AFP

China has challenged the US to fix relations with Beijing in order to make progress on climate change, the foreign ministry said Thursday, with Washington’s climate envoy visiting to press the world’s top polluter to slash emissions.

Tensions between China and the United States have soared in recent months with the two sides trading barbs on Beijing’s human rights record and its initial handling of the coronavirus.

Tackling climate change is among a handful of issues where the two sides had struck notes of harmony.

But Beijing has in recent months emphasised that environmental cooperation could be hurt by deteriorating Sino-US relations.

Wang on Wednesday told US climate envoy John Kerry during a China visit that climate cooperation could not be disentangled from broader diplomacy between the two countries. 

In a video call from separate rooms with Kerry, Wang accused Washington of a “major strategic miscalculation towards China”, according to the ministry statement.

“It is impossible for China-US climate cooperation to be elevated above the overall environment of China-US relations,” Wang said.

Kerry, who visited Japan earlier this week before travelling to meet with his Chinese counterpart in Tianjin, said China “plays a super critical role” in tackling climate change, according to footage of the call published by state broadcaster CCTV.

“I think the challenge is as big as any that we face on a global basis,” Kerry told Wang.

But Wang said on Wednesday that “the ball is now in the United States’ court, and the US should stop seeing China as a threat and opponent.”

The US envoy has repeatedly urged China, the world’s largest polluter, to step up its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, calling on Beijing during the earlier Japan leg of his trip to “fulfil the responsibility appropriate to their status.”

China is the world’s current largest emitter of carbon dioxide, followed by the US, which has historically emitted more than any other country to date.

While China has promised to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060, the country continues to be heavily dependent on coal, which fuels nearly 60 percent of its energy consumption.

The remnants of Hurricane Ida wreaked further havoc as it moved up the northeastern United States, causing tornadoes and significant flooding, including in New York City. 

“Significant and life-threatening flash flooding is likely from the Mid-Atlantic into southern New England,” the National Weather Service said in a bulletin, adding three to eight inches of rain could drench the region through Thursday.

New York City issued a rare flash flood emergency warning on Wednesday, urging residents to move to higher ground. 

Flooding in Maryland killed a 19-year-old man and left another person missing after a building was inundated on Wednesday, bringing the death toll from Ida to seven.

Ida slammed into the southern United States on Sunday. It has since weakened, but has caused severe flooding and tornadoes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland, where in Annapolis, 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the US capital, a tornado ripped up trees and toppled electricity poles.

The NWS warned the threat of tornadoes would linger through Wednesday night, with tornado watches in effect in parts of southern Connecticut, northern New Jersey, and southern New York.

“Take shelter NOW. Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter. Move to a lower floor and stay away from windows,” tweeted New York City’s emergency notification body, later announcing multiple road closures across boroughs of the major metropolis, including Manhattan, The Bronx and Queens, due to flooding.

“This is extremely dangerous and potentially deadly flash flooding ongoing in Somerset County, as well as others in the area,” the NWS account for Philadelphia metropolitan area tweeted late Wednesday, along with a video of a car trapped in churning water.

Ida is expected to continue steaming north and bring heavy rainfall on Thursday to New England, which was hit by a rare tropical storm in late August. 

US President Joe Biden is due to travel Friday to Louisiana, where Ida destroyed buildings and left more than a million homes without power. 

Hurricanes are common in the southern United States, but scientists have warned of a rise in cyclone activity as the ocean surface warms due to climate change, posing an increasing threat to the world’s coastal communities.

The world’s main central banks were seen as saviors of the global economy in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and when the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, but they are less than unified when it comes to addressing climate change.

– Why are they involved? –

The start of central bank involvement in climate action is sometimes attributed to a 2015 speech by the Bank of England’s (BOE) then-governor Mark Carney entitled “Breaking the tragedy of the horizon — climate change and financial stability.”

While not directly involved in addressing global warming, central banks do have to be alert to its impact on the economy and the financial system.

Amid increasing public concern, the institutions are factoring considerations about climate into their policies and watching for threats to their main mandate for price stability, implications for banking supervision and economic growth more broadly.

-What can they do? –

One tool at their disposal are bank stress tests, which can gauge how financial institutions would hold up in the face of climate shocks. 

While the European Central Bank (ECB) has only just launched a climate stress test initiative, the Bank of France by May had already examined nine banking groups and 15 insurance companies, revealing a moderate risk for these establishments. 

