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Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit •

2023’s climate disasters: from storms and cyclones to wildfires and…

Last updated:

22 Dec. 2023
Aside the immediate devastation to human life and livelihoods, the economic impact of extreme weather is increasing. By September, the US had already had $23 billion worth of damage from climate disasters, a record. These included the Maui wildfire, Hurricane Idalia which struck Florida and a storm in Minnesota, all three of which occurred in one month alone: August. There has been a steady upward march in billion-dollar climate disasters in the US over the decades, f...
Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit •

The people vs climate inaction

Last updated:

18 Sept. 2024
Citizens are suing governments and corporations across the world over failures to prevent climate change. From a filing in honour of a South Korean foetus nicknamed Woodpecker to elderly women climbers in Switzerland, there have been a wave of people and non-profit groups taking to the courts over climate impacts and inaction by governments and corporations.There are currently more than 2,100 legal cases relating to failures to prevent climate change, according to da...
inews.co.uk •

'I lost my job because of depression'

Steve Field was in a high-powered job when he began to suffer from severe depression and anxiety.For years he didn’t recognise the signs and didn’t report his symptoms to either his boss or his GP.“You withdraw from everything, I was very outgoing and chatty but I went very quiet, so quiet I couldn’t hold a conversation,” he says.“I was running a UK sales team so there were pressures, targets, performance indicators, none of this helps when you have a continuously low mood.”Steve says if his man...
inews.co.uk •

Disabled people in Britain 'humiliated' over reforms

British people with disabilities are being regularly humiliated and mistreated by the system, according to a report from the United Nations.The government’s overhaul of disability benefits amounted to “grave and systematic violations” of people’s rights, it claimed, saying those with disabilities are “regularly portrayed negatively as being dependent or making a living out of benefits, committing fraud as benefit claimants, being lazy and putting a burden on taxpayers”.The Department of Work and...
The Independent •

Syria: 'The children can escape the country, but they can't escape the

Mona flinches each time she hears a bang in the chaotic refuge in the Lebanese mountains that has been her home for a week. The five-year-old wears several layers of baggy, boys' clothes and clutches a ragged, blue bear. "I always get scared. My father is in Syria so I worry a lot about him," she says. Bed-wetting and terrorised wails are nightly features of the lives of the 30 children who fled Homs and Qusayr, a nearby village, with their five mothers in two convoys last week.Some of the child...
The Independent •

The squalid, lonely death of Ivan Kanev

The final breath rattled through Ivan Kanev's sallow, spent torso. For months he had injected eye drops called tropicamide – used medically to dilate pupils – directly into the femoral artery of his groin. The drug is known as "seven-monther" – the amount of time it takes to kill. His body was found by his father in his Moscow apartment. The 25-year-old had died alone.Ivan's father Sergei sits in a greasy chicken shop in the Moscow suburb of Lubna. Extending a nicotine-stained finger, he prods a...
The Independent •

Gerda's long quest for the truth: who sent my family to their deaths?

It is a bright morning on a German autobahn between Berlin and Rostock, and 91-year-old Gerda Shenfield is steeling herself. Armed with an arsenal of questions, she is visiting her home town for the first time in over 70 years. She is propelled by her fierce resolve to discover who sent her parents to their deaths in 1942.Gerda was born in 1920 in the old fortress town of Teterow, north-east Germany, near the Polish border. Her parents had a thriving animal fur business, a three-storey house and...
The Independent •

The savage toll from Burma's dirty war

Ootepew lies with his withered leg under a mound of coarse blankets, his face stoical as he awaits an amputation. It is more than a week since he trod on a landmine outside his home in Burma's Kayin state, and his wounds have begun to fester. In a messy and bitter war between insurgent groups and the Burmese army that has spanned decades, this clandestine killer has become the weapon of choice.Burma is the only regime in the world still planting landmines. A tenth of the Burmese population live...