Hot take:
The people who control the Democratic Party don’t care if Donald Trump wins the election. If they did care, they would offer a better candidate than Joe Biden to oppose him.
#USA #Politics
If Trump wins, that will make fundraising for the Democrats much easier. And bringing in more cash is always a higher priority for them than passing good legislation.
It looks like YouTube is closed off again for people (like me) using ad blockers. And I can't find a single Invidious instance that's still working either. Just error codes everywhere, as if YT is killing them.
Has anyone else experienced this? Are there any known solutions?
I don't have any problem with a market economy, per se, but I do have a BIG problem with capitalism.
In my preferred version of state socialism, there is no accumulation of capital, and thus no capitalism. All large industries and large-scale services are socialized, owned by the people and managed by the state (or by worker cooperatives, where practical).
In my version of a market economy, people can own and run small companies, hire employees, set prices, make a profit... that's all fine. But they can't buy their competitors and either take them over or put them out of business. They can't open franchises, where they sell (or rent) the right to operate a different company with the same name. They're not allowed to buy their suppliers and create a conglomerate. They aren't permitted to grow so large that the market no longer operates fairly. And every business owner's wealth will be capped with a highly progressive tax structure (which is the price of using the commons to turn a profit).
So, the marketplace as such is not the problem. The problem is capitalism.
#Capitalism #Socialism #Economics #Politics
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/188/589/021/897/329/original/1daab0f386d4fe92.jpg
Our capitalist rulers, and the politicians they own, are playing the long game. Since the 1950s they have been working steadily to shift the Overton window, to reduce the influence of labor unions, to boost consumerism, and to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.
A large part of that strategy involves privatizing services that used to be (and should be) public.
They're playing the long game, and they are winning — much to the detriment of you and me and the environment we live in.
#Politics #Capitalism #Environment
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/188/039/863/571/487/original/e676f8e6c5d06656.jpg
Want to hear some crazy radical ideas?
Check this out...
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❝ Capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evil. Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones.
The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital, the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.
Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. ❞
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That's from 1949 (!) and it was written by...... wait for it...... Albert Einstein.
LEARN MORE -- https://archive.ph/jvlFD
ALTERNATE LINK -- https://glenhendrix50.medium.com/einstein-in-1949-predicted-how-and-why-society-would-go-sideways-d9ab65ed4882
#Politics #Capitalism
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/187/814/896/951/658/original/0cfc547883c68273.webp
If you realize that staying under 1.5C is now a fantasy... and if you've learned enough to know that temperatures will almost certainly climb far higher than that within the next few decades... and if you've heard all you need to hear about climate and ecosystem tipping points... and if you understand that our modern hyper-connected just-in-time society exists on a knife edge, where any major interruption in any part of the supply chain can potentially bring everything down... and if you've therefore accepted that collapse is inevitable...
What do you do about it?
Each of us here will have to decide for ourselves. There are no right or wrong answers.
One option is to try to prepare, to become a "prepper." That might work for some people, but not for all of us.
In any case, whatever we choose, it would be ideal if we can search deep inside and find peace within ourselves. That's the message, I think, of this heartfelt essay from Alan Urban...
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I am tired of stressing out because I’m not fully prepared. I’m *never* going to be fully prepared. No one is.
Even if you’re already living off the grid and fully self-sufficient, it’s only a matter of time before a climate disaster kills your crops or destroys your home.
If a doctor told me I had 5-15 years to live, would I spend all my free time searching for a treatment that would only buy me a few extra months?
Of course not! I would spend my time enjoying nature, playing games, listening to music, hanging out with friends and family, and going on little adventures with my kids.
What’s the point of surviving a little longer if you aren’t really living in the first place?
Sure, I could spend all my free time learning knots, canning fruit, drying herbs, cleaning guns, smoking meat, sewing clothes, growing mushrooms, making candles, building booby traps, using the ham radio, and so on and so forth — and I will do some of these things.
But if I’m being honest, most evenings I would rather watch a movie with my kids without feeling guilty that I’m not doing enough to prepare.
I’m tired of living in the future. I want to live in the now. I want to move beyond collapse awareness and into collapse acceptance. I don’t expect to get there all at once, but already I feel less burdened.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://archive.ph/q4dwd
ALTERNATE LINK -- https://medium.com/@CollapseSurvival/i-know-collapse-is-coming-but-have-i-truly-accepted-it-18b74e3e0fd3
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
"You worry too much. Everything's going to be fine. Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet. We've always adapted before, and so of course we also can adapt to climate change."
Ever hear something like that?
Andrew Dessler (@688df97a), a climate scientist and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M, offers a response to the optimistic "We'll adapt" crowd...
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“Humans have always adapted.”
If you’ve followed the climate debate, you’ve inevitably come across these soothing words, usually made by someone rich, often working for a think tank whose agenda is stopping action on climate change.
The argument taps into the romantic notion of human resilience, suggesting that adaptation is not just possible but a simple, cost-free solution to the climate catastrophe unfolding before us.
This view is overly optimistic. Adaptation, far from being an easy way out, is shaping up to be an absolute nightmare.
Here’s why.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/adaptation-to-climate-change-will
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
A blogger at Medium offers a few unpleasant truths...
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Here is my take on the state of our global civilization:
1️⃣ The human species is in absolute overshoot. We consume more resources and release more pollution every year than what could be regenerated or absorbed by Nature. Yes, some countries consume and pollute much more than others, but that doesn’t make the fact disappear that even if we all lived like Jamaicans, we would be still living beyond Earth’s biophysical limits. And that is just the renewable resources part of the story.
2️⃣ The four pillars of modern civilization (ammonia, plastics, steel and concrete) — the non-renewable part — all take immense amounts of fossil fuels to make. Currently there is no way to produce ammonia (a key ingredient of all fertilizers) *at scale* without using natural gas, nor to make plastics without oil, or to smelt iron without coal — not to mention making cement. Note how fossil fuels are not only sources of energy here, but also key ingredients for these materials: providing the necessary hydrogen and carbon atoms making these wonders of civilization possible.
3️⃣ The best of our non-renewable resources are being depleted, fast. Using the low-hanging fruit principle we harvested the richest, most concentrated — and thus most energy efficient to get — deposits first. What remains takes an exponential increase in energy investment to extract, and might as well remain buried underground. Resource depletion doesn’t mean that we are running on empty, but that we are running out of easy to get resources — and thus bump into all sorts of limits on how much we can afford to extract.
4️⃣ We are in a chronic transportation fuel shortage, which is expected to grow much worse due to resource depletion. Lower grade ores, deeper oil wells, switching to brown coal, etc., all provide much less value to this civilization while taking up even more diesel to mine and carry around. If you consider how depletion of conventional oil (the ideal feedstock of transportation fuels) ruins diesel supply, let alone its energy economics, you start to appreciate the scale and immediacy of the predicament we are facing. Hmm, a shrinking energy base and an ever increasing energy demand to get the same amount of stuff… what could possibly go wrong with that?
5️⃣ Ecosystems all around the world are in free-fall. Even if we solve the energy dilemma tomorrow, this alone would still put an end to our existence. If we managed to kill 70% of vertebrate land animals, empty the seas and usher in an insect apocalypse with such a limited energy source as fossil fuels, what would we do to the planet with unlimited energy? Strip mine the entire Andes mountain range in a search for copper? Convert the whole planet into a bare concrete and glass hothouse, boiling the oceans just with the waste heat of our activities?
It’s very important to note how all these crises are interrelated and downstream to our civilizational activities (building, mining, deforesting, tilling, burning etc.), and are not due to CO2 alone. Climate change is but one of the many symptoms and consequences of overshoot and must be treated as such.
Replacing one energy source with another will not solve the climate predicament (let alone ecosystem collapse), nor will it alleviate resource depletion. Erasing the biosphere with electrified bulldozers in search of raw materials and places to expand our cities into, or dispersing a different set of pollutants does not change a thing for the better.
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There's more, a lot more, and it's all rather bleak, but at least it's truthful.
FULL ESSAY -- https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/a-sneak-peak-6a8087cb5ee7
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
We know there are scientists who WILL tell the truth about climate change — such as David Ho (@8606bdb4), Peter Kalmus (@d574690a), Ruth Mottram (@ad951bfd), Zeke Hausfather (@985ba769), Katharine Hayhoe (@960c7f1a), Brad Rosenheim (@4f7ee2c7), and more — but sadly, there are many others who will NOT level with the public about the crisis we are in.
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"Many scientists don’t want to tell the truth about climate change. Here’s why."
In March, the United Nations released a massive climate change report. The biggest takeaway: Global warming will soon pass the oft-mentioned target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Honestly, as a climate journalist, that totally freaked me out.
That “1.5 C” number comes up a lot in climate change conversations. That’s because at around 1.5 C the climate starts hitting points of no return. Like, almost all the coral reefs die. Ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland get scary wobbly. Permafrost starts to thaw faster than a popsicle on a hot sidewalk. Rising seas drown island nations.
But the UN scientists were pretty clear: 1.5 C is coming.
“Almost irrespective of our emissions choices in the near term, we will probably reach 1.5 degrees in the first half of the next decade,” said Irish climate scientist Peter Thorne, one of the lead authors on the UN report.
Why is overshooting 1.5 C inevitable? Physics. There’s a nearly linear relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the average global temperature. More CO2 in the sky means a warmer world. It’s like pouring water into a bucket — keep pouring it in, eventually the bucket overflows.
