climate crisis

‘Under No Circumstances’ Will US Pay Poor Nations For Climate Damages

July 17, 2023 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. Educate! Biden administration, climate crisis, COP 27, Reparations

John Kerry, U.S. President Joe Biden's climate envoy, made clear at a congressional hearing Thursday that Washington has no intention of compensating impoverished countries for destruction wrought by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency despite playing an outsized role in creating it and continuing to accelerate it. During the United Nations COP27 summit held last year in Egypt, delegates agreed to establish a "loss and damage" fund through which rich nations can provide poor ones with financial resources to help cover the escalating costs of extreme weather disasters, which are growing in frequency and intensity due to unmitigated greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution.

EU Backs First Major Nature Restoration Law In 30 Years

July 13, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Create! climate crisis, Environment, European Union (EU), Restoration

Following a tense debate, the European Parliament has voted in favor of a Nature Restoration Law that establishes legally binding targets to restore degraded natural areas in the European Union (EU). It is the first major piece of legislation to protect biodiversity in the EU in 30 years. Members of Parliament (MEPs) said the restoration measures must cover at least one-fifth of the land and sea areas in the EU and be in place by 2030, a press release from the European Parliament said. “The Nature Restoration Law is an essential piece of the European Green Deal and follows the scientific consensus and recommendations to restore Europe’s ecosystems.

World Passes Highest Average Global Temperature Recorded

July 7, 2023 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Environment, Extreme weather, Global Warming

The average global temperature reached a new high on July 3 at 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest average since records initially began in the 19th century and since satellite monitoring began in the 1970s. July 4 was even hotter, reaching 0.17 degrees Celsius (0.31 degrees Fahrenheit) higher. The high temperatures come after scientists strongly predicted an El Niño event to happen and push the world to record high average temperatures. “The average global surface air temperature reaching 17C for the first time since we have reliable records available is a significant symbolic milestone in our warming world,” said climate researcher Leon Simons

Youth Climate Activists Turn Up The Heat

July 6, 2023 Keerti Gopal, The Lever. Resist! climate crisis, Congress, Direct Action, Youth Activism

On Tuesday, youth-led direct action organization Climate Defiance shut down a 2024 swing state fundraiser at the Harvard Club in New York City, headlined by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The activists were protesting Schumer’s hand in approving the Mountain Valley Pipeline and his ties to the company leading the project, utility giant NextEra Energy. “Schumer, get off it, put people over profit,” chanted the protesters as guests looked around uncomfortably and Schumer walked out of the room. In the three months since it was founded, Climate Defiance has organized high-profile actions.

Fossil-Fuel Lobbyists Work For US Groups Trying To Fight Climate Crisis

July 5, 2023 Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Educate! climate crisis, Corporatism, Higher Education, Lobbyists, Oil and Gas

More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal. Lobbyists for oil, gas and coal interests are also employed by a vast sweep of institutions, ranging from the city governments of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia; tech giants such as Apple and Google; more than 150 universities; some of the country’s leading environmental groups – and even ski resorts seeing their snow melted by global heating.

Climate Savior Or ‘Monsanto Of The Sea’?

July 4, 2023 Bridget Huber, Food and Environment Reporting Network. Educate! Big Ag, climate crisis, Environment, Seaweed

Early on a cool spring morning, in far Downeast Maine, Severine von Tscharner Welcome and her husband, Terran, scrambled along a point jutting into Cobscook Bay. The Passamaquoddy people named the bay Kapskuk after the immense tides and wild currents that make the water seem to boil. These turbulent waters support a rich array of life, including Atlantic salmon, sturgeon, and alewives, as well as many edible species of seaweed. Harvesting in a spot that’s accessible fewer than 20 days per year, during negative tides, Welcome pulled a long strand of alaria, a golden ruffled kelp, from the riffles.

Rishi Sunak Boasts: Oil-Funded Think Tank ‘Helped Us Draft’ Crackdown

July 1, 2023 Adam Barnett and Sam Bright, DeSmog. Educate! climate crisis, Corporate crime, ExxonMobil, State Repression, United Kingdom (UK)

Rishi Sunak has confirmed that a fossil fuel-funded think tank helped to draft his government’s laws targeting climate protests. Speaking at Policy Exchange’s summer party on Wednesday (28 June), the prime minister boasted that the think tank’s work “helped us draft” the government’s crackdown on protests, according to Politico. OpenDemocracy reported last year that Policy Exchange’s US wing, American Friends of Policy Exchange, which provides funds to the UK branch, received $30,000 (roughly £23,700) from oil and gas giant ExxonMobil in 2017. Two years later, Policy Exchange published a report entitled “Extremism Rebellion”, in reference to the environmental protest group, calling for the police and the government to clamp down on eco protests.

