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2024 'Virtually Certain' to Be Hottest Year on Record: EU Climate Agency
A new report contained "the bleakest news possible, especially with a climate denier U.S. president in office for the next four years," said one climate scientist.
Nov 07, 2024
A day after U.S. voters elected climate-denying Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race, soon ushering in an administration that is sure to expand fossil fuel drilling, the European Union's Earth observation agency announced that 2024 is "virtually certain" to be the hottest year on record and to hit a worrying temperature milestone.
The year is expected to be the first on record in which the temperature is more than 1.5°C hotter than before the Industrial Revolution, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS). The Paris climate agreement of 2015 urged countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C by the end of the century.
Over the past 12 months, said CCCS, global temperatures were 1.6°C warmer than the yearly average from 1850-1900.
"The average temperature anomaly for the rest of 2024 would have to drop to almost zero for 2024 to not be the warmest year," said CCCS.
Last month was the second-hottest October ever recorded, with temperatures 1.65°C higher than preindustrial levels. It was the 15th month in the past 16 to be hotter than 1.5°C over preindustrial temperatures.
While a single year above the 1.5°C mark does not necessarily indicate that the Paris climate goal is out of reach, CCCS director Carlo Buontempo said the planet has "never had to cope with a climate as warm as the current one."
"This inevitably pushes our ability to respond to extreme events—and adapt to a warmer world—to the absolute limit," he told The Guardian.
Climate scientist Bill McGuire called the Copernicus report "the bleakest news possible, especially with a climate denier U.S. president in office for the next four years."
Trump has pledged to expand fossil fuel extraction and do away with climate regulations introduced by the Biden administration, telling oil executives he would do so if they contributed $1 billion to his campaign in what was described as a quid pro quo.
The CCCS—which based its analysis on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft, and weather stations—noted in its report that October saw numerous extreme weather events tied to the warming planet. Heavy rains led to severe flash flooding in Spain, killing more than 200 people. Above average precipitation was also seen in Norway, France, China, southern Brazil, and parts of Australia, while Florida faced Hurricane Milton just two weeks after Hurricane Helene killed more than 230 people.
The World Meteorological Organization last week announced that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are accumulating faster than at any other time in human history, rising more than 10% in the last two decades.
"The most effective solution to address the climate challenges is a global commitment on emissions," Buontempo told The Guardian.
BBC journalist Navin Singh Khadka said on the news network that if the 1.5°C breach continues "in the long term, then we are warned there will be catastrophic consequences."
"In the meantime we're told this could be a temporary overshoot because of factors like El Niño, for instance, but even then... the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report has warned us that there might be some irreversible impacts," said Khadka. "What are those irreversible impacts? Can we live with them? That's the question now."
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World Braces for Outcome of Trump-Harris Election
From Palestine to Ukraine to the southern U.S. border, people expressed fears of how a Donald Trump victory could adversely affect them.
Nov 05, 2024
People, governments, and rights groups around the world watched with bated breath as Americans headed to the polls Tuesday to elect a new president in a tight contest whose results are fraught with implications on a wide range of issues, from the climate emergency and migration to support for Ukraine and international trade.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is facing off against former Republican President Donald Trump in a knife-edge race whose outcome may not be known until after Election Day.
In the Middle East, there are fears that a second Trump administration could be even worse for Palestinians, more than 160,000 of whom have been killed, wounded, or left missing by Israel's U.S.-backed assaults on Gaza and the West Bank.
While Harris has promised that she won't change President Joe Biden's "unwavering" support for Israel—which includes approving tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid and diplomatic cover like multiple vetoes of United Nations cease-fire resolutions—Trump has encouraged Israel, which is on trial for alleged genocide at the International Court of Justice, to "finish what they started" and "get it over with fast."
Ammar Joudeh, a resident of the heavily bombed Jabalia refugee camp in obliterated northern Gaza,
toldAl Jazeera Monday: "If Trump wins, disaster has befallen us. Trump's presidency was disastrous for the Palestinian cause. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and normalization with Arab countries increased."
"If Trump wins, we'll be displaced to the Sinai Peninsula [in Egypt]," he added. "Israel has already enacted much of Trump's plan to displace us from northern Gaza. If Trump takes office again, he'll finish the plan."
Wafaa Abdel Rahman, who lives in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said that "as a Palestinian, the two options are worse than each other. It seems to us as Palestinians like choosing between the devil and Satan."
"If Trump wins, I believe that the war will be resolved in Israel's favor quickly and more violently," she added. "Trump policy is clear and known to us as Palestinians. However, Harris will complete what her successor started and adopt the same position as her party, and thus we will remain in a long-term war without a resolution. In both cases, the result is death for Gaza, but in the second case, it will be a slow and more painful death."
Meanwhile in Israel, recent polling shows Trump—who is so popular with Israel's right that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named a planned community in the illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights after him—with over three times the support of Harris.
The big question in Iran is whether the winner of the U.S. election will pursue a path toward diplomacy or potential war. Tehran-based political analyst Diako Hosseini toldAl Jazeera on Tuesday that "pursuing diplomacy with Trump is much harder for Iran due to the assassination" of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, which was ordered by the former Republican president in January 2020.
