After the heatwave, Canada faces a “storm of the century”

Hello, readers of Tomani, this is a new magazine Areas, A newsletter about climate and the environment, never intended to intimidate or encourage you, we are talking about an emergency that can actually alleviate and alleviate. It is not Still The end of the world. Let’s get started.

Another storm of the century

The impact of the climate crisis is not uniform. 1.5 ° C global warming on average does not mean that it will be 1.5 C worldwide, but in some areas it may be 4 ° C or 5 C.

Similarly, the intensity of extreme events causes fury in areas that are most vulnerable due to terrain, geography and geography and are prone to adverse weather symptoms.

A stable climate is always stable in the same way, all unstable climates are unstable in their own way. This is so paradoxical, I know.

An example is Sicily: after recording the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe, it was hit by the autumn of violent disturbances. The other is the west coast of North America, especially the Canadian state of British Columbia, which has become one. Ground zero Climate emergency.

After 500 deaths from 49.6 C and last summer’s heat, the perfect autumn storm has arrived.

The Improved Atmospheric River has been raining for months and twenty-four hours, causing a catastrophe, and its economic cost is now estimated at $ 790 million. This is the worst natural disaster in Canadian history, with displaced people currently numbering 18,000, some in remote and inaccessible areas. Basically The Loss and damage Internal.

The storm hit the infrastructure, paralyzing the city of Vancouver and its environs for several days. Hundreds of people were rescued from highways that had been flooded with rocks, mud, trees and all kinds of debris. The 7,000 people in the city of Merritt were forced to flee their village for the second time in four months: in July they fled a fire that was exacerbated by a heat wave, and now it is flooding.

Disasters tend to reinforce each other: treeless slopes are more vulnerable to landslides caused by heavy rainfall.

“In a moment, all the cars on the road were gone. I could not believe it, a moment ago the roads, the cars, the people, the blink of an eye and nothing, not even a wheel in sight, only the trees were muddy, “said one of the survivors.

“It’s like Armageddon,” another witness told the BBC. “We were in the dark, everyone was sleeping in the car, waiting for the light to turn on or for someone to come.”

In the aftermath of a series of social ripples reminiscent of the start of the epidemic (or a bad disaster movie), people have emptied supermarkets, begging law enforcement agencies to buy citizens only what they need, but panic.

The disaster struck a farm area and drowned thousands of livestock: a picture of farmers trying to pull cows out of mud and water with upgraded jet skies, best illustrated by the storm symbolizing perfect British Columbia. Century “we should say only in 2021.

Climate crisis may not be identified as the direct cause of every atmospheric episode, but it does create the conditions for these episodes to become more frequent and more intense. Turn the atmosphere into a container of evenly distributed hazards.

Courage.

European proposal against deforestation: what is it?

This week the European Commission presented its plan against deforestation. We waited for her for a long time, we were terrified of her health, made up of disturbances and aggressive interventions of the department lobbies.

After playing on the back of a Cop26 and with very rhetorically accurate leadership (we all know how Franz Timmermans’ granddaughter is now) but weakened by failed promises in the Green Climate Fund, Europe is trying to regain credibility with a proposal. A wave of a strong popular mandate: the demand for intervention came through public consultation by more than a million citizens: Do not let us eat the forest anymore.

Francesca de Benedetti wrote of Domani: “It does not protect ecosystems such as savannahs and humid environments, and it is only a taste on the human rights side. The path to ethical consumption is still long. Stage.

The logic of the proposal is to try (or at least mitigate) the deforestation content in palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee, beef, and a series of products consumed in Europe. , In the absence of wood, rubber and other meats. The goal is to have completely clean supply chains Diligence due to corporate, Therefore controlled by importers and brokers, should bring only zero deforestation products to the general market.

Well, however, the gaps are wide: rubber production has destroyed 5 million hectares of forest, especially in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It is indescribable that the department has shirked the obligations of the proposal.

The human rights vacuum has an equal problem: import companies do not need to verify that productive land has not been stolen or subjected to land theft. There is no environmental sustainability without social sustainability.

However, this is a proposal that needs to be evaluated by the European Parliament and the Council, a paragraph that appears to be strengthened or weakened.

