When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Green

Green

What's Climate Migration? A Straight Line From Libyan Floods To Lampedusa Chaos

Libya's catastrophic flood last week coincided with massive arrivals of migrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa. What look at first like two distinct stories are part of the same mounting crisis that the world is simply not prepared to face: climate migration.

Updated September 18, 2023 at 1:45 p.m.

-Analysis-

They are difficult numbers for the brain to comprehend: 4,000 dead, 10,000 more missing. This is the current estimate of the toll — with most victims having drowned and washed away almost immediately — after two dams burst last week during a massive storm in eastern Libya.

As the search continues for victims in and around the city of Derna, across the Mediterranean Sea, a different number tells another troubling story: in the span of just two days, 7,000 migrants have arrived on the island of Lampedusa.

Midway between Sicily and the North African coast, the tiny Italian island has long been a destination for those hailing from all points south and east to arrive on European soil. Still, the staggering number of arrivals this week of people ready to risk their lives on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean should again set off alarms that reach far beyond the island.

Yet these two numbers — one of the thousands of dead, the other of thousands of survivors — are in some way really one story.

Watch VideoShow less

Libya Flood, A "Natural" Disaster Made Of Climate Change And Colonialism

The devastating flood in Libya is the result of the climate crisis, worsened by the country's poor infrastructure, the legacy of European colonialism. These disasters will only become more frequent.

-Analysis-

If we still haven't come to terms with the climate crisis and the criminal irresponsibility of the Western world, we need look no further than the harrowing images coming from Libya, a nation devastated by the Mediterranean Storm Daniel.

The death toll is still unknown, with numbers rising everyday. It seems possible that the death toll will surpass 20,000, eclipsing Morocco's earthquake (which, somehow, has better captured the public's attention).

The damage is notable. In the eastern coastal city of Derna, witnesses describe water as much as three meters high. Yet these extreme weather conditions, stemming from an increasingly severe climate crisis, are only heightened by humanity's reckless disregard for the earth.

Keep reading...Show less

Crossing Europe, Sans Gas? My Summer Vacation 'Stress Test' For Electric Cars

The author set off on a three-week vacation trip across Europe in an electric car. Would the charging infrastructure be enough to get all the way, or would they end up stranded without battery, far from home?

BERLIN — "Do we really want to do that?" my wife asked. "Nearly 3,000 kilometers across Europe, in an electric car? We've already failed over much shorter distances."

She was right about that. But it's 2023, and e-mobility has outgrown its niche. It is set to become the new reality — in fact, it already is. After all, we're driving through Europe, not the desert.

After a lot of persuasion, I finally managed to assuage her worries. But I also prepared myself for a fairly big adventure. After all, our three-week vacation tour this year took us not only through Germany, but also Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy.

On our last long electric trip just over a year ago, we got stuck in a charging station jam after only 160 kilometers. The charging park in Nempitz, Saxony-Anhalt, was overrun, and before we could get to the charging point we had to line up and wait for 45 minutes.

Keep reading...Show less

Lithium Mining: How The Clean Energy Rush Repeats Old Cycles Of Global Exploitation

The search for clean energy is essential in an age of alarming climate change. Lithium extraction represents a great opportunity, but the maltreatment of communities affected by this extraction must be considered if we want to interrupt the vicious cycle of wealthy countries exploiting resource-rich countries.

COPIAPO — The scientific community continues to warn that burning fuels to obtain energy is simply not sustainable for the planet. Among all the alternatives that currently exist, perhaps the most popular one for the transportation sector is electric energy. At first glance, it sounds tempting: electric trains, cars and buses capable of transporting people over long distances, equipped with almost limitless batteries, and charging stations distributed throughout the territory.

But to make electric batteries, which are also found in mobile and portable devices, lithium is needed. This mineral is currently experiencing high demand precisely because of its large energy storage capacity. Extracting it requires large amounts of water and chemicals. This is where some people are already asking: can we justify everything, in the name of energy transition?

The largest sources of lithium in the world are found in brine deposits in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, making them the focus of attention for investors. But indigenous communities that depend on these territories and the resources found there demand prior dialogue and informed consultation before allowing the extraction of the mineral.

"To us, the salt flat represents our entire life," explains Lesley Muñoz Rivera, a representative of the Colla community in Copiapo, Chile. "The salt flat is a water reservoir. When they propose to extract large quantities and tons of water to dry them in the sun and obtain this lithium carbonate, they are harming the water. I define the Colla people as a water-based community, and if we don't have water to live and provide for our animals or crops, how are we going to survive?"

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Marta Zaraska

Gimme Shelter! Using Tech To Rethink How We Protect Endangered Species

Human-made shelters don’t always keep creatures out of harm’s way. Can technology help design a better protect birds and possums?

