Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

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A group of 28 NGOs have written to 34 banks, insurance companies and the Chinese government, urging them to deny financing and other support for oil and gas projects in Uganda.

The letters, written by U.S.-based Climate Rights International (CRI) and 27 Africa-based NGOs, follow a report detailing numerous human rights violations and environmental harms at the Kingfisher oil project sites in Uganda. Similarly, Uganda’s Tilenga oil fields also face scrutiny over their ecological and social harms, including impacts on wildlife and displacement of local communities.

Both Kingfisher and Tilenga are co-owned by French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company Uganda Ltd. (CNOOC), and the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC). Both projects are also part of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline initiative (EACOP), where TotalEnergies is a major partner. The initiave aims to transport oil and gas from Uganda to Tanzania for export.

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Major banks and insurance companies in Europe, Japan and North America have ruled out support for the projects, he added. “Now it’s time for all banks and insurance companies, whether in Europe, China, the Gulf States, Africa, or elsewhere, to publicly rule out any continuing or further support.”

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Subsidized minivans, no income taxes: Countries have rolled out a range of benefits to encourage bigger families, with no luck

The findings come before the government's first budget later this month, and with a cost of living crisis that has driven soaring use of food banks.

According to the report by non-governmental organisation the Trussell Trust, almost a quarter of children under four are facing extreme poverty.

"Shockingly, 46 percent more children are facing hunger and hardship than two decades ago. That equates to one in five children growing up trapped in this situation," the trust said in a statement.

A UNICEF report last year found that the UK -- a G7 and NATO member, and the world's sixth biggest economy -- has one of the highest rates of child poverty among richer countries.

In 2013, Chinese mining company Chinalco (中国铝业集团有限公司) sparked an international conversation about extractive impacts with the news it had successfully relocated an entire Peruvian town of 5,000 residents to clear space for a copper mine. At the time, the relocation project in Morococha, central Peru, was touted as a solution to protect villagers from pollution and environmental degradation as a result of mining practices, and as a potential template for Chinese overseas investment in Latin America.

Ten years later, experts describe the move as a “tragedy.”

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Many residents and environmental activists argue that the company has failed to honor its promises. A 2019 study by the National University of Central Peru revealed that most of the population of New Morococha believes their economy, job stability, and access to social benefits promised by Chinalco have not been fulfilled.

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Since 2013, 96 percent of the residents in Old Morococha have been compelled to relocate to a flood-prone wetland area, which is also isolated from the central highway. The situation is even worse for some 20 families who have refused to resettle.

“The remaining families in Old Morococha are facing daily harassment from the Chinese mining company Chinalco,” Borda said. “Every day, they are destroying the few houses of the settlers, until the last brick disappears.”

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According to the Geological, Mining, and Metallurgical Institute of Perú (INGEMMET) 2017 report, the city of Old Morococha faces an “imminent, non-mitigable danger” due to severe risks, including visible structural damage, proximity to mining waste and tailings, and ongoing seismic hazards exacerbated by active mining operations. The combination of these factors renders any mitigation efforts ineffective, underscoring the extreme vulnerability of the area.

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[The Ingemmet report] concluded that frequent floods and liquefaction of soils caused by earthquakes may affect the safety of residents living in buildings of New Morococha, where most urban facilities, including schools, religious temples, and health centers, were built within 26 months between 2010 and 2012. The report said the company has not yet informed residents of what they would do to mitigate those risks.

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Drought is now so bad in parts of southern Africa that governments say they must kill hundreds of their most captivating, majestic wild animals to feed desperately hungry people.

In August, Namibia announced it had embarked on a cull of 723 animals, including 83 elephants, 30 hippos and 300 zebras. The following month, Zimbabwe authorized the slaughter of 200 elephants.

Both governments said the culls would help alleviate the impacts of the region’s worst drought in 100 years, reduce pressure on land and water, and prevent conflict as animals push further into human settlements seeking food.

Increasingly intense floods and droughts are a "distress signal" of what is to come as climate change makes the planet's water cycle ever more unpredictable, the United Nations warned Monday.

Last year the world's rivers were their driest for more than 30 years, glaciers suffered their largest loss of ice mass in half a century and there was also a "significant" number of floods, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said in a report.

"Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement accompanying the State of Global Water Resources report.

"We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies," she said.

Saulo said the heating up of the Earth's atmosphere had made the water cycle "more erratic and unpredictable.

Nepal is reeling from its worst flooding in decades after ferocious monsoon rains swelled rivers and inundated entire neighborhoods in the capital Kathmandu, killing at least 236 people.

Last weekend's disaster was the latest of several disastrous floods to hit the country this year.

Thame was submerged in August by a glacial lake that burst high in the mountains above the small village, famous for its mountaineering residents.

