Simon

In an effort to reduce litter in space, scientists in Japan have created the world's first satellite made of wood. The biodegradable satellite is made of magnolia wood, which in experiments on the ISS proved to be particularly resistant to cracks, and offers an environmentally friendly alternative to the metal that satellites are currently made of. The satellite, developed in collaboration between universities in Kyoto, Japan, and a forestry company, is supposed to be launched from the USA later this summer. "All the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years. Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth," Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer, warned recently, the Guardian reports.

A new study from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, published in the academic journal Nature Communications, shows that plant-based alternatives are better than meat when it comes to your health, the planet, and in many cases even your wallet. The researchers, from the Centre and University of Oxford, looked at the environmental, nutritional and cost implications of various diets where meat from animal sources were replaced by their respective plant-based alternatives. The results showed that plant-based diets are better for the planet, good for your health, and cost about the same as what the average consumer in Sweden pays for “traditional” food today. “The best thing you can do for the planet, your own health, and your wallet is to switch to a largely plant-based diet. If you find it easier to switch to plant-based alternatives that look and feel like meat, fish, or dairy, that’s okay,” says Anne Charlotte Bunge, lead author of the study and researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. For consumers in Sweden, switching to more plant-based diets is cost-competitive with the current average meat-diet and would be even cheaper if they switched to plant-based whole foods. A diet consisting of a variety of plant-based vegan alternative foods also meets nutritional recommendations in Sweden. The study found that such a plant-based diet also meets most of the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations. This could partly be explained by the fact that it’s mandatory in Sweden for companies to enrich certain foods with micronutrients such as vitamin D and calcium. “Because of that, processed Swedish plant-based alternatives often have a nutritional content similar to the animal-based food they intend to replace. For example, oat drink has a similar calcium level as dairy milk,” Bunge explains. The study also concluded, like many other studies have done, that a vegetarian and vegan diet are much better for the environment and our climate. Switching to a plant-based diet – both plant-based alternatives and whole foods – lowered greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent. The study also showed that plant-based diets need much less agricultural land and reduced water usage compared to more “traditional” meat diets.

Everything seems expensive these days, with the inflation and the global economy tanking and all that. But I think that a vegetarian/vegan diet is generally less expensive than a meat-heavy diet. Such a diet is also much healthier - for both you and the planet!

COP28 was close to falling apart. But after two weeks of deliberations, the nearly 200 countries participating in the COP28 climate summit finally agreed on a climate deal. The deal has been lauded as an historic agreement – but critics say that the deal contains too many loopholes. More than 130 countries, countless of scientists and civil society groups had urged for the agreement to include an explicit commitment to “phase out” fossil fuels. But ultimately, the agreement reached was a compromise and the text only calls for countries to “transition away” from fossil fuels. And the COP28 climate agreement is truly historic. It is, after all, the very first climate agreement that even mentions fossil fuels. And that alone shows just how far behind we – as a collective – are when it comes to taking meaningful climate action. “We have delivered a robust action plan to keep 1.5C in reach,” said Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the president of COP28 this year (who also just happens to be the head of UAE's state-owned oil company). “It is an enhanced, balanced, but make no mistake, a historic package to accelerate climate action. It is the UAE consensus. We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement for the first time ever.” But critics are not as jubilant. The Alliance of Small Island States, representing 39 countries at the summit, said in a response that “the process has failed us” and that the deal included a “litany of loopholes”. But the alliance did not formally object to the agreement. “We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support,” the alliance’s lead negotiator, Anne Rasmussen, said. The COP28 text calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.” The deal calls on countries to work toward “accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power.” A commitment to “phase down” is clearly a much weaker language than one to “phase out” dirty coal power. And by using the word “unabated” for fossil fuels – such as coal and oil – could introduce dangerous loopholes for polluters. It allows countries and companies to continue to invest in and burn dirty fossil fuels, just as long as they pair it with new and unproven technologies that (hopefully) can capture and store most of the dangerous greenhouse gas emissions. The COP28 agreement also continues to allow countries to use “transitional fuels”, such as natural gas, that also emits dangerous greenhouse gas emissions. The COP28 deal also includes a call for tripling the use of renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency. United Nations Climate Secretary Simon Stiell cautioned delegates at the conference that what they adopted was a “climate action lifeline, not a finish line.” To be able to stay within the 1.5C target, the COP28 deal projects – or rather, it hopes – that the world’s carbon pollution will peak in just two years. After the year 2025, the world’s carbon emissions must fall. And if this doesn't happen, if our carbon emissions do not start to sharply fall, then we will move into an unknown and extremely dangerous future. The world, on average, is now about 1.2C degrees hotter than it was before the industrial revolution. And our emissions keep growing at a rapid pace. It thus seems highly unlikely that the world’s emissions will peak in just two years when the emission curve is constantly going up. Both climate scientists Pierre Friedlingstein and Johan Rockström sees it as "extremely unlikely" that the world will meet the 1.5C target. “We need a corona reduction every year for 30 years. That is the size of our transition,” Friedlingstein said in an interview that took place during the COP28 conference. Prof Johan Rockström, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said in a response to the COP28 agreement: “No, the Cop28 agreement will not enable the world to hold the 1.5C limit, but yes, the result is a pivotal landmark. This agreement delivers on making it clear to all financial institutions, businesses and societies that we are now finally – eight years behind the Paris schedule – at the true ‘beginning of the end’ of the fossil fuel-driven world economy.” Following the agreement, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, tweeted: “Whether you like it or not, fossil fuel phase-out is inevitable. Let’s hope it doesn’t come too late.” Yes, for all our sake, let’s hope it really isn’t too late.

