Whitest-ever paint could help cool heating Earth, study shows

Damian Carrington

New paint reflects 98% of sunlight as well as radiating infrared heat into space, reducing need for air conditioning

Prof Xiulin Ruan, a professor of mechanical engineering, with a sample of the paint. Photograph: Jared Pike/Purdue University

The whitest-ever paint has been produced by academic researchers, with the aim of boosting the cooling of buildings and tackling the climate crisis.

The new paint reflects 98% of sunlight as well as radiating infrared heat through the atmosphere into space. In tests, it cooled surfaces by 4.5C below the ambient temperature, even in strong sunlight. The researchers said the paint could be on the market in one or two years.

White-painted roofs have been used to cool buildings for centuries. As global heating pushes temperatures up, the technique is also being used on modern city buildings, such as in Ahmedabad in India and New York City in the US.

Currently available reflective white paints are far better than dark roofing materials, but only reflect 80-90% of sunlight and absorb UV light. This means they cannot cool surfaces below ambient temperatures. The new paint does this, leading to less need for air conditioning and the carbon emissions they produce, which are rising rapidly.

“Our paint can help fight against global warming by helping to cool the Earth – that’s the cool point,” said Prof Xiulin Ruan at Purdue University in the US. “Producing the whitest white means the paint can reflect the maximum amount of sunlight back to space.”

An infrared image shows how a sample of the ‘whitest paint’ (the dark purple square in the middle) cools the board below ambient temperature. Photograph: Joseph Peoples/Purdue University

Ruan said painting a roof of 93 sq metres (1,000 sq ft) would give a cooling power of 10 kilowatts: “That’s more powerful than the central air conditioners used by most houses.”

The new paint was revealed in a report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Three factors are responsible for the paint’s cooling performance. First, barium sulphate was used as the pigment which, unlike conventional titanium dioxide pigment, does not absorb UV light. Second, a high concentration of pigment was used – 60%.

Third, the pigment particles were of varied size. The amount of light scattered by a particle depends on its size, so using a range scatters more of the light spectrum from the sun. Ruan’s lab had assessed more than 100 different materials and tested about 50 formulations for each of the most promising. Their previous whitest paint used calcium carbonate – chalk – and reflected 95.5% sunlight.

The barium sulphate paint enables surfaces to be below the ambient air temperature, even in direct sunlight, because it reflects so much of the sun’s light and also radiates infrared heat at a wavelength that is not absorbed by air. “The radiation can go through the atmosphere, being directly lost to deep space, which is extremely cold,” said Ruan.

The researchers said the ultra-white paint uses a standard acrylic solvent and could be manufactured like conventional paint. They claim the paint would be similar in price to current paints, with barium sulphate actually cheaper than titanium dioxide. They have also tested the paint’s resistance to abrasion, but said longer-term weathering tests were needed to assess its long-term durability.

Ruan said the paint was not a risk to people’s eyesight: “Our surface reflects the sunlight diffusely, so the power going in any particular direction is not very strong. It just looks bright white, a bit whiter than snow.”

A patent for the paint has been filed jointly by the university and research team, which is now working with a large corporation towards commercialisation: “We think this paint will be made widely available to the market, in one or two years, I hope, if we do it quickly.”

Lukas Schertel, a light-scattering expert at the University of Cambridge, UK, who was not part of the research team, said: “Using paint for cooling is not new but has still a high potential to improve our society, as it is widely used. This study makes a step towards commercially relevant solutions. If further improved, I am convinced such technology can play a role in reducing carbon emissions and having a global impact.”

Schertel said the high concentration of pigment in the paint and the relatively thick layers used raised questions of cost: “Pigment is the main cost in paint.” Ruan said his team hoped to optimise the paint so it can be used in thinner layers, perhaps by using new materials, so it will be easier to apply and lower cost.

Andrew Parnell, who works on sustainable coatings at the University of Sheffield, UK, said: “The principle is very exciting and the science [in the new study] is good. But I think there might be logistical problems that are not trivial. How many million tonnes [of barium sulphate] would you need?”

Parnell said a comparison of the carbon dioxide emitted by the mining of barium sulphate with the emissions saved from lower air conditioning use would be needed to fully assess the new paint. He also said green roofs, on which plants grow, could be more sustainable where practical.

Project Drawdown, a charity that assesses climate solutions, estimates that white roofs and green roofs could avoid between 600m and 1.1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050, roughly equivalent to two to three years of the UK’s total annual emissions.

Japan sets to release Fukushima treated radioactive water into sea

The Associated Press

An aerial view of the TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant undergoing decommissioning work and tanks for storing treated water.Jiji Press / AFP - Getty Images file

TOKYO — Japan's government decided Tuesday to start releasing treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in two years — an option fiercely opposed by fishermen, residents and Japan's neighbors.

The decision, long speculated but delayed for years due to safety concerns and protests, came at a meeting of Cabinet ministers who endorsed the ocean release as the best option.

The accumulating water has been stored in tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant since 2011, when a massive earthquake and tsunami damaged its reactors and their cooling water became contaminated and began leaking. The plant's storage capacity will be full late next year.

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Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said ocean release was the most realistic option and that disposing the water is unavoidable for the decommissioning of the Fukushima plant, which is expected to take decades. He also pledged the government would work to ensure the safety of the water and to prevent damaging rumors on local agriculture, fisheries and tourism.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., and government officials say tritium, which is not harmful in small amounts, cannot be removed from the water, but all other selected radionuclides can be reduced to levels allowed for release.

Some scientists say the long-term impact on marine life from low-dose exposure to such large volumes of water is unknown. The government stresses the safety of the water by calling it “treated" not "radioactive” even though radionuclides can only be reduced to disposable levels, not to zero.

The amount of radioactive materials that would remain in the water is also still unknown. Under the basic plan adopted Tuesday by the ministers, TEPCO will start releasing the water in about two years after building a facility and compiling release plans adhering to safety requirements.

It said the disposal of the water cannot be postponed further and is necessary to improve the environment surrounding the plant so residents can live there safely. Residents, fisheries officials and environmental groups issued statements denouncing the decision as ignoring environmental safety and health, while adding a further blow to Fukushima's image and economy from the water discharge that will continue for decades.

Japan Fisheries Cooperatives chairman Hiroshi Kishi said the decision less than a week after he met with Suga “is absolutely unacceptable." Noting the government's pledge not to act without the fishing industry's understanding, Kishi said the decision “trampled on” all Japanese fisheries operators.

Local fisheries have just returned to full operation after a decade in which their catch was only for testing purposes, and they are struggling due to dwindling demand.

Lawyer Izutaro Managi and his colleagues representing residents in Fukushima and nearby areas said the government and TEPCO should not dump the water “only to impact the environment again” — referring to the radiation that still contaminates land closest to the damaged plant.

The lawyers alleged in a statement that ocean release was chosen for cost effectiveness and that forcing the plan “underscores their lack of regret" for the disaster.

Environmental activists wearing a mask of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and protective suits perform to denounce the Japanese government's decision on Fukushima water, in Seoul, South Korea on Tuesday. Lee Jin-man / AP

Protestors also gathered outside the Prime Minister's Office to demand the plan be retracted.

TEPCO says its water storage capacity of 1.37 million tons will be full around fall of 2022. Also, the area now filled with storage tanks will have to be freed up for building new facilities needed for removing melted fuel debris from inside the reactors and for other decommissioning work that's expected to start in coming years.

The tanks could also be damaged and leak in case of another powerful earthquake or tsunami, the report said.

Releasing the water to the ocean was described as the most realistic method by a government panel that for nearly seven years had discussed how to dispose of the water. The report it prepared last year mentioned evaporation as a less desirable option.

According to a preliminary estimate, gradual releases of water will take nearly 40 years but will be completed before the plant is fully decommissioned.

Japan will abide by international rules for a release, obtain support from the International Atomic Energy Agency and others, and ensure disclosure of data and transparency to gain understanding of the international community, the report said.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, in a video message, said the ocean discharge was in line with international practice, though “the large amount of water at the Fukushima plant makes it a unique and complex case.”

He said the IAEA will support Japan in environmental monitoring “before, during and after the discharge.”

China and South Korea reacted strongly to Tuesday's decision.

Koo Yun-cheol, minister of South Korea's Office for Government Policy Coordination, said the plan was “absolutely unacceptable" and urged Japan to disclose how the water is treated and its safety is verified.

China criticized Japan's decision as “extremely irresponsible,” saying it had not considered the health concerns of neighboring countries.

Report claiming global temperature rise will top 1.5C by 2030s divides scientists

Lisa Cox

Climate Council report says most emissions cuts need to occur in the next decade to keep global heating below 2C

A report by the Climate Council has claimed that the global average temperature rise will likely breach 1.5C by the 2030s. Photograph: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

A report by the Climate Council claiming that the global average temperature rise will likely breach 1.5C by the 2030s has caused division in the scientific community.

