DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

The General Assembly has undergone tremendous changes as its influence has waned. What does the General Assembly do? Unlike the U.N. Security Council, which can impose sanctions or authorize the use of force, the General Assembly is purely deliberative. The General Assembly also appoints the U.N. secretary general, currently António Guterres, for five-year terms and the Security Council’s 10 nonpermanent members. Last year, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine delivered a searing rebuke of the Russian invasion of his country in a recorded address to the General Assembly.

Persons: ”, Peter J, Hoffman, that’s, Dr, “, it’s, Israel, António, Volodymyr Zelensky, Guterres, ’, ” Dr, Indira Gandhi of Organizations: United Nations, Assembly, Security Council, Social Council, BRICS, New School, . Security, United Nations ’, Pacific, General, Sustainable, General Assembly, Security, New Zealand —, Indira Gandhi of India Locations: Manhattan, New York City, United, New York, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Caribbean, Western Europe, Ukraine, “, South Sudan, Europe, Americas, Australia, North America, Israel, Japan, South Korea, New, ”, Oceania, America

“Russia believes that the world will grow weary and allow it to brutalize Ukraine without consequence,” Mr. Biden said as President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine watched from the audience. I respectfully suggest the answer is no.”“We have to stand up to this naked aggression today to deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow,” Mr. Biden continued. “Ask Prigozhin if one bets on Putin’s promises.”Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Zelensky received strong applause from some of the delegations in the hall, but many others did not clap. On Tuesday evening, Mr. Biden and Jill Biden were to host a reception for other world leaders at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “This is clearly a genocide,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Persons: Biden, Mr, Volodymyr Zelensky, Zelensky, Vladimir V, Moscow, ”, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin, “, Biden’s, Kevin McCarthy, we’ve, Lloyd J, Austin III, Ukraine’s, Xi Jinping, Jill Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Netanyahu, “ Slava Ukraini Organizations: appeasing Moscow, United Nations General Assembly, Republicans, United Nations, International Criminal Court, . Security, Mr, White, Pentagon, Capitol, Defense, General, appeasing, United, Soviet Union —, Turkmenistan —, Metropolitan Museum of Art, United Nations ’ Locations: Russia, Ukraine, United States, Washington, New York, Russia’s, Germany, China, Beijing, Libya, “, United Nations, Soviet Union, Soviet Union — Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, China’s, Brazil, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Moldova, Georgia, Syria, Belarus, Baltic

☆ U.N. Chief’s Test: Shaming Without Naming the World’s Climate Delinquents
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-19 | by ( Somini Sengupta | More About Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The world’s top diplomat, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, has lately been unusually blunt in his broadsides against fossil fuel producers. Not China, the world’s coal behemoth. Not Britain or the United States, who both have ambitious climate laws but continue to issue new oil and gas permits. Not the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate where a state-owned oil company executive is hosting the upcoming United Nations climate negotiations — a move that activists have decried as undermining the very legitimacy of the talks. “The rules of multilateral diplomacy and multilateral summitry are not fit for the speedy and effective response that we need,” said Richard Gowan, who decodes the rituals of the United Nations for the International Crisis Group.

Persons: António Guterres, Guterres, ”, Richard Gowan Organizations: United Nations, United Arab, International Crisis Locations: China, Britain, United States, United Arab Emirates, Nations, Portugal

Tens of thousands of people, young and old, filled the streets of Midtown Manhattan under blazing sunshine on Sunday to demand that world leaders quickly pivot away from fossil fuels dangerously heating the Earth. Their ire was sharply directed at President Biden, who is expected to arrive in New York Sunday night for several fund-raisers this week and to speak before the United Nations General Assembly session that begins Tuesday. “Biden, you should be scared of us,” Emma Buretta, 17, a New York City high school student and an organizer with the Fridays for Future movement, shouted at a rally ahead of the march. “If you want our vote, if you don’t want the blood of our generations to be on your hands, end fossil fuels.”The Biden administration has shepherded through the United States’ most ambitious climate law and is working to transition the country to wind, solar and other renewable energy. But it has also continued to approve permits for new oil and gas drilling.

