Latest news with #climate disaster
The Guardian
08-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Oil exploration in the Congo basin rainforest could be a disaster for nature and the climate
The 'worst place in the world' to explore for oil is open for business. Again. Swathes of the Congo basin rainforest, home to okapis, lowland gorillas, bonobos and other rare wildlife, are being auctioned off by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for the second time in three years. This round of licensing includes 52 blocks across 124m hectares (306m acres) of swamps and rainforest in some of the best-preserved tropical ecosystems left on Earth. Opening it up for fossil fuel extraction could be a disaster for nature and the climate. We have been here before. In July 2022, the DRC government announced an auction round that included Virunga national park and the Cuvette Centrale tropical peatlands in the north-west of the country, which store the equivalent of three years of global emissions from fossil fuels. It came just months after a $500m (£380m) deal at Cop26 in Glasgow to better protect the DRC's portion of the world's second-largest tropical rainforest. In the end, the auction petered out despite defiant claims from the country's then oil and gas minister that celebrity campaigners including Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck would not stand in their way. The DRC government announced the end of the auction last October, citing lack of competition and irregular offers. But the world has changed in the proceeding months. In 2022, the US was a leading diplomatic voice behind the scenes, urging the DRC government to cancel the auction. Dozens of environmental NGOs spoke out to condemn the decision. One New York investment firm even tried to buy the oil blocks and turn them into an enormous carbon offsetting project. Today, in a world shaped by Donald Trump's White House and with the growing risks of speaking out about the environment, the reaction to the latest auction has been comparably meek. 'The world's worst place to prospect for oil is up for auction, again,' said Prof Simon Lewis from University College London, who led the team that first mapped the central Congo peatlands, speaking to my colleague Phoebe Weston last month. 'No credible company would bid for oil in the DRC's forests and peatlands, as there is probably not enough oil to be commercially viable, and it will be expensive oil in financial, social and environmental costs.' Those in favour of the oil exploration say the development does not need to come with a major environmental cost and could provide a huge economic boost for one of the poorest nations on Earth. They point to Gabon, also a Congo basin rainforest country, as an oil producer that maintains one of the highest levels of forest cover in the world. But there is confusion about priorities of the DRC government. Rich in critical minerals, the DRC has been the focus of intense diplomatic competition between China and the US in recent years, positioning itself as a 'solutions country' for the climate crisis and the energy transition. Earlier this year, it announced one of the world's largest conservation projects – the flagship Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor conservation initiative. But more than two-thirds of the corridor overlaps with the planned oil blocks. 'Imagine: 39 million Congolese people … and 64% of our forests could be directly affected by the awarding of these oil blocks,' said Pascal Mirindi, campaign coordinator for Notre Terre Sans Pétrole. 'And all this while the government is promoting the Kivu-Kinshasa ecological corridor. Where is the logic? Where is the coherence? We are reminding our leaders that the Congolese people are the primary sovereign. We will not remain silent while certain people organise themselves to sell off our future.' Often overshadowed by the Amazon and its Indonesian counterparts, the importance of the Congo basin rainforest is unknown by many around the world. But it is hard to overstate just how crucial it is for millions of people, helping to regulate rainfall as far away as Egypt. Its demise would be a disaster. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Read more: DRC to auction oil and gas permits in endangered gorilla habitat The rangers turning the DRC's 'triangle of death' back into a thriving wildlife reserve The secret life of the Congo rainforest – in pictures This is an edited version of Down to Earth, or climate crisis newsletter. To sign up to receive the full version in your inbox every Thursday, click here
The Guardian
08-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Oil exploration in the Congo basin rainforest could be a disaster for nature and the climate
The 'worst place in the world' to explore for oil is open for business. Again. Swathes of the Congo basin rainforest, home to okapis, lowland gorillas, bonobos and other rare wildlife, are being auctioned off by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for the second time in three years. This round of licensing includes 52 blocks across 124m hectares (306m acres) of swamps and rainforest in some of the best-preserved tropical ecosystems left on Earth. Opening it up for fossil fuel extraction could be a disaster for nature and the climate. We have been here before. In July 2022, the DRC government announced an auction round that included Virunga national park and the Cuvette Centrale tropical peatlands in the north-west of the country, which store the equivalent of three years of global emissions from fossil fuels. It came just months after a $500m (£380m) deal at Cop26 in Glasgow to better protect the DRC's portion of the world's second-largest tropical rainforest. In the end, the auction petered out despite defiant claims from the country's then oil and gas minister that celebrity campaigners including Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck would not stand in their way. The DRC government announced the end of the auction last October, citing lack of competition and irregular offers. But the world has changed in the proceeding months. In 2022, the US was a leading diplomatic voice behind the scenes, urging the DRC government to cancel the auction. Dozens of environmental NGOs spoke out to condemn the decision. One New York investment firm even tried to buy the oil blocks and turn them into an enormous carbon offsetting project. Today, in a world shaped by Donald Trump's White House and with the growing risks of speaking out about the environment, the reaction to the latest auction has been comparably meek. 