• Hundreds of scientists and government officials from more than 190 countries have been around a convention centre in the South Korean city of Incheon  trying to agree on the first official release of a report  called the Summary for Policymakers that pulls together all of what’s known about how the world might be affected once global warming gets to 1.5C.
• The report, being pulled together by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was one tiny part of the Paris climate change agreement.
• If you add up all the things that the 190-plus countries have committed to do as part of that Paris deal, global temperatures will probably go well above 3C.
• A report by Professor Will Steffen includes estimates of how much extra CO2 and temperature they could add once you hit about 2C of global warming.
• For example, the ability of the land and ocean to keep soaking up CO2 could weaken, giving you an extra 0.25C of warming. Dieback of trees in the Amazon and subarctic could give us another 0.1C.
• While governments have the means to affect how much CO2 gets released through policies that radically cut the use of fossil fuels, it would be much harder to get a grip on thawing permafrosts, mass forest collapses or the loss of polar sea ice.
• For those who understand the idea of a carbon budget – where scientists have calculated how much CO2 you could emit before hitting certain temperature rises – it looks even meaner than before if Steffen and his colleagues are right.
• By failing to get a grip on a thing that’s feasibly under your control, we end up risking the release a whole gang of other monsters that we can’t.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

• The metallic compounds in bullets tend to seep into the environment and kill plants and wildlife.
• In a step towards environmental protection, the US army is contemplating the use of biodegradable bullets.
• In order to control environmental damage, officials are asking for proposals to design biodegradable bullets that shall no longer harm the environment.
• They are hoping that the bullets will contain seeds, specialised for each local environment. These seeds will not germinate until they have been in the ground for several months.
• Not only will new plants sprout from these seed bullets, but they will help suck-out dangerous chemicals from their surrounding environment.

• Pharmaceutical manufacturing facility discharges can substantially increase the pharmaceutical load to U.S. wastewaters .
• Wastewater treatment plants are unable to filter out chemical compounds used to manufacture personal care products and drugs, so these chemicals seep into freshwater systems and into the oceans.
• Chemical pollution may be entering the food chain and altering the sex functions of fish.
• Exposure to pharmaceuticals and other chemicals in drinking water may affect human reproductive systems too.
• Only four per cent of investments in the water sector are going towards nature-based, or green, solutions, despite the proven co-benefits, including for water quality.
• Freshwater ecosystems are both disproportionately important and under threat.
• Removing traces of drugs in water sources is ultimately not just a problem for wastewater treatment plants but also for the pharmaceutical industry and for governments.  

•  New biodegradable or compostable plastic products seem to offer an alternative to plastics but they may be no better for the environment.
• In many cases, biodegradable plastic bags are made from crude oil, requiring carbon-based production processes and emitting carbon dioxide or methane when degrading.
• A degradable or compostable plastic item may indeed deteriorate slightly faster than a conventional product, but only if the conditions are right.
• The current industry standards are  underestimating the breakdown times. The standards are also not accounting for the damage to marine life that ingest breakdown particles before a product is completely degraded.
• Consumer action and demand is a good start, with more and more of us changing our behaviour, leading by example, and asking industry to do likewise. This can take the form of a ban of single-use plastics.