This is the first verification of the seriousness of COP 26’s commitment to deforestation by 2030. However, Europe is the first country in the world to issue such rules on forests. Destruction in the Consumption of Citizens: We must not forget the fact that looking at the missing, especially in the eyes of the system, would be a tremendous improvement.

And this is not just a symbolic fact. The European Union is one of the world’s leading importers of tropical deforestation. Germany (43,700 hectares) is in first place, followed by Italy (35,800 hectares).

Side by side, but side by side, worrying numbers continue to come from Brazil. According to data from the Space Research Organization (INPE), deforestation is at an all-time high in the last fifteen years.

In the last year of the analysis, deforestation has increased by 22 percent over the previous year, the highest number recorded since 2006, in stark contrast to the Brazilian commitment – made in Cop26 – to eliminate it by 2030. Moreover, the data show that they were released at the end of October, but only after the Glasgow summit, which probably contained the COP’s largest delegation so as not to embarrass the government.

We lost 13,235 square kilometers of Amazonia last year, and the acceleration resumed before the presidency of Bolzano, although in recent years it has given more strength and edge, giving space and freedom to agricultural and mining activities. The president accused Inbay of tarnishing Brazil’s reputation. This is paradoxical, but he really said it.

We will return to voting next year and there will be elections with enormous climate significance.

New Global Leaders: Mia Amore Motley

As we said last week, the UN Climate conference, in order to understand what the future holds for us, needs to be evaluated not only in terms of vulnerability, but also in terms of heredity. As for Cop26, we are talking about (and) the future of the emergence of new world leaders, geopolitical and financial designers who speak on behalf of the smallest countries, and yes, I’m talking about Mia Amore Motley, the Prime Minister of Barbados. .

His speech at the World Leaders Summit was not only very emotional but also had a real impact on the two-week debate in Glasgow. Modley has made himself heard by the world and set the political platform for the demands that will shape the decade.

Discussion Climate finance, inequalities and the Loss and damage We are indebted to heads of state around the world and to the Government for his strong eight minutes in front of the entire Assembly.

It began: “Epidemiology has taught us that local solutions to global problems do not work.” Then it got better and better. The talk is here, you should often appreciate:

Modley, Barbados’ first female president since independence, recalled that a 2C rise was not equivalent to 1.5C. 2 வெப்ப C warmer world would be a death sentence for countries like yours. They can be strong words that support 1.5 ° C as a single target.

“The world is at a crossroads, comparable to the world that existed when the United Nations was formed in 1945. But most of the nations were not here then. However, we are today. The thing is that we want to be even in a hundred years.

Not only mitigation is the condition for living for a hundred years in places like Barbados – hence reducing emissions and progressive elimination – even finance, “we need new financial tools, more flexible, responsible, flexible, supportive capacity and inclusive growth”. Without these flows there is really no future: this is the lesson of Cop26.

In 2017, Dominica was hit by Hurricane Maria, which affected the island with 226 percent of GDP. How to get out of such a thing?

This is the important and fundamental survival question posed by Mia Motley. New tools can provide more funding, and more quickly, without exacerbating the debt problem, otherwise these countries would not be able to do it.

One of his plans for Cop26 is to pay 1 percent of the profits of the oil and gas sector to a fund. Loss and damage, Can be accessed by countries affected by natural disasters that affect more than 5 percent of GDP. A practical and concrete proposal has not been passed, but since Mia Amore is talking about Motley, we will talk about it again.

Here is an in-depth and well-written profile.

A landscape to greet us

We close with a little beauty, I would say we need it.

Success pictures of the first edition Landscape Photo Awards, Promoted by Nature First, an alliance for responsible landscape photography. You can see all the photos they won here: https://naturallandscapeawards.com/competition-results-2021/.

This is my favorite, picked up by Franca Kepler, which won in the Intimate & Abstract category. It was filmed in eastern Sierra Nevada in the United States, and it reminds me of something particularly intimate, I had no idea what my finger was doing. Maybe tell me what you think.

That’s all for this week Areas, For any question, comment or review, write to me here: [email protected]. To contact Domani, on the other hand, address: [email protected]

See you next Saturday!

Ferdinando Kodukno

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