Background Briefing: August 8, 2021

On By gram

 

The Latest U.N. Climate Report is Beyond Alarming

We begin with today’s alarming report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which finds that within the next two decades temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) the planet has warmed since the 19th century. This means a hotter future is locked in and is now unavoidable and that we have a very short window in which to stop global warming from getting much worse. Rachel Cleetus, the Policy Director with the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists who is an expert on the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and has been attending international climate negotiations since 2009, joins us. We discuss how the extreme weather events we are seeing with fires in Canada, California, Siberia, Turkey and Greece and floods in Germany and China are now the new normal. Indeed the new report makes clear that in the next 20 to 30 years extreme weather will get worse unless leaders wake up or the public forces them to stop burning fossil fuels before plant and animal species are gone, coral reefs disappear and a billion people will be sweltering in life-threatening heat from which there will be no escape. 

 

Will the U.S. Stand For Human Rights Against Egypt’s Dictator?

Then we look into the decision the Biden administration must soon make on whether to withhold $300 million from the annual $1.3 billion in military aid the U.S. gives the brutal regime of General Sisi which is the most repressive in Egypt’s modern history. Mohamed Ismail, a political and human rights activist and coordinator for Egyptians Abroad for Democracy joins us to discuss efforts in congress to make a stand for human rights by not rewarding a military dictator.

 

As Afghanistan Collapses, a Portrait of Osama bin Laden

Then finally with the Taliban seizing the fifth Afghan provincial capital since Friday after having captured 200 districts out of the 400 in Afghanistan, we speak with Peter Bergen, who in 1997 conducted the first TV interview with Osama bin Laden for CNN where he is a national security analyst. He joins us to discuss his latest book, just out, The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden: The Biography which reveals a detailed portrait of the Al Qaeda leader from the 470,000 files taken during the SEAL’s raid that killed him.