'The world's worst place to prospect for oil is up for auction, again,' said Prof Simon Lewis from University College London, who led the team that first mapped the central Congo peatlands, speaking to my colleague Phoebe Weston last month. 'No credible company would bid for oil in the DRC's forests and peatlands, as there is probably not enough oil to be commercially viable, and it will be expensive oil in financial, social and environmental costs.' Those in favour of the oil exploration say the development does not need to come with a major environmental cost and could provide a huge economic boost for one of the poorest nations on Earth. They point to Gabon, also a Congo basin rainforest country, as an oil producer that maintains one of the highest levels of forest cover in the world. But there is confusion about priorities of the DRC government. Rich in critical minerals, the DRC has been the focus of intense diplomatic competition between China and the US in recent years, positioning itself as a 'solutions country' for the climate crisis and the energy transition. Earlier this year, it announced one of the world's largest conservation projects – the flagship Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor conservation initiative. But more than two-thirds of the corridor overlaps with the planned oil blocks. 'Imagine: 39 million Congolese people … and 64% of our forests could be directly affected by the awarding of these oil blocks,' said Pascal Mirindi, campaign coordinator for Notre Terre Sans Pétrole. 'And all this while the government is promoting the Kivu-Kinshasa ecological corridor. Where is the logic? Where is the coherence? We are reminding our leaders that the Congolese people are the primary sovereign. We will not remain silent while certain people organise themselves to sell off our future.' Often overshadowed by the Amazon and its Indonesian counterparts, the importance of the Congo basin rainforest is unknown by many around the world. But it is hard to overstate just how crucial it is for millions of people, helping to regulate rainfall as far away as Egypt. Its demise would be a disaster. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Read more: DRC to auction oil and gas permits in endangered gorilla habitat The rangers turning the DRC's 'triangle of death' back into a thriving wildlife reserve The secret life of the Congo rainforest – in pictures This is an edited version of Down to Earth, or climate crisis newsletter. To sign up to receive the full version in your inbox every Thursday, click here
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Ahead of deadly Texas floods, so many warnings from climate scientists were missed
The July 4 Texas floods continue to unfold, as more than 100 are confirmed dead, and at least 160 are still missing and unaccounted for. A massive recovery effort is underway as the world watches and rightfully questions, 'Could this catastrophic climate disaster have been less deadly and destructive?' Our current Texas state and national leadership, made up of largely climate change-denying Republicans, have said it is not time for questions of 'blame' when bodies are still being found and others are missing, even when there is no hope of finding any alive. Regardless of federal and local leadership's immediate deflections of those seeking the truth, the time will quickly come for rightful questions of weather predictability, preventability, and accountability, and how there was an abject failure on all points. Starting in March of this year, climate scientists began ringing the alarm bells for a horrific period of weather in the United States starting in spring because the Northern polar cap had the most melt of ice ever recorded in history. How does this record winter melt impact our weather? The climate scientists stated that the melt, along with warming temperatures, would put an excess of moisture in the atmosphere to feed storms, weaken the jet stream across the US that drives the storms and as a result, cause storms to slow or even stall over certain points, inundating communities with heavy rains. That prediction is reflected in the deadly floods we have seen in Texas, New Mexico, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia, among many others. And while no one can predict where these devastating storms will take their toll, the increased frequency since the dire predictions earlier this year would certainly cause communities prone to flooding to prepare and increase investments to save lives and properties. Yet no one in the Trump or Texas Governor Abbott administrations seems to embrace the truths about climate change, nor the warnings coming from climate scientists of winter polar melt and warmer temperature impacts. In fact, the opposite is happening – the administration is stripping weather forecasting and emergency prevention resources. Trump is eliminating certain weather jobs in the Texas areas that are directly related to forecasts and warnings. If those jobs had been filled, it is very likely fewer lives could have been lost. Media reports have stated that the Texas elected leadership turned down requested funding at least twice in the last 10 years for a warning siren system in the flood-prone Texas counties now dealing with hundreds likely dead. Reports are also coming that despite weather alerts in the early morning hours of July 4, few reached the many impacted, dead or missing. And, sadly, we are also hearing of long delays or no response from emergency services when the floods began in those same early morning hours. Even as these devastating stories of failure emerge, the Trumpian leadership will likely never take accountability, no matter how costly to lives and economies. Until the people impacted in Texas and across the country hold these leaders accountable, more misery will unfold. Michael Dru Kelley is a writer, media entrepreneur and a cofounder and a principal LGBTQ+ shareholder of equalpride, publisher of The Advocate. Michael writes often on equality, climate change and is innovating once again in helping people eat cleaner for healthier bodies and planet. Michael can be followed on Instagram @cleanfoodscook and his forthcoming food brand, social handles and cookbook, His opinion pieces represent his own viewpoints and not necessarily those of equalpride, or its affiliates, partners, or management. This article originally appeared on Advocate: Ahead of deadly Texas floods, so many warnings from climate scientists were missed
