Biden announces USD 2 trillion climate plan, vows to rejoin Paris deal

Biden announces USD 2 trillion climate plan, vows to rejoin Paris deal

Washington: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has unveiled a USD 2 trillion proposal to boost investment in clean energy and combat global warming as he pledged to rejoin the historic Paris agreement on climate change if elected in the November elections.

US President Donald Trump in 2017 withdrew the United States, the world’s No 2 emitter of greenhouse gases behind China, from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement that brought countries together to mitigate global warming, saying it was too costly.

Biden has said that he will return the US to a leadership role on climate change, assertively re-entering the United States in future climate negotiations to advance the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

“We’re going to reverse Trump’s rollbacks of 100 public health and environmental rules – and then forge a path to greater ambition. We’re going to get back into the Paris Agreement – and back into the business of leading the world,” Biden said in a major policy address on climate change, which he said poses a serious threat the mankind.

Biden will spend USD 2 trillion over four years to significantly escalate the use of clean energy in the transportation, electricity, and building sectors, part of a suite of sweeping proposals designed to create economic opportunities and strengthen infrastructure while also tackling climate change.

“And we’re going to lock-in progress that no future president can roll back or undercut to take us backward again. Science requires a timeline for measurable progress on climate that isn’t three decades or even two. Science tells us we will only have nine years to act before the damage is irreversible,” he said.

“So my timeline for results is my first four years as president — the jobs we’ll create, the investments we’ll make, and the irreversible steps we’ll take to mitigate and adapt to climate change and to put our nation on the road to net-zero emissions by no later than 2050,” Biden said.

“Backward-looking politics that will harm the environment, make communities less healthy, and hold back economic progress while other countries race ahead,” he said.

Biden will challenge incumbent Trump, a Republican, in the November 3 polls.

According to his campaign, Biden will launch a national effort aimed at creating the jobs needed to build a modern, sustainable infrastructure now and deliver an equitable clean energy future.

“Biden will make a USD 2 trillion accelerated investment, with a plan to deploy those resources over his first term, setting us on an irreversible course to meet the ambitious climate progress that science demands,” the campaign said.

The plan, the campaign said will create millions of good, union jobs rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure to lay a new foundation for sustainable growth, compete in the global economy, withstand the impacts of climate change, and improve public health, including access to clean air and clean water.

It will also create one million new jobs in the American auto industry, domestic auto supply chains, and auto infrastructure, from parts to materials to electric vehicle charging stations, positioning

American auto workers and manufacturers to win the 21st century; and invest in US auto workers to ensure their jobs are good jobs with a choice to join a union.

The plan will provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options through flexible federal investments with strong labour protections that create good, union jobs and meet the needs of these cities – ranging from light rail networks to improving existing transit and bus lines to installing infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists.

In the power sector, the Biden move ambitiously to generate clean, American-made electricity to achieve a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.

“This will enable us to meet the existential threat of climate change while creating millions of jobs with a choice to join a union,” it said.

At a White House news conference, President Trump slammed Biden for his announcement on rejoining the Paris agreement, which he asserted was not in America’s interest.

“We would have had to do things that would have been unbelievably destructive to our country, including the possible closing of 25 percent of our businesses,” he said.

“Think of that, and it was going to cost us hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of being involved in the Paris Climate Accord, and you just have to look at what took place this year in Paris and France where money was being sent to countries all over the world, and the people of France didn’t want to take it, and they didn’t, and they did a lot of rioting,” Trump said.

“They had their taxes raised, we would have had to raise our taxes, and it was a disaster. I’ve been given a lot of credit for what I did there took a certain amount of courage, I guess because sounds so nice the Paris Climate Accord, but it wasn’t good for us at all,” he said.

COVID-19: Study shows middle-aged people of mortality risk

COVID-19: Study shows middle-aged people of mortality risk

Paris: Middle-aged people, and not just the elderly, have a dramatically higher risk of dying or developing serious illness from COVID-19, new research from Britain showed on Tuesday.

The findings came in a new comprehensive analysis of virus cases in mainland China.

Researchers from Britain analysed more than 3,600 confirmed COVID-19 cases as well as data from hundreds of passengers repatriated from the outbreak city of Wuhan.

