Week #44 {15 November '21}
- The Bulletin Buzz
- Nov 14, 2021
- 11 min read
Articles written by Ananya Nayar & Misaki Tomiyama.
Articles:
Kids Articles:
Other:
Updates on COP 26
By Misaki Tomiyama
The Conference of the Parties, also known as COP, takes place every year to tackle the issues of climate change. We’ve written an article about COP 26 taking place this year in Glasgow in our previous issue, so if you want to know more about it, please check it out! (Last Week’s articles)
As you know, COP 26 aims to discuss matters on climate change. In the Paris Agreement of 2015, it was agreed that countries will aim to keep the rise in global temperatures to 2°C and aim for 1.5°C. 2 °C might appear to be an extremely small increase, however, a global temperature increase of more than 2°C will make life difficult for all of us- causing most of our coastlines to disappear, exposing 36% of our land to extreme rainfall while others to extremely hot temperatures, leading to the extinction of a lot of animal species and loss of around 80% of our coral reefs and rising of our sea levels.
So, here are a few of the latest agreements made at COP 26.
Draft Text- this is one of the most important documents from COP 26. This draft text requires countries to republish plans for climate actions until 2030, by the end of next year. This draft text also addressed the urgent need for developed countries to financially aid other countries experiencing the effects of climate change. This draft text is very important as it creates the agenda regarding climate change. (Here is the link to the draft text published on the UNFCCC website)
U.S.-China cooperation- U.S. and China agreed to increase climate cooperation from now one, which involves dealing more with the issues of methane emissions, de-carbonisation and transition to greener and cleaner energy. This is an important agreement, as China and the U.S. are countries that release a lot of carbon dioxide, so this agreement will help the world aim for a global temperature increase of 1.5°C.
(Chart that shows different countries’ share of CO2 emissions as of 2020)
Deforestation- 100 countries decided that they will aim to stop deforestation completely by 2030. This is very important, as trees, as you know, help absorb carbon dioxide. However, some say this promise to stop deforestation cannot be guaranteed completely as initiatives like this before, were never successful.
Methane- Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, is one of the greatest contributing factors to climate change. Countries agreed to cut 30% of methane emissions by 2030.
Coal- Around 40 countries agreed to shift away from coal.
Diet Culture Myths (Long Article)
Article by Ananya Nayar
Disclaimer: We are not nutritionists, dieticians, we are simply breaking down diet culture myths that are harmful.
Diet culture is everywhere. It’s so loud. It’s in magazines, tv, books, conversations and there’s no real escaping it. It tells us which foods are good and which are bad, which will make you gain weight, which will make you lose weight. It’s taken over and ruined so many people’s lives and caused eating disorders, exercise addiction, deaths, separation, depression and so much more.
Toxic diet culture manages to make us feel guilty for eating certain things or for not exercising a certain amount, fitness apps, fad diets, calorie counters, uninformative health classes, ‘magical’ medicines all fuel the power it has over our lives.
Food is something to fuel your body, to make you feel happy and to let you live. Exercise is a celebration of what your body can do, a form of self-love. We should ideally fuel and move our bodies out of love rather than restricting and obsessing out of hate and guilt.
We’ve normalised a stringent set of expectations for ourselves about valuing ‘skinniness’ and ‘attractiveness’ over our mental and physical well being. It’s draining to talk to ourselves with self-deprecating talk and constantly restrict or feeling unworthy, but it’s so normalised.
Healthy can mean having a good relationship with food and exercise, prioritising you and your mental health and feeling good in your body and your skin, regardless of size.
Diet culture praises and celebrates certain ways of eating and movement that usually aren’t satisfying cravings, movement, rest, pleasure and connection to your body. It’s ruined family relationships along with mental relationships with the things that keep you alive.
Good and Bad Foods
There are no specific ‘good and bad foods,’ we’ve learnt through classes and media that a brownie will affect blood sugar. When in reality, brownies are delicious and are meant to be enjoyed. No one food will make or break how you look, and brownies are meant to be eaten because that’s part of living.
Once you stop viewing foods in these two categories and start labelling all foods as JUST food, you may have reached an epitome of a healthy relationship with food. Some foods are more nutritionally dense than others, but that doesn’t mean we should restrict or cut out anything because it’s all part of living.
Thinness = Health
WRONG. As I said, health looks different to everybody. Health includes how you feel, your pleasure, your mental wellbeing along with your body's movement, rest and eating habits. Even if we all exercised and ate the same, we’d all look different. There’s so much that makes up a body composition and for many, thinness actually doesn’t equal health
Losing Weight Is The Only Way To Love Your Body
Our weight and size don’t define us at all, we have to be okay with gaining or losing weight and fluctuations in our size is normal, it’s simply part of being human.
No, it’s not wrong to want to lose weight or change your body, especially for medical reasons, but discriminating or favouring body types is.