Our carbon bucket will overflow in about nine years; by the early-to-mid-2030s, we’ll be living in a post-1.5 C world. Unless we quickly cut carbon emissions to zero. Last I checked, that’s not happening.
After this report came out, something weird happened. Unlike the blunt Dr. Thorne, most climate scientists (and journalists) didn’t change how they publicly spoke about 1.5 C. Admitting defeat could risk “demotivation” said Pascal Lamy, the commissioner of the Climate Overshoot Commission. Scientists kept saying things like: “We need to act now to stay below 1.5” or “it’s getting harder, but still technically possible.”
Technically possible? Like, if aliens appear with magic tools that fix climate change?
I felt like I was being gaslit by climate scientists. I wanted to know what was going on. So, I called Kristina Dahl, the principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
She told me that staying under 1.5 C is now “largely unrealistic.”
But, she added, “like other climate scientists, I'm not ready to say that we have to give up on this goal.”
I asked her why. Why wouldn’t she just give it to me straight? And she told me a story that I found revelatory...
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I'm out of room here, but I urge you to click on the link and learn more about why some scientists continue to downplay the true threat of climate change.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023/10/03/1-5-degrees-celcius-un-climate-change-report-barbara-moran
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
It's hard to find this in the corporate-owned (and fossil fuel friendly) news media of the Global North, but here's a story from India's Hindustan Times about a devastating flash flood and dam burst, taking many lives...
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"Sikkim: 14 dead, 120 missing, bridges, dams, roads washed away in flash flood"
At least 14 persons were killed and another 120 people went missing after a flash flood triggered by a glacial lake outburst following heavy rains in north Sikkim in the early hours of Wednesday.
The toll is expected to rise sharply with officials saying that at least 40 bodies have been recovered by different agencies after the disaster struck.
“The Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF), which caused the rise of water levels with very high velocities downstream along the Teesta River Basin in the early hours of October 4, 2023, has caused severe damage in Mangan, Gangtok, Pakyong, and Namchi Districts,” said a statement issued by the Sikkim government.
The flash flood also washed away the Teesta III dam at Chunthang. At least six bridges were washed away and the National Highway 10 (NH10) was damaged in multiple areas.
“North Sikkim has been totally cut off from the rest of the state while Sikkim has been cut off from the rest of India as the flood had badly hit NH10,” said Prabhakar Rai, director of Sikkim’s disaster management department, said.
North Sikkim received around 39 mm rain between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning.
“The rains had probably triggered an avalanche which led to a GLOF. As huge volumes of water and debris comprising boulders came gushing down they hit the hydro dam in Chunthang. The dam was washed away and the entire load gushing down with tremendous force,” said Ashim Sattar, a scientist with IISc Bengaluru, who had studied the lake and the glacier extensively.
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Unfortunately, stories like this will become all too common in the months and years ahead. What now seems like (and is) an unthinkable tragedy may soon be almost a daily occurrence.
We are in a climate emergency. It's past time for system change, and Degrowth.
FULL REPORT -- https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/sikkim-14-dead-120-missing-bridges-dams-roads-washed-away-in-flash-flood-101696430052672-amp.html
#India #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/182/564/315/600/076/original/c55dc208ae59c766.jpg
Why are political leaders so blatantly unwilling to make the hard choices needed to confront the existential threat of climate change?
One reason, of course, is that their main focus is simply to be re-elected. Voters don’t like hearing that they may be required to alter their lifestyles, and so politicians won’t tell them that, even if they know they should.
But another reason could be that these elected officials are getting some bad advice, especially from economists, whom they are far more likely to listen to than scientists...
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Scientists say severe climate change is now the greatest threat to humanity. Extreme weather is expected to upend lives and livelihoods, intensifying wildfires, and pushing ecosystems towards collapse as ocean heat waves savage coral reefs. The threats are far-reaching and widespread.
So what effect would you expect this to have on the economy in coming decades? It may surprise you, but most economic models predict climate change will just be a blip, with a minor impact on gross domestic product (GDP).
Heating the planet beyond 3℃ is extraordinarily dangerous. The last time Earth was that warm was three million years ago, when there was almost no ice and seas were 20 metres higher.
But economic models predict even this level of heat to have very mild impacts on global GDP per capita by century’s end. Most predict a hit of around 1% to 7%, while the most pessimistic modelling suggests GDP shrinking by 23%.
In these models, some countries are completely unaffected by climate change. Others even benefit. For most countries, the damage is small enough to be offset by technological growth.
This, it is becoming clear, is a failure of the modelling. To make these models, economists reach into the past to model damage from weather.
But severe climate change would be a global shock that is wholly outside our experience. Inevitably, models can’t come close to capturing the upheavals climate change could cause in markets fundamental to human life, such as agriculture.
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This article by Timothy Neal, a senior lecturer in Economics at the Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney, is truly frightening. The political, governmental, and economic systems currently in place, which control the world, are wholly incapable of responding to the threat we face.
FULL ESSAY -- https://theconversation.com/have-some-economists-severely-underestimated-the-financial-hit-from-climate-change-recent-evidence-suggests-yes-214579
#Politics #Economy #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
The large majority of people on Mastodon, and the majority of my followers, live either in Europe or the United States.
And so, ironically, even though nearly all of you reading this already will have a clear understanding *intellectually* of how bad the climate crisis is, most of us here have not yet experienced in person the full wrath of 2023's unprecedented heating.
As David Ho writes:
"It’s unfortunate (in a sense) that while temperatures were extreme this year (warmest in the instrumental record in many places), most of the US and Europe were spared. So, many will feel that this level of warming is no big deal."
See -- https://mastodon.world/@davidho/111171767782155538
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/177/038/948/937/035/original/e15081ab80957ecc.jpeg
Earth has a bad fever. Our ecosystem is gravely ill.
If Gaia were a real person, she would be in the hospital, on life-support...
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Following the hottest June through August on record, and the globe's hottest-ever month in July, last month's preliminary data has astonished climate researchers who anticipated such extremes eventually.
The figures show a temperature anomaly of about 0.9°C (1.6°F) above the 1991-2020 average. Converted to the preindustrial era, this amounts to a departure from average of 1.7°C (3.06°F), temporarily exceeding the Paris Agreement's temperature target of 1.5°C compared to preindustrial levels.
In data from the Japan Meteorological Agency, September 2023 beat the previous warmest September by 0.5°C (0.9°F). Typically, monthly records are beaten by fractions of a degree, with such narrow margins that different climate centers around the world can rank them differently.
"We've never seen a record smashed by anything close to this margin," climate scientist Zeke Hausfather told Axios. "It's frankly a bit scary."
September featured numerous extreme weather events, including heat waves in Europe, devastating and deadly flooding in Greece and Libya from an unusually powerful Mediterranean storm system, record heat in Japan, and continued anomalously large wildfires in Canada. In the U.S., the month ended with a record-breaking deluge on New York City and surrounding areas, bringing parts of the region to a halt.
"This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas," said Hausfather.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.axios.com/2023/10/04/earth-hottest-september-record-year
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/176/927/869/769/828/original/ea2e434a80583064.png
At this point, it's too late.
If leaders in the Global North had shown true leadership 50 years ago — or perhaps 40 years ago or even 30 years ago — and begun an urgent shift away from fossil fuels and away from the mantra of growth-at-all-costs, then *maybe* we would be in a position today where some form of modern society could be maintained without enduring catastrophic collapse.
But they did not make that choice. They did not display any vision or show true leadership. Instead, they did the exact opposite.
Since 1990, greedy capitalists and the governments they own have doubled down (see attached graphs), completely wrecking our climate and environment, placing not only humans but thousands of other plant and animal species in grave danger of extinction.
If you've been following me for a while and reading my posts, chances are you already understand how bad our current situation really is. But if you're just being introduced to this topic, or if you simply want to learn more about our impossible predicament, then here is an article filled with relevant information:
"We have destroyed our ecosystem – now we await the collapse of civilization"
https://wraltechwire.com/2023/09/22/doomsday-authors-analysis-we-have-destroyed-our-ecosystem-now-we-await-the-collapse-of-civilization/
Too late? See the first comment below...
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Collapse
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/171/455/715/669/825/original/9dace489689941d4.jpeghttps://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/171/562/798/887/723/original/4e6c47706832c1a0.jpg
It’s already too late to prevent some level of collapse. But that doesn’t mean we should give up!
Because we still have a choice, a vital choice, between (1) a world very different from our recent past, but likely survivable for a smaller population of humans, living simpler lives in closer harmony with their surroundings; or (2) a world where no humans remain at all, and millions of other species perish along with us, due to the terrible decisions we allowed our “leaders” to make.
That is what we’re fighting for now. It’s why we urgently need system change, and a pivot toward Degrowth. Because the difference between a planet 2°C above the pre-industrial baseline (still perhaps achievable) and one 3°C or 4°C above the baseline (where we’re currently headed) is huge. In fact, it’s existential.
The mighty USA, gone within the next decade? That’s the bold prediction from Tessa Schlesinger.
I’m not going to say she’s right about that, but I’m not going to say she’s wrong either. My gut feeling is there are still too many variables to know for sure what will happen. It is possible, however, that things might break as badly as she is forecasting here…
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Ten years isn’t far away, and the sad truth is that a lot can happen in ten years. This is especially so in a world fractured by economics and politics, and driven by climate change to an extinction level event.
