
by Elaine Graham-Leigh, Counterfire, UK - Climate change campaigns may not be able to bring down the system on their own, but what we can do is place ourselves at the centre of the movements which are taking on capitalism...
Women Will Be Hardest Hit by the Climate Change.
by Zuki Zimel, Ear to the Ground, South Africa - No climate justice without gender justice....
Will Fossil Fuel Companies Face Liability for Climate Change?
by Christine Shearer, Conducive Chronicle, USA - In a recent article in National Journal, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) President Tim Phillips said there is no question that AFP and others like it have been instrumental in the rise of Republican...
Buying and Selling Pollution: Who Gains?
by Khadija Sharife, Pambazuka, Kenya - Why are the solutions proposed to halt and reverse climate change placed firmly in the hands of financiers and key state polluters, who consistently elide investigation of the macroeconomic system at the root cause...
City Apartheid Built Turns Green
by Lee Middleton, IPS, Italy - Something unusual is happening in Atlantis. Created in the 1970s to fulfill the apartheid government's agenda to evict "coloured" South Africans from Cape Town, Atlantis has always been best known as the city that...
Sinking Feeling: More Bad News for Pacific Island Nations
by Kate Sheppard and James West, Mother Jones, USA - In climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, the most urgent calls for action have come from the world's small island nations. For many of those nations, the negotiations aren't about...
The Women at the Top, Working for Justice
by Anne Perkins, The Guardian, UK - From the Durban climate change conference to EU negotiations and Nobel laureates, women are at last growing in prominence....
Emirates to Profit in Global Fight against Climate Change
by April Yee, The National, United Arab Emirates - The Middle East is the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide per GDP, according to the International Energy Agency. Dubai hopes to become a hub for carbon credit trading and clean...
Zambia: Youths Don't Want to Inherit a Depleted Africa
by Perpetual Sichikwenkwe, Gender Links, South Africa - From 28 November to 9 December 2011, Africa will host a historical meeting on climate change in Durban, South Africa. Different stakeholders will come together to discuss solutions to decisively deal with...
Thoughts on Why Energy Use and CO2 Emissions Are Rising as Fast as GDP
by Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World, USA - World industrial production has self-organized in a way that assigns different roles to companies operating in the three country groups, as a way to minimize manufacturing costs. Over the long term, this...
Bangladesh: Climate Change to Increase Hunger and Malnutrition
by Juhie Bhatia, Global Voices, The Netherlands - As governments gear up for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP17) in Durban, South Africa, which starts today, experts are warning that among climate change's greatest consequences in developing countries such...
Himalayan Nations Yet to Break the Ice
by Sudeshna Sarkar, Al Jazeera, Qatar - The shrinking and retreating of the Himalayan glaciers - which provide life-giving water to over a billion people - became visible after early 1970. Three decades later, the phenomenon accelerated, resulting in the...
Africa Leads Climate Push as Its People Go Hungry
by Katy Migiro, AlertNet, UK - As the world's poorest continent, Africa is also the most vulnerable to the extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels brought by climate change....
Green Economy and Poverty Alleviation
by Marianne de Nazareth, Counter Currents, India - By regenerating the forest our project proves that a healthy forest can be the source of sustainable income generation for the impoverished mountain communities....
For Salvadoran Activist, It Is Necessary to Change the Development Paradigm
by Tatiana Félix, Upside Down World, Canada - Salvadoran activist Carolina Amaya says that the challenge of social movements is to deconstruct the false paradigm of development that triggered the economic and environmental crisis that puts the life of our...
Climate Change a ‘Catastrophic’ Threat to Global Health
by Katie Murray, AlterNet, UK - Climate change will be “catastrophic” to global health and could foster global instability and insecurity, a group of prominent scientists, environmental health experts and government officials warned Monday....
Climate Change and Food Security: Out of the Mouths of Babes
by Kelly Rigg, Huffington Post, USA - Today is World Food Day, a perfect moment to reflect on what the very real impacts of climate change mean for those who suffer from hunger and malnutrition. It comes at a time...
