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LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — Climate change caused overwhelmingly by human activity is the primary source of the unprecedented forest fires regularly ravaging the western United States, according to a study published Monday. Fires destroyed an average of 13,500 square kilometers (5,200 square miles) per year in the American west between 2001 and 2018 — twice as much as between 1984-2000. “It’s happened so much faster than we previously anticipated,” Rong Fu, who led […]
21 October 2021 More than one million people in southern Madagascar are struggling to get enough to eat, due to what could become the first famine caused by climate change, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). The region has been hit hard by successive years of severe drought, forcing families in rural communities to resort to desperate measures just to survive. Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, has a unique ecosystem which includes animals and plants found […]
by Paula RAMON Agence France Presse LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — It had been completely dry in Sacramento for six months. Then the heavens opened and a record-breaking amount of rain fell in one day. Such extreme shifts are becoming more frequent in California and are a harbinger of what is to come for the rest of a warming planet, scientists say. “California is a sentinel state. It’s like a canary in a […]
by Myriam LEMETAYER Agence France Presse That cow may look peaceful and harmless, munching on some grass in a verdant pasture. But don’t be fooled — it is emitting methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas contributing to runaway global climate change. Agriculture is responsible for 12 percent of global man-made greenhouse gas emissions, much of it due to methane, the second most warming gas after carbon dioxide. Methane is around 25 times more potent […]
by Linda Givetash and Griffin Shea in Johannesburg Agence France-Presse BALFOR, South Africa (AFP) – It’s spring in South Africa, and Danie Bester’s tillers are rusting in a corner of his farm. Freshly-turned earth stretches for miles on other farms as his neighbours prepare their fields. “I’m still playing golf,” said 37-year-old Bester. He might sound like Aesop’s grasshopper, wasting away the spring days while the ants next door work. But he’s actually made a […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) – A leading activist investor called Wednesday for Royal Dutch Shell to break itself up, bolster its low-carbon investment and return more cash to shareholders. Bemoaning how the Anglo-Dutch giant’s stock valuation has lagged that of oil industry rivals, activist Daniel Loeb called for a “bold strategy” shift from the oil giant as he announced that he took a stake in the company. “Shell has too many competing stakeholders pushing […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) – India will be a fighter for “climate justice” at the upcoming COP26 summit, seeking to make rich nations pay for measures to ease rising temperatures, the country’s environment minister said Wednesday. And the world’s third biggest source of greenhouse gases is not yet guaranteeing that it will offer new mitigation efforts at the crucial conference which starts Sunday in Glasgow. India, along with the world’s leading gas emitter China, is […]
by Claire GOUNON EIN GEDI, Israel (AFP) — In the heyday of the Ein Gedi spa in the 1960s, holidaymakers could marinate in heated pools and then slip into the briny Dead Sea. Now the same beach is punctured by craters. A spectacular expanse of water in the desert, flanked by cliffs to east and west, the Dead Sea has lost a third of its surface area since 1960. The blue water recedes about a […]
by Véronique DUPONT with Stuart GRAHAM in Dundee Agence France-Presse NORTH RONALDSAY (ORKNEY), United Kingdom (AFP) – On a tiny island in Scotland’s far-flung Orkneys, thousands of sheep spend the winter munching on seaweed, a unique diet that scientists say offers hope for reducing planet-warming methane emissions. Around 60 people share North Ronaldsay — an island just over 3 miles (5 kilometres) long, ringed by rocky beaches and turquoise waters off the north coast of mainland […]
by Henry MORALES ARANA Agence France-Presse COMUNIDAD CERRO AZUL, Guatemala (AFP) – Lazaro Yat looked on helplessly as his 17-year-old son left the family home in Guatemala and embarked on the perilous journey to the United States as an undocumented migrant. Two powerful hurricanes that struck the north of the Central American country in 2020 decimated cardamom crops, leaving thousands of indigenous people destitute. “Everyone suffered because their crops were left submerged in water,” Yat […]
LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg (AFP) – The impact of surging gas and electricity prices globally threatens the EU’s energy market, but the bloc will not react hastily, officials said on Tuesday. An emergency meeting of EU ministers in Luxembourg to discuss the issue largely backed 11 member countries in rejecting proposals from Spain and France for deep-rooted reforms to the market. The ministers recognised the price hikes “jeopardised the integrity of the European energy market,” the chair of […]
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) – Iran’s capital is suffering its worst drought in half a century, a water resources official said Tuesday, citing a 97 percent drop in monthly rainfall compared with last year. Tehran has had 0.4 millimetres of rain since September 23, compared with 14.3 mm over the same period in 2020, said Mohammad Shahriari, deputy director of the company that supplies the region. “Groundwater and surface water are at a critical state and […]
