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King Charles during the opening speech at COP28 in Dubai. Photo: AP

Earlier, Britain’s King Charles gave the opening speech at COP21 in Paris, the climate meeting that led to the Paris Agreement. Now he has given the opening speech at COP28 in Dubai, writes The Guardian.

– I hope with all my heart that COP28 will be another critical turning point towards truly transformative action at a time when, already, as scientists have warned for so long, we are already seeing alarming tipping points being reached, he says.

– If we do not urgently repair and restore nature’s economy, based on harmony and balance, which is our ultimate sustainability, our own economy and survival will be endangered.

King Charles said the world faces a grim choice and asks how dangerous we are prepared to make it for future generations.

– The conference is an opportunity that we must not miss to keep our common hope alive. I can only urge you to meet it with ambition, insight and a true sense of the emergency we face.

First the population fled the drought, now it’s about floods after persistent rain. Photo: AP

Over two million people have been forced to flee their homes in the Horn of Africa, mainly in Somalia, due to persistent rain and severe flooding. Information about how many people have been affected in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia comes from the news agency AFP, which compiled and calculated data from the UN and from the countries’ authorities, writes TT.

The consequences have become fatal due to the weather and climate phenomenon El Niño. The Horn of Africa has also experienced one of the worst droughts in 40 years. It led to widespread famine and parched lands that are unable to absorb and drain the amounts of rain.

A total of at least 300 people are dead.

“Regions that previously tried to recover from economic and environmental problems from prolonged drought are now doubly affected by floods,” writes the environmental organization Action against hunger in a statement from the COP28 climate meeting in Dubai.

Sultan al-Jaber during Thursday, the first day of COP28 in Dubai. Photo: Peter Dejong / AP

A big step towards helping disaster-stricken countries was taken on the first day of the COP28 climate conference in Dubai. A new fund is being set up to compensate countries hit by deadly floods, extreme heat and drought caused by climate change, AP writes.

Some countries started depositing money at once – even if it was far from what is needed today and in the future.

Sultan al-Jaber, meeting chairman of the climate conference, said that his country, the United Arab Emirates, will put in 100 million dollars, about one billion kroner. Several other countries, such as Germany, contributed the same amount.

US climate change envoy John Kerry said the US administration was working with Congress to raise $17.5 million, money he said would come from several sources.

– The scale of the challenge is simply too great for any government to finance alone, he says.

The four-year drought has left millions of people in Syria, Iraq and Iran with water shortages that would not have happened without human-caused climate change, according to a study. Photo: AP

Climate anxiety is increasing. Ahead of COP28, searches for questions related to the condition also increased, according to Google data shared with BBC 100 Women.

According to several studies, women are more affected by climate anxiety than men. Several fires, floods and droughts around the world are just some of the visible signs of climate change, writes the BBC.

Climate anxiety is defined by catastrophic thoughts about the future, anxiety, worry, hopelessness and/or depression.

Eight out of ten children and young people have climate anxiety. Three quarters are afraid of the future and over half feel let down by their governments. Over half believe that humanity is doomed. This shows a survey from the British University of Bath in which 10,000 young people around the world participated, writes Research & progress.

The study was published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health 2021.