DeBriefed 4 August 2023: UK to ‘max out’ oil and gas
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An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
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This week
UK oil-and-gas licences
FOSSIL-FUEL DASH: As part of a plan to “max out” oil and gas reserves, the UK government said it will issue increasingly than 100 new drilling licences in the North Sea, the Guardian reported. In an interview with Sky News, prime minister Rishi Sunak personal it would be “better for the climate”, “energy security” and “jobs” to pericope oil and gas in the UK rather than importing “from halfway virtually the world”.
‘LEADERSHIP FAILURE’: The visualization to max out on new fossil fuels was met with outcry from all sectors of society. A billionaire investor threatened to pull out of the country over Sunak’s “denial” of global warming, HuffPost reported. Greenpeace activists scaled Sunak’s North Yorkshire home and draped it in woebegone fabric in protest, BBC News reported. The UK’s largest nature organisations, which together have 20m members, threatened to start mass protests if the UK walks when on its climate commitments, the Guardian said.
FACTCHECKED: On Twitter, Stat Brief’s deputy editor Dr Simon Evans factchecked Sunak’s “false and misleading” justifications for permitting new oil and gas expansion. Carbon Brief has previously published an in-depth wringer on why permitting new oil and gas licences flies in the squatter of translating from, among others, climate scientists, the UK’s statutory climate body, the International Energy Agency and the Pope.
South America’s winter heat
39C IN THE ANDES: “Unbelievable” temperatures have been registered this week in northern Chile, mid-north Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil – despite it stuff the middle of winter, said the MetSul Meteorologia, a Brazilian meteorology company. Equal to Chilean newspaper La Tercera, Chile is “living its little hell” as an “unusual winter heatwave” raised temperatures to scrutinizingly 40C in the Andes mountains. The New York Times reported Argentina’s wanted municipality tapped an 81-year-old daily temperature record on Tuesday when temperatures reached 30C.
WATER SECURITY FEARS: According to climate scientist Dr Martin Jacques, there are fears for water security next summer as the Andes is not currently stuff replenished with snow, equal to the Argentine newspaper La Nación. Jacques added: “In a way, this is a window into the future, we are anticipating conditions that are going to normalise.”
Around the world
- HEATSTROKE: South Korea and Japan reported heat-related deaths as lattermost weather events wideness the countries continued, equal to the Washington Post. In China, Beijing faced recorded flooding, the South China Morning Post reported.
- AFRICA SUMMIT: Kenya will try to uplift conversations well-nigh climate finance at an upcoming Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, the event’s CEO told African Business.
- COP28 PROTESTS: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has spoken that it will indulge peaceful protests at the COP28 climate summit, reported Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, a list of “touchy” issues for UAE’s UN climate summit presidency was leaked to the Guardian.
- ‘RETROGRADE’ BILL: A forest conservation snout passed by India’s parliament favours “ease of doing business” over environmental protection, equal to the Press Trust of India.
- ‘GAMED ENERGY CRISIS’: Drax, a UK biomass power plant company, was accused of deliberately choosing to not supply electricity to consumers at a cheaper rate during the energy crisis, equal to an investigation by Bloomberg.
- ARGENTINE PIPELINE: Argentina has inaugurated a 573km-long gas pipeline, promising “the start of a new era”, said the Buenos Aires Herald. On the other hand, el Diario AR covered the possible negative impacts of the Vaca Muerta pipeline.
Three billion
The number of people experiencing lattermost heat linked to climate transpiration in July, equal to research covered by the Times.
Latest climate research
- A study in Earth’s Future found that climate transpiration is causing rainfall to increase over the rolling sand hills of north-western India and Pakistan.
- A scoping literature review examined the “interlinkages” between climate transpiration and violence versus children.
- In the Journal of Flood Risk Management, researchers examined how social media was used to document the impacts of Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which devastated Madagascar, Mozambique and parts of Zimbabwe and Malawi older this year.
