Politics – Page 6 – See Animals Wild

October 31, 2022October 31, 2022

Finale of the Brazilian election! Who will will, will the earth get a reprieve?

The worlds rainforests are concentrated in a small number of countries. As a result, there are a handful of countries where, they have the potential on their own to make climate change far worse.

What is going to happen in Brazil? Will the world get a reprieve or will Bolsonaro (right) get a second term – likely guaranteeing much of the rainforest collapse

These countries include many of those in the Congo basin in Africa, and the countries of south east Asia.

Perhaps the biggest, is Brazil: and unfortunately we have had to watch as the current president Jair Bolsonaro has done everything as badly as possible. Could it have been worse for the world? Perhaps, but it would have been hard.

What is frustrating, is that he is terrible for Brazil. He has the bizarre support of the evangelical Christians, and he has made sure that the middle class has benefitted from his time in office, never-the-less, he has destroyed much of the institutional blocks to serious damage in his first term, so may be able to do more damage in his second.

What is his worst record? 688,000 deaths from Covid, having declared what should he do and having minimized it as the little flu. This is the second most deaths in the world after the USA (largely as a result of Donald Trump minimizing the issue -see a pattern?) despite being 5th in the number of cases. The illness hit indigenous people hardest (possibly intentionally? Certainly it helps Bolsonaros many aims). For the world, though, Bolsonaro will be remembered as someone who vastly increased the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and there is a great deal of fear that the rainforest is getting close to collapse as a result of his behaviour. Not only will this cause huge problems around the world, by releasing billions of tonnes of carbon, but it will also change rain patterns, leading to crop failures in Brazil as well as countries around.

Currently Lulu has a 4%-8% lead in the polls, however, unfortunately 4 years ago the polls underestimated Bolsonaro support so this may mean little. In a similar way to Trump, there is a certain proportion of the population who are embarrassed by their support for the leader, so are unlikely to be honest in polls.

In a debate Bolsonaro spent his time just attacking his opponent and does not seem to have any ideas for the future of the country.

In the first round, Jair Bolsonaro got 43.2% while Lula got 48.4% so he is comfortably ahead, but what happens now is still on a knife edge.

October 19, 2022October 18, 2022

Graham Stuart (UK climate minister) claims that UK fracking and oil drilling is good for environment

Graham made this statement as he informed MPs that he had awarded more than 100 licences for north sea drilling – and claimed that this was a green policy. He also claimed that this fossil fuel extraction will help the UK reach net zero by 2050.

why do we keep appointing fools who do not believe in climate change, to help us do something about it

October 18, 2022October 18, 2022

Has Australia actually appointed a climate change authority member who actually wants to do the right thing?

Australia is likely to loose a great deal if climate change continues in a big way. This is because Australia already has a large part of the country unbearably hot. If the temperature increases another 2-5 degrees these areas might well become impossible to survive within.

This is why it is so strange that Australia is so backwards in this respect.

Currently, Australia gets a great deal of money by selling coal abroad. This is because Australia is incredibly rich in coal. As a result they are keen to be able to put off zero carbon as long as possible as they will loose this income.

Professor Lesley Huges is a climate specialist, that has just been appointed to the Australia climate change authority and she has quite rightly stated that 2050 net zero is not good enough. Encouragingly, though she has also said that the new government was showing a willingness to listen to science. The Climate change minister has appointed 3 new members after it was suggested that the authority was to heavily weighted in the direction of business and fossil fuels (if there are too many representatives from this part of the market, then concerns about global warming are likely to get less voice, as fossil fuel companies know they only have a finite length of time to make money from resources that are likely to be banned in the future).

October 17, 2022October 18, 2022

Has Liz Truss appointed a climate change denialist? is this on purpose? Liz Truss “attack on nature”.

Recent positions taken by Jacob Reece-Mogg include ‘Squeezing “every last cubic inch of gas”‘ from the north sea, restarting fracking, rejecting windfarms (and instead preferring fossil fuels) has all been pushed forwards of his position. He has a history of accusing people of climate alarmism. Two other mps refused the role of the climate change minister (though eventually Graham Stuart agreed to take it on).

Jacob reece-mogg, sometimes named as the member of parliament for the 19th century, is no longer a back bencher. As such his insane views on climate change must be ridiculed, until he moves on, or starts behaving in the countries interests.

Conservative members who are concerned about climate change (so called Green Tories – my argument would be, that if any Tory is not concerned about climate change and global warming, should not be considered for a role in the cabinet. We cannot continue to tolerate climate change denialism in the UK government).

