When Pope Francis becomes the first pontiff to address a joint session of Congress this week, much focus will be on how Republicans will respond to the pope’s position on the climate. If Francis presses his case that the world must take urgent action to combat climate change, you can expect cameras to find Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose office recently indicated it is doubling down on efforts to fight President Barack Obama’s new greenhouse-gas reductions.
But this domestic political drama, absorbing in its own right, may obscure a more important, even radical, shift in the global politics of climate change that Francis has helped to advance. In his June encyclical addressing the issue, he emphasized the fundamental environmental rights of the world’s impoverished, and suggested the rich who have benefited from fossil fuels have a moral obligation to help the poor who may suffer most from climate change. “The poor and the Earth are shouting,” the pope wrote.
This emphasis on the fate of the poor seems like an understandable moral position in keeping with Francis’ broader emphasis on poverty and inequality. But it also draws attention to one of the biggest practical hurdles currently standing in the way of the U.N. climate agreement being negotiated later this year in Paris.
For the complete article, please see Politico.
As we step into 2020, time has come to implement the Paris Agreement and raise climate ambition, but the geopolitical tide seems to be against it. The best way forward at this crucial juncture might be to forge a ‘climate coalition of the willing’ – recognising and streamlining actions of all actors at all levels.
For the first time in the survey’s 10-year outlook, the top five global risks in terms of likelihood are all environmental. They are: extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, major natural disasters, major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and human-made environmental damage and disasters.
Millions of people across Sub-Saharan Africa could face grave hunger in the first half of 2020 because of armed conflict, political instability and climate change-linked disasters, a report says.
The report published by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) this month says that the countries affected will require life-saving food assistance and investment to prevent humanitarian catastrophes.
Australia is currently experiencing one of its worst bushfire seasons, with swathes of the southern and eastern coastal regions having been ablaze for weeks. As the fires have spread, there has been extensive media coverage both nationally and internationally documenting – and debating – their impacts. This Carbon Brief overview summarises how the fires – and the political response to them – have been covered by the media.