The Daily Populous

Thursday December 17th, 2020 morning edition

image for Global rich must cut their carbon footprint 97% to stave off climate change, UN says

While pollution has dipped, greenhouse gases keep accumulating in the atmosphere, locking in future decades of climate disruption and extreme weather.

As for who's chiefly responsible for the gap, it's the global rich, the report says.

Just 10% of the world's population emits nearly half of the world's carbon pollution.

That translates into a reduction of 97% in carbon emissions for the wealthiest people.

"Rich countries tend to be cleaner on other things, have cleaner water and air, but that's not true for CO2.".

Carbon emissions are effectively embedded across much of the global economy, so consuming in general is akin to polluting.

"It's the responsibility of policymakers to support alternatives that give people the goods they need without destroying the climate.". »

Govt secures another two Covid-19 vaccines, PM says every New Zealander will be able to be vaccinated

Authored by rnz.co.nz
image for

Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced that the government is preparing to support its Pacific partners to access Covid-19 vaccines.

Mahuta confirmed $75 million of Official Development Assistance had been earmarked to support Pacific and global vaccine access and roll-out.

New Zealand is also ready to contribute to wider Pacific regional initiatives as they take shape. »

Former Houston police captain charged with pointing gun at repairman, believing he was a voter fraud 'mastermind'

Authored by edition.cnn.com

Aguirre said he suspected there were 750,000 fraudulent ballots inside the truck and that the man was "the mastermind of a giant (voter) fraud," the release states.

After an investigation, Houston police said they found the allegations of election fraud "unfounded" and referred the case to the district attorney's office.

Police searched DL's home with his permission, the affidavit states, and did not find any evidence of voter fraud or ballot harvesting. »

Fifty Years of Tax Cuts for Rich Didn’t Trickle Down, Study Says

Authored by bloomberg.com
image for

Tax cuts for rich people breed inequality without providing much of a boon to anyone else, according to a study of the advanced world that could add to the case for the wealthy to bear more of the cost of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Policy makers shouldn’t worry that raising taxes on the rich to fund the financial costs of the pandemic will harm their economies,” Hope said in an interview.

“Our research suggests such policies don’t deliver the sort of trickle-down effects that proponents have claimed,” Hope said. »

Training methods based on punishment compromise dog welfare

Authored by eurekalert.org
image for

Dogs trained using aversive and mixed methods displayed more stress-related behaviors, such as crouching and yelping, and showed greater increases in cortisol levels after training than dogs trained with rewards.

They found that dogs from schools using aversive methods responded more pessimistically to ambiguous situations compared with dogs receiving mixed- or reward-based training.

They say that these results suggest that aversive training techniques may compromise animal welfare, especially when used at high frequency. »