Today, the annual United Nations climate conference starts. From today and all the way through December 12th, thousands of people – including government leaders and representatives, business officials, scientists, and activists – will gather at COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to discuss and agree on policies aimed at staving off the growing threats of climate change. COP28 is the 28th annual “Conference of the Parties”. But not all top government officials will attend the conference this time around. Among the top three emitters of greenhouse gases, only India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to attend the conference. Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend the conference. And US President Joe Biden has announced that he will not travel to the COP28 climate summit. Instead, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry will lead the US delegation. According to Biden's schedule, he will instead meet the Angolan president and carry out a ceremonial Christmas tree lighting. So, what will the delegates discuss and what kind of outcomes are expected? The first “global stocktake” is expected to be released following the conference. This is supposed to be the first assessment since the Paris Climate Accord in 2015, and it will evaluate how participating nations are doing in efforts to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius, as agreed in Paris, France, during COP21. Spoiler: they are not doing that well. Global emissions and temperatures are still rising rapidly, and we are starting to reach the “tipping points” for irreversible and runaway climate disaster. According to a new report that the UN Meteorological Organization WMO released today, 2023 will be the hottest year on record – and next year is expected to be even worse. “Record global heating should send shivers down the spines of world leaders. And it should trigger them to act,” UN chief António Guterres said. “We have the roadmap to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the worst of climate chaos. But we need leaders to fire the starting gun at COP28 on a race to keep the 1.5-degree limit alive,” Guterres said. Climate negotiations at these conferences have a long history of nations failing to deliver on their commitments. And unfortunately, that hasn’t changed. Progress from nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions has been slow and inadequate, and nations are severely failing to reach the watered-down goals they set for themselves in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Unless major efforts are made to cut greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures could reach 3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average by the end of the century – a level that would be a disaster for our modern human civilization, and all life on this fragile blue earth. Delegates at the COP28 are also expected to agree to a plan that will accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. But scientists and activists are worried that the final COP28 agreement won’t call for a “phase out” of fossil fuels, and that it will instead call for a “phase down” of fossil fuels. Obviously, the latter is a much more watered-down and weaker language. Every participating nation must agree to every single word of the final agreement, so any substantial progress has proven difficult in the past. And just like in past conferences, the debates surrounding the final agreement will most likely be intense and last long into the late hours. There will be diplomatic backstabbing between the “North and South”, and many secret meetings between top government officials and diplomats will take place. And there will be countless revisions until a final agreement can be unveiled at the very last minute – mostly to save world leaders’ reputation. Furthermore, any agreement reached is not binding. This has obviously led to criticism, with critics calling these events a waste of time and activists accusing world leaders of making empty promises. This year, there is extra controversy surrounding the host nation and the conference’s president. As mentioned before, the conference will be held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is world's fifth largest oil producer. And the president of COP28 this year, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, is also the head of UAE's state-owned oil company. BBC News has already reported on leaked briefing documents that shows that al-Jaber has planned to use the conference to make oil deals. Michael Jacobs, a professor at England's Sheffield University who focuses on UN climate politics, said to BBC that it looked "breathtakingly hypocritical." "I actually think it's worse than that, because the UAE at the moment is the custodian of a United Nations process aimed at reducing global emissions," he told the BBC. "And yet, in the very same meetings where it's apparently trying to pursue that goal, it's actually trying to do side deals which will increase global emissions." During the coming days, we’ll see what kind of progress – if any – world leaders will make. Hopefully, for all of our sake, the conference will not be yet another failure.

