Climate Change

Best of Opinion: The hard work behind big ambitions

Today's columns examines the gap between ambition and action in climate policy, the impact of AI on jobs, India's battery-storage opportunity, energy transition and the power of brand storytelling

William Nordhaus: Connecting the dots between climate change & economics

Nordhaus completed his doctorate in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate

COP31 and the world's 35x35 plan

Raising electricity's share in energy consumption to 35 per cent by 2035 may look attractive. But is it the right ambition for India?

Insalubrious climate for reform

COP31 is up against all-round failures

Best of Opinion: From closing window to overshoot, climate action retreats

Today's columns examine climate overshoot and AI's environmental costs, Netanyahu's electoral position in Israel, US midterm implications for oil prices and China's property crisis

From closing window to overshoot: The retreat on climate action

The Emissions Gap Report's suggestion that the world can cross the 1.5°C global warming threshold, but still limit, adapt to and return from higher temperatures, is utterly misleading

Current climate pledges will cut emissions by just 6% by 2035: UN report

If countries implement their current climate pledges, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are expected to drop only 6 per cent below 2019 levels by 2035, meaning the projected reduction is substantially off track, compared to the dip required to limit global warming, a UN report released on Tuesday said. The '2026 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) Synthesis Report' by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said even if these commitments -- called NDCs -- are fully implemented, including conditional elements, emissions are likely to be just 9 per cent below 2019 levels by 2035. The report comes days after another UN report revealed that the 1.5-degree Celsius temperature target was now completely out of reach. It also stated that the best the world could do is restrict the global rise in temperatures to 1.8 degrees Celsius and try to pull it back. The new report noted that most of the new NDCs are linked to long-term decarbonisation targets, whic

Odds of 2026 becoming the hottest year surge higher with strong El Niño

Another scientific body, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, forecasts that 2026 is still unlikely to supplant the 2024 heat record but will come a close second

Europe's summer heat kills 50,000 people, shaves $18.9 billion off GDP

Those findings, from two separate studies, reveal the extent of Europe's vulnerability to rising temperatures in what's likely to be one of the hottest years in modern history

Annual coastal flood damages may reach $199 billion by 2050: ADB report

The ADB report warns that India, China and Indonesia may face the largest monetary losses from coastal flooding, with annual damages potentially reaching $739 billion by 2100.

Dirty truths behind clean energy

Lithium-ion batteries drive the clean-energy revolution, but mining and processing their minerals come at a steep environmental and human cost.

Climate, floods, war: Why sweets are getting costlier this festival season

The main culprit behind this cost escalation are rising prices of sugar and milk that go into making the sweets that are devoured during Diwali and Durga Puja

India yet to integrate environment with development planning: Nitin Desai

TERI's Nitin Desai says environmental concerns have limited influence over development policies, while experts flag climate finance challenges and weakening global cooperation.

Some parts of India facing overlap of floods and droughts: IIT study

IIT Roorkee researchers find a growing concentration of districts vulnerable to both floods and droughts, with multi-hazard hotspots emerging across northern and eastern India

Best of Opinion: Global growth headline numbers mask vulnerabilities

From the IMF's global growth forecast and Navi Pillay's Nobel Peace Prize to India's climate needs, rising healthcare costs and the debate over welfare, today's opinions examine multiple challenges

The inadequacy of climate action

With the 1.5°C threshold expected to be breached within years, India must pay greater attention to adaptation and resilience

Greater flexibility needed to bridge differences at COP31: Bhupender Yadav

Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on Thursday called for greater flexibility, pragmatism, and mutual respect among member countries to bridge remaining differences and secure ambitious and balanced outcomes at this year's UN climate conference, also called COP31. COP31 is scheduled to be held in November in Turkiye's Antalya. He made the remarks while addressing a plenary discussion in Fiji, part of the pre-COP31 meetings co-hosted by Australia, Fiji, and Tuvalu. Pre-COP is a preparatory meeting held a few weeks before the conference. Yadav also stated that India expects COP31 to chart a definitive way forward to enhance engagement, technical cooperation and targeted support for building capabilities. India stands ready for open and transparent dialogue to resolve these issues in the run-up to COP31 to ensure "a balanced, equitable, and historic outcome" for the global community, particularly the most vulnerable, according to the minister. He further emphasised that clim

Swiss glaciers lose 5.5% of ice volume in 2026, second-highest on record

Glaciers in Switzerland the home to the most in the Alps lost 5.5 per cent of their ice volume this year, the second-biggest percentage drop on record due to heat waves and low winter snowfall, experts report. "Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under such conditions," the GLAMOS Swiss glacier monitoring service and Swiss Academy of Sciences said in a statement released Thursday. The trend has worsened in recent years: Over the past five years alone, the volume of ice in Switzerland has declined by nearly a fifth, the experts say. The report testifies to the latest concerns that global warming is wreaking havoc on Europe, the world's fastest-warming continent. "The warming that we are experiencing now can be attributed 100 per cent to anthropogenic climate change. It's as simple as that," said Matthias Huss, who heads GLAMOS. "Without human emissions or fossil fuels, we wouldn't have any warming at the moment." This year's ice volume loss continues ...

India's carbon paradox: Big emitter but small per-capita footprint

India's GHG emissions have grown at a compound annual rate of 3.6 per cent since 1990, more than twice the global rate of 1.5 per cent

El Niño threatens rabi crops, may affect foodgrain output: Agri Secy

Minister Chouhan says teams to visit Maharashtra & Karnataka soon to assess the drought impact