The report, published on Thursday, follows controversy over similar arguments made in a review by the Australian Academy of Science, which said global aspiration of limiting global heating to 1.5C was now “virtually impossible” to achieve.

In its report, the Climate Council says the majority of emissions cuts need to occur within the next decade to keep global heating to well below 2C and avoid major, irreversible tipping points.

It says Australia, to do its fair share, needs to effectively triple its emissions reduction target to 75% on 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2035.

The report does not argue that the long-term Paris goal is lost but says the global average temperature rise will likely overshoot 1.5C and will require drawdown – the removal of carbon from the atmosphere – to bring temperatures back down below this level.

“The science is telling us that global average temperature rise will likely exceed 1.5C during the 2030s, and that long-term stabilisation and warming at or below 1.5C will be extremely challenging,” the report says.

It says if temperatures spike above 1.5C for a significant period of time, ecosystems already affected by existing warming of 1.1C will become even more severely damaged.

“Climate-related damages will be widespread and could, in some settings, be an existential threat,” the report says.

Will Steffen, one of the report’s authors, said despite the fact that countries were already experiencing severe effects of climate change, every fraction of a degree by which further temperature rises could be limited mattered.

“Every 10th of a degree of avoided warming is very important for us,” he said.

He said keeping global heating well beneath 2C was achievable, particularly when major economies such as the US, China, the EU, the UK and Japan were strengthening their emissions reduction commitments.

Australia, by comparison, was being “rapidly left behind” as one of few countries without a net-zero emissions target.

The report’s analysis of the feasibility of limiting warming to 1.5C argues that multiple lines of evidence – including future warming that is locked into the system from emissions that have already occurred, current climate trajectories and the available global carbon budget – suggest this will be exceeded, at least temporarily.

The Climate Council said the report was peer-reviewed by Australian and international scientists.

“It is a case of putting these different lines together,” said Simon Bradshaw, another of the report’s authors and the Climate Council’s head of research.

“The whole point of pointing this out is to drive home the message of how urgent these emissions reductions are.”

It is the conclusion about 1.5C that has caused concern in some quarters of the scientific community.

The Climate Council made its report available to journalists under a strict embargo that included the condition that reporters not share the report with any external experts prior to publication.

Environmental groups were also asked to sign non-disclosure agreements before they received an advance copy of the report.

But climate scientists Carl-Friedrich Schleussner and Bill Hare obtained a leaked copy and have written an 11-page rebuttal to the report’s conclusions about the 1.5C goal.

Hare, who also questioned the Australian Academy of Science report that drew on Steffen’s work to make a similar finding, said the council’s overall conclusion about the urgency of rapid action on climate change in the next decade was correct.

But he said the council’s claim that countries can no longer limit global heating to 1.5C contradicted recent scientific reports, including by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“The claim that we can no longer limit warming to 1.5C is based on some fundamental scientific errors,” Hare said.

“Essentially, it is clear that the evidence presented in the Climate Council of Australia report does not support their claim that 1.5C will be exceeded.”

He said the report’s conclusion that carbon budgets showed countries couldn’t limit warming to 1.5C was especially problematic because there were uncertainties around the numbers.

“A recent paper by leading experts concluded there was 50% margin of error around carbon budget estimates,” Hare said.

However, Andy Pitman, a scientist at the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes at the University of New South Wales, said it was “a statement of fact” that temperatures would overshoot 1.5C and require technology to bring them back down.

“It’s simply not possible to limit warming to 1.5C now,” he said.

“There’s too much inertia in the system and even if you stopped greenhouse gas emissions today, you would still reach 1.5C [of heating].”

Monica Richter, of WWF Australia, said the feasibility of the 1.5C from a scientific point of view could not be a discussion that was “decoupled from the political and moral consequences of breaching 1.5C”.

“At its core, the possibility of limiting warming to below 1.5C remains an issue of politics rather than of science,” she said.

Bradshaw said while there was ongoing discussion in the scientific community, there was “absolute fundamental agreement on the task at hand, which is to get emissions to plummet”.

Covid-19: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine

BBC NEWS

REUTER

US health authorities are calling for a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, after reports of extremely rare blood clotting cases.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said six cases in 6.8 million doses had been reported and it was acting "out of an abundance of caution".

Following the news, South Africa, the first country to use the jab, said it would suspend its rollout.

Johnson & Johnson said it would also delay its vaccine drive in Europe.

The US move follows similar rare cases in the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has prompted some curbs in its use.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top Covid adviser in the US, said it was too early to comment on whether the vaccine could have its authorisation revoked.

The US has by far the most confirmed cases of Covid-19 - more than 31 million - with more than 562,000 deaths, another world high.

The picture for the virus there is complicated, though, with some areas in the north seeing surges in infections, the south less, and with the figures not always reflecting inoculation numbers.

The Johnson & Johnson jab was approved in the US on 27 February and its use has been more limited so far than that of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna doses.

Nevertheless, the government had hoped for hundreds of thousands of vaccinations of the jab every week. Unlike some of the other vaccines, it is dispensed as a single shot and is stored at common refrigerator temperatures, making it easier to distribute.

In South Africa, studies showed the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had a higher protection rate against the South African variant than other jabs, and since mid-February, nearly 300,000 healthcare workers have received it.

There have been no cases of blood clotting in South Africa, but as a precaution, the rollout has been temporarily suspended there, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize confirmed. The country has secured an additional 10 million Pfizer vaccines, he added.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is also known as the Janssen vaccine, named after the Belgian company that makes it.

The jab was approved by the European Union last month, and this week the first doses started arriving in the bloc. In a statement, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it is continuing with a safety review that began last week, but said there is no clear link between the vaccine and the blood clots.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is yet to be approved in the UK, although 30 million doses are on pre-order. The Department of Health said the rollout delay would not affect vaccine supplies in the UK, or derail the aim to offer a jab to all adults by the end of July.

What is the recommendation in the US?

In a joint statement, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said they were "reviewing data involving six reported US cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the J&J vaccine".

It said the clotting was called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).

The statement said that this type of blood clot needed a different treatment than usual.

The common treatment - an anticoagulant drug called heparin - "may be dangerous", it said.

Pending a further review, the FDA and CDC recommended "a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution".

This was to "ensure that the health care provider community is aware of the potential for these adverse events".

All six cases were in women aged between 18 and 48, with symptoms appearing six to 13 days after vaccination.

One patient died from blood clotting complications, while another is in a critical condition, the FDA's Peter Marks confirmed.

He added it was "plainly obvious" there were similarities with the rare blood clots experienced by a small number of people who received the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The joint statement said that "people who have received the J&J vaccine who develop severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks after vaccination should contact their health care provider".

The US government is now likely to pause the use of the vaccine in all federally run vaccination sites, and to expect state sites to do the same.

Johnson & Johnson statement

Johnson & Johnson, a US health care company, issued a statement saying that safety was its "number one priority" and that it shared "all adverse event reports" with the health authorities.

It added: "We are aware that thromboembolic events including those with thrombocytopenia have been reported with Covid-19 vaccines. At present, no clear causal relationship has been established between these rare events and the Janssen (J&J) Covid-19 vaccine."

It also said that it had been reviewing cases with European health authorities.

"We have made the decision to proactively delay the rollout of our vaccine in Europe," it said.

World's wealthiest 'at heart of climate problem'

Roger Harrabin

The world’s wealthy must radically change their lifestyles to tackle climate change, a report says.

It says the world's wealthiest 1% produce double the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%, according to the UN.

The wealthiest 5% alone – the so-called “polluter elite” - contributed 37% of emissions growth between 1990 and 2015.

The authors want to deter SUV drivers and frequent fliers – and persuade the wealthy to insulate their homes well.

The report urges the UK government to reverse its decision to scrap air passenger duty on UK return flights.

And it wants ministers to re-instate the Green Homes Grant scheme they also scrapped recently.

The document has come from the UK-based Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change.

It’s a panel of 31 individuals who study people’s behaviour relating to the environment. They were tasked to find the most effective way of scaling up action to tackle carbon emissions.

Their critics say the best way to cut emissions faster is through technological improvements - not through measures that would prove unpopular.

But the lead author of the report, Prof Peter Newell, from Sussex University, told BBC News: “We are totally in favour of technology improvements and more efficient products - but it’s clear that more drastic action is needed because emissions keep going up.

“We have got to cut over-consumption and the best place to start is over-consumption among the polluting elites who contribute by far more than their share of carbon emissions.

GETTY IMAGES

“These are people who fly most, drive the biggest cars most and live in the biggest homes which they can easily afford to heat, so they tend not to worry if they’re well insulated or not.

“They’re also the sort of people who could really afford good insulation and solar panels if they wanted to.”

Prof Newell said that to tackle climate change, everyone needs to feel part of a collective effort – so that means the rich consuming less to set an example to poorer people.

He continued: “Rich people who fly a lot may think they can offset their emissions by tree-planting schemes or projects to capture carbon from the air. But these schemes are highly contentious and they’re not proven over time.