Malawi Farmers Lay Down Their Hoes to Combat Climate Change
by Karen Sanje, AlterNet, UK - In its first year of operation, Find Your Feet targeted 5,000 farming families in the districts of Karonga, Mzimba and Rumphi in Malawi’s northern region to promote mulching. Now 25,000 families have adopted the...
The Climate Gamble on African Soil
by Sumayya Ismail, Al Jazeera, Qatar - Environmental rights groups say internationally backed carbon capture schemes distract from real climate justice needs....
No Reason to Give Up on Clean Energy
by Nicole Lederer, Huffington Post, USA - Making transformations to something as big and as important as our energy system is not something any industry can do on its own -- much less an industry that's competing against one of...
In the World's Breadbasket, Climate Change Feeds some Worry
by Christine Stebbins, Reuters, UK - The U.S. alone accounts for half of all world corn exports, 40 percent of soybean exports and 30 percent of wheat exports. But climate change fears are sounding some warning bells....
Brazilian Women Rise Above the Waters
by Fabiana Frayssinet, IPS, Italy - Almost a year and a half after floods wreaked havoc in a large part of the state of Rio de Janeiro, a group of women are struggling to rebuild their lives. They lost everything...
Why So Much Is Going Wrong Everywhere at Once and How Life Teaches Us to Fix It
by Olga Bonfiglio, Energy Bulletin, UK - Already we are seeing five symptoms of Critical Mass occurring in both rich and poor countries, including our own: hyper-urbanization, joblessness, poverty, dislocation and disease....
Jellyfish Force Shutdown of Power Plants
by Glenda Kwek, The Age, Australia - Global warming, the nitrification of oceans through fertiliser run-off and overfishing have also created the environment for a huge expansion of the animals nicknamed the cockroaches of the sea, studies showed....
Women Excluded from Climate Change Projects in Africa, UN Experts Warn
by Kristin Palitza, The Guardian, UK - Of the millions of dollars spent on climate change projects in developing countries, little has been allocated in a way that will benefit women. Yet, in Africa, it is women who will be...
If the Sea Is in Trouble, We Are All in Trouble
by Sylvia Earle, The Independent, UK - What is shocking is that it has taken so long for us to make the connection between the state of the ocean and everything we care about – the economy, health, security –...
Link between Cholera Outbreaks, Climate Change
by Christabel Ligami, The East African, Kenya - “When temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius, there is a chance cholera cases will double in four months and if rainfall goes up by 200 millimetres, then in two months’ time, cholera...
Ocean Report: Risk of Marine Extinctions Unprecedented in Human History
by Kelly Rigg, The Huffington Post, USA - A "deadly trio" of carbon-related ocean impacts (ocean acidification, warming, and oxygen depletion) may lead to global marine extinctions on a scale unprecedented in human history. This is one of the main...
Southern Africa: Climate Change Is a Gender Issue
by Daud Kayisi, Pambazuka, Kenya - According to Eco-Watch Africa, sexual harassment and violence against women and girls in the aftermath of natural disasters, like recent floods in Mozambique, is an enormous challenge. This means women will suffer both the...
When Breaking the Law Is Justified
by Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star, Canada - “We need to do (civil disobedience) on a mass scale,” says leading American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New...
The Turtle's Tale: an Epic Struggle Made Harder by Man
by Jo Chandler, The Age, Australia - Climate change suggests a grim future for the turtles that breed on Queensland's Heron Island....
What’s Behind United States Budget Problems?
by Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World, USA - We see endless fighting between the Democrats and Republicans about the budget, but no real explanation as to what the issues are. My view is that there is a structural imbalance between...
Carbon Tiff Takes on Religious Hue
by Katharine Murphy, The Age, Australia - Climate change is about reason: it is about science and economics. But faith has somehow emerged as the dominant theme in the carbon price debate....
