The European ruling could be a game-changer

An international human-rights court has ruled that Switzerland must act responsibly in reducing climate-gas emissions – the case of the Senior Women for Climate Protection

This marks the first time that an international human-rights court has linked protection of human rights with duties to mitigate global warming, clarifying once and for all that climate law and policy do not operate in a human-rights vacuum. The ruling is bound to alter the course of climate protection around the world.

The case was brought by Swiss Senior Women for Climate Protection (Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz), a group of more than 2,500 Swiss women aged 64 or over. They argued that they are at greater risk of heat-related illness or death than most people — and that, given that temperatures are rising, Switzerland was doing too little to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and contribute to meeting the 2015 Paris Agreement targets. In doing so, Switzerland was violating its duty to protect them. The court agreed.

Without prescribing specific years or percentage reductions, the ruling set out how a nation can show it is compliant. There is a timetable for achieving carbon neutrality, as well as targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Measures must be implemented in a timely, appropriate and consistent manner. Governments have a responsibility to provide evidence that they have complied with their targets.

Two more requirements follow from Article 8 of the ECHR. The public has a right to know about climate regulations and measures. They have to take citizens’ views into account when making decisions.

What must Switzerland do right now? From the Federal Council to parliaments and governments at the federal, cantonal and municipal levels, the executive and legislature must act. They should set a greenhouse-gas budget and emissions pathways that can be legally binding, scientifically sound and able to bring about necessary reductions. Authorities must find ways to act on people’s views when it comes to climate change.

Switzerland should welcome the judgement as a nudge to overcome inertia, just as the Netherlands and Germany have done over similar rulings by their domestic courts. Thanks to the KlimaSeniorinnen, policymakers now know what level of protection they must guarantee, and they have access to cutting-edge studies on emissions budgets.

The origins of bioluminescence in animals date back over half a billion years: a marine biologist says the world’s worst disease is not an airborne virus

The first animals may have developed the ability to make light. Plus, the WHO has redefined ‘airborne transmission’ and how artificial intelligence is changing weapons of war.

It took more than half a billion years for bioluminescence to show up in animals. Danielle Deleo, evolutionary marine Biologist and study co-author, said that they had no idea it was going to be this old. The earliest glowing animals were thought to be tiny crustaceans around 270 million years ago. Genetic analysis and computer modelling revealed that octocorals probably evolved the ability to make light much earlier, around the time when the first animals developed eyes.

The strain of the monkeypox virus has the ability to spread through sexual contact. The strain, called clade Ib, has caused a cluster of infections in a conflict-ridden region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The monkeypox virus has been warned about the potential for it to become sexually transmissible before, but the warnings were largely ignored. The strain responsible, clade II, is less lethal than clade Ib, but ultimately caused an ongoing global outbreak that has infected more than 94,000 people and killed more than 180. TheDRC is surrounded by nine other countries, says Nicaise Ndembi.

The WHO has decided to change the way it categorizes airborne pathogens. It has removed the distinction between transmission by smaller virus-containing ‘aerosol’ particles and spread through larger ‘droplets’. The division, according to some researchers, is unscientific and justified WHO’s March 2020 belief that the SARS-coV-2 virus was not airborne. The term “airborne” would be considered to be less clear than “through the air” under the new definition. “I’m not saying everybody is happy, and not everybody agrees on every word in the document, but at least people have agreed this is a baseline terminology,” says WHO chief scientist Jeremy Farrar.

Source: Daily briefing: The origins of bioluminescence in animals date back over half a billion years

The Case of Puerto Rico: The History of the First Human Birth Control Pill and its Effects on Gravitational and Insight-Based AI Weapons

The development of lethal autonomous weapons, such as AI-equipped drones, is on the rise. “The technical capability for a system to find a human being and kill them is much easier than to develop a self-driving car,” says computer scientist and campaigner against AI weapons Stuart Russell. Some argue that accurate AI weapons could reduce collateral damage while helping vulnerable nations to defend themselves. At the same time, observers are concerned that passing targeting decisions to an algorithm could lead to catastrophic mistakes. At a meeting later this year, the United Nations will probably discuss the topic of artificial intelligence weapons.

When US scientists needed a place to test the first birth-control pill, they looked to Puerto Rico. Many of the women who took the pill didn’t know they were part of a trial. Debilitating side effects were dismissed as psychosomatic. The final product was too expensive for women to afford. Las Borinqueas revisits this complicated history. “It’s a long-overdue tribute and, most importantly, a reminder to remain vigilant against abuse and disrespect in studies involving human participants,” writes Nature reporter Mariana Lenharo in her review.

Source: Daily briefing: The origins of bioluminescence in animals date back over half a billion years

Photo of Polarstern in Greenland, winner of a competition to measure ocean temperatures and conductivity with anchored sea floor CTDs

This image, taken on top of the icebreaker research vessel Polarstern, shows the delicate process of retrieving an ocean-monitoring instrument called a CTD (short for conductivity, temperature, depth) that had become trapped under sea ice off the coast of northeastern Greenland. Humidities and temperature vary with depth and are measured with anchored sea floorCTDs. The photo is the winner of a competition. See the rest of the winning images from the competition here.