Leaders head to Glasgow to determine climate future
Presidents and Prime Ministers meet in Glasgow this week for the 12-day UN conference on global warming, often referred to as COP26, to discuss global climate policies, which are likely to determine the future of the planet.
Tensions are looming. Some poor countries badly affected by climate disasters are waiting for the money promised by the industrialized nations. Rising nationalism and the coronavirus pandemic offer grim lessons about the prospects for collective action. The divisions pit advanced countries against developing countries and big polluters against small and vulnerable countries.
US climate envoy John Kerry tried to manage expectations. “Glasgow was never, never going to get every country to come together in Glasgow or necessarily this year,” Kerry said. “It was going to drive increased global ambition.”
Aim: Any agreement may have to be much more important than the previous ones. Even if all countries achieve their 2015 Paris Agreement targets, the global average temperatures are on track to rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, 1.2 degrees above the goal.
Biden’s climate speech: The president wants to assure summit attendees that the United States is serious about climate change. But lacks the legislative home win to back that up.
Related: Electric vehicles made in China are gaining popularity in Europe.
Agreements and commitments at the G20 summit
At the opening session of the Group of 20 summit in Rome, world leaders endorsed a historic global agreement to prevent large corporations from transferring profits and jobs across borders to avoid taxes.
The world’s largest economies also agreed stop financing coal plants abroadAlthough that fell far short of what is needed to combat climate change, sparking half-measure fears at this week’s UN climate summit. The leaders pledged to “continue efforts” to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
Britain moves to curb the spread of Covid in schools
Healthcare workers in Britain will begin a tour of more than 800 schools in a Effort to vaccinate 12-15 year olds. against the coronavirus, amid an increase in cases driven primarily by high levels of infection in school-age children. More than a third of all recently reported cases were in children under 15 years of age.
While around 68 per cent of the British public are fully vaccinated and more than six million people have received a booster shot, the number of cases and deaths have not decreased, as they have in other Western European countries. Some researchers have blamed Britain’s delay in approving adolescent vaccines.
Context: England has had some of the most flexible coronavirus protections in Europe since July 19, when it removed all legal restrictions, including the mandatory use of masks. In a recent poll, 21 percent of Britons said they rarely or never wore a mask in public, roughly four times more than in Italy and Spain.
“Absolutely awesome” is how the University of California, Santa Barbara, described plans for a new 11-story residence – one in which the vast majority of students would live in small, windowless rooms.
One consulting architect saw it differently and wrote: “The basic concept of Munger Hall as a place for students to live is excruciating from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.”
ARTS AND IDEAS
The legendary literary places of New York
While there have been writers in New York City, there have been writers’ bars, as well as restaurants, apartments and clubs, reports Tina Jordan for The Times.
In 1910, The Times lamented “the disappearance of New York’s literary hangouts,” noting that many once-famous hangouts were being razed as the city grew, including the stamping grounds of Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe. Over the decades, dozens, if not hundreds, of other establishments have appeared to take their places.
Members of the 1950s literary ensemble, including James Baldwin, Dylan Thomas, and Jack Kerouac, frequented the White Horse in the West Village, upstairs.
In the 1970s, the Chelsea Hotel lured writers with cheap rent and rosewood-beamed rooms. William S. Burroughs finished “Naked Lunch” there, while Thomas Wolfe, who took refuge in room 829 in the last years of his life, wrote several books there, including “You Can’t Go Home”.
Decades later, Café Loup attracted such luminaries as Fran Lebowitz, Gay Talese, and Christopher Hitchens, who once described it as “my real bar.” Zadie Smith paid tribute to him in her short story “Downtown”, calling it “a moving party.”
Continue your tour of New York literary places here.