Snowstorm batters western New York, restricting travel ahead of Thanksgiving
Reuters Snowfall of more than two metres in western New York state prompted local officials on Saturday to further restrict road travel and forced airlines to cancel flights in the Buffalo area, just ahead of the busy Thanksgiving holiday week. New York Governor Kathy Hochul called in the National Guard, deploying about 150 members to […]
Explainer – Who will pay for climate ‘loss and damage’?
Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt Reuters The COP27 summit of nearly 200 countries agreed on Sunday to set up a “loss and damage” fund to support poorer countries being ravaged by climate impacts, overcoming decades of resistance from wealthy nations whose historic emissions have fuelled climate change. Pakistan’s climate minister Sherry Rehman, who was part of the […]
Dying lands: Farmers fight to save the “skin of the Earth”
ROD NICKEL, AYENAT MERSIE, DAVID STANWAY and XIAOYU YIN, of Reuters, report on how human efforts to preserve soil are proving no match for increasingly extreme weather, which is damaging the living system and depleting its ability to produce food…
Floods, other water-related disasters could cost global economy $US5.6 trillion by 2050 – report
London, UK Reuters Worsening droughts, storms and torrential rain in some of the world’s largest economies could cause $US5.6 trillion in losses to the global economy by 2050, according to a report released on Monday. This year heavy rains have triggered floods that inundated cities in China and South Korea and disrupted water and electricity supply […]
Vanuatu breaks ground with ‘loss and damage’ costing in new climate plan
Thomson Reuters Foundation Pacific island state Vanuatu has submitted a “groundbreaking” update to its commitments under the Paris climate accord to include phasing out fossil fuels and a costing of how it aims to tackle destruction caused by rising seas and wild weather. Climate experts said that while most national contributions focus on cutting planet-heating […]
Temperatures rise as France tackles its worst drought on record
Paris, FranceReuters France on Sunday braced for a fourth heatwave this summer as its worst drought on record left parched villages without safe drinking water and farmers warned of a looming milk shortage in the winter. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s office has set up a crisis team to tackle a drought that has forced scores […]
Climate change is driving 2022 extreme heat and flooding
London, UKReuters Extreme weather events – from scorching heatwaves to unusually heavy downpours – have caused widespread upheaval across the globe this year, with thousands of people killed and millions more displaced. In the last three months, monsoon rains unleashed disastrous flooding in Bangladesh, and brutal heatwaves seared parts of South Asia and Europe. Meanwhile, […]
Big bucks: Drought-hit Zimbabweans cut poverty, poaching with larger goats
BUSANI BAFANA, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports, as extreme weather hurts crops, on a project to breed bigger goats and raise incomes which aims to help communities feed their families without wiping out local wildlife…
Essay: Mass starvation, extinctions, disasters: the new IPCC report’s grim predictions, and why adaptation efforts are falling behind
Three vice-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – MARK HOWDEN, JOY PEREIRA, and ROBERTO SÁNCHEZ – look – in an article published on The Conversation – at the findings of the latest IPCC report…
Extreme weather was the biggest reason for people to flee homes in 2020
London, UKThomson Reuters Foundation Extreme weather linked to climate change and mass evacuations to protect those at risk are driving a global surge in families forced from their homes, with a share remaining displaced long-term, analysts said on Thursday. About 98 per cent of new movements of people from their houses in 2020 were caused […]