Grant Douglas pauses while evacuating as a wildfire reaches Highway 36 near Paynes Creek in Tehama County, California, July 26, 2024
THE world is on the road to ruin unless nations act to stop climate change, the United Nations (UN) warned yesterday.
The international body said that 2024 had “capped a decade of unprecedented heat fuelled by human activities.”
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), which will publish official temperature figures for 2024 in January, said the year “saw record-breaking rainfall and flooding events and terrible loss of life in so many countries, causing heartbreak to communities on every continent.”
Coal-fired stoves in traditional homes are the primary source of extreme levels of air pollution in over-crowded Ulaanbaatar. As more people become climate-displaced, the situation is likely to worsen, write SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
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When it comes to extreme weather events, from wildfires to flash floods, it’s firefighters who are on the front line of defence, but services have been cut to the bone, and government is not taking seriously its responsibility for the environment, says STEVE WRIGHT