Year: 2021

Global pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions are just a fraction of what’s needed to prevent catastrophic global warming, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Program. The warning comes ahead of the critical COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow which begins next week.  World leaders pledged to restrict global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels at the Paris Climate Summit in 2015. However, those promises are not being matched with policies, according to the United Nations Emissions Gap Report 2021, published Tuesday. The report warns that new commitments to reduce emissions made in the run-up to the Glasgow summit — known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs — will reduce greenhouse gases by just 7.5% by 2030, compared to previous pledges. Restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require emissions cuts of 55 percent. “Following an unprecedented drop of 5.4 percent in 2020, global carbon dioxide emissions are bouncing back to pre-COVID-19 levels,” the report says. “A strong rebound in emissions is expected in 2021. Preliminary estimates suggest fossil energy CO2 emissions could grow by 4.8 percent in 2021… and global emissions in 2021 are expected to be only slightly lower than the record level of 2019.”  Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization, said Monday the world is on course for potentially disastrous climate change. “So far, we have heard lots of political support for enhanced ambition of mitigation, but the concrete pledges have still been missing, and at the …

U.S.-based pharmaceutical company Moderna says a clinical trial shows that a low dose of its COVID-19 vaccine is safe for children between 6 and 11 years old.  The company says it inoculated more than 4,700 children with its two-dose vaccine about 28 days apart, with each shot about half the strength given to adults. Preliminary results show the antibody levels in the children were the same levels as those seen in young adults who received a full dose of the vaccine.  Moderna says the children suffered mild side effects from the vaccine such as fatigue, headache, fever and pain at the site of the injection.  The number of test subjects was too small to detect any rare side effects such as myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, which has been detected mostly among boys and young men who received either the Moderna or the Pfizer vaccine.   The study has not been published by any peer-reviewed journal, but Moderna says it will soon present its findings to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other global drug regulators. The FDA is meeting Tuesday to review an application by Pfizer and its German-based partner, BioNTech, to offer its vaccine for children between 5 and 11 years old. In a related development, Reuters is reporting that the African Union will purchase up to 110 million doses of the Moderna vaccine.  The AU will receive 15 million doses before the end of the year, with another 35 million doses arriving in the first quarter of 2022 and up to 60 million in the …

Coal-rich Australia unveiled a much-delayed 2050 net zero emissions target Tuesday, in a plan that pointedly dodged thorny details or near-term goals ahead of a landmark UN climate summit.  Widely seen as a climate laggard, Australia is one of the world’s largest coal and gas exporters.    For the last eight years, its conservative government has resisted action to reduce emissions, routinely approving new coal projects and peddling skepticism about climate change.  Under domestic and international pressure, Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday announced a shift in approach and acknowledged the “world is changing,” Australians want policy that “does the right thing on climate change”, he said, adding the phenomenon “is real, it’s happening. We understand it and we recognize it.”  Just how Australia will get to net zero by 2050 carbon emissions remains unclear, with the government refusing to release its modeling.  The plan would invest US$15 billion in low-emission technologies over the next decade, but it also leans heavily on unproven technologies and carbon offsets, which critics deride as an accounting gimmick.    And Morrison was keen to stress he was not dropping long-running support for the country’s lucrative fossil fuel industry.  “It will not shut down our coal or gas production or exports,” Morrison told a press conference. “It will not cost jobs, not in farming, mining or gas.”  While backing away from demands for more ambitious 2030 targets, Morrison said he expects Australia to “meet and beat” the previously agreed goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent on 2005 levels.    He said …

The battle to stem climate change may be lost as new information indicates the Amazon rain forest is turning from a carbon sink – or area that absorbs CO2 – into a source of carbon dioxide, the World Meteorological Organization warns.  The latest edition of the WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide once again broke all records last year. The U.N. agency’s report warns the concentrations of these greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere are driving climate change. It says carbon dioxide, the single most important greenhouse gas, accounts for approximately 66 percent of the warming effect on the climate. The secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, says about half of CO2 emissions remains in the atmosphere for centuries. He says the other half is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems. He says it is not clear for how much longer forested areas, often referred to as the lungs of the Earth, will continue to act as effective carbon sinks.  “We have already seen some alarming indications that, for example, Amazonian rain forest ecosystem, which used to be a major sink of carbon, has become now a source of carbon, which is alarming,” Taalas said. “And this is related to deforestation in the area and also changes in local climate because of this deforestation.” Oksana Tarasova, who heads the WMO’s Atmospheric and Environment Research Division, says the WMO only now is revealing this new finding because it has taken nine …