In 2016, Ox Lennon was trying to peek in the crevices inside a pile of rocks. They considered everything from injecting builders’ foam into the tiny spaces to create a mold to dumping a heap of stones into a CT scanner. Still, they couldn’t get the data they were after: how to stack rocks so that a mouse wouldn’t squeeze through, but a small lizard could hide safely inside.

Lennon, then a Ph.D. student at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, aimed to protect skinks, snake-like lizards on which non-native mice prey. When road construction near Wellington displaced a local population of the reptiles, they were moved to a different site. But the new location lacked the rock piles that skinks use as shelter.

So, Lennon and their colleagues set out to create a mice-proof pile of rocks. It proved harder than they thought.

Watch VideoShow less
Green
Jazmín Bazán

Patagonian National Park, A Fragile Beauty At The End Of The World

The Patagonian National Park is a spectacular and unique landscape that illustrates the outstanding beauty of nature. But it is at risk of becoming a victim of the climate crisis.

SANTA CRUZ — The northwestern corner of the Argentine province of Santa Cruz is the setting for the Patagonian National Park, an exquisitely neglected part of a region that has become a byword for escapism.

The songwriter Atahualpa Yupanqui called this windswept plateau, with its elevated floodplains and wetlands, the "night watchman of the Americas." Every day the sun shakes up an explosion of earthy colors here before night returns to cast over them a veil of subtle, indefinable mystery. In this merging point of glaciers and the eternal snows of the Zeballos peak, water in so many forms, a Yellow Cliff (Cerro amarillo), prehistoric artworks, volcanic cones and a star-lit sky, only one thing is certain — that nothing is still in this ethereal part of the earth.

Around the Lake Buenos Aires plateau, the park hosts a unique ecosystem of rare and endemic species such as the hooded grebe, and was the home of several prehispanic cultures that left their petroglyphs. The park has three entry points, with camping sites, bathing facilities and even catering options in peak visiting periods.

Watch VideoShow less
Green
Monica Wendel

How Planting Trees Could Inject New Life Into Dry Soil

Dry soil, hardly any rain — this summer's drought is making life difficult for farmers. In one of the driest regions in Germany, environmentally friendly farmer Benedikt Bösel is turning his fields into a laboratory, experimenting with an exciting new approach.

ALT MADLITZ — In summer, Benedikt Bösel likes to set up his table out in the fields, with herds of cattle grazing nearby. The 38-year-old has an estate and a large farm in Brandenburg, the driest region in Germany. For many years now, he has been a leader in the world of environmentally friendly farming, using Instagram, a book and talk show appearances to spread the message about his mission to save the soil.

“Everywhere now, you can feel that water is becoming scarcer, and we don’t have any healthy soil left,” says Bösel, who runs a large farm with 1,000 hectares of arable land and 2,000 hectares of woodland in Alt Madlitz, in the Briesen region, about an hour from Berlin. He has turned his fields into a kind of laboratory. In a region with one of the lowest precipitation rates in all of Germany, and with very sandy soil, he is developing new ways of using the land, in response to the environmental crisis.

Agro-forestry systems play an important role in reducing the damage caused by drought and erosion. In simple terms, this means interspersing trees and bushes throughout arable fields. The trees are regularly spaced out in rows across the fields. Experts believe this helps the soil to retain moisture, meaning that extreme weather causes less damage. When tilling the land, most farmers prefer to “drive in long, straight lines,” says Bösel, who works in partnership with a number of research institutes and is supported by the German Ministry of Agriculture.

According to the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research’s records on droughts, there is a vast swathe of land, running from eastern Lower Saxony across Saxony-Anhalt to Berlin and Brandenburg, that has been consistently too dry for the past five years. As a result, farms in the east of Germany, which tend to be far larger than the national average, have suffered poor harvests.

Watch VideoShow less
Green
Brigitte LG Baptiste

You, Me And 65 Million Chickens: Shifting To Sustainable Food Production, Without The Guilt

Industrial-style farming should certainly be reimagined, but not with a guilt-ridden assault on the livelihoods of millions of farmers, herders and fishermen.

-OpEd-

BOGOTÁ — The bones of 65 million chickens eaten every year will leave a mark on the planet, with scientists and diggers citing them one day as evidence of our existence, alongside radioactivity and microplastics. That was the conclusion of a study from the University of Leicester in England, on the ecology of a planet dominated by human settlements.

Chickens, boiled, roasted and shredded, represent perfectly what we are doing to the planet, in material and symbolic terms. Mass violence isn't the preserve of terrorists, to be sure.

Over 5,000 years, this essentially flightless bird, originally from India, according to the Audubon Society, has become the main source of animal protein for people across the world. With their legs tied, caged or sitting in baskets, these birds eventually made their way to the most remote Amazon settlements and to our country's highlands.

