Climate Point: Heartbreaking heat deaths investigated
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and environment news. From Palm Springs, I'm Janet Wilson.
As 90,000 people from nearly 200 nations meeting in Dubai wrangle over whether to phase out or just reduce harmful fossil fuel emissions, impacts of worsening climate change from those sky high emissions continue to be felt around the world.
"It's heartbreaking." Hotter temperatures combined with hardline border policies near the Mexico border in New Mexico have led to the highest recorded number of heat related deaths of migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. since record-keeping began, according to a report by Lauren Villagran of the El Paso Times, along with photos by Omar Ornelas.
Dozens of women have died within half-a-mile of a state highway, where they could have tried to summon a local Good Samaritan program and received life-saving water. Instead, their heat-blackened bodies were found by a veteran state field investigator, who has measured ground temperatures as high as 150 degrees near them.
“We investigate the death to serve the living,” Laura Mae Williams said. “The family wants to know, ‘Why did my person die?’”
Man in the mirror. Sultan Al Jaber, an oil executive in the United Arab Emirates, is also president of the United Nations' 28th Council of the Parties on Climate Change currently underway, drawing protests from former Vice President Al Gore and other climate activists. Both the Sultan and the Biden administration announced concrete plans to ratchet down methane, a fast-acting greenhouse gas, as the two week event kicked off. Al Jaber announced pledges from 50 oil companies representing nearly half of global production to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030, a move that environmental groups called a “smokescreen.” Nations also agreed to launch a "loss and damage" fund for vulnerable countries.
The event, called COP28 for short, runs another week. To date, it is unclear what definitive actions to not only slow but end harmful emissions might be enacted. Stay tuned. And If you're confused or curious about the discussion around not exceeding 1.5 degrees Centigrade, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and why it's considered a crucial benchmark, Paste BN's Elizabeth Weise has a helpful explainer.
Still growing. Meanwhile, emissions continue to pile up at record levels in the atmosphere, a new UN report finds, although some countries, including historic leading polluter the U.S., have reduced emissions, and coal use here is down to its lowest level since 1903, per Paste BN's Doyle Rice.
Zoning out. Another impact of our warming atmosphere? A government "plant hardiness zone" map relied on by 80 million American gardeners has gotten an update to adjust for warmer temps and growing seasons. About half the country shifted a half-zone warmer, USDA says.
Out of the woods? A southern Georgia facility considered the world’s largest producer of wood pellets for fuel ― a process the company claims is “carbon neutral” ― is spewing as much as three times the legal amount of hazardous pollution into the air, environmental groups say. The company has applied for a "major source" hazardous release permit that would allow it to keep emitting the higher levels.
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