Health care activists in Cameroon are visiting homes, markets and farms this month, encouraging women to get free screenings for breast cancer. The central African state says the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer has risen sharply over the past year because many women delayed screenings for fear of COVID-19 infections. The push to increase screenings is part of this year’s breast cancer awareness month in October. Civilians, mostly women, visit various neighborhoods in Yaoundé asking people to go to hospitals for free breast cancer screening. Each group of a dozen people includes medical staff members, representatives of healthy living organizations, cancer patients and their family members. Among those participating is 24-year-old Amin Ruth Tabi of the Noela Lyonga Foundation, a Cameroon-based NGO. The foundation’s main objective is giving hope to persons who have lost hope either due to frustration, stress or ill health. Tabi says she wants to stop people from dying from breast cancer. “Every female seven to ten days after menstruation is supposed to conduct a breast self-examination to look for abnormal nodules, redness, fluid coming from the nipples, orange skin appearance on the breast because breast cancer is treated well and quickly when it is noticed at an early stage,” she said. Cameron’s Health Ministry said several thousand women came out in at least 11 towns including the capital Yaoundé, the commercial capital Douala and the English-speaking western towns of Kumba, Buea, Limbe, and Bamenda Kumbo. Claudette Mani, 36, says she was diagnosed with breast …

The director-general of the World Health Organization said Sunday that unless countries use existing tools in the fight against the pandemic effectively, there will be no end in sight. “The pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it,” Tedros said addressing World Health Summit, a global forum held in Germany. “We have all the tools we need — effective public health tools and effective medical tools. But the world has not used those tools well,” Tedros said, addressing participants drawn from 100 countries online. The barriers to fulfilling WHO’s goal of vaccinating 40% of every country’s population against the coronavirus are “politics and profit,” the WHO chief said, “not production.” “The countries that have already reached the 40% target, including all G-20 countries, must give their place in the vaccine delivery queue to COVAX and the African Vaccines Acquisition Trust,” Tedros said. COVAX is the international collaboration established for the equitable distribution of the COVID vaccine. The WHO official also urged vaccine producers to “prioritize and fulfil their contracts with COVAX and AVAT [the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust]” and become “far more transparent about what is going where.” AVAT is an African Union initiative focusing on providing access to COVID-19 vaccines across Africa.  He urged vaccine manufacturers to “share know-how, technology and licenses, and waive intellectual property rights.” “We’re not asking for charity,” Tedros said,” we’re calling for a common-sense investment in the global recovery.”  A report in The Washington Post says Americans living abroad are struggling to …

“Coral reefs are amazing and beautiful, and we must conserve them,” Sam Purkis, chair of the department of marine geosciences at the University of Miami, told VOA. Although coral reefs only cover 0.1% of the ocean floor, they are a lifeline for the planet.  With the most biodiverse marine ecosystem on earth, they contain 25% of all marine life, including more than 4,000 fish species. Besides food, “corals provide economic, ecological and even cultural value,” where local communities living near the reefs bond over fishing activities, explained Robert Richmond, director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaii. “Corals also hold potential drugs from the sea, the vast majority of which we haven’t discovered yet,” Nancy Knowlton, scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, said during an interview with VOA. However, coral experts have sounded the alarm that the reefs could disappear, threatened by a number of factors, including pollution, overfishing and especially climate change. The latest study on the status of coral reefs, released earlier this month by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, blamed climate change for killing 14% of coral reefs in just one decade. “Large-scale bleaching events caused by elevated sea surface temperatures are the greatest disturbance to the world’s coral reefs,” the report said. Despite the gloomy picture, coral reef experts say there is hope, despite significant coral losses worldwide. “We still have corals that are healthy, but it requires a massive global effort to protect them,” said Elizabeth Mcleod, leader of The Nature Conservancy’s global reef …