The wealthy, he said, “simply must fly less and drive less. Even if they own an electric SUV that’s still a drain on the energy system and all the emissions created making the vehicle in the first place”.

Sam Hall, from the Conservative Environment Network, told BBC News: "It’s right to emphasise the importance of fairness in delivering (emissions cuts) - and policy could make it easier for people and businesses to go green - through incentives, targeted regulation and nudges.

“But encouraging clean technologies is likely to be more effective, and more likely to enjoy public consent, than hefty penalties or lifestyle restrictions."

But Prof Newell said existing political structures allowed wealthy firms and individuals to lobby against necessary changes in society that might erode the lifestyles of the rich.

The recent report of the UK Climate Assembly, for example, proposed a series of measures targeting carbon-intensive behaviours such as shifting away from meat and dairy produce; banning the most polluting SUVs; and imposing frequent flyer levies.

The Treasury told BBC News that a frequent flyer levy might require the government to collect and store personal information on each passenger.

This could raise issues of data processing, handling and privacy issues. It would also be hard to keep track of people with multiple passports.

But the commission’s report said: “The goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change cannot be achieved without radical changes to lifestyles and shifts in behaviour, especially among the wealthiest members of society.

“If change across society is to be brought about at the speed and scale required to meet agreed climate targets, we need to shrink and share: reduce carbon budgets and share more equally.”

The report is the latest in a long-running dialogue over what it means to be “fair” while tackling climate change.

Poorer nations such as India have consistently argued that they should be allowed to increase their pollution because it’s so much lower per person than emissions from rich nations.

The issue forms part of the tangled tapestry of negotiations behind next week’s climate summit organised by President Biden and the COP climate summit in the UK scheduled for November.

Toxic wastewater reservoir in Florida on brink of collapse; state of emergency declared

Ben Kesslen and The Associated Press

Hundreds of families were ordered to evacuate after officials warned that the Piney Point Reservoir near Tampa Bay could be breached.

Manatee County, Florida, is in a state of emergency and residents are being evacuated as a toxic wastewater reservoir is on the brink of collapse, and Gov. Ron DeSantis said crews are working to prevent "a real catastrophic flood situation."

Families in at least 316 homes were ordered to evacuate Saturday after officials warned that Piney Point Reservoir, about 40 miles south of Tampa, could flood homes with 15 to 20 feet of water if it collapses.

The reservoir holds a mix of saltwater, fresh water, wastewater and fertilizer runoff. DeSantis clarified Sunday that the water is not radioactive after concerns were raised because the ponds are in stacks of phosphogypsum, a solid radioactive byproduct of manufacturing fertilizer.

Due to a possible breach of mixed saltwater from the south reservoir at the Piney Point facility, I have declared a State of Emergency for Manatee County to ensure resources are allocated for necessary response & recovery.

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) April 3, 2021

Part of the reservoir's retaining wall shifted laterally, which means total structural collapse is possible, Manatee County public safety officials said. If that were to happen, 600 million gallons of water could leave the retention pool in a matter of minutes, they said.

A natural gas plant that provides energy to millions in the region is also in the flood zone, causing additional concern.

A jail a mile from the leaky pond had not yet had to evacuate, but officials are moving people to a higher floor and placing sandbags on the ground level. Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes said the area could be flooded with several feet of water.

Crews are working to move water out of the reservoir as fast as possible, but it could take more than a week.About 22,000 gallons of water are being discharged per minute, and Hopes said he expects the risk of a collapse to drop in a couple of days.

The Environmental Protection Agency is sending a representative to the command center in Manatee County, officials said.

"We hope the contamination is not as bad as we fear, but are preparing for significant damage to Tampa Bay and the communities that rely on this precious resource," Justin Bloom, founder of the Sarasota-based nonprofit organization Suncoast Waterkeeper, said in a statement.

Rewilding our cities: beauty, biodiversity and the biophilic cities movement

Amanda Sturgeon

Buildings covered in plants do more than just make the cityscape attractive – they contribute to human wellbeing and action on climate change

New York’s Highline shows that even the densest city environment can be rewilded, creating habitats for native species and green spaces for the community. Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

Our cities are dominated by glass-faced edifices that overheat like greenhouses then guzzle energy to cool down. Instead, we could have buildings that are intimately connected to the living systems that have evolved with us, that celebrate the human-nature connection that is central to our wellbeing.

As more of us in Australia live in urban areas and our cities grow, bringing nature into our cities is a key part of establishing and rebuilding that connection. As well as bringing beauty into urban environments, we know that people are healthier when they are connected to nature. Research also shows that crime rates decrease in areas with street trees and that property values increase.

Nature knows how to manage flooding and weather events and is more adaptable than many of our engineered systems, yet we refuse to learn from it. As we grapple with changing the way that we live due to climate change, we have an opportunity to learn from both the natural systems and Indigenous cultures that have mastered managing and supporting the diversity of Australia for thousands of years.

The “Greener Places” framework, released by the government architect of New South Wales last year, outlines the many benefits of green infrastructure; from increased social interaction and inclusion to reduced flood risk and improved property values. With all this knowledge about the benefits of nature in cities, we are still seeing developments that have little to no nature and if they do, there is very limited thought given to the creation of habitats that can increase biodiversity. A regenerative design approach, one that creates opportunities for people and nature to thrive together, is emerging as a way forward as is the biophilic cities movement that began in the US and is now present in Australia.

Our cities could be rewilded and become habitats for native species everywhere, even in the densest of city centre environments, while also creating engaging community spaces for people. As Australian cities become denser, the benefits of connecting to nature increase, yet we often tell ourselves that it is not possible to bring nature into the city, that it requires too much space or is best left to the creation of parks where it can stay separate from our built spaces.

The Highline of New York provides an example to cities elsewhere for how leftover spaces in cities can be completely transformed to connect both people and nature. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Biodiversity exists everywhere, even the smallest urban green spaces provide essential habitats for the most minute of species. If we manage to link those small spaces together, then the potential increases. Fortunately, we are seeing projects emerging in cities around the world that demonstrate the possibilities.

High-profile projects like the Highline in New York City provide examples to cities elsewhere for how leftover spaces in cities can be completely transformed to connect both people and nature. Rewilding is about adding nature everywhere, not just in parks, by using nature-based solutions or green infrastructure at the edges of our streets, in leftover spaces and on and within our buildings. If we viewed our developments as spaces for nature, from which we cut out the spaces for human use rather than ones where we design for human use and add a token amount of green to them at the edge, we will have a chance at bringing people and nature into a healthy balance.

Perth’s city farm, located next to railway line. Australia’s cities in are teeming with leftover spaces, from railway cuttings to car parks and abandoned industrial sites. Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Our cities in Australia are teeming with leftover spaces, from railway cuttings to car parks and abandoned industrial sites. All too often our busiest roads are hostile environments with little to no nature and our cities rooftops and plazas are hard surfaces that contribute to increased heat and polluted water runoff. The nature that we add does not just need to be trees, projects like Sydney’s Camperdown Commons, Perth City Farm or Melbourne’s SkyFarm demonstrate the opportunity to grow food in our cities while simultaneously growing community interaction and engagement.

There are many ambitions within our cities to create blue/green grids and several plans, frameworks and guidelines that outline the opportunities and benefits. The City of Melbourne’s Green Our City strategic action plan outlines how green walls and roofs can play a part in bringing nature into the city, for example. What we are lacking is the wide-spread integration of these frameworks into the actual designing and engineering of our cities as well as the economic will to hand over some space to nature.

We are typically shortsighted and unable to see the benefits that nature provides us in the long-term. Too often we do not conduct an economic benefit analysis of the increased property values, reduction of pollutants in waterways, and cleaner air that results from these measures. Several high-profile building projects in Sydney and Melbourne have led the way in exploring how to include nature. The planned Green Spine project in Melbourne integrates nature as a defining design feature and the successful One Central Park project in Sydney provides a vibrant urban greening example that takes nature up from the ground plane on to its facade. A movement that demonstrates regenerative thinking is showing signs of emergence.

The award-winning One Central Park in Chippendale, Sydney. Photograph: Michael Yip

The bones are there for the rewilding of our cities to become a reality. Government frameworks, commitments and priorities acknowledge the benefits, we have built examples that can act as catalyst projects for others, and time is becoming critical both in regard to climate change and biodiversity loss, issues that polls consistently show are of high importance to Australians. Let’s hope that more species becoming extinct, devastating bushfires, catastrophic floods and chaotic demonstrations of changing weather patterns do not need to happen for us to take action.

A decade ago the UN convention set targets for biodiversity – alarmingly, none of them have been achieved. In the next decade, we must embrace our responsibility to support nature to thrive, the survival of all other species on which we depend, lies in our hands. Over the last 200 years, Australia has lost 75% of its rainforests and has the world’s worst record of mammal extinctions. While we continue to see nature as something that we can take and destroy and as something that it is separate to us, it is unlikely that anything will change. Here in Australia, even the threat of koala extinction after last year’s bushfires has not resulted in sufficient action.