Persons: Biden, “ Biden, ” Emma Buretta, ” Organizations: United Nations General Assembly, New York City, United Locations: Midtown Manhattan, New York, New, United States

☆ The ‘Forever’ Glaciers of America’s West Aren’t Forever Anymore
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-12 | by ( Somini Sengupta | More About Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Mount Rainier is losing its glaciers. That is all the more striking as it is the most glacier-covered mountain in the contiguous United States. The changes reflect a stark global reality: Mountain glaciers are vanishing as the burning of fossil fuels heats up Earth’s atmosphere. According to the World Glacier Monitoring Service, total glacier area has shrunk steadily in the last half-century; some of the steepest declines have been in the Western United States and Canada. Mount Rainier National Park, a popular tourist destination that gets roughly 2 million visitors every year, is feeling the effects acutely.

Organizations: Rainier, Monitoring, Western, Mount Rainier Locations: United States, Western United States, Canada

☆ Join the Times Climate Event With Bill Gates, Marie Kondo and Others
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-07 | by ( The New York Times | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Climate change is an issue that stretches across borders, touching every facet of our lives. On Sept. 21, The New York Times will bring together newsmakers, including innovators, activists, scientists and policymakers, for an all-day event examining the actions needed to confront climate change. Signing up for the livestream will also give you an opportunity to connect with other online attendees on the messaging platform Slack. Each day will feature a different topic and guests, along with prompts from Times editorial staff. Details about the Slack channel and event schedule will be shared after registering.

Persons: Ajay Banga, Al Gore, United States Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Ebony Twilley Martin, Greenpeace USA Eleni Myrivili, Marie Kondo, Michael R, Bloomberg L.P, Bloomberg Philanthropies Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Gelles, Somini Sengupta, Kim Severson Organizations: New York Times, Times, World Bank, United, Breakthrough Energy, Greenpeace USA, Resilience, KonMari, Bloomberg Locations: United States

☆ Climate Risks Loom Over Panama Canal, a Vital Global Trade Link
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-25 | by ( Somini Sengupta | More About Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Shallow waters, meet Christmas shopping. There could be multiple droughts affecting several trade routes at the same time, disturbing the transport (and subsequent prices) of many types of goods like liquefied natural gas and coffee beans. That is a looming risk in a world that has become accustomed to everything everywhere at all seasons. Last year, for instance, as Europe faced its worst dry spell in 500 years, ships carried a fraction of the cargo they normally do along the Rhine in Germany, one of the continent’s most important thoroughfares. The Rhine’s water levels are better this year, but the river faces a longer-term climate risk: The mountain snow and ice that feeds the Rhine is declining.

Locations: United States, Panama, Midwest, Mississippi, Europe, Germany

☆ Extreme August Arrives With a Warning: Expect More
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-22 | by ( Somini Sengupta | More About Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In India, torrential rains triggered deadly landslides, Morocco and Japan hit new heat records, and southern Europe braced for another scorching heat wave. Those extremes have also brought high-stakes tests for public officials: Where public alerts and education worked, death and destruction were minimized. Maui has so far recorded more than 100 deaths from the blaze that started Aug. 8, and that number is projected to rise. Not all of the extreme weather events can be immediately attributed to climate change. Scientists have repeatedly warned of more heat, wildfires, droughts and intense rainfall with every degree of future warming.

Persons: El Locations: United States, Texas, Maui, India, Morocco, Japan, Europe

☆ Texas Sent Migrants Into California’s Storm Emergency, Aid Groups Say
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-22 | by ( Somini Sengupta | More About Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Texas has shipped out the latest busload of migrants who had crossed the border from Mexico, this time sending them into Los Angeles as it was struggling to keep residents safe from Tropical Storm Hilary. The busload of 37 migrants left the border city of Brownsville at 5 p.m. on Sunday, just as Southern California and much of the surrounding area was in a state of emergency, according to a coalition of advocacy groups that received them. The largest group of people on the bus were from Venezuela, with the rest from Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Ecuador. Also in the group were 15 children, including a 3-week-old baby. Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, an aid groups that supports asylum seekers, called the Texas officials’ decision to send them into a storm zone “reckless.”

