Issues discussed on today’s Daily Climate Show include…
- Home Secretary Priti Patel has announced tougher penalties for anyone blocking motorways and given more powers to the police and courts to use against the Insulate Britain protestors that she declared are “trampling over our way of life”. Civil rights campaigners are concerned that these new powers will be used more widely to restrict other protests. Over 100 injunctions have been served against Insulate Britain, but they vow to continue their protests.
- The World Meteorological Organization has warned of a ‘global water crisis’ unless there are urgent reforms. Increased water hazards like droughts and floods will lead to water shortages unless action is taken.
- As part of Denmark’s plan to cut CO2 emissions by 70% by 2030, the Danish government has announced that the agricultural sector must more than halve it emissions by 2030. For forestry the target is a 65% cut. The Danish CO2 targets are among the most ambitious in the world.
- A new report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network has found that 14% of world’s coral reef has been lost between 2009 and 2018. This is equivalent to more than all of the living coral in Australia. Warming caused by climate change, overfishing, coastal development and declining water quality has placed coral reefs around the world under ‘relentless stress’.
- This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded jointly to three scientists for their work on climate change. Syukuro Manabe (90) of Japan, Klaus Hasselmann (89) of Germany and Giorgio Parisi (73) of Italy were awarded the prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
- New research from Carbon Brief ranks countries by their historical CO2 emissions since 1850. For the first time Carbon Brief has included in the analysis emissions from land use and forestry which significantly changes the rankings from when just fossil fuel use is included. The USA however still tops the chart with around 20% of the global total. China is second with 11%, followed by Russia (7%), Brazil (5%) and Indonesia (4%). Only 4 of the countries in the top 10 emitters have promised significant reductions in the run up to COP26 so far.
- In North Carolina, USA Daniel Tobin is a man on a mission to clean up his local area. Since starting at college he has collected over 8,000 bags of plastic and other rubbish.
Presenter Anna Jones was joined by guests Donnachadh McCarthy, Climate Columnist at The Independent and economist Vicki Pryce, to discuss how much it would cost to insulate the homes of Britain, and what role, if any, nuclear power should play in the UK’s future energy mix.