How serious are net-zero pledges?

Progress towards a sustainable world does not solve the problem of fossil fuel phasing out: an analysis using a U.N. study of net zero emissions

“We’re not asking for them to turn the tap off overnight,” says Lang, adding that all entities — not just the companies they analysed — need to have a plan for a managed decline in fossil-fuel usage over the next 30 or 40 years. These plans are not yet in place. The group hopes to collect more comprehensive data on the phasing out of fossil fuels across all the entities they track in the coming months.

The latest analysis shows that the proportion of countries with net-zero pledges that are either enshrined in law or in a weighty policy document has leapt from 7% in December 2020 to 75% (see ‘Legally weak’). “This shows that governments see actions towards net-zero as critical for the long term,” says Malango Mughogho, managing director of sustainable-finance firm ZeniZeni in Johannesburg, South Africa, and former member of a United Nations net-zero group.

Most of the states and regions that made pledges haven’t met the criteria. “We saw no movement whatsoever” in almost every case, says Lang.

The starting line is the minimum procedural requirements for a decent pledge and is in the Race to Zero scheme. The criteria include a plan, a pledge and evidence of action taken to reach the target.

Urban quiet hours and the fight against disease: an interactive feature of a bustling city in the North Pacific island of Palmyra, California

Most of the larger ones in the center and the smaller ones outside were sorted into a pattern when the microwaves were made to spin by a magnetic field. The phenomenon might one day be used to assemble microscopic structures, and to understand the process of self-organization, in which local interactions — between molecules, cells or animals, for example — lead to order in a system. 2 min read.

Chronic noise is not just annoying, it’s a health threat that goes largely unrecognized. The relentless din of cars, trains and planes increases the risk of hypertension, stroke and heart attacks. People who live in quiet areas are affected by sudden sounds. This interactive feature looks at how cities and countries are taking action. Paris has installed noise cameras to monitor vehicles’ sound levels, and Switzerland has introduced national quiet hours.

This lushly photographed feature travels to the North Pacific atoll of Palmyra — home to some of the most pristine coral reefs in the world. The area has been scarred by military activity and ravaged by coconut-palm trees. Now a nature preserve, Palmyra is a natural laboratory for studying whether networks of fungi below ground can help to revive damaged habitats. “If we can get restoration right on islands, we have this great capacity to have an outsized impact on reversing the world’s biodiversity crisis,” says ecologist Holly Jones.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02078-7

Open-Source Artificial Intelligence: Challenges for a Trust Fund to Establish a Conserved Biodiversity Strategy in the 2030s

There is a quiet revolution going on when it comes to open-sourced chatbots, asrative artificial intelligence tools are grabbing headlines. BLOOM is a large language model designed for researchers. And LLaMA — a model originally developed by Facebook’s parent company, Meta — has been shrunk to the point where it can run on a laptop instead of needing a huge computing facility. Making neural networks open source will make for more accessible, more transparent AI and reduce the systems’ biases, say proponents. Critics worry that making these powerful tools broadly accessible increases the chances that they will end up in the wrong hands.

The ability of countries to meet the goals of a landmark biodiversity plan is under threat due to differences over how to finance it. The signatories agreed to establish a trust fund by the end of this year and that wealthy nations should collectively pay US$30 billion annually by 2030. The proposal is under discussion and will need $200 million by the end of the year. donor countries are reluctant to agree on an initial budget. Low- and middle-income nations do not agree with the initial amount proposed. $700 billion is needed to fully safeguard nature, according to researchers.