Persons: Hilary, Lindsay Toczylowski Organizations: Texas, Immigrant Defenders Law Center Locations: Mexico, Los Angeles, Brownsville, Southern California, Venezuela, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Ecuador, Texas

☆ Thanks, From Your Newsletter Anchor
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Somini Sengupta | More About Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Today, I wrap up my turn at helming this newsletter. It’s why I chose to anchor this newsletter for you. I wanted to show you, in short, bite-size pieces, not just the perils of global warming, but who is doing what to address it. I wanted to walk us through sometimes impenetrable debates and explain, simply, how it matters for everyday people in our everyday lives. I wrote from a place of neither hope nor despair, exactly, but from the perspective of an OK-now-what-do-we-do pragmatist.

Persons: Douglas Alteen, Manuela Andreoni, Claire O’Neill, Adam Pasick, Sharm el Sheikh, “ Locations: Sharm el

☆ A New Kind of Disaster Aid: Pay People Cash, Before Disaster Strikes
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-03 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the United States, cash assistance to mothers for the first year of their children’s lives strengthened their babies’ brain development. Dozens of American cities have pilot projects to give poor residents no-strings-attached cash. Now comes the additional pressure of extreme weather, both slow and fast, aggravated by the burning of coal, oil and gas. Proponents of cash relief say it’s a more efficient way to use aid money because cash incurs fewer logistical expenses and funnels money directly into the local economy. “Cash transfers help families survive climate disasters,” said Miriam Laker-Oketta, research director for GiveDirectly, an aid group that does just that.

Persons: Cash, ”, Miriam Laker, “, Wanjira Mathai, Hurricane Julia Organizations: ”, World Resources Institute, International Federation of Red Locations: United States, Guatemala, Honduras

☆ Dangerous Heat and Heavy Wildfire Smoke March Across North America
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A treacherous one-two punch of heat and fire, aggravated by the burning of oil and gas, scorched a large swath of North America on Thursday, killing at least 15 people in the United States in recent days, sickening countless others, closing schools and testing basic services that remain unprepared for the new perils of summer. In the United States, a heat dome stretched from Texas to Florida all the way up to the tip of Missouri, ratcheting up the heat index — a combination of temperature and humidity — to above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in some places. Temperatures were projected to climb 15 to 20 degrees above normal in much of the region through the weekend. And in coming days, a new heat dome was expected to form over California. Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley, a region where thousands of farm workers labor outdoors for hours, are under excessive heat warnings, the Weather Service said.

Persons: it’s, ratcheting Organizations: California ., San, Weather Service Locations: North America, United States, Texas, Florida, Missouri, California, California . Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley

☆ Here’s a Look at the Water Crises That Might Be Coming to You Soon
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-25 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Bangladesh is a land of water. Now, its most profound threat is water, in its many terrible incarnations: drought, deluge, cyclones, saltwater. The people of Bangladesh are rushing to harvest rice as soon as they get word of heavy rains upstream. They’re building floating beds of water hyacinths to grow vegetables beyond the reach of floodwaters. And where they’re running out of even drinking water, they’re learning to drink every drop of rain.

Locations: Bangladesh, Bengal

☆ Why a Huge Coal Power Plant in Bangladesh Keeps Running Out of Coal
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-18 | by ( Somini Sengupta | Julfikar Ali Manik | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

One of the world’s newest, most contested coal-burning power plants began operation in December. The troubles facing the Maitree power plant are a glimpse into the risks that other new coal plants around the world could face in coming years, for a variety of reasons. Maitree shut down temporarily because of a shortage of foreign currency to import coal from Indonesia. That happened because the value of the Bangladeshi taka shrank, while commodity prices, including coal, rose sharply. Other coal plants elsewhere are at risk of sitting idle in coming years because coal could soon lose its appeal as the cheapest source of electricity.

