The Economist (December 5)
“Europe and America have shown that King Coal can be dethroned.” Next Asia must step up to “topple coal.” Fortunately, this “is overwhelmingly in Asia’s interest to do so. Its people, infrastructure and agriculture are dangerously exposed to the droughts, flooding, storms and rising sea levels caused by climate change….. Coal’s days are numbered. The sooner it is consigned to museums and history books, the better.”
Tags: Agriculture, Asia, Coal, Dethroned, Droughts, Europe, Exposed, Flooding, Infrastructure, Sea levels, Storms, Topple, U.S.
The Economist (August 3)
“Still a livelihood for 1.5bn people, forests maintain local and regional ecosystems and, for the other 6.2bn, provide a—fragile and creaking—buffer against climate change. Now droughts, wildfires and other human-induced changes are compounding the damage from chainsaws. In the tropics, which contain half of the world’s forest biomass, tree-cover loss has accelerated by two-thirds since 2015; if it were a country, the shrinkage would make the tropical rainforest the world’s third-biggest carbon-dioxide emitter, after China and America.”
Tags: Buffer, Chainsaws, China, Climate change, CO2, Damage, Droughts, Ecosystems, Forests, Livelihood, Tropical rainforest, U.S., Wildfires
LA Times (December 22)
“At the latest round of international climate talks this month in Lima, Peru, melting glaciers in the Andes and recent droughts provided a fitting backdrop for the negotiators’ recognition that it is too late to prevent climate change…. They now confront an issue that many had hoped to avoid: adaptation.”
Tags: Adaptation, Andes, Climate change, Climate talks, Droughts, Glaciers, Lima, Negotiators, Peru, Prevention