October 12, 2022October 6, 2022

Linking bear and wolf populations across Europe is the best way to preserve them longterm – is this possible?

The Pyrennes in the south west of France, and the corresponding area across the border, are a wonderful area of wilderness. There are currently about 64 bears living in this area. So where are we on the road to recovery?

Were the the entire Pyrennes mountains wild, it is thought that these mountains could support 600 bears. However, this area is not an area that is set aside for wilderness – there is a whole population of humans living in these mountains (almost 700,000 people live here).

It is thought that the bear population of the Pyrennes could potentially get to 250 in its current form.

October 9, 2022October 18, 2022

Did Jair Bolsonaro set up a new board to publish deforestation data in July to mislead?

So, Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Lula de Silva have both made it through to the final round for the presidency.

However, the fact that this new deforestation data board was set up 3 months ago, in the run up to an election. This at a time when Jair Bolsonaro is being hit for his terrible record on deforestation during his first term. In other words, people are claiming that this is purely a political organisation to help him pull the wool over the countries eyes.

Brazilian deforestation is a problem for the world. Giving scientific responsibility for monitoring and reporting forest loss to a political body is mad – we will no longer know what’s happening, if Jair Bolsonaro wins re-election

October 7, 2022October 3, 2022

Saving the Mexican wolf one at a time

There are currently no know Mexican wolves in Mexico, with the last 5 having been captured in 1980 to create a breeding program. It is possible that a few survived and have not been seen (there is a great deal of wilderness in Mexico), but from what is known they are none left in Mexico.

October 4, 2022September 26, 2022

Backlash to Indigenous communities and environmentalists opposing oil and gas projects have lead to a load of anti-protest fossil fuel bills in the USA

Anti-protest bills are obvious anti-democratic. Yet Republican run states have past bills prohibiting protest in 1 in 3 USA states in the last 4 years. The American Legislative Exchange Council helped write laws criminalizing protest against pipelines, gas terminals and other projects in 24 states in the USA. This is theoretically to protect critical infrastructure.

This is in response to successes in creating laws to keep fossil fuel companies accountable for the damage they do.

For the time being, laws in the USA have swung away from climate protection. We need the US central government to take up this cause, and reverse this issue.

September 26, 2022September 26, 2022

Rich countries continue to fail to live up to pledge of $100 billion dollars a year to poor countries to help climate mitigation

The worlds international deals of all kinds rely on countries doing what they promise, though it is true that if a small country promises a big country, then the big country can make them fulfil their pledge.

What should happen here? It is by definition the case, that the poor countries are those that has been promised the money.

The USA and the UK will fall short of their pledge for 2022.

The amount of this support that each country was responsible was worked out, on the basis of historical emissions and their gross national income. In other words, this split was done as fairly as possible – getting those countries that are responsible for the majority of emissions over time to pay the most, taking into account the countries current ability to pay.

Unfortunately, the USA has the biggest gap between what it has paid, and what it owes. In 2020, the USA paid just 5% of its share, indeed, despite having an economy that is 40% bigger than the EU it paid just 1/12 of what the EU did.

While the UK did better, it is still in default. In 2020 we paid just half of its fair share, and the plan is for this to only reach 2/3 by 2025. Australia paid only 23% and Canada just 18%, and neither have pledged to improve this in the next few years.

The only rich countries that are paying what they owe, are Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, France and Japan.

Currently, of the promised $100 billion each year, only 83% is being met.

What is alarming, is the amount that was agreed (the $100 billion) is extremely small compared to the losses suffered by these poor countries as a result of the weather that has been triggered by global warming.

This is a big problem. If all these poor countries simply ignored science and destroyed their environment, it would be devastating for the west. Yet currently we are not doing what was promised.

September 24, 2022September 26, 2022

More change in direction with the new UK PM

Perhaps one of the issues with a parliamentary democracy is what happens when the leader of the party in power leaves.

The prime minister is the leader of the party which holds a majority in the house of commons. This means that if the leader of this party resigns, or is pushed out by his party, a small part of the country (those in this case that are Conservatives) get to vote on who leads the country. 0.1% of the country are in the Conservatives party, and are generally older, richer and less worried about climate change than the average person in the UK.

Jacob Reec Mogg, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng

Unfortunately, as I have written, Liz Truss, the person who has just taken over this role is making many decisions which are going to be bad for us cutting carbon emissions and therefore us as a country (as well as the world as a whole).