By Clare Cunningham, York St John University | – The environmental activist group Just Stop Oil has grasped public attention with a series of “art action” stunts targeting famous paintings and buildings with cans of soup and paint. They have climbed motorway gantries, blocking drivers on the M25. Their message has been loud, but has […]
COP27: how the Fossil Fuel Lobby Crowded out Calls for Climate Justice
By Alix Dietzel, University of Bristol | – COP27 has just wrapped up. Despite much excitement over a new fund to address “loss and damage” caused by climate change, there is also anger about perceived backsliding on commitments to lower emissions and phase out fossil fuels. As an academic expert in climate justice who went […]
COP27 flinched on phasing out ‘All Fossil Fuels’. What’s next for the Fight to keep them in the Ground?
By Fergus Green, UCL and Harro van Asselt, Stockholm Environment Institute | – (The Conversation) – The latest UN climate change summit (COP27) concluded, once again, with a tussle over the place of fossil fuels in the global economy. An agreement by the world’s governments to phase out all fossil fuels would have been a […]
From Sponge Cities to Early Wildfire Detection Systems: Top 4 Ways Climate-fuelled Disasters can be Thwarted
By Roslyn Prinsley, Australian National University | – Climate change is driving a worldwide increase in extreme events. The latest State of the Climate report confirms the risks of disasters are rising in Australia. Repeated floods have devastated our east coast. Other extreme events are getting worse too. Since 1987 bushfires have burnt increasing areas, […]
After Failures of COP27, only a Radical Effort to Slash CO2 can keep Climate from Going Chaotic
By Peter Schlosser, Arizona State University | – The world could still, theoretically, meet its goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level many scientists consider a dangerous threshold. Realistically, that’s unlikely to happen. Part of the problem was evident at COP27, the United Nations climate conference in Egypt. While nations’ climate […]
Urban Planning is now on the Front Line of the Climate Crisis. This is What it means for our Cities and Towns
By Barbara Norman, University of Canberra | International climate talks in Egypt known as COP27 are into their second week. Thursday is Solutions Day at the summit. Recognising that urban planning is now a front-line response to climate change, discussions will focus on sustainable cities and transport, green buildings and resilient infrastructure. The COP26 Glasgow […]
COP27 Climate Policy breakthrough as Wealthy Polluters accept the Principle of Climate Reparations: But does it Go far Enough?
By Matt McDonald, The University of Queensland | – For 30 years, developing nations have fought to establish an international fund to pay for the “loss and damage” they suffer as a result of climate change. As the COP27 climate summit in Egypt wrapped up over the weekend, they finally succeeded. While it’s a historic […]
With Climate Crisis, Dust Storms are getting Bigger, and Wildfires are one Cause
By Matt Telfer, University of Plymouth | – (The Conversation) – Wildfires affect large areas of the Earth’s surface and many of their effects occur at an alarming speed. The fires that consumed half of Australia’s Kangaroo Island in 2019 left a trail of animal corpses in their wake. In 2021, wildfires burned over 2.5 […]
Ending Amazon Deforestation: The Future of the World’s largest Rainforest
By Jennifer Weeks, The Conversation | – Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was greeted with applause and cheers when he addressed the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 16, 2022. As he had in his campaign, Lula pledged to stop rampant deforestation in the Amazon, which his predecessor, Jair Bolsanaro, […]