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climate crisis

2°C Climate Warming Target Is ‘Dead’

February 6, 2025 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
In a new analysis, acclaimed climate scientist Professor James Hansen and colleagues said that scientists had greatly underestimated the rate of global heating, and that the international target of two degrees Celsius is “dead.” The analysis concluded that the combination of recent reductions in shipping pollution — which have the effect of blocking the sun — and increasing emissions from fossil fuels have been greater than previously thought, reported The Guardian. “A shocking rise of warming has been exposed by, ironically, a reduction of pollutants, but we now have a new baseline and trajectory for where we are,” said Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, as The Guardian reported.

Putting Nature At The Center

February 5, 2025 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. , , ,
Life may be unique to Earth. Even if single-celled organisms can readily evolve in conditions that exist on millions or billions of other planets, we have no actual evidence that complex, multi-cellular life exists anywhere else in the vastness of space. Bacteria appeared on our planet roughly 3.7 billion years ago; by 2 billion years ago, the tree of life was branching into what would become a stunning web of creatures, huge and tiny. Plants, animals, and fungi proliferated, formed relationships, and produced ecosystems. The result was a planet full of life, and one whose atmosphere, temperature, chemical composition, and weather are all largely shaped by the side effects of the strategies that organisms use to thrive.

Betrayed By Green Capitalism, We Can Build A Livable Future

February 3, 2025 Peter Gelderloos, In These Times. , , ,
In one way of measuring it, the mainstream framework to address the climate crisis has been a huge success. Promoting green energy, electric vehicles, conservation zones, carbon credits, carbon capture, and other new technologies has made billions of dollars for companies like Tesla, Google, NextEra Energy, British Petroleum, Saudi Aramco, Tongwei Solar, McKinsey & Company, and BlackRock. Governments have gained power through increased interventions in economic planning, and authoritarian regimes from China and India to Canada and the U.S. now have a new justification to carry out land theft against Indigenous and rural populations.

We Need A Data Revolution To Avert Climate Disaster

February 2, 2025 Stephen Marshall, DeSmog. , , ,
The fires in Los Angeles represent a catastrophic failure to anticipate and respond to environmental threats. In the aftermath of such devastation, an obvious question looms: How did we miss the warning signs? The answer is clear. Unlike other feedback systems designed to drive immediate response — think of the life-saving equipment in intensive care units, or even a car’s fuel gauge — the tools we use to monitor climate resilience and risk are dangerously, and indefensibly, outdated. Take the Planetary Boundaries framework, one of the most recognized global indicators of humanity’s transgression of critical ecological thresholds, such as climate stability and biodiversity.

In ‘Historic Win,’ Court Rules Against UK’s Rosebank Oilfield

February 1, 2025 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , ,
The decision by the previous Conservative government in the United Kingdom to approve the giant Rosebank oilfield off Shetland was ruled unlawful by an Edinburgh court on Thursday. The judgment by Lord Ericht at the Court of Session said the carbon emissions that would be created by the burning of oil and gas at the largest untapped oilfield in the UK had not been taken into consideration. “Today’s ruling is part of a clear trend we’re seeing from courts in the UK – marking the third time in the last year that judges have found that ‘downstream’ emissions must be considered in planning decisions,” said ClientEarth lawyer Robert Clarke, in a press release from ClientEarth.

Protesters Blockade DNC Party Meeting

February 1, 2025 Zach D. Roberts, DeSmog. , , ,
Spurred on by the recent wildfires in Los Angeles that experts say were climate-change related, the activist group Climate Defiance held a protest on January 31 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, D.C., against the Democratic National Committee (DNC), calling on it to get dirty fossil fuel money out of Democratic politics forever. The protest started inside the resort’s main atrium with a three-story banner drop from a hotel room that said, “Oil $$$ Out of the DNC.” Dozens of protesters then marched around the hotel’s ground floor, chanting, “Which side are you on?” and “We need clean air, not another billionaire.”

Over 1000 People Block The Strand Outside Hearing For Just Stop Oil

January 31, 2025 Just Stop Oil. , , , ,
Over a thousand people have taken part in a peaceful demonstration blocking the road outside the Royal Courts of Justice. Inside, the appeal against the draconian sentences given to 16 Just Stop Oil supporters last year is continuing. The mass appeal concerns 16 supporters with combined sentences of 41 years handed down between July and September 2024. [1] [2] All 16 Just Stop Oil supporters were jailed in the months following the publication of a report to the government written by ‘Lord Walney’, a paid lobbyist for the oil and arms industry that called for groups such as Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action to be banned in a similar way to terrorist organisations.

