School pupils, youth activists and communities around the world have turned out for a day of climate strikes, intended to underscore the urgency of the climate crisis even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Social distancing and other Covid-19 control measures dampened the protests, but thousands of activists posted on social media and took to the streets to protest against the lack of climate action from world leaders. Strikes were scheduled in at least 3,500 locations around the globe. Friday’s strikes – some in the form of mostly socially distanced physical marches on the streets, and some purely online meetings – were on a smaller scale and far more subdued than last year’s September week of action, in which at least 6 million people around the world were estimated to have taken part. Greta Thunberg led a strike in Sweden, which was limited to 50 people by the country’s lockdown laws – “so we adapt”, she tweeted, with a picture showing strikers more than 2 metres apart. The ...

  Dr. Susan Pacheco is a pediatrician and Climate Reality Leader – and she’s made it her life’s work to raise awareness about the impact climate change has on public health, especially the health of children . Climate change is not something that will occur in the future – it’s happening right now. Millions of children are already affected by climate change, around the world and in the US. By virtue of its effect on sea levels, more frequent and severe hurricanes, heatwaves and droughts, air pollution, forest fires, and increases in infectious diseases, climate change is already affecting the way children live. The relentless destruction of ecosystems is depriving our children of experiencing nature’s beauty, clean air, safe drinking and recreational water, nutritious food supplies, and safe shelter. I see many patients whose lives have been affected by climate change. What I see most frequently are children whose asthma and/or nasal allergies are getting out of control during days...

Does climate change affect all of us? Yes indeed. But never all of us in the same way. And while most European climate activists are concerned with ‘the future of all of us’, they forget that for some people climate change is -and has been- an issue for quite some time. And guess what, the people hit hardest are probably not the ones reading this article right now. The concept of environmental racism was coined in the United States in the early 1980’s. First used by activists, the term was quickly adopted by scholars and researchers from various disciplines including geography, sociology and law which produced a pile of studies confirming the unequal distribution of environmental pollution burdens between different groups of people with “race” being the strongest determinant. Environmental racism, hence, is any practice leading to a different environmental impact on groups or individuals based on “race”. Environmental justice is the name of a movement that evolved in response to those ...

  We are experiencing long shifts of climatic conditions that are characterised by a change in temperature, rainfall, winds, and other indicators. Currently, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is much higher than in the past years, and its ability to trap heat is changing.  Burning fossil fuels and deforestation are the primary causes of climate change. It presents a substantial threat to humans and animals now and in the future. The following are some of the biggest human causes of climate change: GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION These gases accumulate in the atmosphere, blocking heat from escaping, and they don't respond to the temperature changes (the greenhouse effect). When they remain for an extended period in the atmosphere, they are likely to cause climate change.  Greenhouse gas emission is a major human causes of climate change, and their sources include transportation, electricity production, burning fossil fuel in industries, commercial and residential app...

The Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven wonders of the natural world, is at its greatest risk ever of disappearing into the annals of man-made disasters, due to mass coral bleaching caused by climate change. “Human-caused climate change” is causing an “utter tragedy” to one of the world's largest coral reef systems, according to two Australian researchers. The current bout of coral bleaching on the Reef, “the third in just five years”, is the “most severe and the most widespread” ever. “Coral bleaching at regional scales is caused by spikes in sea temperatures during unusually hot summers,” say Terry Hughes and Morgan Pratchett. Both are professors at James Cook University’s research centre for coral reef studies in tropical northeastern Australia. “We surveyed 1,036 reefs from the air during the last two weeks in March, to measure the extent and severity of coral bleaching throughout the Barrier Reef region.” The results are “not a pretty picture”. Mass bleaching has hit the enti...

Mount Everest and its surrounding peaks are increasingly polluted and warmer, and nearby glaciers are melting at an alarming rate that is likely to make it more dangerous for future climbers, a U.S. scientist who spent weeks in the Everest region said Tuesday. Professor John All of Western Washington University said after returning from the mountains that he and his team of fellow scientists found there was lot of pollution buried deep in the snow, and that the snow was surprisingly dark when they processed and filtered it. "What that means is there are little pieces of pollution that the snow is forming around, so the snow is actually trapping the pollution and pulling it down," All said in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital. All and his team spent weeks testing snow on Everest and its surrounding peaks, as well as plants on the foothills. "The warming temperature is melting the glaciers and the snow around Mount Everest very quickly, so what happens is even when there is a...

The economic impacts of climate change are the part of the economics of climate change related to the effects of climate change. In 2019, climate change contributed to extreme weather events causing at least $100 billion in damages.  By 2050, cumulative damages from climate change may reach $8 trillion, impoverishing by 3% of gross world product and the poorest regions by more of their gross domestic product (GDP).  A 2017 survey of independent economists looking at the effects of climate change found that "estimates for future damages .ranges from 2% to 10% or more of global GDP per year. The Stern Review for the British Government also predicted that world GDP would be reduced by several percent due to climate related costs; among the factors they considered were increased extreme weather events and stresses to low-lying areas due to sea level rise.  Insofar as their calculations may omit ecological effects that are difficult to quantify economically (such as human deat...

A record amount of California is burning, spurred by a nearly 20-year mega-drought. To the north, parts of Oregon that don’t usually catch fire are in flames. Meanwhile, the Atlantic’s 16th and 17th named tropical storms are swirling, a record number for this time of year. Powerful Typhoon Haishen lashed Japan and the Korean Peninsula this week. Last month it hit 130 degrees in Death Valley, the hottest Earth has been in nearly a century. Phoenix keeps setting triple-digit heat records, while Colorado went through a weather whiplash of 90-degree heat to snow this week. Siberia, famous for its icy climate, hit 100 degrees earlier this year, accompanied by wildfires. Before that Australia and the Amazon were in flames. A record amount of California is burning, spurred by a nearly 20-year mega-drought. To the north, parts of Oregon that don’t usually catch fire are in flames. Meanwhile, the Atlantic’s 16th and 17th named tropical storms are swirling, a record number for this time of year....

  It should be troubling enough that temperatures are rising, glaciers are melting, and Arctic sea ice is disappearing so fast that walruses often lounge about on land. But scientists pushing world leaders to forge a global climate-change agreement in Paris increasingly are uncovering more urgent warning signs. We asked scientists to identify what worries them the most. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Since the 1970s warming ocean waters have melted a significant section of ice in the Amundsen Sea in the Southern Ocean – so much that collapse of a far greater mass of ice may be inevitable. Scientists from NASA and elsewhere, based on a half-dozen studies in the past two years, now believe it may be too late to stop  so much Antarctic ice from melting that it would send sea levels rising 16 feet more, inundating regions home to hundreds of millions of people. What may still be possible, however, is for humans to control just when that might happen. Antarctica's South Dakota-sized ...

The global warming that’s changing our climate is already having dire consequences. In just the past few decades: Rising temperatures have worsened extreme weather events. Chunks of ice in the Antarctic have broken apart. Wildfire seasons are months longer. Coral reefs have been bleached of their colors. Mosquitoes are expanding their territory, able to spread disease. What’s causing these harmful changes? It’s mainly us. We humans are the ones who burn fossil fuels and chop down forests, causing average temperatures to rise worldwide. That global warming trend is increasingly disrupting our climate — the average weather over many years. Earth has already warmed by about 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, before industry started to boom. While we experience the effects, we’re on our way toward 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F) by as early as 2030. Why a half-degree more is such a big deal A warmer world — even by a half-degree Celsius — has more evaporation, leadi...