Latest news with #existentialthreat
CNN
5 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
5 things to know for July 24: Signal controversy, Epstein files, Birthright citizenship, Thailand-Cambodia, Ohio ‘ambush'
In a landmark advisory opinion issued on Wednesday, the world's highest court said polluting countries may be in breach of international law if they do not protect the planet from the 'existential threat' posed by climate change. It was the first time the International Court of Justice had formally addressed the climate crisis. Here's what else you need to know to get up to speed and on with your day. The national security scandal involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials has taken a new turn. In March, the officials discussed a US military attack on Houthi militants in Yemen in a group chat on Signal — a conversation that inadvertently included a journalist. Now, the Pentagon's inspector general has received evidence that the military plans shared from Hegseth's Signal account were taken from a US Central Command document that was marked classified at the time, two people familiar with the ongoing review said. The IG's possession of the file appears to further undercut Hegseth's claims that nothing classified was shared on the publicly available messaging app. When Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed President Donald Trump in May on the Justice Department's review of the Jeffrey Epstein case, she informed him that his name appeared in the files, sources familiar with the discussion told CNN. Bondi also said that although the names of several other high-profile figures were mentioned, the investigators did not find a client list or evidence refuting that Epstein died by suicide. The revelations about the meeting contradict Trump's more recent denials that he was told he was in the files. On Wednesday, a House Oversight subcommittee voted to subpoena the DOJ's files about the disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker. The motion passed, 8-2, with three of the panel's Republicans joining with Democrats. House Oversight Chair James Comer also subpoenaed Epstein's former associate Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition. A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that President Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship was unconstitutional. Birthright citizenship is a nearly 160-year-old practice guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which grants citizenship to anyone born on American soil. The 2-1 ruling from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals also upheld a nationwide block against the controversial order. In response, the Trump administration may ask the full 9th Circuit to review the case, or it could appeal the matter straight to the US Supreme Court. Deadly violence has flared up once again on the long-disputed border between Thailand and Cambodia. Tensions between the Southeast Asian neighbors took a turn in May when a Cambodian soldier was killed during a brief battle between Thai and Cambodian troops. Both sides claimed to have acted in self-defense. Over the summer, Thailand took control of border checkpoints, imposed restrictions on crossings and threatened to cut electricity and internet to Cambodia's border towns. Cambodia stopped imports of Thai produce and banned Thai movies and TV dramas. Both militaries reinforced troops along the border. Two recent landmine explosions that injured troops prompted the countries to downgrade relations even further and recall diplomatic staff. Then, as deadly clashes erupted along the border today, Thailand deployed fighter jets and bombed Cambodian military targets. Cambodia said it plans to 'respond decisively.' Two Ohio police officers were allegedly ambushed by an armed man in an undeveloped industrial park on Wednesday. According to officials, the gunman waited on a dead-end street and then opened fire on two Lorain officers when they parked their vehicles there to eat lunch. Another officer, who responded to the victims' call for help, was also shot. At this time, the first two officers are listed in critical condition after suffering multiple gunshot wounds. The third officer was shot in the hand and treated at a local medical facility. The shooter has been identified as a 28-year-old man from Lorain. It's not clear if he was killed by the officers or took his own life, only that he 'was shot on scene and was pronounced deceased,' officials said. Plane crashes in Russia's Far EastA Soviet-era passenger plane carrying about 50 people went down in Russia's far eastern Amur region, state media reported on Thursday, citing local officials. The Amur Center for Civil Defense and Fire Safety said on Telegram that a search and rescue helicopter spotted the wreck of the plane on a mountain slope 10 miles from the town of Tynda. GET '5 THINGS' IN YOUR INBOX If your day doesn't start until you're up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to your new favorite morning fix. Sign up here for the '5 Things' newsletter. In March, the right-wing podcaster revived a conspiracy theory about France's first lady Brigitte Macron. Salvador Plasencia is one of five people who were charged in relation to the 'Friends' star's death. The tennis superstar revealed the big news after becoming the second-oldest woman to win a tour-level singles match. And the comedian is overjoyed to be entering his dad era. Let's just say it has to do with the Los Angeles Dodgers player's dog. $1.1 billionThat's how much President Trump's tariffs on imported cars and car parts cost General Motors in the second quarter. The automaker said it expects tariffs to cost it as much as $5 billion by the end of the year. 'We don't have access to (drinking) water at all. Water shortage is a huge problem affecting our daily life.' — A Kabul resident, speaking to CNN. According to a report by Mercy Corps, the Afghan city may soon become the first modern capital in the world to run completely dry. 🌤️ Check your local forecast to see what you can expect. Conservationists and veterinarians are fighting to rescue and rehabilitate these adorable creatures. Today's edition of 5 Things AM was edited and produced by CNN's Andrew Torgan.
