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Daily briefing: US and China issue joint climate pledge
The two biggest greenhouse-gas emitters have issued a surprise joint declaration at COP26. Plus, how Merck and Pfizer’s antiviral pills might reshape the pandemic, and the origin story of the arXiv.
Two new antiviral pills to treat COVID-19 — molnupiravir, developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, and Pfizer’s Paxlovid — could be game-changers for the pandemic. The companies say that both drugs significantly cut the risk of hospitalization and death in vulnerable people, if used early. Scientists are poised to discover how well the drugs will work in the real world, their safety for a wide range of people, their effectiveness against viral variants, and how easily they will get to the people who need them most. There’s also the concern that the coronavirus could become resistant to antivirals.
One-third of scientists who supervise doctoral students say they have lost sleep, or faced anxiety, during the pandemic because of their role. In a poll of almost 3,500 research supervisors in the United Kingdom, two-thirds said that their supervision responsibilities had increased over this time, with many wanting more support to address the well-being and mental health of their PhD students. Helping students to refocus research projects has been one of the most difficult things supervisors have wrangled with.
The world’s two biggest greenhouse-gas emitters have issued a surprise joint declaration at COP26. The statement reiterates the countries’ commitment to the 2015 Paris agreement and promises “enhanced climate actions” to make it happen. “We both see that the challenge of climate change is an existential and severe one,” said Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua at an unannounced news conference. “In the area of climate change, there is more agreement between China and the US than there is disagreement.” The declaration was met with cautious optimism by observers, who note that it is short on firm deadlines or specific commitments, and partly restates a shared statement made in April.
Microbiologist Rob Finn harnesses the speedy adaptation power of microbes to replace chemical-synthesis processes and investigates their use in carbon sequestration or as food alternatives. Environmental economist Sarobidy Rakotonarivo studies how climate policies affect people in African countries. They are both attending COP26, and are the latest in a series of scientists who spoke to Nature about their hopes and fears for the momentous climate summit. “Nature-based solutions such as forest conservation are absolutely crucial, but we must carefully consider the social costs,” says Rakotonarivo.
The feeling at COP26 today is one of pregnant pause. Delegates have a long night ahead as negotiators will work without sleep to deliver the final texts that must be agreed on by all parties tomorrow.One issue on everyone’s minds: how global carbon markets will create financial levers to reduce emissions, without loopholes.
The tenterhooks are sharpened by the news from researchers at Climate Action Tracker that national net-zero targets, as they stand now, put us on track for a disastrous 2.4 ℃ temperature increase by the end of the century. “All governments need to reconsider their targets,” the research coalition said.
At COP26, António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, launches an expert group that will analyse private-sector commitments to reach net-zero. (COP26 Racing for a better world event | from 4:30)
The California Institute of Technology has been grappling with its past as the home of academics involved with the pseudoscientific eugenics movement, including its most famous former president — Nobel-prizewinning physicist Robert Millikan. As the institution renames buildings and programmes, Nature explores how its story might serve as a model for others.
In the late 1980s, theoretical cosmologist Joanne Cohn started an informal exchange of manuscripts in string theory. Her distribution list later became the arXiv preprint server, which has revolutionized the way scientists share ideas and hosts close to 2 million submissions. Cohn tells Physics Today about how the arXiv began.
A glitch broke the link to our obituary of biophysicist Walter Gratzer that was Quote of the Day in yesterday’s Briefing — please enjoy it here.
Thank you to everyone who was able to attend our first Briefing event yesterday in Glasgow. It was delightful to see you and inspiring to discuss the issues raised at COP26 in person. Several readers said they want to see inside the vast and mysterious COP26 venue, so I did my best to report it in all its glory on Twitter.
If you couldn’t make it, don’t fret — we will try to have another meet-up in a different location as soon as we can.
With contributions by Smriti Mallapaty and Anne Marie Conlon
Updates & Corrections
Correction 18 November 2021: An earlier version of this article failed to mention that molnupiravir is being developed by Ridgeback Biotherapeutics in partnership with Merck.