Fundamentally our relationship to nature is key to this change, we need to embrace nature in our everyday lives and act with the knowledge that whatever we do to nature, we do to ourselves.

• Amanda Sturgeon is the regenerative design and climate change practice lead, Mott MacDonald Asia Pacific, New Zealand and Australia.

India reports national record 103,558 new Covid cases in 24 hours

Guardian staff and agencies

India has the world’s third-highest number of cases after the US and Brazil

India recorded 103,558 new Covid cases on Monday, its biggest ever one-day figure, data from the health ministry showed – taking the national total to 12.59 million cases.

The country added 478 new deaths, raising the toll to 165,101.

India has the world’s third-highest number of cases after the US, with 30 million, and Brazil, with just under 13 million.

Single-day infections have been rising since early February when they fell to below 9,000 after peaking at almost 100,000 in September.

India’s wealthiest state, Maharashtra, home to the financial capital, Mumbai, will impose a weekend lockdown and night curfew on its 110 million people in response to the rise in cases, authorities announced on Sunday.

From Monday night until the end of April a night curfew will be imposed, gatherings of more than four people banned, and private offices, restaurants, cinemas, swimming pools, bars, places of worship and public places such as beaches shut.

On weekends only essential services will be allowed to operate.

“While imposing these restrictions, on the one hand care has been taken not to affect the state’s economic cycle and not to harass the workers and labourers, and emphasis has been laid on closing crowded places,” the state government said.

Public transport services would be allowed to operate, but at 50% capacity. Industrial and manufacturing activities, as well as film shoots in Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, would be allowed to continue if health measures were observed.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, authorities said a seven-day lockdown would be imposed from Monday, with all domestic travel services including flights suspended, and malls and shops shut.

Banks would be allowed to open for 2.5 hours on weekdays, while public and private sector businesses were told to only have a skeleton crew in their offices.

“The corona infections are spreading fast. The infection and death rates are jumping,” said Obaidul Quader, the road transport minister. “In view of the prevailing situation, the Sheikh Hasina government has decided to enforce a lockdown across the country for seven days starting from Monday.”

Bangladeshi health authorities reported 7,087 new cases on Sunday – the highest one-day figure since the start of the pandemic – taking the infection toll to just under 640,000. The country of 168 million people has been grappling with a sharp rise in cases in recent weeks.

Scores die in flash floods in Indonesia and Timor-Leste

Agence France-Presse

Death toll expected to rise further after torrential rain swept the Indonesian archipelago and neighbouring Timor-Leste

More than 70 people have died after flash floods and landslides swept through eastern Indonesia and neighbouring Timor-Leste on Sunday, authorities said, with warnings the toll could rise further.

A house collapses after its foundations were washed away as the Comoro river floods in Dili, Timor-Leste. Photograph: Janito DF Afonso/Reuters

Torrential rain wreaked havoc and destruction on islands stretching from Flores Island in Indonesia to Timor-Leste, a small nation east of the Indonesian archipelago.

The deluge and subsequent landslides caused dams to overflow, submerging thousands of houses and leaving rescue workers struggling to reach survivors trapped in the aftermath.

“There are 55 dead, but this number is very dynamic and will definitely change, while some 42 people are still missing,” Raditya Djati from the Indonesia disaster management agency spokesman told MetroTV.

Mud inundated homes, bridges and roads in the East Flores municipality, where rescuers struggled to reach a remote and badly hit area because of rains and strong waves.

In Timor-Leste, 11 were killed by floods in the capital Dili, authorities said. “We are still searching for the areas impacted by the natural disasters,” Joaquim José Gusmão dos Reis Martins, Timor-Leste’s secretary of state for civil protection, said.

The death toll and the number of injured victims could still rise, authorities warned.

East Flores deputy regent Agustinus Payong Boli estimated there were 60 casualties in his municipality.

“The majority of them, 55, are in Lemanele village. Many people died here because the village was hit by both landslides and flash floods,” he told Agence France-Presse, providing numbers not yet confirmed by national authorities.

Images from Lemanele showed engulfed houses, debris covering entire roads, fallen trees and damaged power lines.

In Lembata, an island halfway between Flores and Timor, parts of affected villages were displaced down a mountain slope and near the coastline, according to an AFP journalist on the scene. Local officials deployed heavy equipment to reopen roads that had been cut off.

Injured victims have been evacuated to neighbouring villages that were unaffected by the flash floods. Images from Lembata showed people wading barefoot through mud, evacuating victims from collapsed houses on makeshift stretchers .

Separately on Sunday, two people were killed in major floods in Bima city in the neighbouring province of West Nusa Tenggara, according to the disaster agency.

Dams in four sub-districts also overflowed, submerging nearly 10,000 houses in Bima following a nine-hour downpour, said Jati.

Fatal landslides and flash floods are common across the Indonesian archipelago during the rainy season. January saw flash floods hit the Indonesian town of Sumedang in West Java, killing 40 people.

The floodwaters destroyed roads in Dili, Timor-Leste. Photograph: Antonio Sampaio/EPA

In September last year, at least 11 people were killed in landslides on Borneo.

The country’s disaster agency has estimated that 125 million Indonesians – nearly half of the country’s population – live in areas at risk of landslides.

The disasters are often caused by deforestation, according to environmentalists.

Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan aims to ‘finally address climate crisis as a nation'

Oliver Milman

President says new plan will allow ‘transformational progress’ by bolstering investments in clean energy and electric vehicles

President Joe Biden is expected to release his $2tn infrastructure package on Wednesday. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Joe Biden has said his new infrastructure plan will allow “transformational progress in our ability to tackle climate change” by bolstering investments in clean energy, electric vehicles and building homes resilient to threats posed by the climate crisis.

The $2tn plan will make “crumbling” American infrastructure more robust to extreme weather events, the US president said in a speech on Wednesday, while providing funds to “build a modern, resilient and fully clean grid”.

Biden said that tax incentives should allow “all Americans to afford clean electric vehicles” and workers will be able to “seize amazing opportunities in a clean energy future”.

Biden opened his White House term with a cavalcade of executive actions to begin the gargantuan task of shifting the US to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and the new $2tn package, known as the American Jobs Plan, is the first indication of the scale of spending that will be required to reshape day-to-day life in order to avert disastrous climate change.

As well as huge investments in crumbling roads and bridges, the Biden plan takes aim at the emissions created by transport, currently the country’s largest source of planet-heating gases. There’s $80bn for Amtrak and freight rail, $85bn for public transit, $174bn to promote electric vehicles through various incentives, the electrification of school buses and 500,000 new plug-in recharging stations within the next decade. The federal government’s vehicle fleet will also be electrified.

Ports and airports will be upgraded, the plan states, while more than $200bn is proposed to build, modernize and fortify housing for low-income people affected by the storms, heatwaves and wildfires of growing intensity that are upending American lives and threatening billions, if not trillions, of dollars in ongoing damages. A further $100bn will be spent upgrading an electricity grid vulnerable to the sort of climate shocks that recently shook Texas, as well as aiding the transmission of a glut of new renewable energy. In all, 40% of this spending will be aimed at vulnerable communities of color.

The scale of the investment, even in the wake of the giant Covid relief bill, is striking. Biden made clear in his speech on Wednesday that this is the point when the US “finally address the climate crisis as a nation”, according to an administration official.

“There’s a lot to like in this plan, it’s excellent in almost every way,” said Julio Friedmann, who was a climate and energy adviser in Barack Obama’s administration and is now an energy researcher at Columbia University.

“This is a generational commitment and it can only be applauded. The $2tn is half the price tag of World War Two, it exceeds the scale of the New Deal, it’s wildly larger than the Marshall Plan – and appropriately so. This is the hardest thing we’ve ever done. People generally don’t understand how much construction and reduction is required.”

But even the administration’s allies concede further, longer-term spurs to remodel the economy and alter behavior will be required on top of this plan.

The package includes a major boost to clean energy research and development, as well as a proposal for a clean electricity standard – a mandate for utilities to phase out fossil fuels use across the grid to zero over the next 15 years that Friedmann said will be a “vital” element of eliminating planet-hearting emissions.

But these measures will, like the new spending, require congressional support that is far from guaranteed. Republicans have recoiled from Biden’s idea of raising corporate tax rates to help pay for the investments, with Mitch McConnell, the GOP’s Senate leader, calling the plan a “Trojan horse” for climate measures the party doesn’t support.

“In an ideal world this plan would be part of a set of policies to lower emissions but with American politics it’s not clear the rest of it will happen,” said David Popp, a climate policy expert at Syracuse University. “Infrastructure alone won’t get you to net zero emissions. The hope is that you build a green economy to the point where emissions reduction mandates become more doable.”

Progressives, meanwhile, have complained that Biden’s plan does not meet the scale of the climate crisis.