It’s hard to respect your body at every size, but set point weight theory exists. Our bodies aren’t machines with one type of fuel, there is a weight for us where we don’t have to constantly fight our bodies and obsessively control food and exercise and sleep.
Calories In Calories Out
Calories are a simple unit of energy, it’s a way of describing how much energy your body gets out of eating something. Diet culture has made calories- a small unit a dominating, all-consuming thing. Food isn’t a number, it’s nutrition, fuel, happiness. The idea that we ‘burn off’ calories is in some ways scientifically wrong.
Diet culture has told us that we should eat between 1,200-2,000 calories a day. In reality, the minimum amount that the human body needs to function with is 1,200 a day. Even this number doesn’t mean that you should, 1,200 calories a day is usually not healthy. A toddler needs 1,000-1,400 a day. An average teenager or adult needs a minimum of 2,100 calories a day and an average of 2,600, with sedentary activity, even this number may be wrong or not satisfactory for many. Calorie counters online take two or three things into account to give you a number. They don’t know your sleeping schedule, workload, exercise schedule and amount, hunger, cravings, metabolism rate and so much more that affects your calorie requirement. Most days, it’s hard to meet that requirement, our bodies are different every day. What we should focus on is honouring our hunger and satisfying our tired bodies rather than over-glamorising a number.
It’s hard to live up to harmful standards every day. Our bodies need us to listen to them and satisfy and keep them healthy. Ignoring diet culture and recovering is a hard process, and it’ll take time.
What Would Happen If Everyone On Earth Became Vegetarian?
By Misaki Tomiyama
Being a vegetarian means that you don’t consume any type of meat, be it fish or poultry. Approximately 8% of the world and around 30% of Indians are vegetarians. Although unrealistic, in this article, we will talk about what will (might) happen to us and the world if everyone became a vegetarian.
In our world, there are around 20 billion chickens, 1.5 billion cows, a little over 1 billion sheep and a little below 1 billion pigs. If our whole population stops eating meat, all of these animals will gradually disappear.
If these animals disappear, there will be a lot of open spaces of land, as approximately 26 percent of the earth's surface is used for livestock grazing. It might sound like a lot of lands is now open for the agriculture of crops, but land used for livestock grazing is actually extremely dry, and not suitable for growing crops. A lot of artificial nutrients will be required to make it able to grow vegetation like trees. This will help with climate change, as trees are capable of absorbing a lot of carbon dioxide.
Additionally, cows produce a lot of methane, which is a contributor to climate change. Reducing livestock and meat consumption, according to some scientists, is the best way to tackle climate change.
Also, around 70% of fresh water on earth is used for agriculture, and approximately 15,000 litres of water is used to produce 1kg of beef, 6000 litres for 1kg of pork, in comparison to 900 litres for fruits and 300 litres for garden vegetables. Therefore, becoming vegetarian is extremely beneficial for our environment, especially in terms of water consumption.
Despite all of these advantages of turning vegetarian, there are a few drawbacks. The world suddenly becoming vegetarian, as mentioned before, will result in the disappearance of a lot of animals. Society will be left with very few cheap sources for byproducts of livestock, such as animal fats used in cosmetics. Moreover, there is likely to be a lot of unemployment, as the jobs of 1 billion people involved in producing livestock will be lost.
CoronaVirus’ New Epicentre: Europe?
Article by Ananya Nayar
Europe has regained its position as the ‘core’ of Covid as cases begin to rise and vaccination rates decline.
Today, countries in Europe account for over half of the weekly infections worldwide, and roughly half of the weekly Covid deaths, which are the highest statistics since April 2020 when Covid was at its prime in Italy and other countries in Europe.
Although over 60% of the populations have received their first and second dosage of the vaccine, the pace for vaccinations has decreased- mostly with the elderly growing sceptical over the doses. On top of this, there has been a slight surge in infections, which questions herd immunity. For some governments, this means reimposing certain restrictions.
To counter a possible rising situation, governments are working on the vaccination drive to provide boosters to those more susceptible to the virus and to teenagers and children who mostly remain unprotected so far.
With festivals like Christmas around the corner, countries are hoping to tackle increasing cases before the holidays where cases are expected to rise, also considering the colder weather is usually accompanied by the seasonal flu.
In Germany for example, some cities have reportedly ‘cancelled’ Christmas events like open farmers markets etc for the time being.
Virologists also stated that ‘vaccines alone will not defeat the pandemic in the long term,’ but self precautions with masks etc will. In fact, Israel has reinforced the masks mandate, vaccine passports and made it compulsory to distance and mask within indoor areas like universities or museums.
Kids Corner:
Toxic Foam in Yamuna River
By Misaki Tomiyama
(A map showing the location of the Yamuna River)
Toxic foam has been floating in the Yamuna River, one of India’s most sacred rivers. According to experts, the foam which was found near New Delhi contains dangerous chemicals and was caused by untreated sewage and industrial wastes. It is likely to cause skin and breathing problems.
