Small actions make a big difference engilsh dkbee.com

The fast-fix for global warming that the UN climate summit can’t ignore Despite rapid progress in clean energy and electric vehicles, the world is still warming faster than ever. The good news is that we already have powerful ways to reduce the warming rate – if governments look beyond carbon dioxide and focus on a broader set of pollutants. We are writing this from the UN’s Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, where much of the attention is rightly on the carbon dioxide cuts that we need to avoid long-term warming. But we could make faster progress by also tackling a different set of pollutants that heat the planet intensely – but fade rapidly. Cutting emissions of these means cutting the warming quickly. So-called “short-lived climate pollutants”, or SLCPs, are emitted in various ways and many of them have the same sources as CO₂. The common ground is that they typically don’t stay in the atmosphere for very long – from a few days to a few decades, compared to centuries for carbo...

This oil-rich country has stood in the way of climate action. It’s quietly building a clean energy empire A dark geometric sprawl breaks up an expanse of ocher-hued sand in Saudi Arabia. Close up, the structure is made up of row after row of solar panels, glimmering in the intense sun as it beats down on this scrubby, arid land about 60 miles south of the city of Jeddah. Al Shuaibah 2 is Saudi Arabia’s largest solar farm, with a capacity of more than 2 gigawatts, enough to power around 350,000 homes . But it won’t keep its crown for long. Even larger installations are already in development as mega solar farms proliferate across the country’s desert lands. “There is a solar boom, no one can deny that,” said Nishant Kumar, renewable and power analyst at the research firm Rystad Energy. Saudi Arabia has pledged to generate 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and the race is on to meet it. At first glance, it may seem an unlikely reinvention; this is oil country after a...

Global companies are still committing to protect the climate – and they’re investing big money in clean tech The Trump administration has given corporations plenty of convenient excuses to retreat from their climate commitments, with its moves to withdraw from the Paris Agreement , roll back emissions regulations, and scale back clean energy incentives. But will the world’s largest corporations follow its lead? Some multinational companies have indeed scaled back. For instance, Wells Fargo dropped its goal for the companies the bank finances to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, saying the conditions necessary for meeting that goal, such as policy certainty, consumer behavior and the pace of clean technology development, hadn’t fully materialized. Oil giant BP told investors that earlier optimism about a fast transition to renewable energy was “misplaced ” given the changing regulatory environment. However, many others, including the world’s largest retailer , Walmart, aren’t trading ...

Can we tackle climate change without net zero? Here's what it really means Net zero is all over the news as the Liberals and the Nationals fight over whether to keep it, but the political debate confuses what it really means. While in political circles it's often used to loosely describe support for climate policies and the efforts to bring emissions down, it's actually a technical term for the point where temperatures will stabilise. The Federal Liberal Party has agreed to scrap net zero from the Climate Change Act and repeal Labor's 2030 emissions reduction target if elected. Its Coalition partner, the Nationals, have already abandoned any support for net zero. At the end of the day, without net zero, the world will continue to heat up. What does net zero actually mean? Climate change is caused by emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that trap heat from the Sun and cause temperatures to rise. When we release emissions by bu...

How climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods Many extreme weather events are becoming more common and more intense around the world, fuelled by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. Here are four ways that rising temperatures are affecting weather extremes. 1. Hotter, longer heatwaves Even a small increase in average temperatures makes a big difference to heat extremes. As the range of daily temperatures shifts to warmer levels, hotter days become more likely and more intense. Scientists use computer models to simulate how individual extreme weather events unfold in two scenarios:today's world with about 1.3C or more of human-caused warming a hypothetical world without human influence on the climate. That way, they can estimate how much a particular heatwave, storm or drought was affected by climate change. In the UK, temperatures topped 40C for the first time on record in July 2022, causing extensive disruption . This would have been extre...

On the Gates climate memo There are a lot of things I agree with in Bill Gates’ new memo on climate change. The recent cutbacks on international spending on vaccination, malaria control, feeding the hungry, and poverty alleviation by many of the richest countries (driven in part by a desire for more military spending) is a catastrophe that will cost thousands if not millions of lives. Adaptation is a critically important part of addressing climate change, and a world with more prosperity and less inequality is one where we can better deal with the impacts of climate change – at least up to a point. But in other areas I feel that it needlessly sets up a conflict between laudable goals: we can both mitigate emissions and alleviate poverty, disease, and hunger. While there are some tradeoffs it is more a question of policy priority than a zero sum game. Similarly, I feel that Gates is a bit too cavalier in his treatment of climate risk. Given the strong reactions to Gates’ memo both on ...

"Take a Break When It's Hot": Taiwan to Legislate Special Measures as Heatwaves Increase The Taiwanese government is showing signs of creating "heatwave holidays" to prepare for prolonged heatwaves caused by climate change. According to Yonhap News on November 4, citing Taiwanese media such as China Times and United Daily News, the Legislative Yuan's Transportation Committee reviewed a proposed amendment to the "Meteorological Act" the previous day. This amendment would allow the issuance of heatwave warnings by including abnormally high temperatures as a type of disaster-related weather. The Taiwanese government is showing signs of creating "heatwave holidays" to prepare for prolonged heatwaves caused by climate change. Photo by Getty Images According to Yonhap News, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications of Taiwan stated in a parliamentary inquiry the previous day that it is, in principle, in favor of heatwave holidays due t...

  This is how much the Earth will warm with countries' new climate plans, UN says All countries of the world had homework this year: submit new-and-improved plans to fight climate change. But the plans they handed in "have barely moved the needle" on reducing Earth's future warming,  a new United Nations report finds . And a good chunk of that progress is counteracted by the withdrawal of the United States from the effort, the report adds. The newest climate-fighting plans — mandated every five years by the 2015 Paris Agreement — shave about 3/10ths of a degree Celsius (nearly 6/10ths of a degree Fahrenheit) off a warming future compared with the projections a year ago.  Only one-third of countries that signed the agreement, covering 63 per cent of emissions, submitted new climate plans . Canada submitted its latest plan in February. It has since been  rated "highly insufficient" by the non-profit group Climate Action Tracker . Earlier this year, Environment...