Persons: Maitree, taka Locations: Indonesia

☆ How Africa Can Help the World
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-16 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Next week in Paris, a critical diplomatic meeting begins on how to enable low-income, climate-vulnerable countries to grow their economies while reducing their dependence on fossil fuels. It reminds me of my recent conversation with Wanjira Mathai, managing director for Africa and global partnerships at the World Resources Institute, and Rebekah Shirley, the Africa deputy director. “Can Africa leapfrog?” I asked them. We spoke for two hours over lunch on the terrace of a restaurant in Nairobi as marabou storks squawked and flew across the sky. Our conversation made me think in fresh ways, which is what I hope Climate Forward occasionally does for you.

Persons: Wanjira Mathai, Rebekah Shirley, “, ” Organizations: World Resources Institute Locations: Paris, Africa, Nairobi

☆ Americans and Their Cars
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Summertime is road trip time for many of us in the United States. That makes it a good time to look at what our relationship with the road has meant for global warming. The data crunchers at the Frontier Group, a research organization focused on sustainability, sought to answer that question by looking at gasoline consumption since 1949, the year the United States started tracking transportation data. They estimated that if American cars, S.U.V.s and pickup trucks were their own country, they would be the sixth-largest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions since 1949, putting them behind the total national carbon dioxide emissions produced by the United States, China, Russia, Germany and Japan. Add other forms of transportation, including heavy trucks, trains and planes, and U.S. transportation would be the fourth-largest carbon emitter, producing around 6.5 percent of the carbon dioxide that’s accumulated in the atmosphere over the last seven decades.

Organizations: Frontier Group Locations: United States, China, Russia, Germany, Japan, U.S

☆ Will Wildfires Like These Become the New Normal?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

That has created the conditions for more frequent and intense heat waves. That extra heat in the atmosphere has created a greater likelihood of extreme, sometimes catastrophic, weather all over the world. While that doesn’t mean the same extremes in the same places all the time, certain places are more susceptible to certain disasters, by virtue of geography. In places that become hot and dry, wildfires can become more prevalent or intense. The unifying fact is that more heat is the new normal.

Organizations: Eastern Locations: Eastern United States, Australia

Rey Steve Mabiala and his wife, Liz Gouari, taking refuge at the Roberval emergency center after being ordered to evacuate Chibougamau, Quebec, as a fire approached. Of the more than 400 fires now burning in Canada, more than one-third are in Quebec, which has already registered its worst wildfire season on record. Credit... Carlos Osorio/Reuters“We are facing some unprecedented events, including droughts, accelerated fires and heat waves, and there will be more over time, especially forest fires,” Ms. Mohsin said. But perhaps most surprised were newcomers to Chibougamau, like Mr. Mabiala, from the Republic of Congo, who came to work in logging. “They were asking, “Oh, is there such a thing in Canada?’ ’’ Ms. Cabrera said.

Persons: Rey Steve Mabiala, Liz Gouari, Gouari, Mabiala, Prince Edward Island, ” Mr, “ It’s, ”, Josée Poitras, Tanzina Mohsin, Carlos Osorio, Ms, Mohsin, Poitras, “ I’ve, I’ve, Francis Côté, “, Chibougamau, Renaud Philippe, Côté, Guy Boisvert, Winters, Boisvert, Shirley, Jonathan Mattson, Mr, Mattson, Ruth Cabrera, Anna Huerte, —, Cabrera, Huerte Organizations: Wildfire, University of Toronto, ., Reuters, The New York Times, “, Credit Locations: Chibougamau, Quebec, Africa, Canada, North America, Republic of Congo, Prince, Nunavut, Fort Nelson, British Columbia, Toronto, Val, Montreal, Roberval, East Coast, United States, Philippines

☆ Record Pollution and Heat Herald a Season of Climate Extremes
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-08 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Fires are burning across the breadth of Canada, blanketing parts of the eastern United States with choking, orange-gray smoke. Puerto Rico is under a severe heat alert as are other parts of the world. Human-caused climate change is a force behind extremes like these. Scientists are also warning that before the end of the year a global weather pattern known as El Niño could arrive, potentially setting new heat records. Taken together, the week’s extremes offer one clear takeaway: The world’s richest continent remains unprepared for the hazards of the not-too-distant future.

