Biden to make Wednesday climate address as dangerous heat grips US and world – live | US politics

From the Guardian’s senior reporter Nina Lakhani, who studies on local weather justice:

As consideration focuses on the intense temperatures scorching giant swathes of Europe and the US, its price drawing consideration to different elements of the world the place harmful warmth and drought have additionally been inflicting distress.

In Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest metropolis the place temperatures above 100F are the norm all through the summer season, residents are enduring a second month of water rationing as three dams which provide households are nearly dry. Authorities are turning on faucets for under six hours per day, although some residents have gone with none working water for lengthy spells, and are pressured to spend hours day by day lining up at communal faucets. The nationwide water authority has declared a state of emergency throughout the nation due to drought.

Based on the North American Drought Monitor, 56% of Mexico is experiencing some stage of drought with northern states like Nuevo Leon (dwelling to Monterrey), Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila significantly badly attributable to a mix of La Niña and international heating. Many of the nation’s wheat is farmed on this northern belt, which is amongst three crops (together with maize and rice) that make up nearly half the world’s energy. All three grains are susceptible to excessive warmth and drought, largely as a result of industrialised agriculture favors monocropping over crop variety.

This was a little bit reported consequence of the punishing spring excessive heatwave in India and Pakistan, the place greater than a billion individuals confronted temperatures from 100 to 122F from late March to the top of June, a interval of virtually 100 days. Because of this, wheat yields dropped by about 15%, compounding the shortages brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Livestock died throughout the subcontinent.

The variety of deaths to this point attributed on to the intense spring warmth is surprisingly low, simply 90, in comparison with greater than 1100 to this point in Spain and Portugal, although that is doubtless at the very least partly right down to points with counting and reporting warmth deaths. (Latest floods in India and Bangladesh have led to excessive dying tolls, however this may very well be as a result of such deaths are simpler to rely.) It’s the monsoon now in India, so temperatures have dropped considerably – it’s solely 90F in Delhi as we speak – however the humidity may be very excessive. Humid warmth is way extra harmful than dry warmth, so the dying toll might rise throughout the Asian subcontinent with out anybody paying a lot consideration.

Learn extra about crop scientists in Mexico creating warmth and local weather resilient wheat varieties right here:

Ohio’s supreme courtroom has struck down the state’s 15 congressional districts, saying they have been so distorted in favor of Republicans that they violated the state structure.

In a 4-3 ruling, the courtroom gave the state legislature 30 days to provide you with a brand new map. If the legislature fails to provide you with a brand new plan, a GOP-controlled fee would then have one other 30 days.

Any new map can be in impact for the 2024 elections. After hanging down the preliminary map Republicans handed earlier this 12 months, the Ohio supreme courtroom declined to intervene once more forward of the state’s major and block a revised map. The map they struck down Tuesday was that revised plan.

The plan creates 10 Republican-leaning districts and 5 Democratic-leaning districts, the courtroom famous. Whereas all 10 GOP districts are solidly Republican, three of the 5 Democratic ones are extremely aggressive, that means Republicans might win them in a robust 12 months for the get together. Projections present Democrats would almost certainly win 4 within the state’s congressional delegation, regardless of profitable round 47% of the statewide vote.

That break up violates a provision within the state structure that prohibits maps that “unduly favors or disfavors a political get together or its incumbents.” Ohio voters overwhelmingly accepted including that language to the state structure in 2018.

“Comparative analyses and different metrics present that the March 2 plan allocates voters in ways in which unnecessarily favor the Republican Occasion by packing Democratic voters into a couple of dense Democratic-leaning districts, thereby growing the Republican vote share of the remaining districts,” the courtroom’s majority wrote. “Because of this, districts that may in any other case be strongly Democratic-leaning at the moment are aggressive or Republican-leaning districts.”

The three judges who dissented argued that almost all opinion sought to make use of a system of proportional illustration, which isn’t required below Ohio’s structure.

Tuesday’s ruling marks the seventh time the Ohio supreme courtroom has struck down congressional and state legislative maps this cycle. Regardless of all of these rulings, all the maps struck down handed by lawmakers might be in place for at the very least the 2022 elections.

President Joe Biden plans an handle on local weather change tomorrow, throughout which he might declare a nationwide local weather emergency after his makes an attempt to get laws decreasing America’s carbon emissions by means of Congress stalled.

Right here’s what else has occurred to this point as we speak:

President Joe Biden will define his subsequent steps to deal with local weather change in an handle in Somerset, Massachusetts on Wednesday, the White Home introduced. “The president will ship remarks on tackling the local weather disaster and seizing the chance of a clear vitality future to create jobs and decrease prices for households,” in keeping with a press release.

The president might use the journey to declare the nationwide local weather emergency The Washington Put up studies his administration has been mulling. Reuters quotes a White Home official as saying, “We’re contemplating all choices and no resolution has been made.”