The ECB also could take climate risk into consideration when buying corporate bonds or accepting those used for collateral, giving preference to assets of firms not involved in polluting activities.

The People’s Bank of China also is considering climate stress tests, while the BOE started in June, reviewing banks such as HSBC and Barclays. It also should announce before the end of the year its program of greening its asset buybacks.

Many central banks have joined the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), which currently comprises 95 central banks and regulators, including those in China, India and Brazil. 

Another member, the Bank of Japan (BOJ), in June offered zero-interest financing to lending institutions that fund environmental projects. The BOJ also will buy green bonds denominated in foreign currency. 

In the United States, the Federal Reserve has been wading into the issue, but Chair Jerome Powell said in June that “climate change is not something that we directly consider in setting monetary policy.”

However, “climate-related financial risk” is in its purview, he said, so the Fed is looking at the implications for bank supervision and regulation of the US financial system.

Mary Daly, president of the Fed’s San Francisco branch, explained that the central bank “does not have the tools or nor is it the appropriate body to think about climate change and mitigating climate change.”

But “we are absolutely involved in thinking about climate risk” including issues like how severe weather, fires and hurricanes can impact property values and the ability to get insurance, as well as how those could affect economic growth.

– Are they acting with sufficient urgency? –

Actions so far have been “fast and slow,” said Eric Dor, director of economic studies at the IESEG School of Management in France.

While there is no shortage of ideas, “putting them into practice is very complex, you have to convince many stakeholders,” he said.

But whether that means imposing financial constraints on institutions during stress tests, or the selection of green assets to buy, “you have to be progressive.”

Central bankers of the richest nations are urging governments to take the lead in addressing climate issues, as they did in the two most recent economic crises.

“It is governments, not central banks, who are primarily responsible for facilitating an orderly transition, and who control the main required tools,” ECB President Christine Lagarde said in July.

Romain Svartzman, economist at the Bank of France and co-author of a report entitled “The Green Swan” which examines the climate risks to the financial system, says central banks have a role to play, “but trying to solve it on their own will get nowhere.”

“There is no point in a central bank moving on its own in a country where the government does nothing, and vice versa.” 

The number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon as the burning season opened in August fell slightly from 2020, but remained close to the near-decade highs seen under President Jair Bolsonaro, new data showed Wednesday.

Brazil’s space agency, INPE, recorded 28,060 fires in the Brazilian Amazon last month — down 4.3 percent from August 2020, but well above the average of 18,000 for the decade before Bolsonaro took office in 2019.

The far-right president, who has pushed to open protected lands to agribusiness and mining, has presided over a surge of deforestation in the Amazon.

Under his administration, Brazil’s share of the Amazon has lost around 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles) of forest cover a year — an area nearly the size of Lebanon.

That is up from around 6,500 square kilometers per year during the previous decade.

The number of fires has surged, too.

“The amount of fires registered each August has reached absurd levels since 2019,” said Cristiane Mazzetti, of environmental group Greenpeace, condemning a new “Bolsonaro standard” of destruction.

Fires often increase in the Amazon when dryer weather arrives from around August to November, as farmers, ranchers and land speculators fell trees, then burn them to clear the land.

Scientists say natural wildfires are virtually non-existent in the famously wet Amazon.

In 2019, Bolsonaro’s first year in office, a sharp rise in Amazon fires caused worldwide outcry and fueled fears for the future of the world’s biggest rainforest, a key resource in the race to curb climate change.

INPE recorded 30,900 fires in August 2019, up from 10,421 the year before.

The agency’s figures go back to 1998. The worst August on record was 2005, with 63,764 fires.

Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), said this year’s fire season would depend on climate factors such as rainfall.

But “we are still at about the same level as in 2019,” she told AFP.

“It’s like we’re getting used to these very high numbers.”

Environmentalists are also concerned over a sharp increase in fires in the huge Pantanal wetlands south of the Amazon, around a quarter of which was devastated by fires last year.

The region is again facing a record drought this year.

Moderna on Wednesday announced it had begun submitting an application to the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize a booster of its Covid vaccine after trial data showed a significant increase in antibodies against variants.

The third shot of the vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, was given to 344 participants in a study six months after their second dose.

The first two doses were 100 micrograms, while the booster was half that at 50 micrograms. 

