hereisthepoint
hereisthepoint
Here is the Point
13 posts
Discussions about the environment and climate change. Illustrate diversity and complexity of approaches. Host a dialogue between scholars and the public. Encourage reasoned argumentation and debate. Have an impact on critical discourse. Engage a growing number of people addressing climate change challenges. Turn the trajectory of our planet into a sustainable and just direction. Encourage global thinking and local actions.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Food and drink products with pro-environment 'ecolabels' are more appealing to shoppers – new research
What’s for dinner tonight? If it’s a choice between beef or tofu, it might help to know there’s a 50-fold difference in greenhouse gas emissions between these products and a 200-fold difference in how much land is used to create them, according to recent research. The choices people make in supermarket aisles can affect how sustainable food systems are, but how do you know which to choose when you’re confronted with multiple options of the same product?
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For now, we can take comfort from the fact that an overwhelming majority of studies show ecolabelled products outperforming those without any environmental guarantees. This could show a public appetite for more sustainable lifestyles that businesses and regulators now have an opportunity to nurture.
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Christina Potter, Health Behaviours Researcher, University of Oxford
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Now's the time to rethink your relationship with nature
The pandemic has allowed many of us to develop a new appreciation of the great outdoors. But of course, this renewed engagement with nature comes at a time when our natural world is facing an unparalleled climate crisis.
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The Anthropocene puts paid to any idea that we can carry on as normal. Indeed, even if all of humanity was wiped out tomorrow, it’s estimated the natural world would take at least five million years to recover. Which is why in the longer term there must be a fundamental reconsideration of how a significant minority of the global population live, get around, feed ourselves and exploit other humans and nonhumans.
Matthew Adams, Principal Lecturer in Psychology, University of Brighton
The article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Fossil fuel subsidies amount to hundreds of billions of dollars a year – here's how to get rid of them
Any feasible pathway out of the climate crisis involves dramatically lowering our consumption of fossil fuels. It’s astonishing, then, that many countries not only don’t reflect the damage caused by burning fossil fuels in the taxes imposed on them, but actively subsidise their extraction and use. Despite an agreement at the G20 in 2009 to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, the US, China and Russia alone spent US$909 billion (£656 billion) on them in 2017, the most recent year available – that’s nearly 40% more than in 2009.
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Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies is not an optional extra in the effort to decarbonise the global economy, it’s central to the entire transition. But achieving widespread support for this will take political leadership, policy innovation and far greater funding.
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Neil McCulloch, Associate Fellow of Political Economy, Institute of Development Studies and Radek Stefanski, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of St Andrews
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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How children are taking European states to court over the climate crisis – and changing the law
Even before Greta Thunberg launched her school strike for climate at age 15, youth activists have been key players in public action on the climate crisis. Now they’re breaking new ground in court.
On November 30, six Portuguese children and young people brought a historic court case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Dubbed Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others – or the Agostinho case, for short – it argues that those states which fail to solve the climate crisis are breaching human rights.
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Law is far from the only means to achieve progress for children’s interests, but it can be a crucial part of explaining what treatment is and is not acceptable. The potential for developing understandings of youth discrimination in the anticipated judgment shows just how exciting this legal development at the ECHR is.
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Aoife Daly, Lecturer in Law, University College Cork; Pernilla Leviner, , Stockholm University, and Rebecca Thorburn Stern, Professor of Public International Law, Uppsala University
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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I'm a climate scientist – here's three key things I have learned over a year of COVID
The planet had already warmed by around 1.2℃ since pre-industrial times when the World Health Organization officially declared a pandemic on March 11 2020. This began a sudden and unprecedented drop in human activity, as much of the world went into lockdown and factories stopped operating, cars kept their engines off and planes were grounded.
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Colleagues and I have estimated that investing just 1.2% of global GDP in economic recovery packages could mean the difference between keeping global temperature rise below 1.5°C, and a future where we are facing much more severe impacts – and higher costs.
Unfortunately, green investment is not being made at anything like the level needed. However, many more investments will be made over the next few months. It’s essential that strong climate action is integrated into future investments. The stakes may seem high, but the potential rewards are far higher.
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Piers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change; Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate, University of Leeds
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
Globally, only one in 50 new cars were fully electric in 2020, and one in 14 in the UK. Sounds impressive, but even if all new cars were electric now, it would still take 15-20 years to replace the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.
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Active travel has offered an alternative to cars that keeps social distancing intact. It has helped people to stay safe during the pandemic and it could help reduce emissions as confinement is eased, particularly as the high prices of some electric vehicles are likely to put many potential buyers off for now.
So the race is on. Active travel can contribute to tackling the climate emergency earlier than electric vehicles while also providing affordable, reliable, clean, healthy and congestion-busting transportation.
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Christian Brand, Associate Professor in Transport, Energy & Environment, Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Biodiversity: we can map the biggest threats to endangered species in your local area
Since 1993, 15 species of bird and mammal are thought to have gone extinct, including China’s Yangtze river dolphin and the Pernambuco pygmy owl from Brazil. But these recent examples are a tiny fraction of what scientists estimate could disappear in the lifetimes of people living today. One million species spanning the full diversity of life on Earth are at risk of extinction.
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Both of these seabirds are classified as “vulnerable” by the IUCN. Overfishing of the puffin’s prey, sandeels, contributes 25% to the species’ extinction risk and a further 22% comes from climate change. This shows how important national and international policies are for strengthening local efforts to protect endangered species.
We can even use STAR to measure local and national contributions towards the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2030 goal of halting biodiversity loss, so that everyone can be part of the global plan for conservation.
