(2024-11-22). "A Great Swindle": Activists Slam Draft Climate Plan Reducing How Much Rich Polluting Countries Owe. democracynow.org 
Broadcasting from Baku, Azerbaijan, on the final official day of this year's finance-themed United Nations climate summit, we look at how climate justice activists are outraged at how little money is being offered by the most polluting nations to countries most severely affected by climate change. We speak with Mohamed Adow, founding director of Power Shift Africa, and Claudio Angelo, head of international policy at the Brazilian Observatório do Clima (Climate Observatory), who describe the latest text as "a great swindle" and "totally unacceptable."…
(2024-11-22). Rural water utilities in North Carolina are still reeling from Helene. grist.org 
The most exciting part of the day at Spruce Pine Montessori School is when the truck arrives to empty the porta-johns. At that point in the afternoon, the kids abandon their toy dinosaurs and monkey bars, throw up their hands, and yell in excitement as they run to watch the truck do its work. It's lucky that they find something to be so joyful about, Principal Jennifer Rambo said on a recent sunny afternoon, because things have been a mess for the past seven weeks. | The flooding that devastated western North Carolina during Hurricane Helene laid waste to communities all around the region, spitting up great to…
Home insurance rates are rising in the United States, not only in Florida, which saw tens of billions of dollars in losses from hurricanes Helene and Milton, but across the country. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, homeowners insurance increased an average of 11.3% nationwide in 2023, with some states, including Texas, Arizona and Utah, 
At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, civil society members held a People's Plenary called "Pay Up, Stand Up: Finance Climate Action, Not Genocide" outside negotiation rooms in which U.N. member states attempted to hammer out a global climate finance deal. In the face of the conference's restrictions on protest, civil society members unfurled the names of Palestinians who have been killed, reading out the names of those killed by Israel's military aggression and calling for an end to ecocidal violence worldwide. We hear from three people who participated in the action, including Palestinian…