However, despite the dangers, many Hindus entered the waters for a Holy dip, as part of the 4-day festival, called Chhath. In this festival, Hindus fast and make offerings in the water. Although the government workers tried to remove the toxic foam, they were unsuccessful.
Remembrance Day
Article by Ananya Nayar
Remembrance Day is a memorial held annually on the 11th of November to commemorate those who passed in World War 1 and conflicts after that too. In England, it’s declared a holiday so that it follows the tradition set in 1919 of short silences for those lost and formal parades.
In some countries, it’s also called armistice day and marks the end of the fighting of World War 1. The Allied powers signed a pact with Germany in France at 11.00 am on the 11th of November 1918, to end the war. So, it has now been recognised as Armistice Day.
In England, red Poppies have been adopted as a symbol to honour those who sacrificed themselves for their country.
The Poppy flower was taken as a symbol after the touching poem by John McRae- called ‘In Flanders Fields’ talked about seeing fragile red flowers flourish on battlegrounds after bloodshed. Now, the flower has become recognised as a symbol of Remembrance and hope for peace.
Photo via: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Each year, the Tower of London opens a large display of a field of ornate porcelain Poppy flowers ‘spilling’ from the tower to the public. It took Paul Cummins and a team of 300 to make 888,246 flowers and count them. ‘Every loose soldier had to be represented.’
Photo via: Dezeen.com
Other:
Did You Know? The Bulletin Buzz Turned 1 Yesterday!
The Bulletin Buzz was an initiative started by us (Ananya and Misaki) last year in November, and yesterday last year, we published our first ever article, which was about the development of the first-ever Covid vaccine. It has been a full year since the Bulletin Buzz started, and we wanted to thank all of our readers for all your support and encouragement, and for making The Bulletin Buzz a success.
We are ending the “This Week in History” and “This Day Signifies” columns, as we have completed a full year of The Bulletin buzz, so this will be the last “This Days Signifies” column!
We are going to start new columns, and one is already starting today- there will be a “Why Do We…” column, which will be a column explaining interesting things about the human body. Another column we are starting is a “Who was…” column, where we will be introducing a famous person from history, or even from our generation, and talk about their contribution to our world.
Again, thank you to everyone who has been reading and supporting the Bulletin Buzz for the past year! We appreciate it a lot and are very grateful :) We look forward to your continued support of The Bulletin Buzz!
Book & Movie Reviews:
Reviewed by Ananya Nayar
Book of the Week: They Both Die At The End by Adam Silvera
This young adult novel went viral on Tiktok, so I thought I’d try it to see why it was apparently so great. In my opinion, it was mediocre. Good but the exaggerated praise wasn’t really required.
The story follows two boys- Mateo and Rufus, who have no relation to each other they discover they have only one day to live left, they don’t know where to go and what to do. They stumble upon each other and the story grows from there, how they avoided death narrowly multiple times, did the last things they wanted to do and… fell in love?
I liked how the writing portrayed the characters so well and showed their flaws, fears, passions and joys really well. The character development too, from the beginning of the day they meet each other to when they die, was so refreshing.
The different perspectives from other characters in the book, reactions was really nice to read too.
Overall, the book was good, just overhyped in my opinion because it was quite short. If it had been a little longer and the plot had been stretched or had more characters that could’ve been better.
Age Recommendation: 13+
Rating out of 5 Stars: ⅗
Movie of the Week: Night at the Museum (2006)
If you haven’t already watched this, I recommend you do so. This action-filled, hilarious movie is perfect for the holiday season with family or friends. If you watched the first, go on to the second, third or even fourth!
This is a fantasy-comedy children’s film but I’d say perfect for everybody. It paints museums in a different light with adventure, real things coming to life, the dangers and amusements of historical pieces and more.
Basically, a newly-hired security guard is left alone in the museum for the night for the first time, coincidentally, that’s the night that the museum literally comes to life. Suddenly, there are life-size, real, living and breathing dinosaurs roaming the building! I’d recommend this for a good laugh.
Age Recommendation: 7+
Rating out of Five Stars: 5/5
Why Do We… Cry When We Yawn?
By Ananya Nayar
When you yawn, you may notice that tears begin to well in your eyes. Or your eyes simply water. Anyhow, when we yawn, our faces contract and the muscles pressure the tear glands (lacrimal glands) in our eyes, which cause excess tears to spill out most of the time.
In some cases with yawning, your eyes could be drier than usual from fatigue, so yawning simply signals to produce tears so that your eyes don’t dry.
Even when tears fall or your eyes water when you are laughing or sneezing it’s a good sign because it means your body is working how it should. Although even if you don’t ‘water’ at every yawn that’s normal too.
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