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Category: Climate Change

What is deforestation – and is stopping it really possible?

What is deforestation – and is stopping it really possible?

Patrick Greenfield writes: Forests and nature are centre stage at Cop26. On the second day of the Glasgow summit, world leaders are announcing a commitment to halting and reversing deforestation. As the second largest source of greenhouse gases after energy, the land sector accounts for 25% of global emissions, with deforestation and forest degradation contributing to half of this. But why do forests matter to the climate, and how can we halt deforestation? What is a forest? There are an…

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Biden administration moves to limit methane, a potent greenhouse gas

Biden administration moves to limit methane, a potent greenhouse gas

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would heavily regulate methane, a potent greenhouse gas that spews from oil and natural gas operations and can warm the atmosphere 80 times as fast as carbon dioxide in the short term. For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency intends to limit the methane coming from roughly one million existing oil and gas rigs across the United States. The federal government previously had rules that aimed to…

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Even as Biden pushes clean energy, he seeks more oil production

Even as Biden pushes clean energy, he seeks more oil production

The New York Times reports: President Biden told a global climate summit on Monday that “we only have a brief window before us” to reduce the emissions from burning oil, gas and coal that pose an “existential threat” to humanity. But only days earlier, he was urging the world’s largest oil producers to pump more of the fossil fuels that are warming the planet. The incongruity was on center stage both at the global climate summit currently taking place in…

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The Toxic Ten: Publishers spreading baseless, unscientific climate denial

The Toxic Ten: Publishers spreading baseless, unscientific climate denial

  Center for Countering Digital Hate reports [PDF]: New analysis shows that posts linking to content from ten “superpolluter” publishers spreading climate misinformation account for up to 69% of Facebook interactions with climate denial content. 1) Breitbart, the disinformation site once run by Steve Bannon 2) Western Journal, whose founder claimed President Obama is Muslim 3) Newsmax, a key promoter of election fraud conspiracies 4) Townhall Media, founded by the Exxon-funded Heritage Foundation 5) Media Research Center, a “think tank”…

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At COP 26, countries must get serious about detailing their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

At COP 26, countries must get serious about detailing their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

Tina Gerhardt writes: As the sun rose in Glasgow, over 20,000 people—delegates from individual nations, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and activists—gathered in Scotland for the start of the United Nations’ two-week climate conference. Known as the Conference of the Parties or COP 26, it runs from Monday, November 1 to Friday, November 12, 2021. The COP 26 will mainly focus on two things: (1) commitments on greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions reductions; and (2) funding and technology transfers from developed countries…

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This is where the first climate wars will break out

This is where the first climate wars will break out

The Daily Beast reports: Climate-related warfare is a near-term reality—not some far-off boogeyman—according to leading defense thinkers and military strategists. They are still talking about the importance of fighting climate change, but they’re also making plans to fight other human beings because of climate change. So, where will these climate-related battles take place? Some people argue they already have, with controversial academic reports claiming recent conflicts were directly spurred by the effects of climate change. Other military advisers and strategists…

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Biden says Russia, China ‘didn’t show up’ on climate change commitments

Biden says Russia, China ‘didn’t show up’ on climate change commitments

Politico reports: U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday blamed Russia and China for any disappointment over the level of commitment by G20 leaders to fight climate change. “With regard to the disappointment, the disappointment relates to the fact that … not only Russia but China basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change,” Biden said at his news conference at the end of the two-day leaders’ summit in Rome. “And there’s a reason why…

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Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction

Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction

George Monbiot writes: There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence. It’s that we always put our survival first. This is true of other species. When confronted by an impending threat, such as winter, they invest great resources into avoiding or withstanding it: migrating or hibernating, for example. Humans are a different matter. When faced with an impending or chronic threat, such as climate or ecological breakdown, we seem to go out of our way to compromise…

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Big oil CEOs just lied before Congress. It’s time they’re held accountable