“Needs to be way bigger,” tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic representative from New York. Ocasio-Cortez and her allies back an alternative $10tn plan, called the Thrive Act, that proponents say would create 15m new jobs and cut emissions in half by the end of the decade. Rallies are set to be held across the US on Wednesday by climate activists who support this plan.

Communities of color, which often suffer the brunt of the climate crisis, helped elect Biden and “it’s time to make sure that our government delivers a real recovery that recognizes the harsh reality our communities continue to face on the ground,” according to Elizabeth Yeampierre, co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance. “We’ve had enough excuses, enough delays.”

The Biden plan is a “big opening gambit, a big downpayment, but it’s not the totality required,” said Friedmann. “It focuses on what’s actionable quickly that yields big emissions abatement. I would like more too, but it’s easy to throw rocks from the outside. It’s a great start but, yes, we will ultimately need more. For the next 30 years, every week is infrastructure week.”

Climate change top challenge over the next decade, UNESCO global survey finds

UN NEWS

Emmanuel Rouy/Lycée Français d | Students of the primary section of the Lycée français de New York (French School) protest climate change in the city’s Upper East Side neighbourhood (file photo).

Climate change and loss of biodiversity is seen as the most pressing challenge over the decade, according to the World in 2030 Survey report published on Wednesday by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Last year we asked 15,000 people across the globe on what they think are the main global challenges in the World in 2030. We have the full survey results now!

Read the survey report here & see what people think of the #WorldIn2030! ➡️ https://t.co/8S6iCRDNRh #Agenda2030 pic.twitter.com/7mEZkFRSzk

— UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳😷 (@UNESCO) March 30, 2021

More than 15,000 people worldwide contributed to the survey, which was held online between May and September 2020, and made available in 25 languages.  

Respondents were mainly young people, with 57 per cent under age 35, and 35 per cent under 25. Results also were analyzed along regional, gender, age and other demographic lines. 

 “Greater efforts are needed to address people’s specific concerns, and multilateralism is the way to do this. Restoring confidence in multilateralism requires the implementation of concrete and impactful projects, and this is at the heart of our Organization's role”, said Audrey Azoulay, the UNESCO Director-General. 

The World in 2030 survey invited people from across the globe to share their specific worries about 11 challenges, and solutions for overcoming them.  

Education is the solution 

Most participants, or 67 per cent, selected climate change and loss of biodiversity as their top concern, mainly due to issues such as increasing natural disasters and extreme weather.   

Respondents felt investment in ‘green’ solutions, education on sustainability, promoting international cooperation and building trust in science, were the best ways to address the issue. 

Violence and conflict, discrimination and equality, and lack of food, water and housing were other big challenges, the survey revealed.   

Participants believed that overall, more education was the crucial solution to every single challenge.  They also felt that it was the area that most needed to be re-thought, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the overall relationship between humankind and nature. 

‘Crisis of faith’ 

The survey further showed that while 95 per cent of respondents extoll the importance of global cooperation in overcoming common challenges, only one in four felt confident that the world would be able to address these issues. 

UNESCO said that “taken together, the results suggest not a lack of appreciation of the importance of multilateralism but rather a crisis of faith in its effectiveness.”

Uganda climate change: The people under threat from a melting glacier

Pablo Uchoa

The ice and snow at the the top of the Rwenzori Mountains, seen here in 2016, are slowly melting I GETTY IMAGES

Ronah Masika remembers when she could still see the snowy caps of the Rwenzori mountains, a Unesco World Heritage site on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The view was stunning every time she travelled from her home in Kasese town to the Ugandan capital, Kampala - and it was not even that long ago.

But now she cannot even catch a glimpse of the ice because the glacier is receding.

And it is not only the view that has changed.

Communities living on the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains are facing both floods and droughtI GETTY IMAGES

Ms Masika recalls her grandmother used to grow beans to feed her family, and they would last until a new crop was ready to be harvested.

"Now I and other people find it difficult to sustain ourselves with what we plant at home, because everything gets destroyed by floods or drought. It's either too much drought or too much rain.

"It's making me uncomfortable, thinking of how the next generation is going to survive this horrible situation," says Ms Masika, who now works on a project to mitigate the impact of the shifting environment.

Climate change is affecting the Rwenzori Mountains in different ways.

Violent floods in May 2020 destroyed about 25,000 houses I KISA KASIFA/ CCFU

The most visible is the rapid loss of the ice field, which shrunk from 6.5 sq km in 1906 to less than one sq km in 2003, and could completely disappear before the end of this decade, research shows.

In 2012, forest fires reached altitudes above 4,000m, which would have been inconceivable in the past, devastating vegetation that controlled the flow of the rivers downstream.

Since then, the communities living at the foot of the Rwenzori have suffered some of the most destructive floods the area has ever seen, coupled with a pattern of less frequent but heavier rainfall.

In May last year, five local rivers burst their banks after heavy rains. The waters came down the mountain carrying large boulders, sweeping away houses and schools and razing the entire town of Kalembe to the ground.

Around 25,000 houses were destroyed and 173,000 people were affected.

While science may provide an explanation for these events, the local Bakonzo culture has another way of framing them - according to their beliefs, they happen because the gods are angry.

"The Bakonzo have a very strong attachment to the snow and the water," says Simon Musasizi, a programme manager at the Cross-Cultural Foundation of Uganda (CCFU).

"They believe that their god, Kithasamba, lives in the snow, and that the snow is actually the frozen sperm of their god."

The name Rwenzori comes from rwe nzururu, which means "place of snow" in the Bakonzo language. There are 30 gods associated with different natural resources living on the mountain, according to Bakonzo cosmology.

But deforestation and rapid population growth around the sacred mountain, as well as the melting glacier, are changing things.

During last year's floods, the water submerged hot springs and washed away the vegetation around a waterfall that was used as a place for rituals. Since then, spiritual leaders have been unable to perform those ceremonies.

Other spiritual sites are getting eroded or filled up with silt and the destruction of the vegetation has weakened the banks in many areas.

All this is threatening centuries-old rituals.

"Most likely, many of these customs will gradually became rare or they won't happen any more, because everything is shifting," Mr Musasizi says.

The Bakonzo's knowledge of their environment has helped devise some policies to help combat climate change I KISA KASIFA/CCFU

The Bakonzo community is made up of around one million people living on both sides of the border between Uganda and DR Congo, and their heritage could be lost as a result of climate change.

"The consequences of climate change are particularly acute at the tropics," says Richard Taylor, a geographer at University College London, who has led research on the Rwenzori Mountains.

"One or two degrees of warming at the Equator has a much bigger impact on climate and water budgets than one or two degrees of warming in London, Paris or New York."

The intensification of weather patterns observed in the mountains is happening throughout the tropics.

Prof Taylor, who co-led expeditions from 2003 to 2007 to measure the changes in the Rwenzori glaciers, says the loss of ice fields in the tropics is a tell-tale signal of global warming.

Restoring and protecting areas affected by climate change is key to preserving cultural heritage too.

As part of a project to do this, Mr Musasizi says there is an agreement with the community about which trees are going to be planted to best reinforce the riverbanks, including bamboos and native trees.

Ms Masika, whose job it is to liaise with the local people, says the community already had answers for some of the problems.

"For example, they know what type of vegetation should be planted at what level on the mountain. They know which ones are strong enough to be planted along the river to stop the floods.

"They know they are supposed to plant along the riverbank because it is food to the water god. And when the water god is fine, he doesn't cause floods.

"Climate change is understood in the culture, and they have some suggestions that can help us mitigate this situation."

The lessons are being shared with other institutions working to protect cultural heritage from climate change, mainly in East and North Africa and the Middle East.

Finding solutions that highlight the close link between the Bakonzo culture and the natural environment has been a surprise for Ms Masika, who grew up in a Christian household where little was said about it.

Now one of her favourite spots is the Embugha or Rwagimba hot springs, that the Bakonzo believe have physical and spiritual healing powers, particularly for skin diseases.

"When we started this project, my skin was itching all over. But every time I visited the springs, I made sure I bathed in the water," she said.

"It's so hot when you sit there, you feel like you're burning. Then you go to the river, which is just next to the hot pool, and the water is so cold you feel like you're freezing.

"By the time you leave, your body is feeling light, and since then I no longer feel itchy."

Covid: new vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists

Natalie Grover

Survey of experts in relevant fields concludes that new variants could arise in countries with low vaccine coverage

A man in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, gets a dose of the CoronaVac jab. Photograph: Pablo Porciuncula/AFP/Getty Images

The planet could have a year or less before first-generation Covid-19 vaccines are ineffective and modified formulations are needed, according to a survey of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists.

Scientists have long stressed that a global vaccination effort is needed to satisfactorily neutralise the threat of Covid-19. This is due to the threat of variations of the virus – some more transmissible, deadly and less susceptible to vaccines – that are emerging and percolating.

