Six months after the last underwhelming UN climate conference COP28 in oil-rich Dubai, negotiators at the UN's climate headquarters in Bonn, Germany, have been trying to smooth the path to the next COP to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November. Another mega-gathering in another fossil-fuel capital - is there any hope of action to protect the world's rapidly melting ice and snow and avert the catastrophic consequences for the rest of the globe?
Greenland melt, ocean heatwaves, AMOC slowing, polar bears starving - Arctic developments so far in 2024 might give you the Climate Blues. Is there light on the horizon?
I went to Dubai for the UN Climate Conference COP28 with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the controversy over the location and the President, head of a giant fossil fuel concern, made me somewhat sceptical. On the other, I was driven by the awareness that this was a kind of last chance, with the …
There has never been a more pressing need for the world to unite and take urgent, radical action to halt emissions, to avoid further changes to the frozen parts of the Earth with catastrophic consequences for people all round the globe.
“It's too late to stop Antarctic ice melt.” But “the Greenland ice sheet might be more resistant to warming than we thought”, according to various recent studies. So should we stop worrying? Or give up on climate action? As we speed towards this year's UN Climate Conference COP28, to be held in – of all places - oil-rich Dubai, while wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine are distracting attention from the planet-threatening climate crisis, what we need is not complacency or resignation but a heightened sense of urgency.
It’s been a big week for climate, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets around the globe as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres hosted a Climate Ambition Summit on 20 September in the middle of Climate Week NYC and the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Just 10 weeks before …
As temperatures spike, forests burn, oceans warm, ice melts in the Arctic, Antarctic and on the world's highest mountains, negotiators at the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany are wrangling over documents to prepare for COP28 in oil-land Dubai at the end of the year. That meeting will tackle the "Global Stocktake" of climate efforts - and shortcomings.
Climate change is impacting the frozen regions of our planet faster and more seriously than expected. The naming of two ice scientists as amongst the world's most influential people shows growing recognition of the key role played by the cryosphere and the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to protect it.
It's now one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. There’s no sign of any end to the conflict. And we are not looking at a regional dispute. This war has become a major clash between systems, with repercussions for the whole planet. Putin’s invasion has plunged us into a time of multiple crises – war, an …
Continue reading Earth’s temperature rises as geopolitical climate cools
Tromso is living up to its image as Norway's Arctic capital, as I step off the plane into a flurry of snowflakes and a landscape of white. I first came up here to to the Arctic Frontiers gathering in 2007 to research and make contacts for a series of documentaries to mark the International Polar …
Continue reading Moving North – Arctic Frontiers in a changing world
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