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Louise Mair, Research Associate in Biodiversity Conservation and Policy, Newcastle University and Philip McGowan, Professor of Conservation Science and Policy, Newcastle University
This article is in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Sea levels are rising fastest in big cities – here's why
It is well known that climate-induced sea level rise is a major threat. What is less well know is the threat of sinking land. And in many of the most populated coastal areas, the land is sinking even faster than the sea is rising.
Parts of Tokyo for instance sank by 4 metres during the 20th century, with 2 metres or more of sinking reported in Shanghai, Bangkok, and New Orleans. This process is known as subsidence. Slow subsidence happens naturally in river deltas, and it can be accelerated by the extraction of groundwater, oil or gas which causes the soil to consolidate and the surface to lose elevation.
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Increased urbanisation especially in deltas areas and the demand for freshwater means subsidence will remain a pressing issue in the coming decades. Dealing with subsidence is complementary to dealing with climate-induced sea level rise and both need to be addressed. A combination of rising seas and sinking lands will increasingly leave coastal cities at risk.
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Sally Brown, Scientist, Bournemouth University and Robert James Nicholls, Professor of Climate Adaptation, University of East Anglia
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Fukushima: ten years on from the disaster, was Japan's response right?
The world saw something never before caught on camera on March 12, 2011: an explosion ripping the roof off a nuclear power plant – Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi. The blast wasn’t actually nuclear, it was the result of hot hydrogen gas encountering the cool, outside air during the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. But the distinction hardly mattered – something had clearly gone terribly wrong.
A decade on from the tragedy, many people are still mourning the nearly 16,000 people who lost their lives to the tsunami. While no-one died from the radiation after the radiation accident at Fukushima Daiichi, roughly two thousand elderly people died prematurely as a result of their enforced evacuation and undoubtedly many more of the huge number of displaced people experienced distress. In order to minimise suffering in future nuclear accidents, there are important lessons from March 2011 that must be learned.
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Analysts report that Japan could generate almost a third of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. But decarbonisation could have proceeded even quicker if nuclear power had not been forced from the mix. Though the reaction is understandable – trust was broken.
The sense that something must be done can be powerful amid widespread disaster. The challenge is directing it towards finding the right solutions.
William Nuttall, Professor of Energy, The Open University and Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management, University of Bristol
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Britain's electricity use is at its lowest for decades – but will never be this low again
In 2020, Britain’s electrical use was the lowest it had been since 1983. This wasn’t entirely due to COVID – demand for electricity had been falling for more than a decade anyway, thanks to savings from energy-efficient appliances, moving industry offshore and consumers becoming more careful as costs increased.
But demand will bounce back after COVID. And the electrification of transport and heat, both critical to achieving net-zero emissions, will require lots more electricity in future.
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For those of us who study energy systems, it’s an exciting time. As demand from transport and heat increases, Great Britain will never again use as little electricity as it did in 2020 – and as this means using less fossil fuels, it’s something to celebrate.
Grant Wilson, Lecturer, Energy Informatics Group, Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham; Joseph Day, Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Energy Informatics, University of Birmingham, and Noah Godfrey, Energy Data Analyst - PhD in Modelling Flexibility in Future UK Energy Systems, University of Birmingham
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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We've made progress to curb global emissions. But it's a fraction of what's needed
The global pandemic has seen an unprecedented drop in global emissions, with carbon dioxide down about 7% (or 2.6 billion tonnes) in 2020 overall compared to 2019.
But our research, published today in Nature Climate Change, found this may soon be undone, as unchecked economic recovery would see global emissions bounce back to pre-pandemic levels.
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Indeed, the new data from the International Energy Agency suggests global emissions already started to rise again over the second half of 2020, potentially offsetting the drops during lockdowns. Although, it’s still too early to infer the size of the rebound for 2021.
Whatever strategies we put in place, one thing is for sure. Globally, we need to do a lot more: to deliver at least ten times more emissions cuts than our pre-pandemic efforts, while supporting economic recovery, human development, improved health, equity and well-being.
Pep Canadell, Chief research scientist, Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO; Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Research Professor, University of East Anglia; Glen Peters, Research Director, Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo; Matthew William Jones, Senior Research Associate, University of East Anglia; Pierre Friedlingstein, Chair, Mathematical Modelling of Climate, University of Exeter; Robbie Andrew, Senior Researcher, Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo; Rob Jackson, Professor, Department of Earth System Science, and Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Stanford University, and Steve Davis, Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine
This article is printed in The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Why keeping one mature street tree is far better for humans and nature than planting lots of new ones
Thanks to Victorian street planners, many British streets were designed to be full of big trees and, with 84% of the population living in urban areas, most people are more likely to encounter trees in the streets than they are in forests.
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These strategies allow local authorities to mandate that developers value tree size and the total canopy cover in a city. The idea is to prevent the use of “stem counts” to hide the removal of large trees and their replacement with smaller trees that are less valuable in terms of carbon storage, ecosystem services and even human wellbeing.
Mary Gagen, Professor Of Physical Geography, Swansea University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the full article.
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hereisthepoint · 4 years ago
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Five ways to reduce your household waste – and stop it being shipped to poorer countries
The UK is the largest plastic waste producer in Europe and one of the biggest producers of plastic waste in the world, second only to the US. The UK produces 99kg of plastic waste per person per year. And it exports about two-thirds of this waste to poorer countries such as Malaysia, Pakistan and Vietnam...
...Above all, it’s important to remember that even very little change to our consumption habits takes us a step closer to reducing the UK’s 26 million tonnes of household waste. Achieve that and it will ultimately put us on track for a more sustainable post-pandemic world.
Sankar Sivarajah, Head of School of Management and Professor of Technology Management and Circular Economy, University of Bradford
The original article is in The Conversation, used under a Creative Commons license. Read the full article here and join the video discussion below.
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