Tuesday, December 3, 2024 |
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Hello, Welcome to The Independent's weekly climate roundup. After a week of tense negotiations in Busan, South Korea, aimed at drafting a legally binding treaty to address the plastic pollution crisis, negotiators failed to reach an agreement. Plans are now being made to resume talks next year. Our Asia climate correspondent Stuti Mishra was in Busan for the talks and reported that countries most at risk from plastic pollution rejected a watered-down proposal in the final hours of the discussions. "We did not accept a weak treaty here, and we never will," said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez of Panama during the plenary session, drawing a long round of applause from delegates. Every year, millions of tons of plastic end up in the world's water bodies, yet less than 10 percent of global annual plastic production is recycled, according to the World Health Organization. Ocean plastic pollution spreads disease, harms wildlife, and disrupts the ocean's critical role in absorbing carbon dioxide and regulating the planet's climate. |
South Korean environment activists protest calling for a strong global plastics treaty outside of the venue for the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution in Busan, South Korea, on Sunday (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) |
The negotiations were supposed to produce what would have been the first legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. More than 100 countries wanted the treaty to limit production, as well as tackle cleanup and recycling. Many had said it was essential to address chemicals of concern. The impasse marks the latest setback for global environmental diplomacy after disappointing outcomes at Cop29 and the Cop16 biodiversity summit. |
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Life in the climate crisis |
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The collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), Earth's critical ocean current system, would have devastating consequences: severe droughts, freezing European winters, rising sea levels, and a diminished capacity for oceans to absorb greenhouse gases. New research from the University of New South Wales warns that melting from the Greenland ice sheet and Canadian glaciers is accelerating the weakening of the AMOC, which circulates warm water northward and cold water southward in the Atlantic Ocean, regulating global temperatures. If Greenland's additional melting is accounted for, the study projects that the AMOC could weaken by 30 percent as early as 2040 – two decades sooner than previously thought, with dire implications for climate stability worldwide. |
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That's the amount of rain that fell in just 24 hours in the Indian city of Chennai during Cyclone Fengal Read more |
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But preliminary data collected during more than a year of lab experiments shows that corals that had the early benefit of multivitamins were more resistant and resilient to heat stress... |
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Colleen Hansel, a senior scientist and marine chemist at Massachusetts' Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said in a press release. Hansel is one of a team of researchers working to protect the world's coral reefs from climate change using multivitamins. Read more |
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