The Independent's Climate Newsletter
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Friday, December 29, 2023 | |
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Welcome to The Independent's weekly round-up on the climate crisis. Thanks for reading - LB | | |
From top left, clockwise: Debris of buildings after devastating floods tore through the city of Derna, Libya in September causing thousands of deaths; Bleached coral off the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico amid a marine heatwave in September; A person cools off at the Piazza del Popolo during a heatwave in Rome, Italy, in July. Members of Greenpeace protest against fossil fuels at the Cop28 climate summit this month in Dubai (Credits: AFP via Getty Images, AP)
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The Independent has reported on climate impacts around the world in 2023, and the efforts being made to tackle the crisis. Here are some of our highlights from the past 12 months.
At the start of 2023, we looked at how the climate crisis came for European skiing, with spring-like temperatures and rain smudging out snowy Alpine playgrounds from Innsbruck, Austria to Chamonix, France. We also reported on Extinction Rebellion's decision to pivot away from disruptive tactics and whether it could revive a plateau for the protest movement. Correspondents in our newsrooms in Washington, New York and Los Angeles analysed how President Joe Biden was doing on the cusp of his third year in office when it came to key issues like labour, inflation, Covid, civil rights and climate.
The following month, The Independent's climate team looked at the ups and downs of climate solutions, including the green burial industry of water cremations and human composting and how cobalt mining for Big Tech is driving child labor and deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In March, we were off to the Oscars (via the bus and subway), with a Hollywood star and his daughter in their mission to prove that Los Angeles' public transport is worth celebrating. We spoke to the Ukrainian lawyer, who founded the war-torn country's campaign against Russian fossil fuels, after she was refused entry to the world's most prominent energy summit. We also interviewed a "very persistent" group of nuns leading a shareholder vote over Citigroup's fossil fuel financing. Meanwhile Vanessa Nakate, one of the world's leading climate activists, told us that President Biden was failing to show "true climate leadership" by greenlighting new oil projects.
Later that spring, we turned our attention to misinformation after a think tank with a long history of denying climate change mailed thousands of copies of a pseudoscience textbook to US schools. Soon afterwards, we discovered that another climate misinformation group had been ejected from a science teachers' convention after signing up under false pretenses. We also shared the story of a TV meteorologist who was forced to leave his job after suffering PTSD caused by threats over his coverage of the climate crisis.
By summer, it was becoming clear that 2023 was on track to be the hottest year in human history as record after record was broken. It sparked a series of extreme weather and devastating events. In New York City, the sky glowed a Bladerunner-esque orange in June after smoke billowed south from hundreds of wildfires raging in Canada. Ocean temperatures reached new highs around the world, causing coral reef die-offs. One-third of the US was under extreme heat warnings for weeks after temperatures soared above 100F. With unprecedented heatwaves becoming the new normal whether you're in Dorset or Dhaka, we spoke to the latest member of an all-female squad tackling extreme temperatures around the world.
In Derna, Libya, there were unfathomable scenes in September after flash flooding caused a dam to collapse and washed entire city blocks out to sea. More than 11,000 people are believed to have died, and thousands more are struggling to recover from the physical and mental devastation. Hurricanes and cyclones caused chaos across the US, Mexico and the Caribbean while there was report after report of extreme flooding from countries across Africa, along with Australia, China, India, parts of Europe and the Middle East.
The same month, the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week coincided and gave us the opportunity to sit down with Mary Robinson, Ireland's former president and climate justice advocate, to hear her forthright assessment on what is, and isn't, working in tackling a myriad of crises.
By the fall, The Independent's US bureaus were turning their attention to the 2024 presidential election and asked why, if Republican voters are becoming more concerned with the climate crisis, don't GOP presidential candidates seem to care?
In November, the planet delivered another alarming first: Earth hit the milestone temperature of 2C for the first time – a temporary breach but one that scientists warned means we are far off-course in cutting emissions. The news came shortly before findings that the carbon footprint of the world's richest 1 per cent was equal to two-thirds of the global population - and that the uber-rich were responsible for a staggering 16 per cent of emissions overall.
In the last weeks of 2023 the Cop28 climate summit was held in Dubai, where we witnessed the euphoric moment the world called time on fossil fuels
but also troubling signs of the oil and gas industry's influence on the event.
And while there were billions pledged towards the "loss and damage" of vulnerable countries - it's still far from enough.
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With 2023 the hottest year on record, the effects of climate change are more obvious than ever before. |
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Life in the climate crisis |
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