🗞️ In Climate News

• 🇵🇪 Indigenous leaders killed as narco airstrips cut into their Amazon territories

  • Mongabay and Earth Genome detected 67 clandestine airstrips used for transporting drugs in the Peruvian regions of Ucayali, Huánuco and Pasco.

• 🧨 Thousands of chemicals from food packaging found in humans, a major study reveals

  • They found that among the 14,402 known food contact chemicals, 3,601 – more than 25 percent – are present in human blood, urine, hair, umbilical cords, placentas, and breast milk.

• ⚡️ Trump names fracking executive Chris Wright energy secretary

  • He is expected to fulfil the president-elect’s promise to increase fossil fuel production - an aim summed by the campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill”.

    Wright is the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, which serves companies extracting oil and gas from shale fields in a process known as “fracking”.

• 🇮🇳 India fires warning shot with rejection of finance deal at COP29

  • In a statement described as “bold” and “historic”, India rejected the rushed approval of the new finance goal for 2026-2035, arguing that due process had not been followed, and sought “much higher ambition” from rich nations.

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The UK government has admitted in court that the Scotland's largest untapped oilfield was approved unlawfully

  • The move came during a case brought by climate campaigners against both Rosebank and the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea.

    At the Court of Session in Edinburgh Chris Pirie KC, for the government, accepted that assessments did not include “the effects on climate of the combustion of oil and gas to be extracted from the fields.”

• 🇮🇳 Toxic smog covers Indian capital as pollution hits record levels

  • The air quality index (AQI) touched a peak of 491 in Delhi on Monday, forcing the government to introduce restrictions on vehicle movement and construction activities, and schools to conduct classes online.

• 🇬🇧 Entire towns under water and 'cut off' after devastating landslides in the UK

  • At least 140 flood warnings remain are in place and across England and Wales, and nearly 200 flood alerts with travel chaos expected to continue.

• 🗽 New York City drought warning declared for first time in over 20 years

  • The warning, which extends beyond the city to include 10 other counties in New York State, was announced as wildfires burned and residents continued to await meaningful rainfall.

📈 Cool Trends

• 🍌 Ecological charcoal made from organic waste to protect Cameroon’s forest

• 🐋 Using AI to help track whale migration

♾️ eco-story

Komal’s morning view was of jagged, forbidding mountains, the rush of the river dozens of metres below the family home on the cliff. That was until the water became a torrent and tore the ground away beneath their feet.

“It was a sunny day,” says Komal, 18.

For generations, her family had lived among the orchards and green lands in the heart of the Hunza valley in the Karakorum mountains of Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan region.

“In the morning everything was normal, I went to school,” Komal says, “but then my teacher told me that Hassanabad bridge had collapsed.”

🌏 The Culture Column

📺 What we’re watching: Voice of the Glaciers

📸 Profile of the week: @marceglaciar
📖 What we’re reading: The Secret Lives of Glaciers, by M. Jackson
🤯 Shocking fact we learnt this week: More than a third of the world's remaining glaciers will melt before the year 2100