Big oil CEOs just lied before Congress. It’s time they’re held accountable

Jamie Henn writes: For the first time ever, the executives from four major oil companies and two of the industry’s most powerful front groups testified before Congress about their decades-long effort to spread climate disinformation and block legislation that would reduce US dependence on fossil fuels. Republicans vehemently opposed the premise of Thursday’s House oversight hearing. Yet within the first round of GOP questioning, led by one of the industry’s staunchest defenders, ranking committee member James Comer of Kentucky, the…

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World’s ‘greenest city’ will be totally unaffordable because of climate change

World’s ‘greenest city’ will be totally unaffordable because of climate change

Vice News reports: Five winters ago, one of the biggest local storm surges in 50 years hit Vancouver, a city on the front lines of climate change that’s also among the world’s most expensive places to own a home. “I got scared: ‘Oh, my God, we’re gonna flood,’” recalled Ricky Point, a member of Musqueam First Nation and part of the public works department. Point had good reason to be frightened. The Musqueam reserve is located in southeast Vancouver on…

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The regenerative revolution in food

The regenerative revolution in food

BBC Future reports: Low lying and layered with clay, the soils of Molescroft Farm in East Yorkshire have never been the easiest to cultivate. Driven by ever-dwindling productivity, the land was pushed to its limits for decades – more passes with machinery, more fertilisers, more pesticides. These intensive agricultural practices kept the farm afloat; but beneath the surface, the soil was dying. “The land had been farmed very conventionally, so the ground was overworked and had lost its organic matter,”…

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In Germany, global warming is changing more than just the climate. It’s changing politics, too

In Germany, global warming is changing more than just the climate. It’s changing politics, too

NBC News reports: Layers of dried mud on sidewalks, concrete roads turned to gravel and time-worn stone bridges washed away. Three months after this summer’s catastrophic floods in Germany’s Ahrweiler region, there are reminders everywhere of the destruction they wrought. The deluge, which was preceded by three consecutive summers of drought, has brought a new urgency for many to find climate change solutions — and that has impacted Germany’s politics, too. In last month’s federal election, the environmentalist Green Party…

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Signs that we are nearing a point of no return in the Amazon rainforest

Signs that we are nearing a point of no return in the Amazon rainforest

Reuters reports: Gertrudes Freire and her family came to the great forest in search of land and rain. They found both in abundance on that day half a century ago, but the green wilds of the southwestern Amazon would prove tough to tame. When they reached the settlement of Ouro Preto do Oeste in 1971, it was little more than a lonely rubber-tapper outpost hugging the single main road that ran through the jungle like a red dust scar. Sitting…

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The world’s second-largest rainforest is key to limiting climate change — it needs urgent study and protection

The world’s second-largest rainforest is key to limiting climate change — it needs urgent study and protection

Lee J. T. White et al write: Earth’s second-largest expanse of tropical forest lies in central Africa, in the Congo Basin. The region supports the livelihoods of 80 million people. The rainfall that the forest generates as far away as the Sahel and the Ethiopian highlands supports a further 300 million rural Africans. These forests are crucial to regulating Earth’s climate, and are home to forest elephants, gorillas and humans’ closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. Such services to people and…

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Manchin leads opposition to Biden’s climate bill, backed by support from oil, gas and coal

Manchin leads opposition to Biden’s climate bill, backed by support from oil, gas and coal

The Guardian reports: In the tumult of negotiations over the most consequential climate legislation ever proposed in the US, there is growing scrutiny of the fossil fuel industry connections of the man poised to tear down the core of the bill – the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin. Manchin, a centrist Democrat, has objected to key provisions of a multitrillion-dollar reconciliation bill that would slash planet-heating emissions and help the US, and the world, to avert catastrophic climate breakdown. In…

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How Joe Manchin and Republicans could destroy the world

How Joe Manchin and Republicans could destroy the world

Brian Kahn writes: The United Nations climate conference happening in Glasgow in less than two weeks will essentially chart a course for humanity for generations to come. That’s because this decade is one where the world must start cutting carbon emissions by nearly 8% per year or blow past a key climate guardrail. The U.S. was slated to be a big player, showing up to the meeting known as COP26 with a major new tool to reduce carbon pollution from…

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