Millions of people in the United States are gearing up to get COVID-19 booster shots amid ongoing controversy over vaccine mandates. Michelle Quinn reports. Produced by: Mary Cieslak  …

For the first time in a laboratory, Australian scientists have produced tadpoles more tolerant of climate change. A team from the University of Western Australia has cross-bred frogs from wetter regions with other species from drier areas to make them more resilient.  Researchers in Australia want to give nature a helping hand. They have warned that climate change “poses an enormous threat to many of the world’s frogs.”  Genetic traits that allow a type of amphibian called a crawling frog to survive in regions with lower rainfall, researchers say, could be passed on through breeding. They’ve mixed frogs from drier parts of south-western Australia with others from wetter areas.    Sperm and eggs from four different crawling frog populations that occur in areas with various levels of rainfall were used in the experiment.    The effort produced tadpoles that were better adapted to climate change and had “increased tolerance to dry conditions.” The world-first laboratory trial has been reported in the journal, Communications Biology.     Jodi Rowley is a lead scientist at the Australian Museum’s citizen science project and an expert in amphibians. She believes that frogs need help to meet the challenges of global warming.    “It does seem a little bit like we are acting God, in some ways, but at this point it is some of the only ways that we are going to be able to have these amazing frogs in the future. The times of just leaving things alone to be protected in these areas [are] not going to work anymore. You know, climate change is moving faster than the frogs are able to adapt themselves. So, we are …

British finance minister Rishi Sunak’s budget this week will include an extra $8.1 billion of spending for the health service over the next few years to drive down waiting lists, the finance ministry said on Sunday.    The sum comes on top of an $11 billion package announced in September to tackle backlogs built up over the COVID-19 pandemic, the finance ministry said.    The spending is aimed at increasing what is termed elective activity in the National Health Service (NHS) — such as scans and non-emergency procedures — by 30% by the 2024/25 financial year.  The increase comprises $3.2 billion for testing services, $2.9 billion to improve the technology behind the health service, and $2 billion to increase bed capacity.    “This is a game-changing investment in the NHS to make sure we have the right buildings, equipment and systems to get patients the help they need and make sure the NHS is fit for the future,” Sunak said in a statement.  Sunak is expected to set fairly tight limits for most areas of day-to-day public spending in his budget on Wednesday, which will seek to lower public debt after a record surge in borrowing during the pandemic.  …

Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only two countries where polio still paralyzes children, marked World Polio Day (October 24) Sunday amid excitement and hopes that global eradication of the crippling disease is within reach.  The neighboring countries constitute a bloc where the disease has been endemic; but each has detected just one case of wild polio so far this year compared to 53 in Afghanistan and 81 in Pakistan in October 2020. The number of cases so far in 2021 is the lowest in history, according to World Health Organization officials. A polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan has faced challenges in particular over the past two years — due to vaccine hesitancy and the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a five-month pause in polio immunization campaigns starting in March of 2020.   “We have reason to be optimistic,” said Aziz Memon of Rotary International, which coordinates a global polio eradication program.   Memon told VOA the declining trend of reported polio cases and negative environmental samples suggest “a positive outlook” for polio eradication in Pakistan and Afghanistan, stressing the need for capitalizing on what he described as an “unprecedented” opportunity to stop wild polio transmission.    “We are currently in the high season for polio transmission in Afghanistan and Pakistan, so it’s never been more important to ensure that polio immunization and surveillance remain a top priority, particularly as the pandemic continues to threaten immunization programs around the world,” he said.    Memon said restrictions on public movement to prevent COVID-19 …

A Financial Times report says COVAX, the global collaboration established to ensure that poor countries have access to the COVID-19 vaccine, has “largely failed.”  “Wealthy countries have received over 16 times more COVID-19 vaccines per person than poorer nations that rely on the COVAX program backed by the World Health Organization,” the newspaper reported. Millions of people in the world’s poorest countries have not yet received their first shots of the vaccine, while people in the wealthiest countries have access to booster shots, following their initial inoculations. The disparity, The Financial Times warned, “could lead to a rise in cases and the emergence of more virulent strains, and hold back the global economic recovery.”  The World Health Organization’s director-general said Friday 82 countries are at risk of not meeting WHO’s goal of having 40% of every country’s population vaccinated against COVID by the end of the year. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “For most of those countries, it’s simply a problem of insufficient and unpredictable supply.”  Earlier this month, Britain reported its highest daily number of COVID-19 related deaths since March 9. A government advisor told a BBC television show Saturday that people should not wait for government mandates to begin initiating measures to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus. Peter Openshaw, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, told BBC Breakfast, “I think hospitals in many parts of the country are barely coping actually” under the weight of COVID cases. “The sooner we all act,” Openshaw …