An analysis showed the booster increased neutralizing antibody levels against variants of concern, including Delta by more than 42.3-fold, Gamma by 43.6-fold, and Beta by 32-fold, with similar gains seen across age groups including over-65s.

Ultra-contagious Delta, first identified in India, is now the dominant strain globally.

“We remain committed to staying ahead of the virus and following the evolving epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2,” Stephane Bancel, the company’s CEO, said in a statement.

The company said it was also planning submissions to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and other regulatory authorities in the coming days.

While Moderna is submitting data for a repetition of its first vaccine, which was developed against the original strain first identified in Wuhan, China, the company has previously tested a variant-specific booster against Beta, which was first identified in South Africa but has faded considerably in recent months.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has begun offering third Covid vaccine doses to immunocompromised people and plans to widen boosters to everyone eligible, eight months after their second dose, starting September 20.

That decision has left many health experts baffled, because although there is evidence that vaccine efficacy is waning against infection, it has remained largely stable against hospitalization and deaths — the purpose for which the shots were conceived.

The move has also been criticized on the basis that most developing countries at this time don’t even have enough vaccines to give their populations their first or second doses. 

Beyond the questionable ethics and politics of failing to provide vaccines to poor countries, leaving these regions under-vaccinated for a prolonged period of time risks incubating new and possibly more dangerous variants that could evade the protective action of the current generation of vaccines. 

Also on Wednesday, the FDA announced it would hold a meeting on September 17 to evaluate whether to authorize a third booster dose of Pfizer’s mRNA Covid shot.

The number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon as the burning season opened in August fell slightly from 2020, but remained close to the near-decade highs seen under President Jair Bolsonaro, new data showed Wednesday.

Brazil’s space agency, INPE, recorded 28,060 fires in the Brazilian Amazon last month — down 4.3 percent from August 2020, but well above the average of 18,000 for the decade before Bolsonaro took office in 2019.

The far-right president, who has pushed to open protected lands to agribusiness and mining, has presided over a surge of deforestation in the Amazon.

Under his administration, Brazil’s share of the Amazon has lost around 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles) of forest cover a year — an area nearly the size of Lebanon.

That is up from around 6,500 square kilometers per year during the previous decade.

The number of fires has surged, too.

“The amount of fires registered each August has reached absurd levels since 2019,” said Cristiane Mazzetti, of environmental group Greenpeace, condemning a new “Bolsonaro standard” of destruction.

Fires often increase in the Amazon when dryer weather arrives from around August to November, as farmers, ranchers and land speculators fell trees, then burn them to clear the land.

Scientists say natural wildfires are virtually non-existent in the famously wet Amazon.

In 2019, Bolsonaro’s first year in office, a sharp rise in Amazon fires caused worldwide outcry and fueled fears for the future of the world’s biggest rainforest, a key resource in the race to curb climate change.

INPE recorded 30,900 fires in August 2019, up from 10,421 the year before.

The agency’s figures go back to 1998. The worst August on record was 2005, with 63,764 fires.

Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), said this year’s fire season would depend on climate factors such as rainfall.

But “we are still at about the same level as in 2019,” she told AFP.

“It’s like we’re getting used to these very high numbers.”

Environmentalists are also concerned over a sharp increase in fires in the huge Pantanal wetlands south of the Amazon, around a quarter of which was devastated by fires last year.

The region is again facing a record drought this year.

Around a third of all the world’s tree species are threatened with extinction, according to a global index published Wednesday, warning that climate change could tip some forests into ecosystem collapse.     

Land clearance for farming — both crops and livestock — and logging are by far the biggest threats to trees, the State of the World’s Trees report said, adding that climate change was also “having a clearly measurable impact”.

The study looked at the risks to 58,497 tree species worldwide and found that 30 percent (17,500) are threatened with extinction, with a further seven percent listed as “possibly threatened”. 

For 21 percent of species there was not enough data for an evaluation, and just over 40 percent were listed as “not threatened”. 

Well-known trees such as magnolias were among the most threatened, while oaks, maples and ebonies were also deemed at risk. 

Some 142 tree species were found to be extinct, and more than 440 have fewer than 50 individual trees in the wild. 

“Many tree species are on the brink of extinction, some represented by one last living individual,” said Jean-Christophe Vie, Director General of Fondation Franklinia, in a foreword to the report. 

He said it was “shocking” that deforestation rates remain so high, given the crucial role that trees play — providing habitat for a huge proportion of the world’s animals and plants, slowing climate change by absorbing carbon, and providing ingredients for medicines.  

