1 . If you look at the dynamic “Global Temperatures” map on NASA’s website, you can see the historic temperature change over time across the planet as the timeline goes from 1880 to the modern day. By 2019, the entire planet is in red, orange, and yellow colors, indicating temperatures much higher than the historical average in every country and human inhabitance.

If the timeline went to 2023, the map would look even worse. That’s because the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever, according to ocean monitors. July was the hottest month in recorded history. Next July could be worse. Unless we do something quickly, we face dealing with more and more dangerous and expensive natural disasters in the future.

Forest fires sent smoke from Canada across the North American continent, causing New York City to have the worst air quality in its recorded history. Heavy rainstorms fell on Vermont and the Northeastern United States in just a couple of days in the middle of July, which exceeded the amount that area would usually receive in two months and caused extreme damage to homes and businesses. Around the same time, flash flooding in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — north of Philadelphia — killed nearly a dozen people.

Erich Fischer, a researcher specializing in climate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is concerned that natural disasters could get much worse in the future—and in ways we cannot predict. He called for a “strike for climate justice,” which actually took place on Sept. 15, 2023. “The strategy needs to be twofold (双重的) . We need to decrease carbon emissions as much as realistically possible. That is already happening with people using electric cars and other green technologies. At the same time, we also need to find ways to predict the risk of natural disasters ahead of time,” said Erich Fischer.

3 . As vulnerable (易受伤害的) states suffer, US is blamed for not donating its required money for the Green Climate Fund, or GCF.

In Kenya’s countryside, people are facing one of the most serious droughts in memory. Some regions have been without rain for two years, and more than half the crops and most of the farm animals have died. Up to 4 million people may require food aid in the coming months.

Kenya isn’t the only country to suffer the fallout from climate change in recent years. Countries least responsible for the climate crisis are most vulnerable to its effects. In South Asia, Bangladesh already spends $2 billion each year on climate-related damage, according to a report from the International Institute for Environment and Development. A dozen island nations are at risk of disappearing entirely.

The international community has realized the urgency. In 2010, the United Nations created an institution, the Green Climate Fund, or GCF, to support developing countries that aren’t historically responsible for causing the climate crisis to cut their emissions (排放物) and deal with climate impacts.

However, the UN climate fund now has warned that carbon-cutting projects in developing countries would have to be cut without more money coming in.

Campaigners have blamed the United States—one of the GCF’s founders—for the potential cuts. “If the GCF needs to limit its operations in the near future due to lack of funding, it’s hard to find any single country more at fault than the US,” Action Aid’s policy director Brandon Wu told Climate Home News.

In 2014, then-US president Barack Obama promised the GCF $3 billion but gave only $1 billion before the end of his term. His successor, Donald Trump, didn’t give any money to the fund and, so far, neither has President Joe Biden. The US owe s the fund $ 2 billion.

Last year, 46 climate and green groups signed a letter that urged the White House to give the $2 billion to the GCF. The climate and green groups also asked the administration to commit an additional $6 billion to bring the US in step with other donor countries.

In 2019,1 3 countries—mostly in Europe but including South Korea and New Zealand—announced a doubling or more of their contributions to the GCF to help fun d green projects for 2020-23.

4 . After a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit Luding county in Southwest China’s Sichuan province on Monday, rescuers from across the province have rushed to the hardest-hit areas to help affected local people.

During the search and rescue operations, the photo of a young rescuer holding a 2-month old baby in his arms has pulled the heartstrings of many people. Zhang Zili and fellow members from the Forest Fire Brigade of Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture (自治区) discovered the baby and her grandmother trapped at their home in a village on Tuesday. The rescuers have carried the baby, who suffered as light head injury, and his grandma to safety. The baby’s father is also a firefighter who was participating in rescue operations after the quake hit the area. His mother and grandfather were seriously injured and sent to hospital.

The photo of Zhang holding the baby moved many people. Zhang was lovingly referred to as “brother Wen chuan” for the characters of “Wenchuan” on his armband, which indicates that he is from the Wenchuan squadron (中队) of the Aba forest fire brigade.

The 20-year-old is a native of Maoxian county, which is close to Wenchuan county, the epicenter(震中) of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 69, 000 people in 2008. 14 years ago, Zhang witnessed the devastating earthquake, which brought down his family’s house. He and his family lived in a temporary, shelter setup at a school playground. “I remembered the tent we lived in was dark, and I was scared,” Zhang said. Here called how emergency supplies were air-dropped from” helicopters and how soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army and rescuers helped locals get over the difficulties. “Then a uncle of the PLA came to me. He taught me songs to sing and played with me. He kept saying, “Don’t be afraid. We are here now.” The words left a deep impression on the boy’s heart.

This year, when he learnt that the local forest fire brigade was recruiting (招聘) firefighters, he did not hesitate to join it. Since then, in less than four months, he has taken part in several forest firefighting missions and rescue operations of the latest earthquake.

5 . During the 20th century, an estimated 3 million great whales were hunted to provide humans with oil, meat and rose fertiliser. Roger Payne, a biologist and environmentalist, spurred (推动) a worldwide environmental conservation movement with his discovery that whales could sing.

This discovery was made in 1967 during his research trip to Bermuda (百慕大) when a navy engineer provided him with a recording of curious underwater sounds documented. Payne identified the tones as songs whales sing to one another and he was conscious from the start that whale song was to get the public interested in protecting an animal previously considered little more than a resource, curiosity or nuisance.

Payne saw the discovery of whale song as a chance to spur interest in saving the giant animals, who were disappearing from the planet. In 1970, Payne released the album Songs of the Humpback Whale. The record, a surprise hit, fueled a global movement to end the practice of commercial whale hunting and save the whales from extinction. It remains the bestselling environmental album in history.

The impact of the whale song discovery on the early environmental movement was immense. Many antiwar protesters of the day took on saving animals and the environment as a new cause. The humpback whale became the icon of a new environmental awareness. And the whales entered pop culture, no longer the fearsome beasts. In 1977, the whale calls were loaded on to the Voyager probes and sent into outer space.

Payne, graduating from Harvard University and Cornell University with a doctor’s degree, authored or co authored dozens of scientific papers, gave hundreds of lectures, made countless television programmes and films, and led 100 oceanic expeditions. Payne had started an ambitious new project: CETI, a combination of scientists using new technology to interpret what whales might be “saying”.

6 . Chinese researchers have found that the knife fish in the Yangtze River, once endangered by overfishing, is recovering thanks to a fishing ban（禁令）.

Monitoring data from different sections of the Yangtze shows that knife fish resources have been continuously recovering since 2019 when measures were taken to protect the fish, said Yang Jian, researcher with the Freshwater Fisheries Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences.

The knife fish was known as “the first delicacy in the Yangtze,” and its population saw a sharp decrease due to overfishing and damage of its natural habitat（栖息地）. China banned the productive fishing of this species in 2019 and a 10-year fishing ban took effect in the Yangtze in 2021.

Since 2014, Yang Jian and his team have been monitoring a part of the Yangtze-connected Poyang Lake, an area for the knife fish to lay eggs. Yang said that from 2019 to 2021, the average number of knife fish caught by every observation unit in the area is 67 times that recorded during the period from 2014 to 2018.

The average length and weight of knife fish collected in 2021 was 27.2 cm and 91.4 grams respectively, an average increase of 41 percent and 37.55 percent compared to those collected from 2019 to 2020.

Yang Jian added that areas inhabited by knife fish have been increasing along the Yangtze, and the species was recently found in places such as Dongting Lake and the Ganjiang River where there had been no trace of the fish for more than ten years.