With natural disasters like wildfires and heatwaves, the UN secretary-general has warned that humanity is on the verge of “collective suicide.”
Speaking to ministers from 40 nations, António Guterres stated that the effects of climate change posed a threat to half of humanity. No country is immune to effects like floods, storms, and droughts, he claimed, yet people “continue to feed their addiction to fossil fuels.”
He continued, “We have a choice. The world must decide between collective action or collective suicide.
Wildfires have been caused by heat records that have broken in North America and Europe. Scientists have been surprised by heatwaves in South Asia and droughts in Africa.
The UK, France, and other nations have all issued heat advisories.
The climate crisis will be discussed at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, which is organised annually by the German government.
The likelihood that the Cop27 UN climate summit will take place this year has decreased. Governments are preoccupied with the cost of living after COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine due to rising fuel prices.
Countries made a commitment to keep global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels at Cop26 last year in Glasgow. They are required to develop improved greenhouse gas emission plans known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) this year.
There aren’t “many new NDCs,” according to the vice president of the European Commission, who represents the EU bloc at the UN climate talks.
Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, serves as the organization’s president.
Additionally, the World Bank and other “multilateral development banks” were accused by Guterres. He claimed that in terms of providing money to address the climate crisis, they weren’t adequate.
climate change
A recent study asserts that sleep deprivation may result from climate change.
In a study titled “Rising temperatures erode human sleep globally,” data from sleep monitors worn by 47,628 anonymous people in 68 countries over a two-year period, from September 2015 to October 2017, were examined.
According to the study, by 2099, rising temperatures will probably rob each person of 50 to 58 hours of sleep annually.
The risks associated with temperature effects on sleep loss are significantly higher for lower-income nations like Pakistan and India. The elderly and women are most likely to be impacted, according to the study.
Future hot nights will cause people to sleep in later and wake up earlier, which will have “several detrimental physical and mental outcomes.”
Our body temperature must decrease in order to fall asleep, which will be more difficult as the world gets warmer.
Our ability to “maintain a stable core body temperature” is essential for maintaining our lives, according to the study’s author Kelton Minor.
The majority of us are unaware of what our bodies do each night, but they dissipate heat from our core into the environment by widening blood vessels and increasing blood flow to our hands and feet.