Brazil, home to large swathes of Amazon rainforest that is increasingly under threat from massive agricultural expansion and logging, has the most tree species (8,847) and also the largest number of threatened trees (1,788). 

But the highest proportion of threatened species was found to be in tropical Africa, especially in islands like Madagascar and Mauritius where 59 percent and 57 percent of tree species respectively are threatened. 

– Ecosystem collapse –

The report also raised concerns that the destruction can cascade across ecosystems affecting communities of trees.  

Notable examples include the loss of a million hectares of spruce species in Alaska and some ten million hectares of lodgepole pine in British Columbia.  

Forest ecosystems can collapse when they are subjected to multiple stressors — like fire, logging and the break up of habitat — that have the potential to interact and “drive abrupt ecological change”, the report said. 

“However, climate change has the potential to become the principal driver of collapse in most, if not all, types of forest ecosystem,” said Adrian Newton, Director of Conservation Ecology at Bournemouth University, in the report. 

The impacts of a changing climate and severe weather — listed as a direct threat to more than a thousand species — include shifting habitats, increasing storms and floods, as well as more fires, pests and disease. 

– ‘Huge opportunity’ –

  

The five-year assessment was coordinated by Botanic Gardens Conservation International and specialists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which holds a key biodiversity conference in France this week. 

Vie said that the strong focus on restoring forests to mitigate the effects of climate change was a “huge opportunity to change this dire picture”. 

But he said it was crucial to make sure the right trees are planted in the right places.     

“Tree species that have evolved over millions of years, adapting to changing climates, can no longer survive the onslaught of human threats,” said Vie.  

“How short-sighted are we to allow the loss of tree species on which global society is ecologically and economically dependent. If we could only learn to respect trees, undoubtedly many environmental challenges would greatly benefit.”

An oil slick spreading from a Syrian power plant pulled away from the breakaway north of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus on Wednesday thanks to shifting winds.

The internationally isolated government of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) — recognised only by Ankara — has been watching for days as an estimated 20,000 tonnes of fuel oil drifts toward the region’s northeastern tip.

Emergency workers tried to contain the spillage by roping it off with booms tossed from ships some 15 nautical miles (28 kilometres) off the shore.

Top ministers had warned that at least some of the oil could reach the scenic Karpaz peninsula on Friday.

But they sounded more positive after noticing that winds had begun pushing the oil back up north and away from the coast.

“The weather conditions continue to be in our favour,” tourism and environment undersecretary Serhan Aktunc said.

The minister added that beachgoers should remain “vigilant” until Friday in case the winds change direction again.

“There is no problem in our sea now,” he said.

But Aktunc and other officials warned that marine life remained threatened because some of the oil had started to solidify and sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Republic of Cyprus — whose overwhelming majority are Greek Cypriots and which has been a European Union member since 2004 — has effective control over the southern two-thirds of the island.

Officials there on Wednesday reported detecting traces of oil some 30 nautical miles off its eastern-most coast.

The TRNC government has relied almost exclusively on financial and other assistance from Turkey since breaking away in 1974.

Turkey has already sent two ships to help contain and collect the spillage.

Turkish transport and environment ministers have also been advising the North about how to respond.

Officials in war-torn Syria have provided few details about what may have caused fuel to start leaking from the oil-operated Baniyas Thermal Station last week.

Syria’s electricity minister had told a pro-government newspaper Monday that the size of the leak ranged from two to four tonnes of fuel.

More than three million people have been affected by the annual monsoon deluge as torrential rains pummel eastern India, officials said Wednesday, with villagers fleeing to higher ground and wildlife sanctuaries underwater.

Monsoons are crucial to replenishing water supplies after the scorching summer season but also cause widespread death and destruction across South Asia each year.

The storms have been worsened by climate change, experts say.

India’s poorest state Bihar and wildlife-rich Assam have been hit by incessant rains for a week, with swollen rivers bursting their banks and stranding thousands of people in villages.

In Assam, water levels for the Brahmaputra — a mighty transborder Himalayan river system — have risen above their “danger levels”, a water resource department official told AFP.

Villager Amshar Ali said locals were struggling with basic needs.

“We are in great suffering. It is difficult to get food, drinking water and other essential items,” Ali told AFP.

“Many villagers do not have their own boats, so people are suffering.”

