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The planet has entered a state of emergency with unprecedented risk of damage to humanity and the environment. Global warming and the collapse of biodiversity are having fatal consequences on an exponential scale. Urgent action is needed at all levels – everywhere and now – to confront the threat.
Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals
Source : The Guardian
As offshore oil and gas platforms come to the end of their working lives, the remarkable ecosystems beneath the waves come into their own.
Source : BBC Future Planet
Our food system has been shaped over past decades by the ‘cheaper food’ paradigm.
Policies and economic structures have aimed to produce ever more food at ever
lower cost. Intensified agricultural production degrades soils and ecosystems,
driving down the productive capacity of land and necessitating even more intensive
food production to keep pace with demand. Growing global consumption
of cheaper calories and resource-intensive foods aggravates these pressures.
As a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, our food system is
also driving climate change, which further degrades habitats and causes species
to disperse to new locations. In turn, this brings new species into contact and
competition with each other, and creates new opportunities for the emergence
of infectious disease.
Source : Chatham House
Les panneaux photovoltaïques cohabitent avec la végétalisation afin de produire de l’énergie verte tout en protégeant les bâtiments. Le Grand JD nous emmène sur les toitures de l’HEPIA – Haute École du paysage, d’ingénierie et d’architecture de Genève – où cette aventure commence. Ce projet est financé grâce au Fonds Vitale Environnement, alimenté par les Genevois·es ayant choisi Electricité Vitale Vert.
Source : SIG
Not all of the water from the planet’s melting glaciers is pouring into rivers and oceans. A surprising amount is building up behind unstable piles of rubble left behind by the retreating ice. As the Earth continues to warm, the swelling lakes threaten to burst through the glacial moraines holding them back and wash away the forests, towns and farms below.
Source : Inside Climate News
Want to capture the attention of millions of young people and raise awareness about the climate emergency? Then talk to the video gaming industry.
Levelling up, going faster, scoring higher and taking on the impossible is not just what it takes to achieve gaming stardom. They are exactly what it will take to confront urgent global challenges.
A recent report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners analyses the impact of the Playing for the Planet Alliance, an initiative that taps the power of the gaming industry to encourage action on climate change. Supported by UNEP, GRID-Arendal and Playmob, the alliance brings together 29 major gaming companies, which can reach over 1.2 billion players.
Source : UNEP
“The survey brings the voice of
the people to the forefront of the
climate debate. It signals ways in
which countries can move forward with
public support as we work together to
tackle this enormous challenge.”
Achim Steiner, Administrator,
United Nations Development Programme
With 1.2 million respondents, the Peoples’ Climate Vote is the largest survey of public opinion on
climate change ever conducted. Using a new and unconventional approach to polling, results
span 50 countries1
covering 56% of the world’s population
Source : UNDP
Earth was besieged by a record 50 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2020, the most such disasters ever recorded after adjusting for inflation, said insurance broker Aon (formerly called Aon Benfield) in its annual report issued January 25. The previous record was 46 billion-dollar weather disasters, set in 2010 and 2011. The annual average of billion-dollar weather disasters since records began in 1990 is 29.
Source : Yale Climate Connections
Earth’s ice is melting faster today than in the mid-1990s, new research suggests, as climate change nudges global temperatures ever higher. Altogether, an estimated 28 trillion metric tons of ice have melted away from the world’s sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers since the mid-1990s. And the annual melt rate is now about 57 percent faster than it was three decades ago.
Source : Reuters
The future of electric vehicles is batteries, batteries, batteries. That means a lot of mining for nickel, lithium, cobalt, and other minerals. Indeed, with the enormous growth in demand expected in the electric vehicle industry in the coming years, there’s concern about securing enough battery supplies to meet demand. One solution that will increase as the industry grows and EVs on the road get older is battery recycling.
Source : Clean Technica
Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? This new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.
Source : The Conversation
New research suggests that, sooner than expected, trees may become carbon sources rather than carbon sinks, as a feedback loop of rising temperatures drives them to release more greenhouse gases.
Source : Inside Climate News
To keep global warming below 1.5°, we must at all costs avoid depleting our carbon budget. All organisations must therefore reduce their emissions as much as possible – and as soon as possible – in order to comply with the IPCC special report’s warning to limit global warming to 1.5°C. At current emissions levels, this budget will be exhausted within a few years and well before 2030. Every moment is counting and the countdown is not stopping. So the time to act is today.
The MCC Carbon Clock shows how much CO2 can be released into the atmosphere to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C and 2°C, respectively. Once the remaining time has elapsed these thresholds will be exceeded. With just a few clicks, you can compare the estimates for both temperature targets and see how much time is left in each scenario.
The world total carbon footprint in 2019 due to human emissions was around 37 gigatons of CO2 eq. These huge emissions are the accumulation of many and many … billions of big and small emissions that are the result of life styles and consumption.
To reach net zero emissions by 2050, the individual carbon footprint should not exceed 700 kg/ year of CO2 eq.
For the time being, the average individual footprint in Switzerland is 14 t CO2 eq. It means, we should divide our carbon footprint by 20. Let’s start and take up the challenge today.
Here is the carbon footprint of some everyday life aspects, be it the production of goods or the consumption of services (average values):
160 g can be compared to the weight a banana. It means that for each km by car we send a CO2 banana in the atmosphere …
Just imagine how it would be if these bananas were left on the roads
| Sources | Co2 Equivalent kg |
|---|---|
| One car | 4000 - 7000 |
| One personal computer | 165 |
| One smartphone | 33 |
| One e-mail | 0.020 |
| One kg of office paper | 1.2 |
| One Plastic bottle (33 cl.) | 0.070 |
| Vegetarian meal | 1.7 |
| Non-vegetarian meal | 3.6 |
| Coffee (1cup) | 0.113 |
| Green Electricity (kWh) | 0.007 |
| 1 km by petrol car | 0.160 |
| 1 km by train (in Switzerland) | 0.007 |
The carbon footprint is only one part of the impact of human beings on planet Earth. To get a glimpse of our global impact, take a look at the graphic below.
We should also keep in mind how quickly our impact has grown. The Earth, our only available habitat, appeared some 4.5 billion years ago. The ancestors of human beings first appeared less than 10 million years ago.
In other words, if you were to compress the entire history of the Earth into 24 hours, the first Homo sapiens would only arrive in the last few seconds and the advent of agriculture would only be a blink of an eye before midnight.
To have a closer look, follow Living in the Age of Humans, a series of stories that examine the impacts of human presence on Earth.
Major environmental-change categories expressed as a percentage relative to intact baseline. Red indicates percentage of category damaged, lost or otherwise affected; blue indicates percentage intact, remaining or unaffected. Frontiers in Conservation Science