We know, for a fact, that things are going to get a lot worse. This is not ideology. It’s not pie in the sky. It’s straight extrapolation from what we already know. So here’s what we can bet on.
🔴 There are going to be an increasing number of fires due to the rising heat. These fires are going to get hotter and hotter, and they will burn fiercer and fiercer. It’s inevitable that a major city will burn.
🔴 There are going to be more and more 20-inch rainfalls — dams of water falling out of the sky in unexpected places, drowning all below.
🔴 Bridges and dams will collapse. It has already been long established in America that these are much in need of repair work. It only takes a couple of these natural events to put them permanently out of commission.
🔴 Scientists are 100% sure that there will be another pandemic — many more pandemics. As yet, countries are still not prepared for the next outbreak. More Americans died from Covid 19 than any other nation on earth, and more will die from the next serious pandemic.
My bet is that in a decade, the United States will have lost its international position, destroyed by its lack of care for its people, its lack of investment in its infrastructure, an increasing number of natural disasters, and the progress of other countries.
There will still be people who live ‘an ordinary life’ but they will be few and far between. Most people will be touched by events, and words and phrases like ‘The American Dream’ and ‘Leader of the Free World’ will have sunk into obscurity.
Its great friend, the UK, will be no better off.
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I've included only a few of the many bullet points the author uses to bolster her position. The rest of them do seem to add up to a predictably dismal outcome for the good ol' USA.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.ph/lQeqS
ALTERNATE LINK -- https://medium.com/tessas-web-log/if-america-dies-dead-in-a-decade-91b0168db05a
#USA #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Covid
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/171/288/962/236/665/original/90e0529cac3e58ef.webp
We urgently need to get off fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas. Right? Does everyone agree with that?
Human extraction and burning of fossil fuels is destroying Earth's delicately balanced ecosystem and radically altering the stable climate that sustains us. Our industry and commerce are quickly making this world unlivable both for people and for countless innocent species who are dying now and who will disappear along with us in the near future if something doesn't change fast.
But the problem is, where do we go from here? How can we sustain our complex modern society *without* using fossil fuels to power it?
And… take another step beyond that. Are we even asking the right question? Does it truly make sense to try and find a way to sustain an unsustainable way of living?
Indrajit Samarajiva (https://indi.ca/about/) is a writer living in Sri Lanka. I’ve pointed to his essays before, and now I want you to consider his challenging response to the type of questions I’ve posed above.
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The common understanding of winning the climate fight is that we stop using fossil fuels, stop emitting (and even capture) CO₂, and carry on with a virtually indistinguishable type of civilization. Broadly, we change the engine, but not the type of vehicle or where it’s going.
The general vibe is that one type of product (fossil fuels) is bad, and so we should switch to consuming other products (renewables!). If you look at the marketing of our climate change fight, the promise is that you can have the same lifestyle but in an electric vehicle and with a different type of milk.
The promise is that the future will be even better, faster, more comfortable, and without all that pesky guilt weighing you down. As the Miller Lite slogan goes, “same great taste, less filling.” This type of marketing is just another emission, called bullshit.
All of the ‘solutions’ to climate change are just marketing slogans to ‘keep capitalist and carry on’. It’s like cigarettes telling you that they have ‘less tar.’ Okay, but what about all the other shit? Infinite growth on a finite planet still gives you cancer in the long run, which is where we are.
As you can see, our stated goal of ‘fighting climate change’ is precisely the problem, which is human domination of the natural world. It’s the very idea that we should control nature that caused the problem. You can’t mitigate the effects of this hubris with more cause.
What are we proposing, really, with all this 'green growth' and ‘innovation’? We’re proposing to bind nature in lithium chains instead of hydrocarbons. That’s all. We’ve gotten away with it for so long that we think we can pull a fast one on nature again, but nature will not be fooled.
This is just the same old hubris in new packaging. This attitude of ‘fighting’ and ‘winning’ over nature is precisely why we lose. Nature is a balance. One species ‘winning’ is an oxymoron.
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There’s much more in Indi’s potent essay, including numerous links to his previous work and to other useful information sources. I hope you’ll read the whole thing.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://indi.ca/why-we-need-to-stop-fighting-climate-change/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism
So heartbreaking...😢
I have to be careful not to overdo my exposure to terrible news like this, and to balance it with things I enjoy that make me happy. Otherwise I'll lose myself in grief and rage.
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More than a hundred dolphins have been found dead in the Brazilian Amazon amid an historic drought and record-high water temperatures that in places have exceeded 102 degrees Fahrenheit.
The dead dolphins were all found in Lake Tefé over the past seven days, according to the Mamirauá Institute, a research facility funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Science.
The institute said such a high number of deaths was unusual and suggested record-high lake temperatures and an historic drought in the Amazon may have been the cause.
The news is likely to add to the concerns of climate scientists over the effects human activity and extreme droughts are having on the region.
Below average levels of water have been reported in 59 municipalities in Amazonas State, impeding both transport and fishing activities on the river.
Authorities expect even more acute droughts over the next couple of weeks, which could result in further deaths of dolphins, CNN Brasil reported.
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FULL STORY -- https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/01/americas/amazon-river-dolphins-dead-temperatures-drought-intl-hnk/index.html
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #BusinessAsUsual
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/165/719/365/322/025/original/a1080f3d471c6019.webp
A severe drought in the Aamazon, with fish dying and drinking water contaminated...
What does that sound like? It sounds to me like Business As Usual. 😡
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The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is in the grips of a severe drought that may affect around 500,000 people by the end of the year, limiting their access to food, drinking water, and other supplies.
Water levels have already dropped, and dead fish now float atop some of the rainforest’s winding rivers.
Their rotting corpses have contaminated the water supply in some areas, officials told the news agency Reuters, with more than 110,000 people facing repercussions.
In Manacapuru — a town two hours’ drive from the major city of Manaus, considered a gateway to the Amazon — fish launched themselves out of the scorching, shallow waters in a desperate attempt to survive. The smell of rot, emanating from the brown water, filled the air.
This drought is forecast to last longer and be more intense because of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which inhibits the formation of rain clouds, the civil defence authority said.
Climate change also exacerbates droughts by making them more frequent, longer and more severe. Warmer temperatures enhance evaporation, which reduces surface water and dries out soils and vegetation.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/9/28/photos-amazon-rainforest-faces-a-severe-drought-affecting-thousands
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #BusinessAsUsual
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/165/644/638/572/238/original/170173714ad30dae.webp
In an opinion piece posted at Common Dreams, Tom Weis says, "To keep pretending, year after year, decade after decade, that the U.N. process is working when everyone can see that it is failing, is its own kind of denial."
Here's more...
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Every year, the world’s governments gather at what the United Nations calls a Conference of the Parties, or COP, to talk about lowering carbon emissions while they just watch emissions continue to rise. It is time to start calling these annual gatherings what they are: COP-OUTs.
COP28 is already shaping up to be the biggest COP-OUT of them all. Taking the dressed-up climate pageant to a new level of absurdity, the COP28 conference being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from November 30 to December 12 is being chaired by — get this — an oil baron. The president of COP28 is Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Lest you think the Biden administration truly gets that we’re in a climate emergency, John Kerry, Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, publicly praised Al Jaber’s appointment as “a terrific choice,” as if the idea of an oil baron presiding over international climate talks wasn’t preposterous on its face.
We need to stop thinking things will get better with the next COP-OUT, when things just keep getting worse. The hostile takeover of the international climate negotiations by fossil fuel industry arsonists is an unconscionable betrayal of our children’s trust and of all generations to come. Big Oil has not only been lying to the public for decades, it is knowingly perpetrating ecocide and crimes against humanity.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/boycott-cop28
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual #COP28
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/165/534/324/609/286/original/57f4972445526485.webp
Our capitalist rulers are *very* clever. They realize that many people are concerned about climate change and want our governments to take action against it.
So they come up with cool-sounding ideas like "Carbon Capture and Storage" to make it appear as if something is being done — when in reality that same technology is being used to *increase* fossil fuel extraction and sales, producing even more profits for the oil and gas industry.
It's a win-win for the capitalists: They look good AND they make more money.
Business As Usual goes on...
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When Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber opens the 28th annual UN climate conference in Dubai in November, he will be juggling two roles – convincing the world of the United Arab Emirates’ leadership in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while preserving the very industry that’s causing them.
In addition to his job as summit president, Al Jaber heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), which plans to increase its oil and gas output by 11% by 2027. The company says that more oil will mean less emissions, however — provided the industry builds enough facilities to capture carbon dioxide (CO2), the main gas causing the climate crisis.
On September 6, ADNOC finalized a deal to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the UAE’s Habshan oil and gas field, extending the company’s existing CCS operations at a steel plant. Now projected to become one of the largest carbon capture plants in the Middle East, ADNOC says the facility will have the equivalent climate impact of removing 500,000 cars from the road.
In fact, the project will be used to squeeze even more oil from the ground. Most of the CO2 ADNOC already captures is pumped into existing oil wells, forcing residual crude to the surface in a process known as “enhanced oil recovery.”
It is a trend reflected across the sector: Of the 32 commercial CCS facilities operating worldwide, 22 use most, or all, of their captured CO2 to push more oil out of already tapped reservoirs. But the fact that existing carbon capture projects are mostly used to bring more oil to the surface has not stopped oil and gas companies championing the technology as a climate solution in the run-up to COP28.
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That's from an excellent investigative piece by DeSmog, which makes it clear that Al Jaber is not the only villain. Oil companies in the US pioneered this devious plan years ago, and Europe soon followed.
Meanwhile, as long as people continue to believe this decades-old lie, why not just run with it?
FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.desmog.com/2023/09/25/how-carbon-capture-and-storage-projects-are-driving-new-oil-and-gas-extraction-globally/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual #COP28
If it wasn’t so sad and tragic, you’d have to laugh at how stupidly humans continue to behave in the face of an obvious calamity.
Crazy, man.
Check out these excepts from an excellent article by Paul Abela…
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If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then our approach to sustainability fits the bill.
There is an assumption that all we need to do to create sustainable societies that mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis is to make slight changes to society and the economy while essentially continuing to behave how we’ve always done. But when looking at the overwhelming amount of research that consistently shows we’re dangerously close to breaching tipping points, it’s plain to see the approach isn’t working.
How, as a collective society, are we so accepting of this state of affairs when we know we’re veering towards catastrophe? It turns out that our psychology is working against us . Here are seven reasons why.
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Paul then lists and explains each of those seven reasons, with the first being Cognitive Dissonance, and the last Optimism Bias.
It’s definitely worth reading the whole essay (which is linked below), but here I’ll just provide a bit more from the conclusion…
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Our current emissions trajectory means there is less than a 5% chance of keeping temperatures below 2°C over pre-industrial levels, and less than 1% chance of achieving the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target.
Optimism, when faced with those odds, is blind delusion. But the slow-moving nature of changes to bio-physical processes means the crisis is set up for optimists to feel optimistic.
This optimism works to create complacency and a feeling that no matter how bad things get, everything will be okay in the end. Optimism makes calls for social transformation feel rather extreme when companies appear to be doing a fine job of solving environmental problems. Rather than a widespread need to instigate an emergency response, optimism bias means, collectively, we remain safe in some delusional comfort blanket that things aren’t going to be as bad as scientists claim.
Our psychology works to reinforce the problem trying to be solved while convincing us that the actions being taken are effective in overcoming the crisis. But fundamentally, the problem is that we’re dealing with the wrong crisis.
The crisis is that capitalism, the preeminent global economic system that feeds into every aspect of our lives, is unsustainable by design. The ecological crisis is merely an outcome of the cause.
It’s logical then that to overcome the problem, we need to focus on fixing the cause of the problem — capitalism. But our psychology is working to prevent humanity from seeing what is staring us all in the face.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.transformatise.com/2023/09/7-psychological-reasons-why-were-failing-to-solve-the-climate-crisis/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #Degrowth
Alex Mell-Taylor, author of the piece excerpted below, is angry. I can certainly understand why, and I'm angry too.
The article takes a look at China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and the EU, examining the cynical pledges and woefully insufficient efforts made by our so-called leaders to tackle the climate challenge.
We know it's not enough, and *they* know it's not enough, yet they continue to lie and pretend and push forward with Business As Usual...
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We need to recognize that things are dire. We will potentially reach global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (at least temporarily) this decade. If we continue along this path and refuse to make radical changes on a systemic (not individual) level, we will face a world of increasing famines, sea rise, and a series of compounding effects that cascade into downright apocalyptic scenarios.
From China to Germany to the United States, I see a lot of far-off pledges and no immediate steps to radically halve current emissions, and certainly none to engage in strategies that reduce consumption such as Degrowth. Everyone is just banking on being able to switch their energy grids over “in time,” which, even disregarding the fact that electrification still has a carbon cost, this strategy assumes that the pollution made to get to that point won't be enough to wreck our environment.
The era of denialism is over, and in its place is the era of lukewarm commitments, where leaders pledge to build up solar, wind, and other renewables while simultaneously preserving fossil fuels well into the next decade, if not beyond.
This strategy is insane because it is one where we are effectively abandoning staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and settling for somewhere at or below 2C, an environment that will be pretty hellish. (See https://archive.ph/o/ivabR/https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-why-global-temperatures-matter/)
At such an increase, we will move from 14% of the world being exposed to extreme heat waves to almost 40%. Droughts will be even more common, impacting tens of millions of more people annually. Potable water will become scarce. More species will die. The list goes on.
You should be angry over your leader's cowardice. You should not accept the lie that going "faster" is unreasonable. What is unreasonable is their hesitance: their insane holding pattern with the fossil fuel industry as they march us confidently into a more unstable world.
We need to operate under the assumption that our leaders, the ones who built the system now choking us to death, are wrong. That they will need to be fought against. That we will need to march, protest, and block infrastructure, as well as engage in other more direct actions that make them uncomfortable.
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Hell yes!
FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.ph/ivabR
ALTERNATE LINK -- https://aninjusticemag.com/our-leaders-solution-to-climate-change-is-to-pretend-like-they-have-solved-the-problem-30c320899104
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual #Degrowth
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/148/517/627/084/448/original/d8fe2f7c59cf9a90.webp
Wow. As much ice lost in the last two years as had been lost before over a span of 30 years....
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Swiss glaciers have lost 10% of their volume in just two years, a report has found.
Scientists have said climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of unusually hot summers and winters with very low snow volume, which have caused the accelerating melts. The volume lost during the hot summers of 2022 and 2023 is the same as that lost between 1960 and 1990.
The ice, which traditionally builds up in winter and melts slowly in summer, provides fresh water vital to Europe's rivers, to irrigate Europe's crops or to cool its nuclear power stations.
Last year and again this year, shipping on the river Rhine, a key waterway for Europe's freight, had to be restricted because the water had become too shallow.
Experts have stopped measuring the ice on some glaciers as there is essentially none left.
"Every time I come back to these sites that I have monitored for many years, it's different,' said Matthias Huss, head of the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network. "The ice is smaller, thinner, more grey. It's very sad."
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"Swiss glaciers lose 10% of their volume in two years"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/swiss-glaciers-lose-tenth-volume-in-two-years-climate-crisis
"Swiss glaciers record catastrophic ice loss"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66950328
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/144/249/250/389/632/original/0eb5f7393f766e6d.webp
Although we've mentioned this before, it's grim news that bears repeating. Global heating caused by human industry is melting glaciers and sea ice all around the world — but nowhere more dramatically than in and near Antarctica.
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Sea ice that covers the ocean around Antarctica hit a record low surface area in the winter, a preliminary analysis of US satellite data shows, and scientists fear the impact of climate change is increasing at the southern pole.
“This is the lowest sea ice maximum in the 1979 to 2023 sea ice record by a wide margin,” said the NSIDC, a government-supported programme at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
At one point this year, sea ice had dropped to 1.03 million sq km, far smaller than the previous record low and an area of loss roughly the size of Texas and California combined.
“It’s a record-smashing sea ice low in the Antarctic,” NSIDC scientist Walt Meier said in comments published by NASA.
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The excerpt above is from a news story published at Al Jazeera.
FULL STORY -- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/26/antarctic-sea-ice-hits-record-smashing-low-coverage-area-new-data-show
Over at Medium, an article by Ricky Lanusse goes into more depth on the subject, and concludes with this heartfelt lament...
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It’s been 33 years since the first IPCC report on climate change. Three-plus decades of climate negotiations and disappointment: emissions soaring, climate denial, on-paper optimism, and ‘net zero, but not in my term’ speeches.
Now, the northern summer of 2023 is officially the hottest on record, pushing global sea temperatures to record highs and disrupting ocean ecosystems. Over 3.8 billion people — almost half the world — felt the wrath of human-induced extreme heat between June and August.
You don’t grab buckets or towels when your bathtub overflows, ignoring or denying the problem. You turn off the tap. Climate change isn’t a future problem; it’s here. And you might think it won’t affect you, but as temperatures climb, more will face such dire choices. The question is not if but when.
Antarctica’s struggle isn’t a far-off concern; it’s a glaring reminder that climate change is here and spares no place on Earth.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.ph/9sNKh#selection-2503.0-2503.132
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/144/004/531/140/086/original/3b7dfcab50465c7c.jpg
Our third and final glance today at tipping points from Planet Snapshots takes us north, to the boreal forests that ring the globe just below the Arctic Circle. We all know about this year's devastating forest fires in Canada (which are still going on), and perhaps also about huge wildfires in Siberia from previous years.
But there's more to the story. And it's what lies below the surface — permafrost, storing gigantic amounts of potential climate-wrecking carbon — that might be of even greater concern, if that's possible, than those burning forests.
All in all, it's a true horror story, a nightmare from which we may never awake...
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The 1.5 billion acres of boreal forest spread across the sub-Arctic region stores over 30% of terrestrial biomass, making it the largest carbon storage source on land. However, what’s stored can be released. And we’re in deep trouble if Earth’s boreal forests flip from a carbon sink to a source.
There are a few mechanisms at play here. The primary threat is a feedback loop that triggers massive consequences: as the climate warms, wildfires intensify, more carbon is released, and the climate gets warmer.
But there are also more direct drivers too: chainsaws and beetles. The logging industry continues to ax away. And warmer winters are killing less bark beetle larvae, strengthening their numbers and expanding their range into more northern areas. Together these forces threaten to transform these old-growth forests into shrubby grassland.
The wildfires raging through Canada’s boreal forests this year have burned an area larger than 104 of the world’s 195 countries and have released 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (more than 100 nations’ combined annual emissions). And new analysis suggests that Canada’s forests have already reached a tipping point, perhaps even as early as the turn of the century.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that the boreal forest tipping point is stacked atop another one: permafrost, the permanently frozen soils in Arctic regions that store twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere now. And since the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else, thawing permafrost is releasing massive amounts of planet-warming gas. In this global game of stabilizing carbon budgets, the balancing act is quickly teetering towards free-fall collapse.
This is really the crux of the issue. Losing this biome is bad enough, but the carbon released from the forests’ death rattle is utterly terrifying.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://medium.com/@planetsnapshots/issue-93-tipping-points-boreal-forests-b64f77c5dde4
#Canada #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #CO2 #Emissions
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/142/902/426/967/452/original/c86b2c20127536ad.jpeg
Let's go from the very cold (Greenland) to the very warm (coral reefs) and learn more about climate tipping points from Planet Snapshots...
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There’s only one thing more frightening than an ocean filled with large predators, and it’s an ocean filled with nothing living at all. Unfortunately, warmer temperatures are bleaching Earth’s corals into white tombstones and turning reefs into biological graveyards at an alarming rate.
About 90% of all atmospheric warming has been absorbed by Earth’s oceans, creating a multitude of problems including the destruction of its beloved biodiversity hotspots: coral reefs.
A warmer ocean significantly disrupts coral food webs that 25% of the planet’s marine species and about one billion humans rely on. Scientists further fear that its collapse won’t be slow and gradual but rather sudden and catastrophic.
That coral reef tipping point is both unnervingly close and frustratingly uncertain. The reefs that color Earth’s oceans and support tremendous biodiversity are rapidly dying. But the die-off is also uneven.
Some corals are more resilient to changes in marine chemistry than others. So while the prevailing science places a likely major collapse of low-latitude coral reefs between 1.5 to 2°C of warming, we’re still unsure where the tip into the deep end is exactly.
Reports from the IPCC indicate that a global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels would likely result in a decline of 70 to 90% of coral reefs. At 2°C that percentage reaches 99%. And recent studies point to crossing that warming threshold by mid-century. Which means that for this tipping point, our metaphorical toes are gripping the edge.
To say a mass die-off of coral reefs would be catastrophic for biodiversity and food webs would be an understatement. And it’s going to take more than curbing emissions to prevent the worst of its effects.
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LEANR MORE -- https://medium.com/@planetsnapshots/issue-91-tipping-points-coral-reefs-744e82e91edd
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Biodiversity
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/142/761/527/633/484/original/231fb36f1bed0722.jpeg
Could all the ice in Greenland melt again, raising global sea levels and drowning many of our huge coastal cities?
Yes, it could, and at the rate we're going it almost certainly will someday. The problem is we don't know how close we might be coming to a catastrophic tipping point.
Here's more from Planet Snapshots...
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Rewind about 400,000 years ago and Greenland was, in fact, green. Temperatures were warmer then, and global sea level was at least 5 feet (1.5 m) higher than today.
Greenland is one of Earth’s most pressing climate tipping points — thresholds in the planet’s fine-tuned, self-regulating system that, once breached, cause dramatic and damaging changes. Its life support systems work like a game of Jenga: removing a few blocks may compromise the structure’s stability without ending the game. But there’s a critical block that will bring it crashing to the ground. Hiding within Jenga-Earth are critical blocks that, when pulled, will tip the whole structure.
Global sea level would rise 23 feet (7 m) if Greenland’s ice sheet completely melted again. The goal is to keep that “if” from turning into a “when.”
Scientists don’t know exactly how much atmospheric warming would trigger that level of melt, but some estimate a figure as low as 1.6°C. We’re well on track to surpass that target, especially considering that the loss of Greenland’s ice is creating a positive feedback loop.
The same reflectivity that makes it difficult for satellites to image the ice sheet is also great at bouncing back sunlight. But more of the ice is melting and the surface is darkening, reducing its reflectivity, or albedo, and further accelerating ice loss.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://medium.com/@planetsnapshots/issue-89-tipping-points-greenland-5bdda753bea8
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/142/656/813/275/870/original/a3322a42c2dd59eb.jpeg
Gruesome discovery to tell you about…
I recently encountered a newsletter that I’d never read before called “Planet Snapshots,” and it’s quite a valuable resource of information on the state of our global climate and environment.
What’s gruesome about that? Well, pretty much everything. I mean, the more you and I learn about our present situation, the worse it seems. But I think it’s very important that we don’t look away, that we clearly understand where we are and what we face.
Along with that, of course, we must do what’s necessary to maintain our mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing so that we are in good shape to act on what we learn and to assist those around us who are in need of help.
Anyway, this morning (EDT) I’ll be filling you in on some of the things I’ve gleaned from this new info source. We’ll start with a few climate tipping points, and yes, basically it’s a litany of decay. We find ourselves deep down inside a filthy hole, and for some reason our so-called 'leaders' are still digging even deeper as fast as they can.
Stay tuned, if you dare…
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
https://medium.com/@planetsnapshotshttps://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/142/562/496/085/795/original/ce64909bff0824ad.jpg
I've heard some people suggest that instead of naming our modern era the Anthropocene, it should be called the Plasticocene.
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Microplastics are becoming an increasing concern, as the tiny non-biodegradable particles — less than a fifth of an inch in size — are infiltrating our water supplies and posing a threat to environmental health.
Now, a study led by the University of Oldenburg in Germany has found a worrying source of microplastics: the air.
The study, conducted in collaboration with German and Norwegian researchers, took air samples in areas stretching from the Norwegian coastline to the Arctic.
After analyzing the samples, the researchers identified the types of plastic particles in the atmosphere, including polyester, polyethylene terephthalate — likely from the fashion industry — polypropylene polycarbonate, and polystyrene.
Debris from tires was also a significant source of microplastics.
The researchers believe plastic particles on the sea surface are being released into the atmosphere during storms via the spray caused by waves. It was also suggested that air bubbles on the surface that burst are contributors.
One way plastic finds its way to our oceans is through river systems, either from littering or inappropriate disposal. Additionally, some cosmetic products contain microplastics, which are often washed away by domestic drainage.
It’s unfortunately easy for fibers to escape from clothing, meaning they are likely passed into waterways’ drainage from household washing machines.
“These pollutants are ubiquitous,” said Isabel Goßmann, lead author of the study. “We find them even in remote polar regions.”
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-uncover-concerning-surprise-lurking-113000909.html
SEE ALSO -- https://scitechdaily.com/ubiquitous-scientists-discover-that-the-oceans-release-microplastics-into-the-atmosphere/
#Science #Environment #Pollution
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Our Mastodon friend Steve Genco (@8b05a7db) has posted a long and highly informative article about fossil fuels, politics, and climate change. I'll provide just a few excerpts here, and I really hope you'll read the whole thing...
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"The Oil Age May Not End the Way You Imagine It Will"
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere when we exit the Age of Oil will be the defining factor that determines how much heat our descendants will have to endure for the next several thousand years.
Here we enter the realm of human choice. On the one hand, we could stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow. Climate scientists tell us in no uncertain terms that each tenth of a degree of global warming we inflict on the planet will bring with it potentially catastrophic effects, including the likely triggering of irreversible tipping points that could render the planet not just hotter, but essentially uninhabitable by humans (not to mention millions of other species).
On the other hand, economists and politicians tell us if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, we would destroy the world economy, bring industrial civilization to its knees, and probably put the lives of a large fraction of the human population in jeopardy. And they’re probably right. So we could do it, but we won’t do it.
There is of course a deep irony in the fact that while we continue burning fossil fuels to prop up our global economy, those fossil fuels continue to heat up the planet and produce climate damage that is equally threatening to our global economy, if not more so.
🔴 Exxon has announced plans to double its shale oil production in the US over the next five years.
🔴 Shell announced earlier this year that cutting the world’s oil and gas production would be “dangerous and irresponsible.”
🔴 Both Shell and BP have reneged on prior plans to cut oil and gas production, now claiming that such moves would dampen profits.
🔴 As reported in the New York Times in April 2023, hundreds of new oil and gas extraction projects have been approved in the last year, and dozens more are expected to be approved.
🔴 The industry has co-opted the UN COP process so successfully that Saudi Arabia was able to remove any mention of phasing out fossil fuels from the 2022 IPCC report.
🔴 Based on projections by Rystad Energy, the 20 largest oil and gas companies are expected to invest $932 billion in developing new oil and gas fields over the next 9 years. By the end of 2040 the figure grows to a staggering $1.5 trillion.
🔴 Fossil fuel subsidies remain astronomical and governments are showing little enthusiasm for eliminating or even reducing them.
In essence, governments are paying fossil fuel companies to continue ratcheting up global warming to a level that could plausibly result in human extinction. But that’s not how governments see it. In their view, they are keeping the global economic engine running because, just like the internal combustion engine in your 2010 Ford pickup, if that engine isn’t provided with fuel, it will stop running.
Both outcomes are happening simultaneously, because currently political leaders fear the end of capitalist accumulation (aka economic growth) more than they fear global warming. This is the major obstacle to any well-meaning plan for voluntary degrowth as a viable response to climate change and resource depletion.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.ph/4eJJB
ALTERNATE LINK -- https://sjgenco.medium.com/the-oil-age-may-not-end-the-way-you-imagine-it-will-68143a68e775
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
Here's another opinion piece supporting the concept of degrowth and describing a renewed enthusiasm for system change...
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There has been an upsurge of interest in degrowth — a long-discussed strategic alternative to climate chaos — and not just from the radical left. It is experiencing a renaissance at the moment, driven by the relentless rise in global temperatures and the resulting climate chaos.
It was the theme of a three-day conference in May entitled ‘Beyond Growth 2023', which filled the main hall of the European Parliament with mostly young and enthusiastic people. According to the Economist report, the young audience ‘whooped and cheered’ when it was proposed that some form of de-growth would be necessary to avoid societal collapse.
In July, Bill McKibben, the veteran environmental campaigner, founder of 350.org, and prolific author, had a major article in the New Yorker strongly advocating degrowth from a historical perspective.
Growth is the driving force behind the environmental crisis. Over the past 60 years, the global economy has grown at an average rate of 3% a year, which is completely unsustainable. Over the same period, the global human population has risen from 3.6 billion in 1970 to 8 billion in 2022. John Bellamy Foster has pointed out that a 3% annual growth rate would grow the world economy by a factor of 250 over the course of this century and the next.
Such growth rates are incompatible with the natural limits of the planet and will ultimately defeat any attempts to resolve the environmental crisis that fail to deal with it.
What degrowth offers is a planned reduction of economic activity within a different economic paradigm, first and foremost in the rich countries of the Global North. Giorgos Kallis puts it this way in The Case for Degrowth: "The goal of degrowth is to purposefully slow things down in order to minimise harm to human beings and earth systems."
Jason Hickel in Less in More tells us that degrowth is “a planned reduction of excess energy and resource use in order to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe and equitable way”.
Such an approach must be the cornerstone of ecosocialism and an ecosocialist strategy designed to save the planet from ecological destruction and create a post-capitalist, ecologically sustainable society for the future.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://mronline.org/2023/09/23/degrowth/
#Capitalism #Inequality #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice #Degrowth
Degrowth is the answer, the ONLY answer for preventing catastrophic climate breakdown and the collapse of society. And degrowth *is possible* if we can find the political will.
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According to a new study, the level of gross domestic product (GDP) has no impact on the ability of states to fund investments in radical decarbonization measures and ambitious social policies such as universal public services and a job guarantee.
"Halting global climate collapse requires massive increases in public spending. Only through public investment can we achieve a timely transition away from fossil fuels," says Christopher Olk, a doctoral researcher at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science in Berlin and lead author of the study.
It is widely believed that governments can only increase spending if they first grow GDP to increase tax revenue. This presents a problem, because GDP growth works against ecological objectives. Indeed, a majority of climate scientists now call for "degrowth" — a democratically planned, equitable reduction of less necessary forms of production — in high-income countries in order to enable faster decarbonization. Key degrowth measures include the expansion of universal public services and a job guarantee in sustainable sectors.
Degrowth presents governments with the question of how to finance the necessary ecological and social measures during this process of transformation — a question that Olk and his fellow research team members want to answer. They argue that public investment can be increased without GDP growth and that the process of degrowth simultaneously dismantles destructive, less necessary industries and prevents inflation.
According to the authors of the study, degrowth requires above all a politically well-organized social base. Concerns about financial feasibility, inflation, and living standards often lead to widespread skepticism about the possibility of a radical social and ecological transformation.
In this study, the authors address these concerns, demonstrating how such a transition is macroeconomically feasible, and propose a practical economic policy program that allows for ecological and social goals to be achieved at the same time.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://phys.org/news/2023-09-fund-radical-ecological-social-policies.html
#Capitalism #Inequality #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice #Degrowth
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A few excerpts from a stirring opinion piece by Nikayla Jefferson, a political science graduate student at UC Santa Barbara...
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There is no clear relationship between income equality and GDP growth. When a country is faced with the inevitable choice of growing its GDP or social and environmental well-being, the rules of our economy demand that GDP gets priority. We’re ensnared by our own silly rules, entangled in our precarious imaginations, so why not adopt another measure?
Nearly every country in the world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels and build out their clean energy, climate adaptation and mitigation systems, structures, and technology. Deep decarbonization requires resources, and these resources must be shared equitably between countries.
The effort goes beyond just switching a system from fossil fuels to clean energy: 2 billion people around the world are in urgent need of clean water, and 3.6 billion are without access to essential services like sanitation. The Global South needs to grow in the realm of public goods, essential services, and other sectors that are crucial to a good, quality livelihood. If resources are finite and we aim to stay within bounds, resource use must be discerned between essential, meaningful, and superfluous.
Say our collective imagination was a little loosened, we liberated ourselves from the story of economic growth, and people democratically decided to take collective action. The economy without a mandate for growth might actually be a freer one.
Growth requires us to go fast and then faster. I imagine slower days, shorter work weeks. Less input into the growth monster means less output. There is less to demand of us, less to do. Sure, we may not receive boxes of colorful and neat-o new things two hours after we click buy, but what might we receive instead? More time with family and friends, more energy to devote to what and who we love most, more freedom to exist as a human being.
The mandate of every generation is to give old logic, imaginations, and orders a formidable challenge — to push society onward through the hard and necessary work for the sake of becoming better people. Every generation ages into its right to retell the story about us as we are and act on the dream of who we could be.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/09/opinion-lets-free-ourselves-from-the-story-of-economic-growth/
#Capitalism #Inequality #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice #Degrowth
An economist named Blair Fix has written a piece illustrating the scope of our society's vastly growing inequality. Of course, you probably already knew about that, but he shows how bad it really is — and how it continues getting worse.
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The rich get richer.
It’s a phrase that packs a lot of punch. It’s potent rhetoric, yet surprisingly accurate at describing how rising inequality plays out.
Of course, there’s nothing inevitable about the rich getting richer. We just happen to live in an age of growing corporate despotism.
The Forbes 400 got a lot richer over the last forty years. But so what? It could be that over the same period, all Americans got richer. In that case, it’s not particularly meaningful to say that the rich got richer. Everyone got richer.
Except they didn’t.
It turns out that unlike the Forbes 400, the average American saw little change in their net worth over the last four decades. Do you see what happened to the black line [below] which plots the net worth of the median American? That’s right … not much. For forty years, Americans’ median net worth hardly budged.
What’s fascinating about rich lists like the Forbes 400 is that their authors seem oblivious to what they’re measuring. While ostensibly celebrating ‘wealth’, these lists are actually a barometer for social inequality.
As it turns out, inequality is written everywhere in the Forbes data. When the rich get richer, it’s not just the Forbes 400 who pull away from everyone else. Within the Forbes 400, the stupendously rich pull away from the ultra rich, who pull away from the mega rich, who pull away from the considerably rich, and so on. At a certain point, we run out of adjectives to describe the hand of inequality.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/09/24/how-the-rich-get-richer/
#Capitalism #Inequality
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Scientists are now reporting on the "greening" of Antarctica. And that's NOT a good thing...
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As Antarctica is mostly covered in ice and snow, there previously hasn't been much space left for plants to grow. There are no trees or shrubs, and the plants that do exist are limited to a few islands and along the western Antarctic Peninsula.
However, as global temperatures continue to rise and ice in Antarctica continues to melt, researchers have found that plants on the continent are growing more quickly.
Comparing the results with surveys from the previous 50 years, they found that the sites had not only become more densely populated by the plants, but that they had also grown faster each year as the climate got warmer.
The results were staggering, with the Antarctic hair grass growing as much in 2009-2019 as it had in the entire 50 years from 1960 from 2009.
The Antarctic pearlwort moved even faster, growing five times more in the same periods.
Peter Convey, at the British Antarctic Survey, touched on the impact of accelerated growth as he told New Scientist: “The most novel feature of this is not the idea that something is growing faster. It’s that we think we’re starting to see what is almost like a step change or a tipping point.”
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You and I no longer live in the natural world into which we were born. It's already very different, and the pace of change is accelerating.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.unilad.com/news/world-news/antarctica-flowers-spread-climate-change-828134-20230922
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Antarctica
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If you vote for Republicans, you’re voting for disaster.
If you vote for Democrats, you’re also voting for disaster, except it will happen a little more slowly and less dramatically.
*Neither* party offers the kind of change we need — which is SYSTEM change.
#USA #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/074/826/885/081/112/original/debf69c004c0dd3b.webp
Excerpts from an essay tiitled "Give Our Lives to Nature"...
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Industrial civilization seems to have pushed nature past its limits. Cactuses are dying of heat. Fish are drowning because the water lacks oxygen. The ocean now has almost as much plastic as fish. Severe droughts, heat waves, and floods are causing massive shortages of food and water. People are dying in the heat.
Our political and economic elites have proven for 30 years that they have no intention of stopping or even mitigating the environmental destruction they cause. We, or at least 98% of we, are going to die from this.
So what do we do? Nature gives us life every hour. I’m asking us to devote our lives to nature in return. Devotion to life is a sacred path, and one that will be harder, happier, and healthier than the easy path of addiction to wealth we are on now.
If we prioritize life, we could save trillions of future lives, even if many of them are bugs. If we can stop destroying forests and start planting them, start seeing animals as our relatives and stop killing them, we could save millions of creatures living now.
Life is a gift, and we have to give back, which indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer calls reciprocity. We should be devoting as much time and energy as we can to healing Earth. We might not see many successes, but we can do something, and we can feel good about what we’re doing. People will also get along together better and survive better when we’re working on a common goal.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://aninjusticemag.com/give-our-lives-to-nature-1a8273a421c3
#Nature #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Biodiversity
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Look at the graphic below. It's a stark representation of the accelerating and overlapping impacts that human activity has on our environment. And this is based only through 2010. Since then, obviously it's getting even worse.
I suspect that few of us understand how rapidly and how disastrously we are altering the biosphere.
Now, here are a few excerpts from a beautiful and compelling essay about our story...
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There was a time when life moved slowly, fitting perfectly into the rhythm of the earth. People would awaken with the sun, plant their crops to the song of the seasons, and gather their yield when the time was right. For generations, they danced to the same rhythm. People were farmers, their offspring became farmers, and the tradition continued generation after generation. The Holocene was our stage, and we were mere extras in the grand play that unfolded on the timescale of gods.
Fast forward 10,000 years, and we have elevated ourselves to the roles of main actors in this grand production. We no longer merely fit our role; instead, we have reshaped the stage to suit our diva-like demands.
The Holocene has been replaced by the Anthropocene and, in this new play, things move at a much faster pace. They move so swiftly that generations no longer practice the same professions. Not only do entire professions change from one generation to the next, but humans also switch from one profession to the next within a single lifetime.
Technology advances so rapidly that the world is unrecognizable from birth to old age. Even the planetary conditions, which would typically take millions of years to shift, now dance to our rhythm.
We now understand that the accelerating changes in Earth’s environment can be exacerbated by feedback loops that are triggered when critical tipping points are reached. These environmental ‘snowballing’ effects include phenomena such as the release of methane from thawing permafrost, which further increases global temperatures, and the reduction in albedo from melting ice, leading to increased energy absorption and further melting.
Furthermore, the swift advancement of new technology has established a ‘human feedback loop’ in which new technologies facilitate an even faster development of subsequent technologies. This loop has contributed to an exponential surge in the pace of change, as innovations build upon one another in shorter time-frames.
The journey from the traditional farmer’s fields to the globalized, technology-driven present has been swift, transforming professions, landscapes, and even the fundamental workings of our environment. Yet, as we race forward, the shadow of unintended consequences looms large. The urgency of our technological advancement must be balanced by an equal urgency for reflection and consideration. The very tools that enable our progress can also amplify its negative impacts.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://archive.ph/eG5om
ALTERNATE LINK -- https://medium.com/the-new-climate/epochal-acceleration-88280b83bfb0
GRAPH SOURCE -- http://www.igbp.net/globalchange/greatacceleration.4.1b8ae20512db692f2a680001630.html
#Science #History #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
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This will not be an easy topic to consider or to discuss. But let's give it a try.
First, we know that our present rate of consumption and growth is clearly unsustainable for a human population of 8 billion (now) or 10 billion (soon).
Which might lead some among us — the richest and the strongest, that is — to ask an ugly question: Could some form of our modern high-tech society persist if it had a much smaller population to support?
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With the weather already shaking its fists at us, things can only get worse, the more people there are. However, what would happen if, as a result of all these disasters, many millions die? In fact, what would happen if half or three quarters of the population died through natural disasters like starvation, pandemics, fires, or flooding?
When one has a lot of money, that money can protect us from the harsh side of life. When one has billions, it enables us to buy homes in any place we consider safe and it enables us to produce food in high-tech ways. We are also able to invest in industries to ensure that our way of life continues.
So why would billionaires care if billions of people die?
They answer is that they don't.
They don't care because they have a low opinion of people who aren't billionaires. They perceive them as stupid, lacking in ability to make money, and not worthy of life. They also realize that the world is over-populated, and that it's quite possible to continue to use oil if only one percent of humanity survives.
When one can do exactly was one pleases, it becomes easier and easier to live in unethical ways. Ethics comprise rules that ensure the greater good of all people. Essentially, the richer one becomes, the less one cares about the lives of others.
The rich don't care because they think they will be safe. Added to that, they believe that with fewer people on the planet, they will be able to continue to live as they are, and the world will be a much better place.
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It may be hard for most of us to even imagine thinking this way. But are there people like that? if so, how dangerous are they to the rest of us?
FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.ph/FPmD2
ALTERNATE LINK --https://medium.com/tessas-web-log/end-game-why-the-rich-dont-care-aa1da041ed3f
There *is* a conspiracy, an active attempt to control and oppress us. That conspiracy is working very well, in fact, and it has a name...
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"The Conspiracy is Capitalism"
We’re seeing conspiracy thinking flourish in response to climate change, in response to Covid, in response to nearly all world events these days. Every social media app is flooded with the idea that a secretive scheme, often orchestrated by a small and mysterious group, is behind just about everything. And the funny thing is, they’re right.
Well, they’re half right.
A small group does exert vastly disproportionate control over just about everything. The only issue is, they’re not that secretive about it. They flaunt their wealth and power out in the open.
The small group known as “billionaires” have seen their wealth grow by 109% over the past decade – from $5.6 trillion to $11.8 trillion. The richest 1% gained nearly twice as much money as the rest of the world put together over the past two years. They control a vastly disproportionate percentage of the world’s wealth and many of the world’s politicians, and have concentrated much of the world’s power in their hands.
The group I’m referring to has historically been known as the ruling class, or the owning class, the people who own the companies and control the wealth, and they spend their days trying to ensure that this imbalanced and unjust capitalist system continues.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://www.jphilll.com/p/the-conspiracy-is-capitalismhttps://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/063/484/958/377/507/original/4c57ef1bcdd4aced.jpg
Looking for a climate villain?
Start here -> 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
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A new report identifies the United States as "planet-wrecker-in-chief," pointing to the nation's plans for a massive expansion of oil and gas production over the next two and a half decades even as it postures as a climate leader on the world stage.
According to research by Oil Change International (OCI), planned oil and gas expansion in the U.S. — the largest historical contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions — accounts for more than a third of prospective global oil and gas expansion through 2050. Much of the U.S. expansion is tied to fracking, the report observes.
The new report takes the Biden administration to task for "pledging climate leadership" while simultaneously facilitating "the continued expansion of fossil fuel production in the United States."
The U.S. is one of just 20 countries that are projected to be responsible for nearly 90% of the carbon dioxide pollution from new oil and gas extraction projects between 2023 and 2050.
If those 20 countries follow through with their fossil fuel expansion plans, the projects will emit an estimated 173 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of the lifetime emissions of more than 1,000 new coal plants.
"If that amount of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere, then we're in serious trouble," said Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead for OCI and co-author of the new report. Such emissions, Ioualalen warned, would blow through the world's dwindling carbon budget and make it "mathematically impossible" to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
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FULL STORY -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/united-states-planet-wrecker
OCI REPORT -- https://priceofoil.org/2023/09/12/planet-wreckers-how-20-countries-oil-and-gas-extraction-plans-risk-locking-in-climate-chaos/
#USA #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
The article linked below is about flooding in Hong Kong and in cities across southern China, caused by the heaviest rainfall in at least 140 years.
But it’s not only happening there.
Torrential rains have caused devastating floods in Greece, in Libya, in Chile, in Brazil, in parts of the United States, and elsewhere, taking many lives and doing billions of dollars in damage to infrastructure and property all around the world.
This is not normal. It’s not just 'bad weather'.
We’re seeing Earth’s climate begin to break down right in front of our eyes.
🟥 🟥 🟥 🟥
"Hong Kong and southern China battle widespread flooding from record rains"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66748239
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
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Reporters at the Guardian invited scientists from around the world to comment on the extreme weather we are seeing in 2023, and what it means for our future...
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Scientists who responded said that the global heating seen to date is entirely in line with three decades of scientific predictions. Being proved right was cold comfort, they added, as their warnings had so far been largely in vain.
Increasingly severe weather impacts had also been long signposted by scientists, although the speed and intensity of the reality scared some. The off-the-charts sea temperatures and Antarctic sea ice loss were seen as the most shocking.
Some scientists warned that the tendency of climate models to underestimate extreme weather meant we were “flying partially blind” into a future that could be even more catastrophic than anticipated.
Many of the scientists were blunt about our future prospects. Prof Natalie Mahowald, of Cornell University, US, said: “What we are seeing this year is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of what we expect to happen.” Prof Malte Meinshausen, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, said: “If we do not halt global warming soon, then the extreme events we see this year will pale against the ones that are to come.”
Dr Rein Haarsma, of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), said even if climate tipping points may not have been passed yet, they were getting closer: “The extremes we see now happening could induce tipping points such as the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and melting of the Antarctic ice sheets that would have devastating impacts. These tipping points are considered as high impact but low likelihood. But the recent extremes, and the poor understanding of the causes, mean I am not sure about the low likelihood.”
The scientists responding to the Guardian were absolutely clear on what must happen. “We need to stop burning fossil fuels,” said Dr Friederike Otto, of Imperial College London. “Now – not sometime when we’ve allowed companies to make all the money they possibly can.”
Others said the world was on “code red alert” to stop fossil fuel extraction and to fight to halt new exploration projects.
Dr Shaina Sadai, of the Union of Concerned Scientists in the US, said the dramatic growth of carbon emissions since 1990 was “largely due to the failure to rein in the fossil fuel industry and the multi-decade campaign of delay and disinformation they created”.
“Anyone in any way perpetuating the fossil fuel era, deforestation or any of the other drivers of climate change is firmly on the wrong side of history,” said Prof Emily Shuckburgh, of the University of Cambridge, UK.
Suruchi Bhadwal, of the Energy and Resources Institute, India, put it most simply: “In order to make the Earth habitable for future generations, we need to take drastic measures to reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases.”
Vincent Ajayi, an associate professor at the Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria, said: “Governments must not merely make empty promises but must wholeheartedly commit to fulfilling their obligations to protect our planet’s future.”
Prof Paola Arias, at the University of Antioquia, Colombia, said the transition must be fair to all: “We need, above all, a just and equitable transition. A very small percentage of the human population is responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions.”
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/28/crazy-off-the-charts-records-has-humanity-finally-broken-the-climate
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
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Check out this link to "The Climate Dictionary: An everyday guide to climate change" prepared by the United Nations Development Program.
https://climatepromise.undp.org/news-and-stories/climate-dictionary-everyday-guide-climate-change
This can serve at least two purposes, I think. First, it's a useful guide for educators, activists, and communicators in choosing the right language to convey the meaning they intend. And second, it might work as a primer for those who simply want to learn the basics of climate change, explained in simple and direct terms.
In addition to English, the "Climate Dictionary" is also available in Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, and Turkish.
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice
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'Sooner than expected' — 'Faster than previously thought' — 'Worse than was predicted' — Why do we keep hearing this over and over?
As the article excerpted below suggests, it's due to the difficulty of assessing risks and judging odds when climate tipping points are involved...
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Many current changes are at the upper limit of scientific projections, and sometimes beyond them. This year, heat records have been smashed, and global ocean surface temperatures are at the top of the projected range. Other events, including sea-surface warming in the North Atlantic and the eye-watering decline of sea ice around Antarctica, have simply astounded scientists.
“On the one hand, we knew these things were going to happen. These have been the predictions for a long time,” Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, told the Washington Post earlier this year. “But this year, in particular, has seemed so extreme. The size of the anomalies is surprising.”
This year, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, has become a flashpoint for debating how to express and explain climate risk. This phenomenon refers to the complex web of ocean currents covering the breadth and length of the Atlantic, from the Southern Ocean to the Arctic, which help regulate global weather patterns.
This system has already slowed by 15% since the mid-20th century, and in 2021 researchers concluded there is “strong evidence that the AMOC is indeed approaching a critical, bifurcation-induced transition” (in other words, a tipping point) but the timing was unclear.
Stefan Rahmsdorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University in Germany, said that while there is still “large uncertainty where the tipping point of the AMOC is, the scientific evidence now is that we can’t even rule out crossing a tipping point in the next decade or two. The conservative IPCC estimate, based on climate models which are too stable, is in my view outdated now.”
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There's much more in this highly informative piece from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and I suggest you read the whole thing.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://thebulletin.org/2023/09/betting-against-worst-case-climate-scenarios-is-risky-business/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
"Green Growth" will not stop climate change. It will only continue to make things worse. And there is no such thing as "sustainable" capitalism. That is simply an impossibility.
Let's look into it...
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With global temperatures soaring to record highs, it might be worthwhile to check in on the progress of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law by President Biden one year ago.
Passage of the act was met with accolades. Mainstream environmentalists declared it a “game changer” and a “seismic shift.”
But are we actually on track to avert climate catastrophe? How much money is being spent, and where is it being targeted? Are there trends we can identify at this early stage? To state the obvious, time is not on our side, and an assessment of where we stand in terms of benchmarks and emissions is crucial.
Arguably, the sector where the IRA has had the most immediate impact is the manufacturing of electric vehicles, identified as a primary goal towards “decarbonizing” the transportation system.
For example, Ford Motor Company, whose profit last year was more than $23 billion, was given 9 billion taxpayer dollars to build an electric vehicle factory in Tennessee. Even with the substandard wages they will pay their workers in that “right-to-work” state, Ford claimed it needed this “incentive” to compete with Chinese auto manufacturers.
Setting aside the corporate-friendly way the law encourages the build-out of this new industry, can anyone really believe it is “green”? Is there any accounting for the embedded emissions, not to mention the overall ecological impact, involved in replacing 275 million private vehicles with shiny new electric ones?
Already 52 new mining and manufacturing projects have been announced — with $56 billion in investment proposed.
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The article goes on to examine other #greenwashing initiatives, like direct air capture and so-called green hydrogen, along with the push for even more consumer-driven economic growth.
FULL STORY -- https://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/let-a-million-evs-bloom-the-ira-one-year-later/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
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It's so hard to remain optimistic or to take a positive view about the condition of our world...
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Carbon dioxide (CO2), the predominant greenhouse gas, is emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas, as well as from deforestation and cement production.
In 2021, some 37.12 billion tons of CO2 was emitted across the globe. According to Oxfam, the richest 10% of the world’s population is responsible for more than half of all carbon emissions.
Africa’s carbon emissions are dwarfed by the emissions of other continents. At 11.47 billion tons, China is the world’s largest polluter, followed by the United States (5 billion tons), India (2.7 billion tons), Russia (1.75 billion tons), and Japan (1.07 billion tons).
Comprising about 17% of the world’s population, Africa contributes just 4% of global carbon emissions at 1.45 billion tons.
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The strongest and richest are doing the damage, while the weakest and poorest are paying the price.
There is no #ClimateJustice. Certainly not today, and maybe not ever.
FULL STORY -- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/4/how-much-does-africa-contribute-to-global-carbon-emissions
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual #CO2 #Emissions
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The Juice (@30e80774), which generally focuses its wickedly satirical attention on Australia, now takes on Canada.
And wow, this one is a doozy. 😜 It's extremely funny, but when you think about it, it's also very sad. 😢 And finally, it's infuriating! 🤬
WATCH -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7s-BgfcFXw
#Canada #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism
Nothing does more damage to the climate and the environment than burning coal. Yet world leaders continue to build and expand their coal-fired power plants year after year after year...
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New research has shown that G20 per capita coal emissions are continuing to rise. According to a study published on 5 September by Ember, between 2015 and 2022, per capita G20 coal emissions rose by 9%.
These coal-based emissions are increasing despite climate pledges and transition efforts from some members of the group of major economies. The group’s leaders will meet in New Delhi this weekend for its main annual summit. Collectively, the countries in the forum account for 80% of global power sector emissions.
During talks in July, the G20 failed to agree that global emissions should peak by 2025. Moreover, it fell short of jointly committing to massively ramp up renewable energy use.
Countries like the UK are no climate role models. While it has lowered coal-based emissions, the UK government has continued to double down on fossil fuel production. For instance, in December, the fossil-fuel-friendly government granted planning permission for a new coal mine in Cumbria. Plus, it has yet to rule out the environmentally-ruinous Rosebank project. Over its lifetime, oil field alone would produce the emissions equivalent of burning 56 coal-fired power plants for an entire year.
Other countries ditching coal haven’t been much better. Despite its commitment to phase out coal, Germany has instead ramped up its production and restored coal plants. The Environmental Justice Foundation found that in 2022, 8.4% more coal-generated energy was fed into the German grid than in 2021. Previous Ember research also demonstrated that Germany and Poland generate two-thirds of the EU’s coal emissions.
Meanwhile, other countries – including G20 host India, along with Indonesia and China – all increased their coal emissions.
Last year, rich nations pledged $20 billion to Indonesia to help it wean itself off coal. However, Ember found that its per capita emissions from the fuel jumped 56% from 2015. In early August, Indonesia’s capital city Jakarta experienced severe spikes in toxic air pollution.
Notably, air pollution levels in the megalopolis of about 30 million people have risen to some of the highest in the world in recent months. According to Swiss air monitor IQAir, the smog levels have topped global rankings multiple times since the beginning of August.
The Ember report also said that even some countries that achieved reductions in their coal emissions continue to emit far above the global average on a per capita basis. Ember’s Dave Jones said, "China and India are often blamed as the world’s big coal power polluters. But when you take population into account, South Korea and Australia were the worst polluters still in 2022."
For instance, Australia is currently the world’s second-largest exporter of thermal coal, after Indonesia. In addition, the country is the largest exporter of metallurgical coal, which is used in steel making.
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Plenty of bad actors everywhere, all around the world. No wonder the climate crisis is spiraling out of control.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.thecanary.co/global/2023/09/06/g20-coal-emissions-continue-to-rise-despite-climate-pledges/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
Earth has a fever. We're breaking all previous records for high temperatures. And next year will be even hotter...
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The summer of 2023 was the hottest ever recorded, as the climate crisis and emerging El Niño pushed up temperatures and drove extreme weather across the world.
In June, July, and August – the northern hemisphere summer – the global average temperature reached 16.77C, which was 0.66C above the 1991 to 2020 average. The new high is 0.29C above the previous record set in 2019, a big jump in climate terms.
“Our planet has just endured a season of simmering – the hottest summer on record. Climate breakdown has begun,” said UN secretary general António Guterres. “Scientists have long warned what our fossil fuel addiction will unleash. Our climate is imploding faster than we can cope with, with extreme weather events hitting every corner of the planet.”
Heatwaves, fires, and floods have destroyed lives and livelihoods across the globe, from North and South America, to Europe, India, Japan, and China.
Dr Friederike Otto, at Imperial College London, said: “Breaking heat records has become the norm in 2023. Global warming continues because we have not stopped burning fossil fuels. It is that simple."
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FULL STORY -- #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency
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Headline from Grist: "Winter just ended in South America. It’s 110 degrees." Wait -- that can't be right, can it? https://grist.org/agriculture/winter-just-ended-south-america-110-degrees/ #Brazil #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency https://climatejustice.social/system/media_attachments/files/111/127/172/783/419/048/original/f928e9982eda91ac.jpeg