Watch VideoShow less
Green
Gonzalo Sánchez

How Argentina Got Hooked On Overfishing — And How To Set Herself Free

Trawling in Argentine waters is wiping out marine life in the southern Atlantic. Whatever the money stakes, Argentina must expand those territorial waters where all fishing is banned.

BUENOS AIRES — Very few people know about trawl fishing, the chief method used to fish, indiscriminately and wastefully, in Argentine territorial waters. It has been used for over 50 years to catch hake (halibut) and prawn, two of the three species that constitute the local industry (the third being squid, which is caught another way).

Bottom trawling, if this is happening at the seafloor level, is "non-selective," and uses a vast, heavy net, 120 meters long and 45 wide, with a "mouth" that can reach 12 meters in height.

The monstrous contraption is submerged and dragged by a boat on the surface, engulfing everything in its path: fish, crustaceans, molluscs, mammals, etc. This means dragging up, and killing, all life in a particular zone just for hake and prawn.

Everything that rises dies before it is loaded onto these floating factories. Rays and sharks emerge as half-crushed remains, and are thrown back into the sea. Within minutes, a place teeming with life is turned into a graveyard.

Watch VideoShow less
Society
Kristian Frigelj

You Don't Clean Up Your Dog's Poop? DNA Could Trace It Back To You

In one German town, like in several places around the world, the mayor wants to take action against those who don't clean up their dog's "business." But Germany's data protection laws mean the initiative will be difficult to implement.

WEILERSWIST — Stepping in a pile of dog excrement is bad enough. But for city workers, the ick factor is often even higher. The droppings spray when public lawns are being mowed, stain clothing and equipment, and sometimes end up in employees' faces. Despite the increased use of bag dispensers and campaigns, almost all cities and municipalities continue to face the reality that certain resident dog owners are too lazy to pick up and dispose of their four-legged friends' "business."

In Weilerswist, a German municipality near Cologne, Mayor Anna-Katharina Horst wants to implement a measure that is DNA file for dogs. Horst wants the city to send all owners an invitation to take a DNA sample of their four-legged friend. In addition, a sample is to be taken with the registration of each new dog.

Watch VideoShow less
Geopolitics

Europe's Oldest and Largest Forest Is Now A Major Political Battleground

The Puszcza Białowieska, one of Europe's oldest forests, has become a battleground, with environmentalists increasingly concerned about widespread logging in the forest, which is also ground zero for heightened tensions with neighbor Belarus and the ongoing migration crisis. And, all across Poland, increased logging with political motivations has been stirring activist tensions.

The Białowieża Forest, Puszcza Białowieska, known as the oldest and last of the remaining primeval forests in Europe, has become a battleground for activists. Environmentalists have noted the “lightning speed” with which timber is being extracted from the forest, bringing complaints from as high up as the European Commission.

The forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site — and the only nature site in Poland to make the list — “includes the most representative and most important natural habitats for the conservation of biodiversity, including those with endangered species," according to the NGO Puszcza Pracownia.

But to some in the Polish government, nature conservation is a step for tomorrow, to follow economic growth, and not necessary right now. “In the West, first they built their infrastructure, and then laws to protect nature began to be introduced," said ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) MP Jan Duda. “We — through no fault of our own — have been developing for only 20-odd years and we are forced to (protect the environment) now, taking into account the restrictive environmental protection law."

With a so-called “special act," PiS demolished the Białowieża Forest, dividing it in half with a fence, which was protested by several hundred scientists from Europe. The fence divides the forest, people and populations of protected species, threatening their genetic connectivity and biodiversity. The fence was built without the usual environmental, construction or tender procedures. On the basis of the same principles, the bank of the border section of the Bug River was covered with razor wire. Animals have died in agony, caught in the wire’s coils, according to a report from Gazeta Wyborcza.

Watch VideoShow less
Green
Marta Danielewicz

Toxic Fires Reveal Poland's "Time Bomb" Of Illegal Waste Dumps

A fire involving a hazardous waste dump has brought attention to the hundreds of illegal waste dumps across Poland. Yet the government has failed to offer an adequate response.

ZIELONA — On July 23, an illegal toxic waste dump set ablaze in Zielona Góra, a city of about 140,000 inhabitants in western Poland, causing high levels of polluted smog and a fire that raged for several hours before finally being extinguished. The waste brought attention to the sheer number of illegal landfills across the country. There are hundreds of such places in Poland, and even more companies operating this way. They are present in every region of the country.

The ruling party government has boasted about tightening the regulations on illegally dumping waste, which they claim has been a so-called “declaration of war” on the “garbage mafia”.

It turns out, however, that the more restrictive the regulations, the more the black market behind Poland’s waste management is able to develop. Recent data shows that every year, more warehouses and sheds filled with toxic chemicals are detected. And this is not the only problem regarding illegal waste storage sites.

Watch VideoShow less
EXPLORE OTHER TOPICS
chinaitalyusafrancegermany