"However, if a potential Harris administration is willing, Iran would not have any major obstacles for direct bilateral talks," he added. "Nevertheless, Iran is well and realistically aware that regardless of who takes over the White House as president, diplomacy with Washington is now considerably much more difficult than any other time."
Migrants and asylum-seekers have expressed alarm over Trump's plan for even tougher bans, border closures, and mass deportations than occurred during his first term. Trump has vowed to carry out "the largest deportation operation in American history" and reinstate first-term policies targeting asylum-seekers and people from Muslim-majority nations.
Flor Ramirez, a community navigator at the advocacy group Arise Chicago, toldSouth Side Weekly Monday that migrants are once again experiencing the "collective fear" they felt during Trump's first term.
"It was a fear that cut through our family. I had to talk to my bishop, to tell him that if I got deported, if I could please leave him a notarized letter that he would take care of my children, because my biggest fear at that time was that my children... would be separated," she said.
In Asia and Europe, the prospect of crippling tariffs imposed by Trump is stoking fear of negative economic implications, including a weakened euro.
"Tariffs will seriously dampen the [European Union's] economic growth," Zach Meyers, assistant director of the Center for European Reform, toldFortune on Sunday.
Ukrainians and their backers are also bracing for the possibility that a President Trump would end or dramatically cut aid to Ukraine, which is fighting to defend itself against a nearly three-year Russian invasion and the occupation. Harris supports continued aid to Ukraine. Trump says he will prioritize ending the war quickly—an objective he
claims he could achieve "in 24 hours."
Far-right Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and Trump, who are mutual admirers, said Sunday that Europe will have to rethink its support for Ukraine if the Republican wins, as the continent "will not be able to bear the burdens of the war alone." Orbán opposes military aid to Ukraine.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance—who is also a U.S. senator from Ohio—has proposed letting Russia keep the Ukrainian territory it has occupied and establishing a "heavily fortified" demilitarized buffer zone along the war's front line. Ukraine would be forced to accept neutrality under the plan.
Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin—who favored Trump in the 2016 contest against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton—Harris' campaign said the proposed "Trump-Vance-Putin plan for Ukraine is a surrender plan."
"Trump won't say he wants Ukraine to win because he's rooting for Vladimir Putin," a Harris campaign spokesperson said in September."
While some Ukrainians say they want Trump to win because they believe he could help end a war of attrition that's claimed at least tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, others fear the implications of a possible end or precipitous reduction of U.S. aid.
In the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, one produce vendor with relatives living under Russian occupation, recently toldCBS News that "for us, it's a matter of survival."
"We are really strong. We will hold on," she said. "We hope America will keep helping us, and not abandon us."
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Warning Stakes 'Could Not Be Higher,' European Greens Call On Jill Stein to Drop Out
"We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House," the left bloc of parties from across Europe said.
Nov 01, 2024
Noting that the U.S. Green Party and its presidential nominee, Jill Stein, have strayed far from the values held by Green parties in countries across the globe, a coalition of European lawmakers representing the organization called on Stein to drop out of the U.S. presidential race to help prevent a victory by Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"The stakes of these elections could not be higher," reads an open letter from politicians and parties from countries including Norway, Belgium, France, Ireland. "We are clear that [Democratic Vice President] Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House."
Stein, who has run for president in the last four elections and won 1.4 million votes in 2016, is now polling between 1.1% and 1.4% and is on the ballot in a majority of states, including almost every battleground state.
The European Greens noted that they advocate "for a politics that prioritizes the planet, people, and peace above corporate greed, systemic injustice, and violence."
"The U.S. Greens are no longer a member of the global organization of Green parties," reads the letter, spearheaded by European Greens co-chairs Mélanie Vogel, a French senator, and Thomas Waitz, an Austrian member of European Parliament. "In part this fissure resulted from their relationship with parties with authoritarian leaders, and serious policy differences on key issues including Russia's full-scale assault on Ukraine."
Stein attended a dinner in Russia in 2015 with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has been critical of U.S. support for Ukraine's defense against the Russian invasion that began in 2022.
In mid-October, Stein joined former Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant at a rally where Sawant acknowledged that Stein has no chance of winning. At an event in Michigan, Sawant said the state was "ground zero to punish Kamala Harris and defeat her" for Harris' support for the Biden administration's policy in Israel and Palestine. The comment suggested to critics that Stein and her supporters view a Trump presidency as preferable to a Harris victory on November 5.
"The U.S. Green Party is attempting to go after the subset of voters on the left who don't like the Democrats," Carl Roberts, a spokesperson for Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, a political foundation affiliated with the German Green Party, toldThe Guardian in September. "I think this is quite out of step with other Green parties, who always center environmental concerns in their messaging and campaigns as one of their highest priorities."
Oras Tynkkynen, a member of Finnish Parliament representing the country's Green Party, which signed Friday's letter, said supporting Harris is "the obvious choice" for voters and politicians with "Greens values."
On Friday, the European Greens wrote that the U.S. election is taking place "at a watershed moment in the history of our planet."
"We face a climate crisis that is worsening every year, with heatwaves, floods, and a loss of biodiversity at a rate never seen before. Climate policies require democratic institutions, which we fear would be dismantled if Trump is elected," they wrote. "Right now, the race for the White House is too close for comfort. We call on Jill Stein to withdraw from the race, and endorse Kamala Harris for the presidency of the United States."
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