The grim forecast of a year or less comes from two-thirds of respondents, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of organisations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, who carried out the survey of 77 scientists from 28 countries. Nearly one-third of the respondents indicated that the time-frame was likely nine months or less.

Persistent low vaccine coverage in many countries would make it more likely for vaccine-resistant mutations to appear, said 88% of the respondents, who work across illustrious institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Yale, Imperial College, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the University of Edinburgh.

“New mutations arise every day. Sometimes they find a niche that makes them more fit than their predecessors. These lucky variants could transmit more efficiently and potentially evade immune responses to previous strains,” said Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University, in a statement.

“Unless we vaccinate the world, we leave the playing field open to more and more mutations, which could churn out variants that could evade our current vaccines and require booster shots to deal with them.”

The current crop of vaccines that have received emergency authorisations in different parts of the world is a mix of old and fresh technologies.

Of particular interest is the mRNA approach, employed by the companies Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, which can be tweaked at speed (within weeks or months) to accommodate new variants – however, manufacturing hiccups are always a potential problem.

But crucially, they are unlikely within reach of poorer countries, given that this set of vaccines are far more expensive and have comparatively onerous temperature storage requirements.

Meanwhile, resource-rich countries like the UK and US have administered at least one vaccine dose to more than a quarter of their populations and have secured hundreds of millions of supplies. In contrast, nations such as South Africa and Thailand haven’t even managed to get shots in the arms of 1% of their populations. Some countries are yet to administer their first dose.

Covax – the global vaccine initiative coalition aimed at countering so-called vaccine nationalism – hopes to be able to supply at least 27% of the population of lower-income countries with vaccines in 2021.

“The urgency we see in rich nations to vaccinate their populations, aiming for all adults by the summer, is simply not reflected globally. Instead, we have Covax aiming for perhaps 27% by the end of the year if we possibly can manage it – that is simply not good enough,” said Max Lawson, head of inequality policy at Oxfam and the chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, which is calling Covid-19 vaccine developers to openly share their technology and intellectual property to boost production.

“Where is the ambitious global goal? A goal that the science tells us is needed?’ I think that’s the key point – we just don’t see the ambition that would go along with it, widespread recognition that limited vaccination is quite dangerous.”

'I'm scared': top US official shares sense of 'doom' as Covid cases rise

Joan E Greve & Richard Luscombe

Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, notes new US cases are now at about 70,000 a day

The US faces “impending doom” from a resurgent coronavirus pandemic, the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned on Monday.

“Right now I’m scared,” Rochelle Walensky said in an emotional and unscripted moment during a White House briefing.

“I’m speaking not necessarily as your CDC director, and not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter to ask you to just please hold on a while longer.”

Walensky aired her concerns the same day a new CDC study provided “strong evidence” that the two mRNA vaccines approved for use in the US, produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are highly effective in preventing infections in what the agency called “real-world conditions” among healthcare personnel, first-responders and essential workers.

“This study shows that our national vaccination efforts are working,” Walensky said. “These findings should offer hope to the millions of Americans receiving Covid-19 vaccines each day and to those who will have the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated in the weeks ahead.”

Later, Joe Biden announced that 90% of US adults would be eligible to be vaccinated by 19 April, with twice as many pharmacies authorized to administer shots.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state would begin vaccinating people aged 30 and older on Tuesday, and would make all adult residents eligible from 6 April.

Nonetheless, many experts fear a fourth wave of Covid-19 in the US as variants of the deadly virus continue to circulate in numerous states, many of which have almost fully reopened, and Americans prepare for the summer travel season.

And while Biden’s news offered some optimism, the president also warned the battle against Covid-19 was not over yet. “We still are in a war with this deadly virus, and we’re bolstering our defense, but this war is far from won.”

Despite more than 2.5m vaccinations being administered per day and a shrinking death toll, Walensky believes a fourth wave is imminent.

“I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” she said. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I’m scared.”

Walensky’s concern appears to be backed up by statistics. The US recently passed 30m cases of Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University, and the seven-day average of hospital admissions has risen to 4,800, up 200.

The daily average of new cases has also risen, by 10% in a week, to about 70,000, far higher than the 40,000 to 50,000 daily cases of a few weeks ago.

According to Johns Hopkins, 549,364 Americans have died of coronavirus.

“We do not have the luxury of inaction,” Walensky said, pleading with Americans to continue to wear masks and maintain social distancing. “I’m asking you please hold on a little while longer.”

The CDC vaccines study, conducted in six states from December to March, showed risk of infection was reduced by 90% two weeks after a participant received a second dose, and by 80% two weeks after their initial shot.

The figures mirrored those reported by vaccine manufacturers after clinical trials, which led to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granting emergency use authorisations.

Elsewhere on Monday, the New York Times and other outlets reported that it had obtained a leaked copy of a World Health Organization (WHO) report suggesting the coronavirus most likely originated in bats before spreading to humans through another animal.

The origin of the pandemic has become a political football with some, including Dr Robert Redfield, a former director of the CDC, suggesting without evidence the virus escaped a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The WHO report, set for official release on Tuesday, discounts that claim as “highly unlikely”, the Times said, citing “a team of experts” that recently visited Wuhan.

Also on Monday, the CDC confirmed it was extending until 30 June a nationwide moratorium on evictions for renters affected financially by the pandemic. The current protection had been scheduled to lapse on Wednesday.

Vaccinated Mother Gives Birth To First Newborn With Covid-19 Antibodies

Nina Shapiro

Newborn I GETTY

While none of the initial Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trials specifically included pregnant or lactating women, the limited data with regard to safety and efficacy in this demographic were promising. Over 20 women enrolled in the initial adult Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial became pregnant during the study period, and none suffered pregnancy loss or perinatal complications. A recent study reported in Forbes demonstrated that breastfed infants of vaccinated women had Covid-19 antibodies via consumed breast milk. As reported in Forbes by Victoria Forster, pregnant women who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 during New York City’s coronavirus surge between March and May 2020 delivered babies who tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies. Women who had more demonstrable symptoms when infected with Covid-19 had higher levels of antibodies, as did their newborns.

Pregnant woman receiving vaccine I UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Vaccinating pregnant or breastfeeding women against Covid-19 has been up for debate, as vaccines have not, to date, been studied specifically in this population. The CDC and WHO, as well as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal/Fetal Medicine (SMFM) have advocated for strongly considering the importance of vaccinating pregnant women. Pregnant women who develop acute Covid-19 infections have been considered extremely high risk for developing severe complications, including fetal loss and maternal death.

Prospective trials using the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine are currently underway in 4,000 pregnant women between 6 and 8 months of their pregnancy.

Delivery room with newborn and mother I GETTY

A Florida woman, who is a healthcare worker, received her first dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at 36 weeks of pregnancy, and three weeks later delivered a healthy newborn girl. Samples of the newborn’s umbilical cord blood at the time of delivery demonstrated presence of Covid-19 antibodies. As discussed by authors of the pre-print article regarding this patient, maternal transmission to the fetus of both influenza as well as TDaP (tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis) antibodies after being vaccinated during pregnancy have been shown in the past to provide some protection to newborns who are too young to be vaccinated, for up to six months. It is hopeful that Covid-19 antibody transmission will provide similar protection.

When it comes to antibodies against Covid-19, whether transmitted via breast milk or in utero via the umbilical cord, it remains unclear whether these will be sufficient to prevent acute Covid-19 infections in newborns and older infants. While it is likely that these antibodies will provide some protection, infants and children may still merit Covid-19 vaccination, as is the case for routinely used vaccines such as the flu vaccine (given to infants ages 6 months and older) and DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine, the first dose of the series given at age 2 months).

This week, Moderna, whose vaccine is currently approved under emergency use authorization (EUA) by the FDA for ages 18 years and older, began enrollment of children ages 6 months to 11 years, to assess dosing, safety, and efficacy of this vaccine in infants and young children. Until results of this study, enrolling over 6,000 children, are reported, newborns born to vaccinated mothers will likely receive some degree of antibody protection from Covid-19 in their first months of life.

'Dimming the sun': $100m geoengineering research programme proposed

Damian Carrington

Outdoor experiments should be allowed only if they provide critical knowledge that cannot be obtained by other means, said the report. Photograph: Charles Wollertz/Alamy

All options to fight climate crisis must be explored, says national academy, but critics fear side-effects

The US should establish a multimillion-dollar research programme on solar geoengineering, according to the country’s national science academy.

In a report it recommends funding of $100m (£73m) to $200m over five years to better understand the feasibility of interventions to dim the sun, the risk of harmful unintended consequences and how such technology could be governed in an ethical way.

The National Academies of Sciences (NAS) said cutting fossil fuel emissions remained the most urgent and important action to tackle the climate crisis. But it said the worryingly slow progress on climate action meant all options needed to be understood.

Outdoor experiments should be allowed only if they provide critical knowledge that cannot be obtained by other means, said the report, and the research programme “should not be designed to advance future deployment of these interventions”. Harvard University is hoping to gain imminent approval from an independent committee for test flights, which are opposed by environmental groups.