Al Jazeera
6 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
UN court: Climate crisis is ‘existential threat'
UN court: Climate crisis is 'existential threat' NewsFeed The International Court of Justice says climate change is an 'urgent and existential threat' in its first-ever climate opinion, requested by the UN. Protesters gathered in The Hague as judges weighed whether major polluters should be held legally accountable for the damage. Video Duration 01 minutes 31 seconds 01:31 Video Duration 00 minutes 41 seconds 00:41 Video Duration 01 minutes 43 seconds 01:43 Video Duration 01 minutes 17 seconds 01:17 Video Duration 03 minutes 07 seconds 03:07 Video Duration 00 minutes 54 seconds 00:54 Video Duration 03 minutes 18 seconds 03:18
LBCI
6 days ago
- Politics
- LBCI
ICJ: Climate change 'urgent and existential threat'
The top U.N. court on Wednesday described climate change as an "urgent and existential threat", as it handed down a landmark ruling on the legal obligations of countries to prevent it. "The consequences of climate change are severe and far-reaching: they affect both natural ecosystems and human populations. These consequences underscore the urgent and existential threat posed by climate change," said International Court of Justice president Yuji Iwasawa. AFP
Gizmodo
19-07-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
Is Climate Change an Existential Threat?
If a 60-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) asteroid slammed into Earth tomorrow, it would render the planet inhospitable to nearly all life forms, save for the hardiest extremophiles. This mass extinction event would wipe humanity off the face of the Earth—there would be no survivors. To some experts, this is the true definition of an 'existential threat.' Traditionalists will say this term describes a risk that endangers the very existence of something—in this case, the human species. In recent years, that definition has loosened largely to encompass global warming. Scientists, politicians, and world leaders have all described the climate crisis as an existential threat to humanity. This human-driven phenomenon is already altering life as we know it on a planetary scale, but could it really lead to our extinction? Some experts say it could, in the most extreme scenarios. Others argue this isn't the question we should be asking. For this Giz Asks, we reached out to a variety of experts to get their take on whether climate change actually poses an existential threat to our species. Executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. It depends on how you define existential threat. I tend to use 'global catastrophic risk' instead of 'existential risk' because the latter literally means risk to existence. I would argue that in terms of extreme catastrophes, we should care about more than just existence. If we continue to exist as a species or a civilization, but in an extremely diminished state on an ongoing basis, that's also important. And in fact, some of the definitions that are used for existential risk include both a loss of existence—like human extinction—and also lingering on in a very diminished form. This, to me, feels like an abuse of the phrase existential risk, because our existence hasn't actually been lost. In general, however, I am concerned about scenarios in which there is a collapse of human civilization. You can have a whole other conversation about what that means, but basically, I'm talking about the world as we know it no longer functioning. And if there are any survivors, they're carrying on in a significantly diminished state. Human civilization emerged within the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, but the human species is said to be about 200,000 years old. Why has civilization only recently emerged? One explanation for this is that within the last 10,000 years, Earth's climate has been very favorable. It's the Holocene period of the climate, where temperatures have been fairly warm and stable. There's a theory that says those stable, warm conditions are what enabled us—a species that had a latent capacity to produce civilization—to actually pull it off. Indeed, agriculture was invented in at least five or six different places around the world, all within this same 10,000 year period. This suggests that without the Holocene, we couldn't pull this off. With that in mind, if we now start to push the planet outside of these nice, warm, stable, favorable Holocene conditions, perhaps we are destroying the precondition for our civilization. Then, you can start to look at the details. How is the climate changing? How will that affect human populations? There's plenty of concern about how this will affect agriculture, water resources, and extreme weather. All of that stuff starts to paint a picture of a scenario in which our ability to survive this as a civilization is in question. The other important detail is that climate change doesn't happen on its own. In this way, it's different from a lot of other catastrophe scenarios, like getting hit by a large asteroid. Climate change is a gradual process, and so we have to think about not just climate change on its own, but how it affects everything else going on—including other catastrophic risks. Does climate change make nuclear war more likely? Could climate change push society to take dangerous risks with artificial intelligence? We're actually seeing little bits of that right now. It can be helpful to think less about whether climate change is a catastrophic risk on its own, and more about whether it increases the risk of global catastrophe. I feel like that's a question that's very easy to answer yes to. Climatologist, geophysicist, and director of the Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. I don't think there is any question. In our forthcoming book, Science Under Siege, Peter Hotez and I identify three existential threats that currently conspire to threaten human