They found that age was a key determining factor in serious infections, with nearly one in five over-80s requiring hospitalisation, compared to around 1 per cent among people under 30.

Taking into account estimates of the number of cases that may not have been clinically confirmed -that is, mild or asymptomatic infections the data showed the hospitalisation rate of patients in their fifties was 8.2 per cent.

The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, estimated that the mortality rate from confirmed COVID-19 cases in mainland China was 1.38 per cent.

If unconfirmed cases were taken into account, the death rate dropped to 0.66 per cent.

The authors of the research said that while this was significantly lower than previous estimates, COVID-19 is still several times deadlier than previous pandemic viruses, such as H1N1.

“Our estimates can be applied to any country to inform decisions around the best containment policies for COVID-19,” said Azra Ghani, a study co-author from Imperial College London.

“There might be outlying cases that get a lot of media attention, but our analysis very clearly shows that at aged 50 and over, hospitalisation is much more likely than in those under 50, and a greater proportion of cases are likely to be fatal.”

Billions of people have been confined to their homes around the world as governments desperately try to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

4.8 per cent of all confirmed COVID-19 infections have proven deadly.

But experts stress that without widespread testing it is impossible to know how many people may have become infected and recovered.

This means the true mortality rate is likely much lower, in line with The Lancet study and previous research from China.

The Lancet study showed that 18.4 per cent of patients in their 80s were hospitalised in China.

This compared to 4.3 per cent for 40 to 49-year-olds and roughly 1 per cent for people in their 20s.

According to their modelling, the authors estimate that 50-80 per cent of the global population could contract COVID-19 -but that came with several caveats, as modelling can’t account for behavioural changes such as hand washing and social distancing.

Devi Sridhar, professor and chair of Global Public Health, at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School, said that the assumption that most people would become infected was leading governments, including in Britain, to abandon measures that could help slow the pandemic.

She tweeted on Tuesday that the models “resulted in the UK giving up on containment too early & assuming everyone will get it.

“Planning & preparing for unprecedented testing & using big data/apps for tracing were taken off the table. In my view, we went down the wrong path,” she said.

Pint-sized bird may be smallest dinosaur yet: study

Pint-sized bird may be smallest dinosaur yet: study

Paris: Tinier than the teeniest bird, older than T-Rex and perfectly preserved for eternity: scientists have identified a 100-million-year-old flying dinosaur encased in amber that may be the smallest yet discovered.

The skull of Oculudentavis khaungraae was found in a globule of amber in Myanmar, offering researchers a startlingly clear view of its features.

“When I first saw it I was blown away,” said Jingmai O’Connor, a paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead author of the study published in Nature on Wednesday.

“It’s pretty exquisitely preserved and really weird looking, with its unique scleral ring (eye bones) and a large number of teeth,” she told AFP.

The preserved skull is just 7.1 millimeters (less than one-third of an inch) long, likely making it the smallest dinosaur yet discovered. It would have been smaller than the smallest bird alive today, the bee hummingbird.

The team even refer among themselves to the specimen as “Teenie Weenie”, O’Connor said.

Despite its minuscule size, researchers believe it hunted insects, using its sharp teeth and large eyes to home in on prey.

Unlike fossils encased in rock, amber specimens still retain their soft tissue, showing scientists their original color and morphology.

As to whether Teenie is a bird or a dinosaur, O’Connor said the lines were blurry.

“We think it’s a bird the skull has a shape that only occurs in birds and some dinosaurs,” she said,

“However there are no skull characteristics that define birds, therefore, it could be a dinosaur or even something else,” she added.

Writing in a linked editorial, Roger Benson from Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences said the discovery suggests birds may have evolved miniature body sizes much earlier than thought.

he skull of Oculudentavis khaungraae was found in a globule of amber in Myanmar, offering researchers a startlingly clear view of its features.

This indicates that, only shortly after their origins late in the Jurassic period (which lasted from about 201 million to 145 million years ago), birds had already attained their minimum body sizes,” he said.

And although it’s encased in amber, there’s no risk of scientists bringing it back to life, as a certain Steven Spielberg film.

“There are most certainly fragments of DNA preserved inside but we’ll never reach ‘Jurassic Park’,” said O’Connor.