The report considers three types of solar geoengineering to allow more heat to escape the Earth’s atmosphere: injecting tiny reflective particles into the stratosphere to block sunlight; using the particles to make low-lying clouds over the oceans more reflective; and thinning high-altitude cirrus clouds. Major volcanic eruptions are already known to cool the climate by pumping particles high into the atmosphere.

Proponents of geoengineering argue that impacts of global heating could be so great that every option to limit these must be explored. Opponents argue that such research increases the risk that such technologies could be deployed, perhaps by rogue states, instead of cutting emissions. Critics also warn that solar geoengineering could cause damage such as crop failures, and would need to be maintained to avoid a sudden hike in temperature, unless carbon emissions fall rapidly.

“Given the urgency of the climate crisis, solar geoengineering needs to be studied further,” said Prof Marcia McNutt, the president of the academy. “But just as with advances in fields such as artificial intelligence or gene editing, science needs to engage the public to ask not just can we, but should we?” She said questions of governance – who will decide to deploy this intervention and for how long – were as important as the scientific questions.

“The US solar geoengineering research programme should be all about helping society make more informed decisions,” said Prof Chris Field of Stanford University, who was chair of the committee that wrote the report. “Based on all of the evidence from social science, natural science, and technology, this research programme could either indicate that solar geoengineering should not be considered further, or conclude that it warrants additional effort.”

The report said: “A reasonable initial investment for this solar geoengineering research programme is within a range of $100-200m total over five years.” It said the programme would be a small fraction of the US budget for climate change research and should not shift the focus from other projects.

It said the programme should be designed to “move forward in a socially responsible manner” with researchers following a code of conduct, research catalogued in a public registry, and public engagement undertaken. Outdoor experiments should be subject to appropriate governance including impact assessments, said the report.

The academy said the programme should include scientific research on the possible climate outcomes of geoengineering and impacts on ecosystems and society. Social dimensions cited for research included “domestic and international conflict and cooperation” and “justice, ethics, and equity”.

Prof Gernot Wagner of New York University, whose research includes geoengineering, said: “The report’s focus on research and research governance is important for one simple reason: the current discussion is – and should be – all about research into solar geoengineering, certainly not about deploying the technology, where, if anything, a firm moratorium would be appropriate.”

“Solar geoengineering is an extremely risky and intrinsically unjust technological proposal that doesn’t address any of the causes of climate change,” said Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America director for the ETC campaign group. “The report asking for more research into a technology we don’t want is essentially flawed.”

Iceland volcano dormant for 6,000 years erupts not far from Reykjavík

Phil Helsel

Meteorological officials said the eruption at this stage appeared small. The prime minister said no towns are considered threatened.

A volcano in southwest Iceland that has long been dormant began erupting Friday night, spilling lava down two sides but officials said it appears small and was not considered a threat to any towns.

The eruption on Reykjanes Peninsula, which began around 8:45 p.m. local time (4:45 p.m. ET) was seen on a web camera and later confirmed, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said in a statement.

"The eruption is considered small at this stage," it said on Twitter, estimating that the fissure was around 500 meters, or 1,640 feet, long. While a distinct orange glow could be seen in the low cloud on the peninsula.

Early Saturday, the Meteorological Office said the "volcanic activity has somewhat decreased," and the "lava fountains are small."

A new video of the eruption at Geldingardalur valley in Reykjanes peninsula. Taken from the Coast Guard helicopter. #Reykjanes #Eruption #Fagradalsfjall pic.twitter.com/B862heMzQL

— Icelandic Meteorological Office - IMO (@Vedurstofan) March 19, 2021

The Department of Emergency Management was not anticipating evacuations because the volcano is in a remote valley, The Associated Press reported.

The department initially urged people on Twitter to "close windows and stay indoors"over fears of "volcanic gas pollution" but on Saturday said "currently, gas pollution is not expected to cause much discomfort for people except close up to the source of the eruption."

Iceland's Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir said the eruption was not considered a threat to any towns, but officials were closely monitoring events.

The capital Reykjavík is about 20 miles away.

"As of now it is not considered a threat to surrounding towns," she wrote in a tweet. "We ask people to keep away from the immediate area and stay safe."

A volcanic eruption has begun in Fagradalsfjall on the Reykjanes peninsula. We are monitoring the situation closely and as of now it is not considered a threat to surrounding towns. We ask people to keep away from the immediate area and stay safe. https://t.co/iIACfCc31E

— Katrín Jakobsdóttir (@katrinjak) March 19, 2021

The Fagradals Mountain volcano had been dormant for 6,000 years, and the Reykjanes Peninsula hadn't seen an eruption of any volcano in 781 years, The AP reported.

There had been earthquakes and other seismic activity on that peninsula, but activity in the area of the eruption had been lower in recent days, the meteorological office said in a statement.

In 2010, a different volcano in a different part of Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull, erupted and spewed volcanic ash that spread and caused massive flight disruptions in Europe and affected travel worldwide.

Big banks’ trillion-dollar finance for fossil fuels ‘shocking’, says report

Damian Carrington

A coal-fired power station in China. Despite the pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding of fossil fuel firms remains on an upward trend. Photograph: Wang Meng/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Coal, oil and gas firms have received $3.8tn in finance since the Paris climate deal in 2015

The world’s biggest 60 banks have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to a report by a coalition of NGOs.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding remains on an upward trend and the finance provided in 2020 was higher than in 2016 or 2017, a fact the report’s authors and others described as “shocking”.

Oil, gas and coal will need to be burned for some years to come. But it has been known since at least 2015 that a significant proportion of existing reserves must remain in the ground if global heating is to remain below 2C, the main Paris target. Financing for new reserves is therefore the “exact opposite” of what is required to tackle the climate crisis, the report’s authors said.

US and Canadian banks make up 13 of the 60 banks analysed, but account for almost half of global fossil fuel financing over the last five years, the report found. JPMorgan Chase provided more finance than any other bank. UK bank Barclays provided the most fossil fuel financing among all European banks and French bank BNP Paribas was the biggest in the EU.

Overall financing dipped by 9% in pandemic-hit 2020, but funding for the 100 fossil fuel companies with the biggest expansion plans actually rose by 10%. Citi was the biggest financier of these 100 companies in 2020.

A commitment to be net zero by 2050 has been made by 17 of the 60 banks, but the report describes the pledges as “dangerously weak, half-baked, or vague”, arguing that action is needed today. Some banks have policies that block finance for coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, but almost two-thirds of funding is for oil and gas companies.

The report’s authors said targeting of banks by campaigners and activist shareholders could help change bank policies but that action by governments was also needed.

“When we look at the five years overall, the trend is still going in the wrong direction, which is obviously the exact opposite of where we need to be going to live up to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Alison Kirsch, at Rainforest Action Network and an author of the report. “None of these 60 banks have made, without loopholes, a plan to exit fossil fuels.”

“We have seen progress in restricting financing for special places like the Arctic or greenhouse-gas-intensive forms of oil, like tar sands, but these are such a small piece of the pie,” she said.

“One bank after another is making solemn promises to become ‘net zero by 2050’,” said Johan Frijns, at BankTrack, part of the coalition behind the report. “But there exists no pathway towards this laudable goal that does not require dealing with bank finance for the fossil fuel industry right here and now.”

“Banks provide the financial oxygen that allows the fossil fuel industry to breathe,” said Mark Campanale, at financial thinktank Carbon Tracker, which was not involved in the report. “It reveals the shocking fact that lending has grown since the Paris Agreement, [which] should concern everyone, not least policymakers and shareholders of the banks themselves.

“The cost of carbon in terms of extreme weather events, lost lives and livelihoods will be borne by society and sadly not the banks, nor the fossil fuel companies,” said Campanale. “Next time the banks come looking to taxpayers for a bailout, they shouldn’t be surprised to find backs are turned.”

The report was produced by six NGOs and is endorsed by over 300 organisations from 50 countries. It used Bloomberg data to analyse both direct loans by banks to fossil fuel companies and funding from other investors that the banks arrange via bond and debt sales.

“A surprising result from the 2020 data is that BNP Paribas, a bank that never loses an opportunity to boast of its clean, green credentials, and those of its US subsidiary Bank of the West, came in as the fourth-worst fossil bank in 2020,” the report said, with the $41bn provided by far the biggest sum in last five years.

BNP Paribas has some of the strongest policies on unconventional oil and gas, such as fracking and tar sands, Kirsch said: “But it’s a relatively small part of their overall funding and the bank hasn’t reined in its financing to the oil and gas supermajors, which get really big deals.”

A spokesperson for BNP Paribas said the report has ranked the bank second for the strength of its restrictions on financing coal, fracking and tar sands. “During the Covid-19 crisis, all sectors of the economy needed support and BNP Paribas, like other banks, played an important stabilising role for the economy. However, BNP Paribas supported the oil and gas sector to a lower extent than other sectors of activity.”