Triple fines when Greta Thunberg was convicted again. This past Wednesday, famous climate activist Greta Thunberg was sentenced for the second time (Swedish source) in a few months for disobedience to law enforcement when she was taking part in a climate protest in Malmö, Sweden. See previous posts in this topic. This time, the punishment was toughened and Thunberg was fined 90 daily fines of SEK 50 each (for a total of 4500 SEK). "I was at the scene, but my action should be free of responsibility due to the provisions on emergency because the climate crisis is a crisis that threatens health and life," Greta Thunberg said before the court, Aftonbladet reported (Swedish source). But Thunberg could not convince the Malmö District Court, with court president Johan Kvart saying that "the emergency rules of the Criminal Code do not cover this situation at all. The district court has considered that there are reasons to sentence to a more severe penalty because she relapsed so quickly into the same crime," Kvart said in a statement. "We have the science on our side and we have morality on our side," Thunberg said in a statement follow the verdict. "Nothing in the world can change that and so it is. I am ready to act based on the conditions that exist and whether it leads to more sentences,” she said after the verdict." Shortly after receiving the verdict, Thunberg travelled to neighboring Norway to take part in a protest with other activists, including Indigenous Sami, against a wind farm. The activists want the wind farm removed because they say it endangers the indigenous people's way of life. Thunberg and the activists say a transition to renewable energy shouldn’t come at the expense of the rights of Indigenous people. See these Instagram posts: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyVJpwBsUL3 https://www.instagram.com/p/CyS9GgZsBwj

Hello and welcome to the community @Organicspots and @April Wright

As we all know, climate change is a serious threat to human health and well-being. The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that one of the consequences of a warmer and more unstable climate is the increased spread of vector-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, malaria and Zika virus. One example of how climate change has contributed to a dengue fever outbreak is Bangladesh, where over 1,000 people died from the disease in 2019. Researchers have linked the unusually high number of cases to irregular rainfall and high temperatures that created favorable conditions for mosquito breeding. According to WHO, dengue fever is the fastest growing vector-borne disease in the world, with a 30-fold increase in cases over the last 50 years. In 2019, more than 400 million people were infected with dengue fever, and over 4,000 died. The disease causes high fever, severe headache, joint and muscle pain, and sometimes bleeding. There is no specific treatment or vaccine for dengue fever. WHO’s alert and response director Abdi Mahamud has called the increasing number of severe outbreaks a “canary in the coalmine of the climate crisis” and warned that “more and more countries” are experiencing “the heavy burden of these diseases.” Climate change affects the distribution and abundance of the mosquitoes that carry dengue fever, as well as their breeding sites and biting habits. Higher temperatures shorten the incubation period of the virus in the mosquitoes, making them more infectious. More frequent and intense rainfall creates more stagnant water where mosquitoes can lay their eggs. Changes in wind patterns and sea level rise can also alter the geographic range of the mosquitoes. The organization calls for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen health systems, improve surveillance and prevention, and raise awareness among communities.

Regeringen har vunnit det Svenska Greenwash priset för 2023 som årligen delas ut av miljöföreningen Jordens vänner. – Att svenska regeringen tar hem Svenska Greenwashpriset visar på att det är dags att de svarar på hur de ska hjälpa Sverige genom klimatkrisen, sa ordföranden för Jordens vänner, Nastaran Zargari, när årets greenwash-vinnare presenterades. – Regeringens klimatpolitik är otillräcklig, vi kommer varken klara våra egna åtaganden enligt klimatlagen eller de åtaganden vi har gentemot EU och FN. Trots löftena om effektiv och ambitiös klimatpolitik ökar regeringen aktivt utsläppen och förvärrar klimatkrisen. Samtidigt drar man ned på klimatanpassningsbudgeten. Förutom regeringen så var även Preem och Svenska kyrkan nominerade i årets omröstning. Preem var nominerade för sina gröna PR-kampanjer trots ökade fossila investeringar och Svenska kyrkan för sin ohållbara förvaltning och exploatering av skog. Vinnarmotiveringen lyder: Läs mer: https://jordensvanner.se/artiklar/svenska-regeringen-vinner-svenska-greenwashpriset-2023/

Interesting, so how do I actually use sugar as a weedkiller in my garden?

No, what's that?

Greta Thunberg has been charged again for taking part in a new climate action in Malmö, Sweden. Like I wrote earlier, Greta Thunberg participated in a new climate protest on the same day she was fined by the Malmö District Court. And now the famous climate activist has been charged for taking part in that climate action. In a press release (Swedish source), prosecutor Isabel Ekberg at the Malmö District Court, said that the demonstration lacked a permit and resulted in car traffic being stopped. "The woman [Great Thunberg] refused to obey the police order to leave the scene. The crime classification is therefore disobedience to law enforcement," Ekberg said.

Hello @Martin Malinda and welcome to the community!

I'll see what I can do! No, it's not possible to downvote posts and other content items on Green Blog. I think there are much better ways to tell someone you disagree with them than to simply click on a downvote button.

Watch this TED Talk in which journalist and author Aaron Bastani explains that he believes we have the technological ability to meet our biggest challenges and create unprecedented levels of prosperity for all. He shows how we could get there by ditching capitalism as the world's economic operating system and adopting "universal basic services," where governments would freely provide life essentials like housing, health care, education and transport. Another greener, better, and happier world is possible. If you're interested in learning more, be sure to check out the book Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani.

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