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Dispelling Myths, Embracing Action: How We Can Own and Resolve the Climate Crisis Together

In the narrative of the climate crisis, a series of pervasive myths shape our perceptions and actions, often limiting our sense of agency and urgency. These myths, rooted in misinformation, resignation, or misunderstanding, suggest that the issue is too vast, too complex, or even too distant to be influenced by individual efforts. However, dismantling these myths is crucial for empowering ourselves and our communities to take meaningful, impactful actions towards a sustainable future. This blog post aims to address these common myths, explore how they shape our behaviour, and offer strategies for breaking free from these limiting beliefs to take ownership of the climate crisis.

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The digital economy’s environmental footprint is threatening the planet

Modern society has given significant attention to the promises of the digital economy over the past decade. But it has given little attention to its negative environmental footprint.
Our smartphones rely on rare earth metals, and cloud computing, data centres, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies consume large amounts of electricity, often sourced from coal-fired power plants.
These are crucial blind spots we must address if we hope to capture the full potential of the digital economy. Without urgent system-wide actions, the digital economy and green economy will be incompatible with each other and could lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, accelerate climate change and pose great threats to humanity.

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Shifting discourses of climate security in India: domestic and international dimensions

The Indian perspectives on climate security are influenced by both domestic and international imperatives. The logic followed by India is not typically the same as that adopted by countries of the Global North. India’s discourses on the interconnections between climate change and security are largely conditioned by developmental priorities (domestic) and geopolitical pressures (international), which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

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Independence Day 2024: India’s future, its youth, face their greatest challenge yet — the climate crisis

Nationalism enjoys popularity across party lines. It might therefore be fitting for Indian youth to ask themselves: what is the thread of Indianness that binds us as brothers and sisters? The first guess would be the territory — coincidentally, the focus of the first part of the Constitution of India. Ecology and climate, then, become our shared national concern.
Unfortunately, climate change is not a widely popular concern in India.

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Implications of an emission trading scheme for India’s net-zero strategy: a modelling-based assessment

To help meet its near-term NDC goals and long-term net-zero 2070 target, the Government of India has planned to establish a Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), i.e. a domestic emission trading scheme (ETS). An ETS is an inherently cost-effective policy instrument for emission reduction, providing the greatest flexibility to reduce emissions from within and across sectors. An effective ETS requires design features that consider country-specific challenges and reflect its role within the larger policy package to achieve long-term emission reduction

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How climate change might trigger more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions

Earth’s climate is changing rapidly. In some areas, escalating temperatures are increasing the frequency and likelihood of wildfires and drought. In others, they are making downpours and storms more intense or accelerating the pace of glacial melting.
The past month is a stark illustration of exactly this. Parts of Europe and Canada are being devastated by wildfires, while Beijing has recorded its heaviest rainfall in at least 140 years. Looking back further, between 2000 and 2019 the world’s glaciers lost around 267 gigatonnes of ice per year.
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Climate Change and Population

The effects of global warming are already bringing harm to human communities and the natural world. Further temperature rises will have a devastating impact and more action on greenhouse gas emissions is urgently required. Multiple factors contribute to climate change, and multiple actions are needed to address it. The number of people on our planet is one of those factors. Every additional person increases carbon emissions — the rich far more than the poor — and increases the number of climate change victims – the poor far more than the rich….

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Rich man’s solution? Climate engineering discourses and the marginalization of the Global South

Numerous recent studies project that ‘climate engineering’ technologies might need to play a major role in the future. Such technologies may carry major risks for developing countries that are often especially vulnerable to, and lack adaptive capacity to deal with, the impacts of such new technologies. In this situation, one would expect that developing countries—especially the least developed countries that are most vulnerable—should play a central role in the emerging discourse on climate engineering. And yet, as this article shows in detail, the discussion about whether and how to engage with these technologies is shaped by experts from just a small set of countries in the Global North. Knowledge production around climate engineering remains heavily dominated by the major research institutions in North America and Europe.

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Tackling climate change can improve public health in Africa – new report highlights how

African countries can simultaneously address climate change and improve public health by reducing air pollution. In many cases these actions also have other societal, economic, environment or health benefits.
Addressing these together is challenging because they are often the responsibility of different government departments. International climate change, health and development processes are often also separate discussions…

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The climate crisis is making gender inequality in developing coastal communities worse

Across the world, women and men experience the impacts of the climate crisis in different ways. These are shaped by societal roles and responsibilities and result in widening inequalities between men and women.
Sea-level rise, storm surges and high waves in coastal areas do not discriminate, but societal structures often do. This makes climate change a highly gender-sensitive issue.
Research has long shown that coastal areas are the most directly affected by climate change…

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