JPMorgan Chase launched a “Paris-aligned financing strategy” in October, pledging to set intermediate emission targets for 2030 for its financing portfolio. It declined to comment on the report. Barclays and Citi did not respond to requests for comment.

A separate report last Thursday from the International Energy Agency and Imperial College London found that investments in renewable energy have seen a 367% greater return than fossil fuels since 2010.

Australia’s Worst Floods in Decades Quicken Concerns About Climate Change

Damien Cave

In a country that suffered the harshest wildfires in its recorded history just a year ago, the deluge has become another awful milestone.

WINDSOR, Australia — Kelly Miller stood in her doorway on Monday, watching the water rise to within a few inches of the century-old home where she runs an alternative medicine business. The bridge nearby had already gone under in some of Australia’s worst flooding in decades, along with an abandoned car in the parking lot.

“It’s coming up really quickly,” she said.

Two massive storms have converged over eastern Australia, dumping more than three feet of rain in just five days. In a country that suffered the worst wildfires in its recorded history just a year ago, the deluge has become another record-breaker — a once-in-50-years event, or possibly 100, depending on the rain that’s expected to continue through Tuesday night.

Nearly 20,000 Australians have been forced to evacuate, and more than 150 schools have been closed. The storms have swept away the home of a couple on their wedding day, prompted at least 500 rescues and drowned roads from Sydney up into the state of Queensland 500 miles north.

Watching the flooded Hawkesbury River in Windsor, on Monday. Over the weekend, the river rose rapidly by more than 30 feet.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

Shane Fitzsimmons, the resilience commissioner for New South Wales — a new state position formed after last year’s fires — described the event as another compounding disaster. Last year, huge fires combined into history-making infernos that scorched an area larger than many European countries. This year, thunderstorms have fused and hovered, delivering enough water to push rivers like the Hawkesbury to their highest levels since the 1960s.

Scientists note that both forms of catastrophe represent Australia’s new normal. The country is one of many seeing a pattern of intensification — more extreme hot days and heat waves, as well as more extreme rainfalls over short periods.

It’s all tied to a warming earth, caused by greenhouse gases. Because global temperatures have risen 1.1 degrees Celsius, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, over preindustrial levels, landscapes dry out more quickly, producing severe droughts, even as more water vapor rises into the atmosphere, increasing the likelihood of extreme downpours.

“There is a very strong link between global warming and that intensification in rainfall,” said Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Climate Extremes at the University of New South Wales. “There’s good scientific evidence to say extreme rain is becoming more extreme due to global warming.”

Australia’s conservative government — heavily resistant to aggressive action on climate change that might threaten the country’s fossil fuel industry — has yet to make that link.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has offered funds for those forced to flee, and several dozen areas have already been declared disaster zones.

Sandbagging in Windsor, which may see some of the worst flooding as rains continue on Tuesday.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

“It’s another testing time for our country,” he told a Sydney radio station, 2GB, on Monday. Windsor may become one of the places hardest hit. Over the weekend, the Hawkesbury rose rapidly by more than 30 feet, and it is expected to peak in the next day or so at 42 feet.

With rain continuing to fall, emergency workers wearing bright orange went door to door on side streets with waist-deep puddles where the road dipped.

In and around the historic downtown, many of the businesses close to the river stayed shut on Monday, with a few putting sandbags by their doors. The central meeting place seemed to be at the foot of the Windsor Bridge, where television crews and crowds in rubber boots marveled at the view.

The new Windsor Bridge, which opened just a few months ago as a “flood-proof” replacement for an older bridge, was completely underwater.

Flooding in Windsor. Experts say the storm that produced the floods was a once-in-50-year event, or perhaps even 100.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

It was built 10 feet higher than the bridge it replaced, but the river flowed over it as if it did not exist. A red flashing light on the top of a buried yellow excavator offered the only hint of the old bridge, or what had once been solid ground.

Cameron Gooch, 46, a diesel mechanic from a town nearby, said he saw huge trees speeding downriver toward the coast a day earlier. The water seemed to have slowed down, he said, becoming a giant bathtub with water held in place and rising slowly from tributaries.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “It’s just going to keep building up.”

A few feet away, Rebecca Turnbull, the curator of Howe House, a home and museum built in 1820, put handwritten notes on the furniture that would need to be removed if the water surged a few more feet.

She pointed to a line drawn on the doorway of a room that smelled of damp old wood.

“This is where the water came up to in 1867,” she said. Like many others in Windsor, she said she doubted the river would reach quite that high this time around. But that didn’t bring much solace to those closer to the rising brown sludge.

Windsor may become one of the places hardest hit by the Australian floods.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

Rachael Goldsworthy, who owns a home and real estate business just behind Ms. Miller’s naturopathic clinic — it’s a few feet higher on the hillside — said she saw a new Mercedes washed downstream the night before after a man had parked in a small puddle and then went into a grocery store to buy a roast chicken. In just minutes, the rising water carried the car away.

On Monday, she tried to help Ms. Miller find a few milk crates — the only defense for some of the heavy furniture that could not be moved out.

Inside, Ms. Miller and her son collected oils and other products that she would normally be selling, with plans to put them in a truck or a storage unit. The antique flowered carpet was still dry, and she’d taped up the toilets to keep the septic system from backing up into the house.

She said she didn’t have flood insurance because she couldn’t afford it. So all she could do was learn from YouTube videos about how to fight a flood.

“We’re trying to work out how to save what we can,” she said. “We don’t want to lose everything.”

Yan Zhuang contributed reporting from Melbourne, Australia.

THE GREEN ROOM (Episode 11): Amelia Clarke on Collaboration not Competition (Building Multi-stakeholder Partnerships for Sustainability)

GREEN ROOM: LIVE WEBINAR

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Summary of the Discussion

Dr. Amelia shared her research work which focuses on Implementation of goals through different approach which can be partnership or participation. She further speaks on the importance of localising the Sustainable Development Goals and the deep Decarbonization strategy which is also  crucial in achieving the Global Goals.

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LISTEN TO PODCAST

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Amelia Clarke is the Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Dr. Jason J. McSparren is an educator, researcher, and administrator with a PhD. in Global Governance and Human Security from Massachusetts Boston.

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Q&A

Dr. McSparren: Fantastic work. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much. Okay, I'd like to begin now with the question and answer period. Okay, again, ladies and gentlemen in the audience, if you're interested in asking a question, please raise your hand or type your question into the chatbox. And then, we will call on you unmute your screen so that you can ask your question, or if you prefer if it's in the chat box, I can always ask.

But as I was listening to the presentation. One thing came to mind that that jumped out on me. Actually, there are a lot of very interesting details. This is a really fantastic research; it can have a big impact on sustainable development progress and the actualisation of the SDGs going forward. So that's really great work. I want to commend the two of you. But one thing that I thought about really quickly is, you mentioned, Dr. Clarke, that you have some of these multi-stakeholder group projects are either voluntarily put together or they are contract-based. And I was wondering if in your conclusions in your findings. Did you find that one or the other is more successful, or was that something that you weren't necessarily looking at?

Dr. Clarke: So what we're finding is that at the local scale, they're all relevant.And so then it's a question for what.So generally, organisations get involved with a partnership approach because they've, they want to tackle something that's outside their jurisdiction, or they don't have the resources to do it.And so that drives them to want to partner with someone else. So, if the main resource you're missing is capital, don't have the money to do an infrastructure project for example, then a PPP might be the right approach. On the other hand, if you're missing kind of collective action by many actors simultaneously. And you want to move forward on a lot of aspects because these are very complicated problems. Then a multi-stakeholder kind of cross sector partnership will enable you to engage many actors from local universities to local businesses to civil society, to all collectively work towards the same vision. So, each one has a purpose. And what we're seeing in the climate spaces now there's a lot of sector approaches. So they're starting to develop partnerships very specific on transportation, for example. And then another one over here on electricity. So, again, it depends on what you're missing right how much do you control the local utilities or it's another company. How much needs to be done through partnership or how much you can do yourself.

Dr. McSparren: Yes, interesting I asked that question because in some of my research, I've looked at voluntary governance mechanisms in the mining sector, and again in the literature, there's a lot of talk about the effectiveness or sometimes lack thereof. And those so I'll just kind of wondering about your perspective in the sustainability front.

Dr. Clarke: I'm glad you brought up mining. So, this is a perfect example of a participation approach versus a partnership approach. And if you're doing stakeholder engagement, but you completely control their decision, and you're going to completely implement all the decisions that's not collaborative right, where if it's a partnership approach where you let the community have a big say in what's happening here. Then you're starting to get into a more partnership approach.

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Favourite Quote

“The Sustainable Community plans are a wonderful way of localizing the SDGs and bringing those topics all down to local scale and what can be achieved at the local scale.”

— Dr. Amelia Clarke

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Top Comments

I am very appreciative by the insightful information shared by both Professor Clarke and by Mr. Bayo at today's Green Room event-Filomena

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