NationofChange
As extreme weather events increase, what are the risks to wildlife?
Last year the United States racked up nearly $100 billion in damages from weather and climate disasters. These events are starting to take their toll on wildlife, too.
Image credit: Texas Army National Guard/1st Lt. Zachary West, public domain
A hailstorm in South Texas. Tornadoes in Tennessee. Wildfires across
the West. A barrage of Gulf Coast hurricanes. Those are among the record 22 weather and climate disasters that each topped $1 billion in damages last year in the United States.
In all, the price tag for 2020 hit a whopping $95 billion and that’s just in the United States. Reinsurance firm Swiss Re put global economic losses at $175 billion last year, including $32 billion for floods in China and $13 billion in damages from Cyclone Amphan across India and Bangladesh.
Artist Diana Bell out and about in nature
Oxford artist Diana Bell has made contact with a team of researchers from Oxford and Cambridge universities who are studying whether people have reacted to nature in a different way during lockdowns. Ms Bell has been drawing or painting from nature every day since the first lockdown began last March. Garden Ecologies by Professor Jamie Lorimer and his research team aims to understand how human to nature relationships have been affected and whether an interest in nature sparked during the lockdowns will persist. For a questionnaire, contact gardenecologies@gmail.com.
She has drawn or painted nature every day for the past 322 days. Ms Bell embarked on her Nature Unlocked project on March 16 2020 – days before the first lockdown began – and has kept going ever since. She has now painted or drawn 90 different wild plants, 52 tree species and 28 birds. Did she imagine when she started she would still be doing the project 322 days later? “Absolutely not. But by the time of the second lockdown I realized I would do it for a year. It’s going to be quite challenging for February because I have already drawn so many things. “I started in a sketch book thinking that it would probably be just one sketch book. I am now on the fifth!”
Washington, Jan 11: An unprecedented second impeachment of outgoing US President Donald Trump in the final days of his term has been initiated, with the Democrats on Monday introducing the single article charging him with "incitement of insurrection" following the violent storming of the Capitol last week.