India lost 259 bn hours of labour annually because of global warming

 Productive hours lost to heat and humidity globally are about 400 billion hours greater than previous estimates, roughly the same as the amount of work hours lost during the Covid-19 pandemic

India lost around 259 billion hours of labour annually between 2001 and 2020 due to the impacts of humid heat, according to a study from researchers at Duke University. The loss of these productive hours cost India $624 billion (Rs 46 lakh crore)–equivalent to almost 7% of its 2017 gross domestic product (GDP). The authors use the term ‘humid heat’ to refer to conditions that are either hot and dry or hot and humid enough to cause decreases in labor productivity.

Globally, humid heat caused 677 billion hours of lost labour each year, worth $2.1 trillion (Rs 156 lakh crore). Climate change is worsening these losses. “Even fractions of a degree of global climate change can have large-scale implications for labour,” the study said. Without rapid emissions cuts, climate change is set to further increase losses in already hot countries, and historically cooler countries will start to see more significant labour losses, according to a briefing by Climate Trends, a Delhi-based climate research firm.

In the first 20 years of this century, India lost 25 billion more hours annually compared to the previous 20 years, the paper, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found. “Over the last four decades, heat-related labour losses globally have increased by at least 9% (>60 billion hours annually),” the study said, as global average temperatures rose about 0.4 degrees Celsius because of human activities, per the Climate Trends briefing.

Scientists say it’ll take $300 billion to halt global warming for 2 decades

The sum is not to fund green technologies or finance a moonshot solution to emissions, but to use simple, age-old practices to lock millions of tons of carbon back into the soil

$300 billion. That’s the money needed to stop the rise in greenhouse gases and buy up to 20 years of time to fix global warming, according to United Nations climate scientists. It’s the gross domestic product of Chile, or the world’s military spending every 60 days.

The sum is not to fund green technologies or finance a moonshot solution to emissions, but to use simple, age-old practices to lock millions of tons of carbon back into an overlooked and over-exploited resource: the soil. “We have lost the biological function of soils. We have got to reverse that,” said Barron J. Orr, lead scientist for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. “If we do it, we are turning the land into the big part of the solution for climate change.”

Rene Castro Salazar, an assistant director general at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said that of the 2 billion hectares (almost 5 billion acres) of land around the world that has been degraded by misuse, overgrazing, deforestation and other largely human factors, 900 million hectares could be restored.

Returning that land to pasture, food crops or trees would convert enough carbon into biomass to stabilize emissions of CO2, the biggest greenhouse gas, for 15-20 years, giving the world time to adopt carbon-neutral technologies…

Read More: Global Warming

World ‘losing the race’ to avert climate disaster, warns UN chief Guterres

Guterres said he was heartened by growing societal awareness, which meant that hope was not yet lost

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday the world was “losing the race” to avert climate disaster, but that greenhouse gas reduction targets were not out of reach yet. He was speaking during an interview with the Covering Climate Now coalition of media, which includes AFP, days before a UN youth climate summit that will be followed by a meeting with world leaders, where he will urge countries to raise their commitments set under the Paris agreement.

The landmark accord saw countries pledge to limit the long-term rise in the average temperature of the Earth to two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, and if possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius. “What I want is to have the whole of society putting pressure on governments to make governments understand they need to run faster, because we are losing the race,” he said, adding: “What the science tells us today is that these targets are still reachable.”

Guterres said that inaction by some key countries, including the US, could be at least partly offset by action at the sub-national level, for example in the carbon neutral pledges made by the states of California and New York. “I think one of the best things of the US society is the fact that it is a federal country… that decisions are decentralized, so I will be always very strongly in favor of keeping decisions on climate change as decentralized as possible,” he said…

Read Source: Climate Change

Can environmental populism save the planet? It is difficult, but possible

Beyond lip service, we need to mobilise truly popular support for change. Now is a good time to start

Populism and environmentalism are words seldom seen in the same sentence. One is associated predominantly with nationalists and charismatic leaders of “real people”, the other with broadly-based collective action to address the world’s single most pressing problem.

Differences don’t get much starker, it would seem. But we are increasingly seeing the two strands combine in countries around the world. Exhibit A in support of this thesis is the remarkable growth and impact of Extinction Rebellion, often known as XR.

When I finished writing a book on the possibility of environmental populism little more than six months ago, I’d never even heard of XR. Now it is a global phenomenon, beginning to be taken seriously by policymakers in some of the world’s more consequential democracies. Britain’s decision earlier this year to declare a climate emergency is attributed in part to 11 days of Extinction Rebellion protest that paralysed parts of London.

Greta Thunberg, the remarkable Swedish schoolgirl who has rapidly become one of the world’s leading climate activists, is another – rather inspiring – example of a rising tide of popular opinion demanding political leaders take action before it is too late. It is also a telling indictment of the quality and imagination of the current crop of international leaders that schoolchildren are taking the lead on an issue that will, for better or worse, define their future...

From storms to cold waves, 2018 was 6th warmest year in Indian history: IMD

2018 was also the year when India witnessed several high-impact weather events ranging from cyclonic storms to cold waves

Current Affiairs : The average temperature in India was “significantly above normal” in 2018, making it the sixth warmest year the country has witnessed since 1901 – when it first began recording climate data. The winter season was the fifth warmest.

In its ‘Statement on Climate of India during 2018,’ the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday that last year, the annual mean surface air temperature, averaged across the country, was 0.41°C above (1981-2010 period) average. For some states, the temperature soared even well above that – such as in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. According to a Quartz report, heatwaves have increased in duration. Global warming could further increase both their frequency as well as intensity. This would, in turn, pose a threat to public health. The national weather forecaster further noted that over 1,400 people died in extreme weather events last year in India, and according to a National Disaster Management Authority report, between 1992 and 2016, nearly 26,000 died.

While 2016 (0.72°C) was the warmest in India’s recorded history, 11 out of the 15 warmest years have so far all been within the last 15 years. The last decade (2001-2010/2009-2018) was also the warmest on record. This “clearly shows that ‘global warming’ is happening and we need to prepare ourselves to face the consequences,” M. Rajeevan, secretary of the earth sciences ministry told Times of India..

Contain Source: Business Standard