Persons: It’s, El Niño, Justin Trudeau, ” Organizations: Northern Locations: Canada, United States, Puerto Rico, North America, El

☆ Rice. Half of Humanity Eats It. And Climate Change Is Wrecking It.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-20 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +12 min

Sometimes there’s not enough rain when seedlings need water, or too much when the plants need to keep their heads above water. Rice farmers are shifting their planting calendars. On top of that, there’s climate change: It has upended the rhythm of sunshine and rain that rice depends on. That’s a fraction of the emissions from coal, oil and gas, which together account for 35 percent of methane emissions. His experiment, carried out over seven years, concluded that by not flooding the fields continuously, farmers can reduce rice methane emissions by more than 60 percent.

☆ Ideas, and Coffee, Robust Enough for the Climate Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As a climate journalist, I get asked a perennial question by my fellow Americans: What do I do in the face of a crisis so big and complicated? The answer I witnessed on a recent reporting trip to East and Southern Africa: everything. In Uganda, coffee farmers are beginning to switch away from robusta, the coffee species they’ve grown and shipped abroad for decades but that is falling prey to droughts and diseases aggravated by climate change. Instead, they’re growing a totally different and tougher coffee called excelsa, a variety of the native species Liberica. They were trying to be less poor, because being less poor is the best way to be more resilient to climate shocks.

☆ Looking for a Climate Career? They Might Have the Answer.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

She became intrigued by land use changes, and then, gradually, by the links between climate change and sustainable food systems. Kolman, who grew up in Savannah, Ga., majored in physics and political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I spent my time in undergrad searching for a career where I could use my analytical skills to improve society,” he told me. A trip to South Africa, which has dealt with successive droughts exacerbated by climate change, brought home “the impacts of water insecurity.”He considered working in public policy but those plans changed after the 2016 election. Kossoff, who calls herself the “most recent climate convert,” grew up mostly in southwest Florida and studied business and chemistry at Emory University.

☆ African Farmers May Have a Coffee Robust Enough for the Climate Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The two coffee species that most of us drink — Arabica and robusta — are at grave risk in the era of climate change. Farmers in one of Africa’s biggest coffee exporting countries are growing a whole other coffee species that better withstands the heat, drought and disease supersized by global warming. This year, they’re trying to sell it to the world under its own true name: Liberica excelsa. “Even if there’s too much heat, it does fine,” said Golooba John, a coffee farmer near the town of Zirobwe in central Uganda. For the past several years, as his robusta trees have succumbed to pests and disease, he has replaced them with Liberica trees.

☆ Meet the Climate Hackers of Malawi
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When it comes to growing food, some of the smallest farmers in the world are becoming some of the most creative farmers in the world. Like Judith Harry and her neighbors, they are sowing pigeon peas to shade their soils from a hotter, more scorching sun. A few are turning away from one legacy of European colonialism, the practice of planting rows and rows of maize, or corn, and saturating the fields with chemical fertilizers. “That might save your season.”It’s not just Ms. Harry and her neighbors in Malawi, a largely agrarian nation of 19 million on the front lines of climate hazards. Their scrappy, throw-everything-at-the-wall array of innovations is multiplied by small subsistence farmers elsewhere in the world.

☆ The Next Frontier in Farming? The Ocean.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Somini Sengupta | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +10 min

For centuries, it’s been treasured in kitchens in Asia and neglected almost everywhere else: Those glistening ribbons of seaweed that bend and bloom in cold ocean waves. Far beyond South Korea, new farms have cropped up in Maine, the Faroe Islands, Australia, even the North Sea. But even as its champions see it as a miracle crop for a hotter planet, others worry that the zeal to farm the ocean could replicate some of the same damages of farming on land. “Seaweed is not going to replace all plastic, but seaweed combined with other things can tackle single use plastic,” he said. Seaweed farms are a far cry from the rows of corn and wheat that make up monoculture farming on land.

Search resuls for: "Somini"

25 mentions found