With Cap-and-Trade on the Ropes, Is it Time to Reconsider a Global Tax on Carbon?
by Saya Kitasei, Revolt, USA - A hybrid system could look like an emissions trading system with a pre-determined number of emissions allowances, but with an ability to purchase additional allowances at a set price (an effective upper limit on...
Climate Change and Agriculture
by Dr. Vandana Shiva, Climate Story Tellers, USA - Biodiverse ecological farming is the answer, not genetic engineering....
Climate Change and Africa's Vanishing Lake
by Emily Miller, Mail & Guardian, South Africa - Fatime and 4,3-million other children who are suffering from chronic malnutrition are victims of a more permanent crisis -- the disappearance of Lake Chad....
Brazil Beats US in Climate Change Awareness
by Luisa Massarani, SciDev, UK - The results challenge the belief that in the developing world there is a lack of knowledge of the importance of climate change....
Climate Change Could Happen Much Faster than Previously Thought
by Louise Gray, Telegraph, UK - Humans are in danger of making large parts of the Earth uninhabitable for thousands of years because of man made climate change, according to new evidence based on geological records....
Cancun: Can We Avert Climate Chaos?
by Janet Redman, Institute for Policy Studies, USA - Arm twisting and back-room pressure tactics will backfire....
My Journey into Kivalina v. ExxonMobil et al.
by Christine Shearer, Climate Storytellers, USA - In 2008, a small Inupiat village in Alaska sued ExxonMobil and 23 other fossil fuel companies including Peabody Energy and BP for contributing to the destruction of their homeland, and charged a smaller...
Shell’s Arctic Drilling Will Destroy Our Homeland and Culture
by Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Climate Storytellers, USA - This week families across the country will be celebrating Thanksgiving—sharing food and telling stories. Here is my story about our food and culture that would be destroyed if Shell Oil gets the permit...
Can Condoms Curb Climate Change?
by Krista Mahr, Time, USA - Family planning, an important but often overlooked idea in the expanding arsenal of policy needed to address global warming, is the subject of a new report released by the Worldwatch Institute this week....
Small, Endangered Kiribati Takes Giant Steps to Save the Ocean
by Rasa Gustaitis, New America Media, USA - Even as it disappears under water, the Republic of Kiribati, a small oceanic nation that straddles the Equator about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii, it has emerged, along with other tiny...
Worlds Collide at Cancun Climate Talks
by Laura Carlsen, Foreign Policy in Focus, USA - Two worlds will collide in Cancun, but they share a single planet. If the world that defends our current model of production and consumption prevails, the planet will edge ever closer...
Voices of Resistance and Hope from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change
by Silvia Ribeiro, Pambazuka News, Kenya - ‘We are confronting the terminal crisis of the model of patriarchal civilisation based on submission and destruction of human beings and nature that was accelerated with the industrial revolution.'...
The Arctic: The New El Dorado
by Huguette Young, Americas Quarterly, USA - Just 50 years ago, the Arctic was one of the world’s most remote and inhospitable regions, largely populated by indigenous peoples who hunted musk-ox and caribou and supported themselves with fishing, much as...
Fighting to Save Glaciers as They Retreat
by Marcela Valente, Inter Press Service, Italy - Argentina's glaciers, along with Chile's the most extensive of South America, manifest the damage caused by climate change, while they also face threats from mining and major transportation infrastructure projects. A law...
Syrian Drought Triggers Rural Exodus
by Lina Sinjab, BBC, UK - As you drive along the Euphrates river in northern Syria, you see lush green fields, but keep traveling east, and the land that was once filled with life is now dry, barren and empty....
Climate Change Reality Dawns on Rural Farmers
by Charlene Munhenga, The Herald, Zimbabwe - Rural folk across Zimbabwe are beginning to experience the effects of climate change, with crop yields declining as prolonged droughts and erratic rains start taking their toll....