Doomsday Clock Set At 89 Seconds To Midnight

January 29, 2025 Adam Dombovari, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. , , , , , , , ,
The Doomsday Clock was set at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its 78-year history. The 2025 Clock time signals that the world is on a course of unprecedented risk, and that continuing on the current path is a form of madness. The United States, China, and Russia have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink. The world depends on immediate action. The Doomsday Clock’s time is set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB) in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes nine Nobel Laureates.

Dispatch: Through The Fire

January 26, 2025 Carlos Sirah, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
Unprecedented January wildfires devastate Los Angeles, as communities face both natural disaster and militarized state response. The Eaton Fire displaces numerous families in the Pasadena-Altadena area, including multigenerational Black households who have built lives in these neighborhoods for decades. Among them, the Edwards family stands displaced from their home of 32 years. For those seeking to support impacted community members, the Edwards family’s GoFundMe, provides direct aid to one of many displaced households fighting to survive. A broader directory of displaced Black families seeking support can be found here.

The Coming Climate Uncertainty Conundrum

January 25, 2025 Rupert Read, DeSmog. , , ,
This piece is about what we talk about when we talk about ‘climate change.’ Mostly, whether in the campaigning world or the policy world, the tech world or the business world, the everyday world or the world of international summitry, we mainly talk about cutting carbon emissions. And if we talk about impacts, we talk about the impacts of global heating, plus the impacts of the growing chaos. But we don’t talk enough about climate impacts, our vulnerability to them, let alone how to prepare adequately for them, or to tackle them ‘upstream’ before they land or get worse.

New York Climate Activists Show A Powerful Path Forward

January 25, 2025 Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
On the evening of Dec. 10, 12 self-identified elder climate activists sat around the Christmas tree in the New York State Capitol, in Albany, singing carols as they waited to be arrested. The protesters, who were there to support New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, had been told by police they would face criminal misdemeanor trespass charges if they stayed put. “Normally, for a protest like this, we’d expect to be written a citation rather than charged with a misdemeanor,” said Michael Richardson of Third Act Upstate New York, which helped plan the civil disobedience.

President Trump’s First 24 Hours

January 22, 2025 People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , ,
On Monday, January 20, as thousands were taking to the streets to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration, Trump himself signed a barrage of executive orders with broad implications. These orders were largely an attempt to reverse many of the moves of the Biden administration, in particular Biden’s most progressive policies on immigration, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and efforts to combat climate change. The US government is the largest employer in the country. Some of Trump’s executive orders followed through on the right-wing promise to attack the federal work force, as mentioned in both the 2024 Republican Party platform, which pledges to “fire corrupt employees” and the infamous Project 2025.

Mapped: Donald Trump’s Transatlantic Anti-Green Network

January 22, 2025 Adam Barnett, DeSmog. , , , , ,
As Donald Trump takes his oath of office to become the 47th president of the United States, his second term comes at an ever-more critical time for climate change. Climate scientists have warned that 2024 was the hottest year on record, and without dramatic action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, global pledges to limit warming to 1.5C and curb the worst effects of climate change are doomed. At the start of 2025, Trump’s “government efficiency” chief Elon Musk (who donated $250 million to Trump’s campaign), pushed grooming gangs to the top of the UK political agenda – with the help of Conservative and Reform UK politicians, and their allies in the media.

How Fossil Fuel Sectors Create A Climate Denial Echo Chamber

January 18, 2025 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. , , , , ,
From 2008 to 2023, nine of the nation’s largest oil, agrichemical, and plastics trade groups and corporations posted thousands of tweets on the social media platform X, and their messaging on environmental issues was strikingly “obstructive” for climate policy and action, a study published today in the journal PLOS Climate concludes. The study found that all of the organizations, including the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), were mentioned by at least four of the other groups – helping to essentially create an echo chamber for similar messages.

For Sicanjgu, Food Sovereignty Means Eating Climate-Friendly

January 18, 2025 Grace Hussain, Resilience. , , ,
On a Wednesday summer evening on the Rosebud Reservation, members of the Siċaŋġu Nation arrange 12 tables to form a U around the parking lot of a South Dakota Boys & Girls Club. The tables at the Siċaŋġu Harvest Market are laden with homemade foods for sale—tortillas, cooked beans, pickles, and fresh-squeezed lemonade. The market is one of many ways the nonprofit increases access to traditional and healthful foods that also happen to come with a low climate impact. The Lakota, of which Siċaŋġu is one of seven nations, were traditionally hunters and gatherers, but today, the Siċaŋġu Co nonprofit is building on both new and old traditions to fulfill its mission.
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