by | Jul 25, 2021 | The Guardian
The UK has legitimate concerns about the deal, but threatening to tear it up will destroy the trust that’s so vital
Taking responsibility should be the flipside of taking back control. But admissions of responsibility are in short supply in the government document published on the Northern Ireland protocol on Wednesday. According to this, the protocol was the responsibility of (delete according to taste) Theresa May, Hilary Benn or indeed the 2019 parliament. Anyone, in other words, except the people who negotiated it – the prime minister and his chief negotiator, David Frost.
The blame shifting should not, however, lead us to ignore the fact that the British government has legitimate concerns about the way the protocol has functioned.
Continue reading…
Click here to see original article
by | Jul 25, 2021 | The Guardian
We are losing the race to keep our planet cool
Reminders that our planet is wilting under the impact of human-driven climate change have been hard to avoid this month. Catastrophic floods have killed 160 in Germany while more than 50 died after massive inundations swept through the central Chinese province of Henan when a year’s worth of rain fell in three days last week. At the same time, forest fires have ripped through one of the world’s coldest places, Siberia, after unusually hot, dry weather gripped the region. Canada and the US have also been afflicted by conflagrations that have destroyed communities and vast areas of woodland. One blaze in the US state of Oregon has spread over an area 25 times the size of Manhattan and has raged out of control for weeks. Global warming, triggered by rising levels of greenhouse gases, has been implicated in every case.
Nor will things get better. Indeed, they can only get worse. Every year, factories, power plants and vehicles pump tens of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, trapping solar radiation that will further increase temperatures round the globe. Even if all greenhouse gas emissions were halted tomorrow the carbon dioxide already in our atmosphere will hang around for decades and continue to heat the planet, turning vegetation to tinder and allowing air to retain more moisture before releasing it with sudden and devastating consequences.
Continue reading…
Click here to see original article