civilization. They are the climate crisis, deadly pandemics, and—most critically—the rising tide of antiscience and disinformation that impairs our ability to address those crises. It seems very unlikely that extinction is on the table for any but the most severe scenarios of climate negligence. However, it is easy to envision a collapse of human civilization. We're already seeing it fray at the edges, particularly in the form of geopolitical conflict that is driven in substantial part by competition of a growing global population for increasingly scarce food, water, and space. All of that is exacerbated by climate change. Tipping points, such as the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet or the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation—which would have important regional consequences—could loom in the not-too-distant future if we continue to warm the planet with fossil fuel carbon emissions. Though we don't know precisely how much warming will trigger them, whether it's 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), or more. Without even appealing to the uncertain science of climate tipping points, the known impacts of climate change—particularly more extreme, damaging, and deadly weather events that will continue to worsen with increased warming—would be more than adequate to destabilize our societal infrastructure. We see this already in the way that these events interrupt supply chains, put stress on food and water resources, and threaten human health. This is already taxing our resources and severely testing out adaptive capacity. Research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. If we use the term 'existential risk' in a strict sense, one could think of it as a threat to humanity, which is very extreme. But there's another term that we use called 'catastrophic risk.' This frames the climate crisis not only in terms of the collapse of the climate system—which could be disastrous in the most extreme scenarios—but in terms of the extreme impacts of climate change that we can witness now and in the near future. One can think about these impacts in many ways. Scientists think about it in terms of planetary boundaries, or tipping points. If you focus on people, you'll find that already in many parts of the world, there are areas that are quite exposed to the extreme impacts of climate change. If you look at small island states, some of them are about to disappear due to rising sea levels. One could say that's an existential threat to them, because there's a possibility that the islands or territory might disappear. This threatens people's way of life, and we can already see some Pacific islands engaging in conversations and negotiations about immigrating to other countries such as Australia. When such scenarios unfold and become reality, where do people go? Climate impacts are also destroying major parts of economies. In many African countries, for example, people mainly rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. Droughts are getting more and more intense, and more frequent. We also have extreme weather events like floods, etcetera. Some estimates have shown that these countries spend up to 20% of their GDP dealing with the impacts and damages of climate change. Industrialized countries are also facing climate impacts. We're seeing wildfires become more intense and more common, summers are becoming hotter. So, while those who think about climate change on a planetary scale focus on boundaries and tipping points, you can also see climate change impacting people in many different ways across the world. I think these different perspectives share the same concern. As academics, we might debate which framing is more useful, but I think we should not lose sight of the realities where these problems are unfolding. An existential psychologist focusing on climate and environmental psychology. It's hard for me to imagine climate change not being considered an existential threat. I've spent decades unpacking the psychology of climate change, and I feel that there's a very unique confluence of factors that contribute to the ways we experience and comprehend it. This includes the fact that it's human generated, that it's systemic, and that its impacts are distributed across time and space. That combination creates a very distinctive set of existential threats, specifically from a psychological perspective, which looks at how people process and make sense of climate change. There's also an existential crisis of meaning. If we really were to take into consideration what's going on here, it does bring a level of inquiry into who we are as human beings and what it means to live a good life. Climate change forces us to come to terms with the consequences of industrialized practices that we've developed relatively recently. We're struggling to process and come to terms with what's happening. We as humans are programmed to have a sense of where we're going, what's ahead, and I have felt for a long time now that awareness of climate change and environmental issues has a direct impact on our capacity to envision a viable future. The way that I'm using the term 'existential' is to simply acknowledge that climate change touches and influences our existence. To me, it doesn't necessarily mean the end of all life as we know it. It means: what does it mean to be a human being? I feel that we need to acknowledge that threats to the climate and environment are existential in the sense that they cut to the heart of who we are. Assistant professor of philosophy at Georgetown University. Climate change is an existential threat to humanity and to human society. But the reason why it's an existential threat to human society is not necessarily directly—or perhaps even primarily—linked to the atmospheric and ecological effects of climate change. Rather, it's the intersection between those effects, which are devastating by themselves, and our political systems that poses the existential crisis. There's a lot of focus on the carbon accounting that has come to define how we talk about the climate crisis and our responses to it, from the levels of CO2 and CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere to the severity of various atmospheric hazards like wildfire. All of these things are worth paying attention to, but the actual damage that they cause to human society results from the interaction between ecological problems and how our political systems succeed or fail to protect people from them. What we've seen historically is that colonial, unjust systems respond to nature and ecological disasters differently than more egalitarian systems. People in many parts of the world—including the U.S.