Public Pension Funds Have Lost Billions On Their Fossil Fuel Investments

June 29, 2023 Dana Drugmand, DeSmog. Educate! climate crisis, Divestment, Oil and Gas, Pensions

For U.S. public pension funds, divesting from oil, coal, and gas would result in overall higher financial value. That is the key takeaway from a new study examining the past decade’s portfolio performance for several of the largest public pension funds in the country. The analysis by researchers at the University of Waterloo, published today in partnership with the organization Stand.earth, has found that the total cumulative value of six major U.S. public pension funds would have been about 13 percent higher had they divested from fossil fuel holdings ten years ago – equivalent to around $21 million in earnings.

How Hospitals Betray The Public Trust With Fossil Fuel Pension Investments

June 26, 2023 Climate Safe Pensions Network and First Do No Harm Campaign, Stand.earth Educate! climate crisis, Divestment, Fossil Fuels, Health Care

The report focuses on fossil fuel investments in direct contradiction to the health sector leadership’s calls for decarbonizing the health sector, including a well-publicized “Call to Action” by the President of the National Academy of Medicine; to, widespread ‘sustainability’ commitments made across the sector’s 1,200 private hospital systems; and, to the voluminous body of research confirming a range of serious threats to public health from fossil fuel pollution and climate change. Healthcare pensions can and must divest from fossil fuels to protect our health and our frontline communities that are so disproportionately affected by the fossil fuel industry.

The Modern Form Of Colonialism: Climate Change

June 25, 2023 Tapti Sen, Inequality.org. Educate! Bangladesh, climate crisis, Climate Justice, Environment

I am from a disappearing nation. My country, Bangladesh, is one of several at risk of becoming submerged partially or completely by rising sea levels caused by climate change in the coming decades. 75 percent of the country lies below sea level. Bangladesh, a tropical country on top of a low-lying delta, is no stranger to flooding, especially during monsoon season. But the extent to which this flooding has taken place in recent years is unprecedented. Flooding in Sylhet and other northeastern districts of Bangladesh between May and June of 2022 displaced an estimated 15 million people – approximately 9 percent of the country – and toppled hundreds of villages in 2022 alone.

Study: Ecological Collapse Could Happen Much Sooner Than Expected

June 25, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Amazon Rainforest, climate crisis, collapse, Tipping point

Without a doubt, the landscape of our planet is changing. Arctic sea ice is melting, rainforests are being razed for agriculture, deserts are expanding and meadows are appearing in places that have been covered in snow for thousands of years. In some parts of the world, tipping points have already been surpassed, and in others, the danger of that happening may come sooner than we might think. According to The Conversation, more than 20 types of ecosystem have already experienced “regime shifts” and more than 20 percent — including the Amazon rainforest — are on the precipice of it.

Will The Federal Trade Commission Lead The Climate Reformation?

June 23, 2023 Clara Vondrich, DeSmog. Educate! Carbon offsets, climate crisis, Environment, False Solutions, FTC

As of last year, more than a third of the world’s largest publicly traded companies had set targets to reach net zero carbon emissions, up from a fifth in December 2020. But a dirty little secret lies behind most net zero commitments: Companies are buying carbon offsets to meet their goals — paying for absolution just like pre-Reformation Catholics buying Indulgences to offset their sins. Under the law, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has the power to hold companies liable for marketing that harms consumers’ health or wealth by misleading them into buying a product or service based on a false or deceptive claim. The FTC just closed public comment on how to amend its classic Green Guides in light of new market realities.

Sudden Heat Increase In North Atlantic Seas Could Have Devastating Effects

June 21, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Global Warming, Oceans

Scientists have warned that an extreme marine heat wave off the UK and Ireland coasts is posing a major threat to marine species. According to the official blog of the UK’s Met Office, the global sea surface temperatures for April and May of this year were the highest since records began in 1850. Last month was the warmest May on record in the North Atlantic, with temperatures about 1.25 degrees Celsius higher than average over the 1961 to 1990 reference period. “The extreme and unprecedented temperatures show the power of the combination of human-induced warming and natural climate variability like El Niño,” said Daniela Schmidt, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Bristol.

Polycrisis, Unraveling, Simplification, Or Collapse

June 18, 2023 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Polycrisis

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the resulting disruption of multiple global supply chains, policy think tanks have increasingly adopted the term polycrisis to signify humanity’s destabilized status quo. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Risk Report uses the newish word 13 times in 90 pages. Scholars from a range of disciplines (including Columbia University historian Adam Tooze) have written about the polycrisis, and both Cascade Institute and Omega Institute have published papers and reports on it. The Cascade Institute notes that “a global polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects.

Hydrogen Hype Bubbles Over At German Gas Lobby Conference

June 18, 2023 Phoebe Cooke, DeSmog. Educate! climate crisis, Fossil Fuels, Germany, Hydrogen

Berlin, Germany — Germany’s push to achieve climate neutrality by 2045 could, by some projections, soon turn the vast network of natural gas pipelines powering the country’s homes and industry into one of Europe’s biggest stranded assets. But gas grid executives gathered in Berlin this week to lay out a survival strategy: Retool their infrastructure to turn clean-burning hydrogen into the engine of Germany’s energy transition. Echoing a trend seen among fossil fuel incumbents the world over, Germany’s pipeline operators are casting themselves as gatekeepers to climate solutions.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources