Skip to content

Climate Change

Low-Income Countries Bear Brunt Of Climate Change

Climate change is affecting nations in a disproportionate manner with tropical low-income countries with a lesser share in emissions bearing the brunt in comparison to wealthy nations that are more responsible for global warming. A research paper published in Science Advances recently estimated the economic loss faced by countries due to climate change over a period of 20 years. From 1992 to 2013, the global economy suffered losses amounting to around $5 trillion-$29 trillion due to global warming. But the insurmountable global loss in terms of economy, the research suggests, was not equally shared. Worryingly, the national income of low-income tropical countries declined by around 6.7% while wealthy nations suffered a decline of only about 1.5%.

Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies Rose To Record Levels In G20 Countries

The report found that, not only had emissions rebounded in these countries following the coronavirus pandemic, but fossil fuel subsidies had reached record levels. “Too much public finance for energy in the G20 is still skewed towards the fossil fuel industry. Sixty three percent of G20’s public finance for energy went to fossil fuels in 2019-2020,” ODI senior research fellow and report finance lead Ipek Gençsü said, as BusinessGreen reported. “Last year, the G20 reaffirmed its 2009 commitment to ‘phase out and rationalise, over the medium term, inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,’ but I think we can safely say we are now in that ‘medium term’ and it’s clear the G20 has failed to deliver, instead continuing to use public funds to distort the market in favour of fossil fuels.”

Climate Activists Occupy Parliament After Sunak Announced As New PM

Dozens of climate and energy crisis activists have occupied the Central Lobby in the Houses of Parliament, hours after Rishi Sunak was named the UK’s new prime minister. Activists from Greenpeace and Fuel Poverty Action caused live interviews with MPs to be shut down and unfurled a banner reading: "Chaos costs lives". In a statement they said the action is designed to highlight the cost of living crisis, which has seen energy bills soar, and they are demanding that the next prime minister "starts putting the welfare of the British people before fossil fuel companies by properly taxing oil and gas profits and launching a nationwide home insulation programme to tackle fuel poverty". The protesters have linked arms and are reading testimonies from people struggling with their bills.

The Community Solution to the Climate Crisis

Climate chaos is here right now. It’s not something off in the future like fast food restaurants selling bug patties, emotionally fulfilling sex with robots, or a lab-created dinosaur accidentally getting loose in a shopping mall. New floods, wildfires, and droughts hit communities around the world everyday but the most obvious solutions to this crisis are rarely even discussed. So what can be done? To begin with, the Biden administration could actually fund action on climate change. Congress recently passed $840 BILLION for the war machine. They sent $52 Billion to semiconductor chip manufacturers and President Biden is proposing $37 Billion to fund our impressively brutal police nationwide.

The Terrifying Research Nuclear Powers Don’t Want You To See

Humanity is, according to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.” The warning , made at the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, arrives at a time of alarmingly heightened tensions around the world. Just a few days after Guterres made that statement, Nature Food published a harrowing scientific paper that drove home the UN Secretary General’s message: “Global food insecurity and famine from the reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection.” The paper (which you can read in full here) was written by a handful of leading experts who have spent years studying the potential impact of nuclear war on food supplies. The results are stark.

The Climate Justice Movement Must Be Anti-War

No matter your specific organizational or ideological affiliation, anyone who cares about climate change today ought to understand the critical connections between war, imperialism, and the climate crisis. In the 21st century, where conflicts between the world’s rich and powerful are often waged via the lives of the poor, we have to look at the human and environmental impacts of war and refuse any claims that war is ever a necessary evil. We’ve seen again in recent months how the United States and other powerful nations use military power to gain control over resources, particularly oil, and capital. While issues such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are incredibly nuanced, with much blame to go around for both Putin and NATO’s aggression over time, it is important to remember that those who suffer in times of war are poor and working-class people.

Progressives Hand Biden List Of 55 Executive Actions

The CPC's new list of executive order recommendations is broad in scope, aiming to address a variety of pressing issues including sky-high drug prices, the worsening climate emergency, the coronavirus pandemic, mounting student loan debt, and a rigged tax system—priorities that Biden vowed to tackle on the campaign trail in 2020. While Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the CPC chair, has said she would prefer ambitious legislation such as the Build Back Better package to more limited executive orders, that bill is dead in the Senate due to opposition from Republicans and corporate-backed Democrats such as Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), leaving the president with few other options to advance his popular agenda.

The Economics Of Climate Accountability

"The Enbridge terminal expansion is planned to be constructed in the ancestral settlement and land of the Karankawa Kadla, where thousands of sacred Karankawa artifacts remain and ceremony and prayer have continued for the past 2,000 years,” said a news release from the Indigenous Environmental Network. The release also included a simple line asking for “accountability from Enbridge and Bank of America". That word “accountability” shifts the protest to another kind of action, one based on ESG standards; a metric that includes Environment, Social and Governance as well as the planning for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Both Bank of America and Enbridge say they have ESG plans and are on track to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

How Israel’s Occupation Of Palestine Intensifies Climate Change

Al-Naqab — On Sunday, roughly 200 activists demonstrated outside Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office in Jerusalem against the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) tree-planting project in al-Naqab, maintaining the forestation is an attempt to displace the indigenous Bedouin population. Contracted by the Israeli government, the JNF razed fruit trees and seeded fields in al-Naqab in January to “make the desert bloom” with non-native plants. The purported environmental project has been met with fierce protest from the local villagers, with more than 60 Bedouin arrested in the last few weeks. JNF maintains that its actions in al-Naqab encourage sustainability, but other organizations disagree. The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel took the JNF to the Supreme Court last year after its research found that JNF’s afforestation will harm the area’s biodiversity.

Activists Target Public Relations Groups For Greenwashing Fossil Fuels

Duncan Meisel used to help climate activists tell their stories, as a communications adviser to environmentalists trying to convince the public that oil and gas companies must change to avert a climate crisis. Now he is putting pressure on consultants shaping those industries’ own messages. Clean Creatives, the group Meisel helped found, is at the vanguard of a new tactic in the environmental movement: to target advisers who, activists claim, help fossil fuel companies continue polluting and slow government action by distorting climate debates. Last September, Clean Creatives published an “F-List” of advertising and public relations groups it accused of spreading “climate misinformation” on their clients’ behalf.

Divestment Campaigns And Reinvestment Efforts Gain Strength

With over 80 percent of the world’s population experiencing extreme weather linked to climate change, university endowments have become a focal point for students, faculty, and community members eager to snuff out their schools’ support for the fossil fuel companies most responsible for fueling the climate crisis. Major universities, including Boston University, the University of Minnesota, and Harvard University — which boasts the largest endowment of any school in the world — are among the latest to commit to pull billions from fossil fuel funds. In their wake, others are following suit. In July, Maine became the first U.S. state to legally require divestment of public funds from fossil fuel assets.

Legal Petition Calls On Biden to Phase Out Federal Oil, Gas By 2035

Washington - More than 360 climate, tribal, religious and conservation groups petitioned the Biden administration today to use its executive authority to phase out oil and gas production on public lands and oceans. The petition provides a framework to manage a decline of oil and gas production to near zero by 2035 through rulemaking, using long-dormant provisions of the Mineral Leasing Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the National Emergencies Act. Without such action, it will become increasingly difficult for the United States to meet its pledge to help avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and its unprecedented social, environmental and economic damage.

A Tour Guide To Hell On Earth, Small Town-Style

"Dixie did far more than take out entire forests. It razed Greenville, my hometown since 1975. It reduced house after house to rubble, leaving only chimneys where children once had hung Christmas stockings, and dead century-old oaks where families, spanning four generations, had not so long ago built tree forts. The fire left our downtown with scorched, bent-over lampposts touching debris-strewn sidewalks. The historic sheriff’s office is just a series of naked half-round windows eerily showcasing devastation. Like natural disasters everywhere, this fire has upended entire communities."

‘Fortress Conservation’ Is Driving Us From Our Homes

Kaziranga is also a World Heritage site recognized by UNESCO and listed as a global hotspot of biodiversity by the IUCN. However, all that is under threat thanks to an increasingly militarized form of conservation. This is being promoted by the Indian Forest Department, in a feudal, colonial setup, assisted by large international and national NGOs. A flawed and exploitative idea has emerged: the plan to turn 30 per cent of the world’s surface into Protected Areas by 2030 (30x30). This idea, being pushed by the IUCN, has been greenwashed, whitewashed and sold to the world, alongside ‘nature-based solutions’ (NBS), as a way to solve climate change.

COP26 Summit: Thousands March In Glasgow For Action Against Climate Change

The protesters at the Glasgow march represented various groups, including indigenous organisations, frontline communities, trade unions, youth groups, peace and anti-war groups, communist and left organisations, and different environmental organisations. Despite a broad spectrum of platforms, the protesters were "united around the recognition that without system change, there is no way to take the urgent necessary measures to save the planet and advance climate justice." About 100 climate change protests and demonstrations were held in other cities of the UK. Similar actions also took place in another 100 countries as part of the global day of action.
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.