World leaders are falling short again on delivering on their promises

One of the biggest issues that have been recognised, is that a similar route to prosperity is not open to the developing world. As Europe and north America developed their economy they emitted huge amounts of carbon – much of our power was created by burning coal.

In order to help developing countries jump this stage completely and move straight to renewables, the west had promised money. Developed countries had together committed to 72 billion a year to make this happen. While this sounds like a great deal, when you remember that without it, we are on course for devastating levels of global warming, it comes more into balance.

It was hoped that the G7 could boost this process in advance of Glasgow COP26. Given the G7 accounts for 60% of the worlds wealth, but its population accounts for only 10% of the global population, you would think that we could afford roughly 10 billion a year to be able to continue to live in a hospitable environment. Now of course, this is not all that we need to do – we also need to cut our own emissions to zero as fast as possible, however, there is much money to be made in this work.

The COVID epidemic has taken everyone’s attention off global warming. This is understandable, but we now need to refocus and make the changes that are required as quickly as possible.

Sea-lion struck down by epilepsy – brought on by global warming

There is an increasing problem of sea-lions off the coast of California becoming epileptic as result of global warming.

It appears to be caused by domoic acid poisoning, which in the wrong circumstances builds up to dangerous levels in shellfish and other sea animals in the area. 

Domoic acid can be released in large quantities during algae blooms, and due to global warming algae blooms are happening far more often.

Another animal this is prone to this problem are sea otters. Given the historical damage we did to the sea otter population, unfortunately lee6 could do substantial damage.

Scientists have found treatments that will allow them to deal with animals affected,however it may become necessary to find methods of making them affected instead as algae blooms will become more and more common as the temperature of the water’s increase.

Hundreds of koalas have died in forest fires as they burn their natural habitat but they are not threatened with imminent extinction

Koalas as a species, are highly popular. Not found in many zoos a lot of people go to Australia to see them. Perhaps down to the character Binky bill, and the books written about him, koalas are one of the species that almost everyone knows about even though the majority of people haven’t seen them. In the UK only found and in Edinburgh Zoo and Longleat Safari Park, ( with both these arrivals relatively recent) zoo goers are not used to seeing koalas.

Wildlife species only found in Australia are threatened by several factors. The first is the fact that Australia is increasing the clearing their habitats- as in Africa, forest living species cannot survive in the wild when their habitat has been cleared, and unfortunately in Australia large parts of their land are being cleared. While on occasion that has been pledges to replant Forest elsewhere in Australia, generally the firm has either failed to live up to its promises or has not replaced it with like the like- often the new forests are fast growing species that do not support the wildlife of the forest they destroyed.

Australia is one of the countries that is being hit first by global warming with parts of the Continent becoming largely uninhabitable. The increase in temperature is also drying out the forest which is meaning that some of the forest not being cut down are dying anyway.

Over the last decade also Australia has had some politicians who have been prominent climate change deniers, and thus far they seem to be uninterested in doing the things that are required to protect their own way of life.

In this latest fire, hundreds of koalas have been burnt to death, unfortunately the area was actually a highly successful breeding ground and had very high densities (remember that koalas are herbivores and therefore can live at densities of hundreds per square mile).

However sensationalist claims that koalas functionally extinct after these fires is totally false. They are highly endangered with their habitats disappearing at an astounding rate, but be functionally extinct they need to be very few members of the Species left and we are not there yet (functional extinction essentially says without human intervention the species will disappear). There are arguments as to how many koalas are left, but it’s estimated that New South Wales has between 15,000 and 30,000 remaining.

Koala numbers declined by about 40% between 1990 and 2010, so the theory is without a change in the government’s attitude very soon the Koala will be totally extinct in the wild. Isolated cases of reforestation need to be increased and and Forest corridors between blocks would allow the population to rebound naturally (this adds resilience to farmland as well as the wild areas around).

News in brief

 Just 10% of fossil fuel subsidies just would pay the green transition

There is a continuous claim made from all sides that the costs of going green are simply too high, and that green electrical generation and transportation will never be affordable without subsidies.

Now all evidence looked at so far shows this is not true, however, why is this a standard we are looking at given that we are still providing huge subsidies for fossil fuels?

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