—are living out the opening political gambits of some of the worst-case climate scenarios. Part and parcel of thinking about the climate crisis as a political crisis, rather than just an ecological crisis, is thinking about how the institutions that could protect the common good might instead retool themselves to defend private goods. This is something that Astra Taylor and Naomi Klein have zeroed-in on in a very visceral and useful way. One of the biggest takeaways from this way of thinking about the crisis is not only that governments are failing to live up to their central responsibility to protect the public good, but that the way in which they're failing is making it impossible for civil society, communities, and households to work toward a solution. We live in a very complicated ecology, and we're trying to deal with a problem that is at planetary scale. We not only need governments to do what they have to do, we need many people thinking, working, planning, and making decisions about what they can do for their river, or the trees in their city. We need people doing climate adaptation and mitigation work. The end result of a politics of grit and graft—a politics of looting the common good—is also a politics of not having a public to mobilize for those things.
Telegraph
26-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Pakistan upgrading nukes with Chinese support, US warns
Pakistan is upgrading its nuclear arsenal with Chinese support and sees India as an 'existential threat ', a US report has said. In its worldwide threat assessment report for 2025, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted that nuclear modernisation would be a top priority for Pakistan's military during the next year. The report said: 'Pakistan regards India as an existential threat and will continue to pursue its military modernisation effort, including the development of battlefield nuclear weapons, to offset India's conventional military advantage.' It suggested Islamabad was not only upgrading and securing its arsenal but also 'almost certainly' procuring weapons of mass destruction (WMD). 'Pakistan is modernising its nuclear arsenal and maintaining the security of its nuclear materials and nuclear command and control. Pakistan almost certainly procures WMD-applicable goods from foreign suppliers and intermediaries,' it said. Chinese largesse Pakistan is a recipient of China's economic and military largesse, and the two nations carry out joint military exercises, including an air exercise in November last year. 'Foreign materials and technology supporting Pakistan's WMD programs are very likely acquired primarily from suppliers in China, and sometimes are trans-shipped through Hong Kong, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates,' said the report. India considers China its 'primary adversary,' and Pakistan, its neighbour, more of an 'ancillary security problem', the report said. It added that India had modernised its military last year, testing the nuclear-capable developmental Agni-I Prime MRBM (medium-range ballistic missile) and the Agni-V multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle. India also commissioned a second nuclear-powered submarine to strengthen its nuclear triad and bolster its ability to deter adversaries. Last week, the Indian government claimed China had helped move satellites and recalibrate air defence systems before Pakistan shot down Indian fighter jets during their recent military clashes. According to Ashok Kumar, the director general of the New Delhi-based Centre For Joint Warfare Studies, China worked with Pakistan to reorganise its radar and air defence systems to track troop deployments and aerial movements by India. Mr Kumar, whose research group operates under the Indian Ministry of Defence, said Chinese military advisers helped Pakistan realign its satellite coverage over India as the two neighbouring state clashed after the April 22 terror attack. On that day, 26 tourists were killed at Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan and accused it of backing cross-border terrorism. Pakistan denied any involvement and called for an international investigation. Between May 7 and 10, the neighbouring states launched attacks involving supersonic missiles and drones on each other's territory. Pakistan said it shot down six Indian warplanes, including three French-made Rafales. India has not commented on the specific losses. Dozens of civilians were killed in the attacks, mostly in Kashmir, which is divided between the two nations. Hours after the initial Indian military strikes on May 7, Ishaq Dar, Pakistan's foreign minister, told parliament that Islamabad had used Chinese jets, including J-10C, against India. Mr Dar said the Chinese ambassador had been called to his office to discuss the deployment. Pakistan also used a Chinese-made PL-15 missile, which has never been used in combat before. Its use raised concerns among Beijing's rivals, including Taiwan. China's government has not commented on the use of its equipment. Donald Trump, the US president, surprised many by announcing a ' full and immediate ceasefire ' on May 10, which appears to be holding.