Hottest Summer in Russia
by Svetlana Kononova, Russia Profile, Russia - The heat wave and air pollution due to forest and peat fires have hit Russia’s economy, had an impact on people’s health and are making working conditions unbearable in many offices. A recent...
Troubled Waters
by Rubeena Mahato, Nepali Times, Nepal - Nobody had anticipated a century ago that countries would enter into major wars over oil. Today, when identical predictions are made over water, the response is strikingly similar: disbelief and a general...
Payment of Climate Debt, by Rich Polluting Nations to Poorer Victims
by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, Earth Island Journal, USA - Justice advocates roil debate by questioning role of extractive industries that provide path to economic development. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that climate change is anything but an equal opportunity disaster....
Bolivia Climate Conference: Indigenous Peoples Design Roadmap to New World
by Brenda Norrell, Americas Program, Mexico - Indigenous Peoples from around the world, including Maori from New Zealand and Gwich’in from the far north in Alaska, came to the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother...
UN Urges Global Move to Meat and Dairy-Free Diet
by Felicity Carus, Guardian, UK - Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides....
Cochabamba’s Message: Let the People Speak
by Janet Redman, Yes!, USA - The World People’s Conference on Climate Change held last week in Bolivia was an experiment in replacing the less-than-democratic UN process with one that invites public participation....
REDD: Seeing the forest for the trees
by Khadija Sharife, Pambazuka, Kenya - There’s a difference between carbon emissions in developed and developing countries – that of ‘extravagant’ carbon versus ‘survival carbon’, for the provision of basic services such as electricity. But it is a distinction that...
350 Degrees of Inseparability
by Rebecca Solnit, Tom Dispatch, USA - Last December, the Copenhagen Climate Summit gave the heads of state supposedly negotiating a future climate-change treaty a clear-cut choice between short-term profits for the few and the long-term survival of practically everyone...
Animals Are Essential To Sustainable Food
by Nicolette Hahn Niman, Earth Island Institute, USA - The most environmentally sustainable food production mimics nature in all its complexity – and animals are an essential component....
The People v. CO2
by Rachel Morris, Slate, USA - In international law, there's an established principle called transboundary harm, which means that if a Canadian factory belches toxic chemicals into a river, fouling a reservoir in Vermont, sooner or later the people...
Water Shortage Calls for Second Look at Indus Treaty
by Zofeen Ebrahim, IPS, Italy - Climate change and the probability that a current water shortage would worsen may make constantly bickering neighbours, India and Pakistan, take a closer look at a 50-year-old treaty under which they share rivers originating...
Inside Koch's Climate Denial Machine
by Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones, USA - Exxon and Chevron aren't the only behemoths waging a multi-million dollar campaign to seed doubt about climate change. In fact, one of the biggest funders is a gas giant most have never heard...
As Glaciers Melt, Bolivia Fights for the Good Life
by Jessica Camille Aguirre, Yes!, USA - Bolivia is watching its glaciers melt, early casualties of a changing climate. As communities struggle to adapt and the government tries to pioneer an alternative way forward, rural Bolivians believe the answer lies...
Water Wisdom
by Vandana Shiva, Resurgence, UK - Since 1966 – and as a consequence of the introduction of the Green Revolution model of water-intensive, chemical farming – India has over-exploited her groundwater, creating a water famine....
Humans Driving Extinction Faster than Species Can Evolve
by Juliette Jowit, Guardian, UK - For the first time since the dinosaurs disappeared, humans are driving animals and plants to extinction faster than new species can evolve....
Shrinking Glaciers Threaten Tajikistan's Economic Dreams
by Farangis Najibullah, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Like many other farmers in the remote village of Barchid, lying in the shadow of Tajikistan's Pamir Mountains, Makbulsho Yakinshoev knows little about issues like greenhouse-gas emissions or global warming....
North-South Divide and Tackling Global Warning
by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Counter Currents, India - Should the countries of the South have the right to increase their emissions as they industrialize and ‘develop’?...
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