Farmer Liyakat Ali said he had to move his livestock to a friend’s property after his house was submerged.

“The floodwaters have risen to above four to five feet (1.2-1.5 metres) in the last two days,” he told AFP.

Up to 80 percent of the Kaziranga National Park and Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary — both along the Brahmaputra and home to rare one-horned rhinoceroses — were underwater, officials said.

“All the wild animals are taking shelter on higher lands in the sanctuary,” Pobitora ranger Nayanjyoti Das told AFP.

Assam officials said at least 11 animals — including two swamp deer, eight hog deer and one capped langur — have been killed in the floods.

“We have been surviving on dry food grains as our kitchen is in chest-deep water,” villager Prem Yadav told AFP from his rooftop, where he and his family have been sleeping since Saturday in Bihar’s Gopalganj district.

The homes of villagers in other low-lying areas were also inundated with floodwaters, forcing them to take shelter at nearby embankments and roads.

More than 3.2 million people in over 2,200 villages in 17 districts in Bihar have been impacted by the rising waters since last week, authorities said.

Some 215,000 people were evacuated from their homes.

Since the start of the monsoon season in June, some 43 people have died in Bihar, according to official data.

The India Meteorological Department said the heavy downpours could continue in the two states until Thursday.

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Weather-related disasters have skyrocketed over the past half-century, causing far more damage even as better warning systems have meant fewer deaths, the UN said Wednesday.

A report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) examined mortality and economic losses from weather, climate and water extremes between 1970 and 2019.

It found that such disasters have increased fivefold during that period, driven largely by a warming planet, and warned the upward trend would continue.

“The number of weather, climate and water extremes are increasing and will become more frequent and severe in many parts of the world as a result of climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

In total, there were more than 11,000 disasters attributed to these hazards globally since 1970, causing more than two million deaths and some $3.64 trillion in losses.

Hurricane Ida, which slammed into the US Gulf Coast at the weekend and killed at least four people, could become the costliest weather disaster on record, Taalas told reporters.

“There is a chance that the economic cost will be higher then Katrina,” he said, while adding that improved prevention and protection measures had ensured that Ida caused only a fraction of the casualties of the giant storm that devastated the same area exactly 16 years earlier.

Until now, Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and destroyed large parts of New Orleans, had been considered by far the costliest weather-related disaster, racking up nearly $164 billion in economic losses.

– 115 deaths each day –

On average, a disaster linked to weather, climate and water extremes has thus occurred every single day over the past 50 years, killing 115 people and causing $202 million in daily losses, the WMO report found.

More than 91 percent of the deaths occurred in developing countries, it said.

Droughts were responsible for the largest losses of human life during the period, alone accounting for some 650,000 deaths, while storms have left over 577,000 people dead.

Floods have meanwhile killed nearly 59,000 over the past 50 years and extreme temperatures have killed close to 56,000, the report found.

On a positive note, the report found that even as the number of weather and climate-related disasters ballooned over the past half-century, the number of associated deaths declined nearly threefold.

The toll fell from over 50,000 deaths each year in the 1970s to fewer than 20,000 in the 2010s, WMO said.

And while the 1970s and 1980 reported an average of 170 related deaths per day, the daily average in the 1990s fell to 90, and then to 40 in the 2010s.

Taalas said dramatic improvements in early warning systems were largely to thank for the drop in deaths.

“Quite simply, we are better than ever before at saving lives,” he said.

– More people exposed –

WMO stressed though that much remains to be done, with only half of the agency’s 193 member states currently housing the life-saving multi-hazard early warning systems.

It also cautioned that severe gaps remained in weather and hydrological observing networks in Africa and parts of Latin America and in Pacific and Caribbean island states.

Mami Mizutori, who heads the UN office for disaster risk reduction, also hailed the life-saving impact of the improved early warning systems.

But she warned that “the number of people exposed to disaster risk is increasing due to population growth in hazard-exposed areas and the growing intensity and frequency of weather events.”

And while early warning systems save lives, they have done little to shield disaster-prone areas from swelling economic damage.

In fact, the reported losses from 2010 to 2019 stood at $383 million per day — seven times more than the some $49 million in average daily losses in the 1970s.

Seven of the costliest 10 disasters in the past 50 years have happened since Katrina hit in 2005, with three of them in 2017 alone: Hurricane Harvey, which caused nearly $97 billion in damages, followed by Maria at close to $70 billion and Irma at almost $60 billion.