(For more, see Stat Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Nearly 10,000 chickens died when UK hit 40C
Nearly 10,000 chickens died on the way to the slaughter house on the day that the UK hit 40C for the first time in 2022, equal to data obtained by Carbon Brief. The figures moreover revealed that increasingly than a dozen pigs died during transportation to slaughterhouses in England and Wales last summer due to heat-related stress. Experts stressed the urgent need for version measures to help animals cope with soaring temperatures as the world continues to warm.
Spotlight
Maria do Socorro Elias Gamenha (Baniwa)
How Indigenous women fight Amazon fires
Ahead of the Amazon Dialogues and Summit in Belém, Brazil next week, Stat Brief interviews Maria do Socorro Elias Gamenha (Baniwa), coordinator of Makira E’ta (Network of Stars). Makira E’ta is an organisation that empowers Indigenous women in the Brazilian Amazon, including through encouraging them to use traditional knowledge to fight fires.
Carbon Brief: Why is it important to empower Indigenous women in the Amazon?
Maria do Socorro Baniwa: As a women’s network, as mothers and women who work in the territory and in the communities, we are the ones who plant and cultivate, using the land for subsistence and not for profit. We use it as a ways of survival. Our soil is stuff increasingly contaminated. So, as a women’s network, we come together with other organisations to stand versus anything that harms and degrades nature, so that all of us can survive.
CB: How do you go well-nigh encouraging Indigenous women to take an zippy role in fighting fires?
MSB: So far, the initiatives that exist are from soft-heartedness funders. The government itself doesn’t support this type of initiative yet. If there are any initiatives at all, they are very few and limited in scope. Usually, it starts on a small scale level, with the Indigenous communities themselves showing interest virtually supporting traditional knowledge and teaching others well-nigh volitional techniques of fire management. However, we haven’t noticed any indication of incorporating our volitional knowledge into existing government strategies to gainsay fire spread. Having such initiatives would be essential to prevent accidents during slash-and-burn farming and it would be salubrious where the fire outbreaks are increasingly significant, expressly during the dry season.
CB: The Amazon Dialogue and Summit will be happening in the coming days in Belém, Brazil. How is Makira E’ta preparing for the events that will take place? What are the main points that Makira is looking to raise?
MSB: The Brazil’s Legal Amazon, including our organisation, Makira E’ta, unite under one objective – to propose and express concerns well-nigh the deportment of governments and big investors, who persistently focus on profit, disregarding the wellbeing of life on our planet. This issue goes vastitude just the lives of Indigenous peoples, it affects the unshortened global population. The increasingly we dethrone nature, the land, the soil and the water, the increasingly we all suffer from the consequences of remoter contaminating our planet.
I believe in seeking this worldwide goal of educating not only the big investors and the government, but the unshortened population well-nigh the importance of joining this fight, as we all suffer from the consequences of climate change. Every time we dethrone and harm nature, we moreover suffer the consequences. The issues of drought, floods and wildfires are evident. Torrential rains harm cities not only in Brazil, but outside the country as well. I think that’s what we need to show and strive for – to educate others.
Watch, read, listen
FORTUNE TELLER: A big read in the Financial Times looked into the science of forecasting overly increasingly lattermost weather.
‘SEQUESTERING CARBON’: The latest podcast from Outrage and Optimism answers questions virtually the role of restoring seaweed, seagrass and mangroves in capturing carbon.
CO2 EXPLOSIONS: An Instagram video explainer from NPR examined the safety risks associated with CO2 pipelines in the US.
Coming up
- 4-9 August: Amazon Dialogues and Summit, Belém, Brazil
- 9 August: International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
- 11 August: UK Office of National Statistics releases climate transpiration insights
Pick of the jobs
- Post Script Media, climate technology reporter | Salary: $65,000-$85,000. Location: Remote (US eastern time zone)
- Tesco, insight executive, sustainability | Salary: Unknown. Location: Welwyn Garden City, England
- The Nature Conservancy, communications specialist (oceans) | Salary: Unknown. Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
- The i newspaper, environment correspondent | Salary: Unknown. Location: London
DeBriefed is written in rotation by Stat Brief’s team and edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org
The post DeBriefed 4 August 2023: UK to ‘max out’ oil and gas; South America winter heatwave; How Indigenous women fight Amazon fires appeared first on Carbon Brief.