It was once home to Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, the first person to climb the world's highest mountain Everest, along with New Zealander Edmund Hillary.

Experts say that the flood in Nepal was part of a frightening pattern. Glaciers are receding at an alarming rate.

Hundreds of glacial lakes formed from glacial melt have appeared in recent decades.

In 2020, more than 2,000 were mapped across Nepal by experts from the Kathmandu-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), with 21 identified as potentially dangerous.

Parts of Antarctica are turning green more quickly than previously thought, leaving scientists "shocked" at the impact of climate change in the region.

The area covered by vegetation in the Antarctic Peninsula is 10 times larger than four decades ago, a UK research team has said.

It means the 800-mile (1,300km) area in the northernmost part of the continent - could become vulnerable to invasive species as a result.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13985944

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/32287179

One of the more far-fetched rumors is that Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits. Others accuse the administration of President Joe Biden of using federal disaster funds to help migrants in the country illegally, or suggest officials are deliberately abandoning bodies in the cleanup.

• Fed up with China's employment situation, young people on the mainland are retreating to the countryside.

• Job hunting has been particularly difficult for young people as the Chinese economy struggles, said Chung Chi Nien, chair professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Archived version

Here is the report (pdf)

A new report shows how U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing disinformation about climate change.

Co-author Chuck Collins is co-founder of the Climate Accountability Research Project. He said people with ties to the fossil fuel industry are bankrolling groups trying to block action on climate change through tax-deductible donations.

“There are 137 organizations that are actively involved in promoting climate disinformation,” said Collins, “challenging the science, sowing doubt, blocking alternatives. Their goal is to run out the clock and keep extracting their profits.”

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Many donors are now listed online at ClimateCriminals.org (archived version), which also features a countdown to a deadline set in Paris to cut fossil fuel emissions in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

In recent years, deforestation has slowed in the Amazon. But despite attempted crackdowns by state authorities, lawlessness is still rife, and the state presence feels minimal.

Some of the Amazon is privately owned by individuals or companies. Private owners are meant to conserve 80% of the rainforest on their land by law, and can develop the remaining 20%. But this is not well policed.

Some of the land is classified as a state-owned protected reserve, or as an indigenous reserve. Some land though is undesignated entirely - meaning it is not privately owned by anyone, and has also not been protected as a reserve.

Those areas are particularly vulnerable to land-grabs. Everywhere you drive or fly over in the south of Amazonas state, mines, loggers and farms are visible.

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The fires may be mostly started by humans, but they have been made worse by Brazil’s worst-ever drought, which has turned the normally damp vegetation into a dry tinderbox.

The drought has seen the level of the rivers drop to historic lows, and almost 60% of the country is under stress from the drought.

A rare combination of three major climate factors—El Niño, the positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole, and the warm phase of the Tropical North Atlantic—has contributed, along with climate change, to intensifying drought conditions in South America, southern Africa, and parts of the Mediterranean and eastern Europe.

The report, "Global Drought Overview—September 2024," published by the European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC), shows the gravity of these temperature and rainfall anomalies.

Several regions of the world have experienced very pronounced warm temperature anomalies. In July 2024, these anomalies exceeded 3°C in north-western North America, eastern Canada, the Mediterranean, eastern Europe, south-eastern and central Africa, Iran, western and central Russia, Japan, and Antarctica.

The extreme drought conditions have pushed millions of people from food stress to crisis levels in many regions of the world. With less food available, vulnerable populations will be further exposed to hunger and malnutrition. In southern Africa, millions of people are expected to require food aid in the coming months.

Rivers, lakes, and water reservoirs have been drying up as a result of the combination of prolonged lack of rain and high evaporation caused by the high temperatures.

In South America, rivers such as the Amazon have been at alarmingly low water levels, threatening agriculture, drinking water supplies, transportation and hydropower production.

In southern Africa, the very low water flow of the Zambezi River—a critical source of hydroelectric power for several countries—has been causing power shortages and blackouts, with several indirect consequences.

Half of all Haitians are struggling every day to find food as rampant gang violence and lawlessness are causing “the worst hunger emergency in the western hemisphere”, a report has found.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and its partner organisations estimate that 5.4 million Haitians are now regularly finding it hard to get enough to eat, a record for the Caribbean nation and the largest proportion of acutely food insecure people anywhere in the world, WFP said. The figure suggests another 600,000 people have fallen into “crisis” level hunger since the previous peaks recorded earlier this year and in 2023.

A coalition of 12 leading aid agencies has called for immediate action to alleviate the escalating hunger crisis as gang control of major roads blocks food supplies and causes huge price rises.

“Without immediate action the hunger crisis in Haiti will continue to deepen, with devastating consequences for millions of vulnerable people,” civil society groups in Port-au-Prince, including Action Against Hunger, Save the Children and Mercy Corps warned in an open letter.