There will be cars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday but no drivers in sight as racing teams mark a milestone in autonomous vehicle development. Nine single-seaters will take part in the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC), a competition with a $1 million prize that aims to prove “autonomous technology can work at extreme conditions,” said Paul Mitchell, CEO of co-organizer Energy Systems Network (ESN). Cars will not race on the “Brickyard” track at the same time but will start one after the other — with the winner being the fastest over two full-speed laps. Teams are made up of students from around the world. Each group was given the same Dallara IL-15 car, which looks like a small Formula One vehicle, and the same equipment, which includes sensors, cameras, GPS and radars. On race day, it is not drivers that will make the difference — but about 40,000 lines of code programmed by each team.  The software kickstarts the engine and a powerful computer wedged in the bucket where the driver usually sits. The MIT-PITT-RW team, the only one made up entirely of students without supervision, got their car only six weeks ago. Engineering student Nayana Suvarna, 22, does not yet have a driving license but was nonetheless reluctantly designated as team manager.  “I didn’t know anything about car racing,” she said with a smile, “but I’m becoming a fan.” The MIT-PITT-RW’s car hit 130 km/h in testing, but Suvarna believes it capable of overtaking 160 on Saturday.  ‘Generation …

U.N. agencies are preparing to launch a polio vaccination campaign for all children under 5 in Afghanistan, a country where the potentially crippling disease persists despite a more than three-decade-long campaign that has nearly eradicated it worldwide. Vaccine doses will begin to be administered in Afghanistan on November 8 for the first time in three years, now that the country’s new Taliban government has granted approval. “This is a huge development that now we can go all across Afghanistan and deliver the vaccine house to house,” Dr. Hamid Jafari, the World Health Organization’s director of polio eradication for the Eastern Mediterranean region, told VOA. Jafari described the upcoming campaign as “a real combination of excitement and extreme fear — excitement because it looks like a real opportunity to eradicate wild polio virus finally.” Warning that the virus might still be “lurking in some hard-to-reach populations,” he said it’s critical that the WHO “maintain this momentum to vaccinate our children so that the virus has nowhere to go.” “Both Afghanistan and Pakistan really actually need to switch gears,” Jafari declared. Polio’s presence in Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan, where a U.N. polio vaccination effort begins in December, means the disease can still spread globally. Rotary International, which coordinates a global polio eradication program, predicts “hundreds of thousands of children could be paralyzed” if polio is not eliminated within 10 years. The WHO announced the vaccination campaign on Tuesday, five days before the observance of World Polio Day, part of Rotary International’s Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). …

One of the world’s largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia, announced Saturday it aims to reach “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2060, joining more than 100 countries in a global effort to try and curb man-made climate change. The announcement, made by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in brief scripted remarks at the start of the kingdom’s first-ever Saudi Green Initiative Forum, was timed to make a splash a little more than a week before the start of the global COP26 climate conference being held in Glasgow, Scotland. Although the kingdom will aim to reduce its emissions, Prince Mohammed said the kingdom would do so through a so-called “Carbon Circular Economy” approach. That approach focuses on still unreliable carbon capture and storage technologies over efforts to actually reduce global reliance on fossil fuels. The announcement only pertains to Saudi Arabia’s efforts within its national borders and does not impact its continued aggressive investment in oil and exporting its fossil fuels to Asia and other regions. “The transition to net zero carbon emissions will be delivered in a manner that preserves the kingdom’s leading role in enhancing the security and stability of global energy markets, particularly considering the maturity and availability of technologies necessary to manage and reduce emissions,” a statement by the Saudi Green Initiative forum said. The kingdom’s oil and gas exports form the backbone of its economy, despite efforts to diversify away from reliance on fossil fuels for revenue. The global summit COP26 starting Oct. 31 will draw …