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Category: Climate Change

Putin’s war shows autocracies and fossil fuels go hand in hand. Here’s how we can tackle both

Putin’s war shows autocracies and fossil fuels go hand in hand. Here’s how we can tackle both

Bill McKibben writes: At first glance, last autumn’s Glasgow climate summit looked a lot like its 25 predecessors. It had: A conference hall the size of an aircraft carrier stuffed with displays from problematic parties (the Saudis, for example, with a giant pavilion saluting their efforts at promoting a “circular carbon economy agenda”). Squadrons of delegates rushing constantly to mysterious sessions (“Showcasing achievements of TBTTP and Protected Areas Initiative of GoP”) while actual negotiations took place in a few back…

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IPCC’s starkest message yet: Radical steps needed to avert climate disaster

IPCC’s starkest message yet: Radical steps needed to avert climate disaster

Nature reports: Humanity probably isn’t going to prevent Earth from at least temporarily warming 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels — but aggressive action to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and extract carbon from the atmosphere could limit the increase and bring temperatures back down, according to the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report makes it clear, however, that the window is rapidly closing, and with it the opportunity to prevent the worst impacts of…

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Permafrost is thawing under the sea, burping up planet-warming gases

Permafrost is thawing under the sea, burping up planet-warming gases

Wired reports: Around 20,000 years ago, the world was so frigid that massive glaciers sucked up enough water to lower sea levels by 400 feet. As the sea pulled back, newly exposed land froze to form permafrost, a mixture of earth and ice that today sprawls across the far north. But as the world warmed into the climate we enjoy today (for the time being), sea levels rose again, submerging the coastal edges of that permafrost, which remain frozen below…

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Once again, environmentalists are sabotaging climate progress

Once again, environmentalists are sabotaging climate progress

Eric Levitz writes: New York City is among the most progressive and climate-conscious municipalities in the United States. It is legally obligated to bring its greenhouse emissions to 40 percent below their 2005 peak by the end of the decade. And yet over the past year, NYC has dramatically expanded its reliance on fossil fuels – thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of Empire State environmentalists. In 2019, when the city put its ambitious climate goals into law,…

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Falling oxygen levels are putting ocean ecosystems on life support

Falling oxygen levels are putting ocean ecosystems on life support

Jessica Camille Aguirre writes: People who make their living catching fish on the open ocean first noticed the strange phenomenon a few decades ago. It occurred in the shadow zones, the spots between the great ocean currents where sea water doesn’t circulate, off the coasts of Peru, West Africa, and California. The fisher people shared the knowledge among them like a common secret, a bounty that had an even stranger explanation: Sometimes, when the conditions were right, fish would swim…

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If the West can welcome Ukrainians, it can accept the many climate refugees to come

If the West can welcome Ukrainians, it can accept the many climate refugees to come

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Beba Cibralic write: Global migration policy has started to move in a more humane direction in response to the invasion of Ukraine. While many states are welcoming displaced Ukrainians, this is a far cry from how those states typically treat refugees. Activists and scholars have lamented the lack of similar response to people displaced from south Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The uneven global response to migration on display sets a chilling precedent for the…

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Indigenous land rights are critical to realizing goals of the Paris climate accord, a new study finds

Indigenous land rights are critical to realizing goals of the Paris climate accord, a new study finds

Inside Climate News reports: The land rights of Indigenous peoples across millions of acres of forests in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru must be protected and strengthened if the world has any hope of achieving the goals set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement, a study released on Thursday found. The study, by the World Resources Institute and Climate Focus, two non-profit global research organizations focused on alleviating climate change, supports a growing body of research emphasizing the important role…

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Why Russia’s war is so devastating to climate science

Why Russia’s war is so devastating to climate science

Inside Climate News reports: In France, scientists working on an experimental fusion-power reactor, which could potentially revolutionize how humankind generates carbon-free electricity, had to put their research on hold due to key parts shipping in from Russia. A global consortium of permafrost scientists who were set to embark on a multi-year expedition in the Arctic to collect crucial data on global warming have also had to cancel their plans due to Russian sanctions and international uproar. And the Arctic Council,…

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Joe Manchin’s dirty money and the Biden administration’s painful turn from climate action

Joe Manchin’s dirty money and the Biden administration’s painful turn from climate action

The New York Times reports: On a hilltop overlooking Paw Paw Creek, 15 miles south of the Pennsylvania border, looms a fortresslike structure with a single smokestack, the only viable business in a dying Appalachian town. The Grant Town power plant is also the link between the coal industry and the personal finances of Joe Manchin III, the Democrat who rose through state politics to reach the United States Senate, where, through the vagaries of electoral politics, he is now…

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We have the technology necessary to rapidly ditch fossil fuels

We have the technology necessary to rapidly ditch fossil fuels

Bill McKibben writes: On the last day of February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most dire report yet. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, had, he said, “seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this.” Setting aside diplomatic language, he described the document as “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” and added that “the world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.”…

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Climate action has been ‘a calamity’, says Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

Climate action has been ‘a calamity’, says Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

The Guardian reports: For nine years, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat representing Rhode Island since 2007, made weekly speeches called “Time To Wake Up” urging the Senate to take action on the climate emergency. He ended the weekly ritual once Joe Biden became president and Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. But now, with hopes of new climate legislation in shambles, Whitehouse is back at it again. “I revived the speech series because I lost confidence in the…

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Biden’s most effective climate warrior faces potential doom in the Senate

Biden’s most effective climate warrior faces potential doom in the Senate

Politico reports: President Joe Biden’s efforts to deliver on his ambitious climate agenda are getting a big boost from the leader of one often overlooked agency who has used his position to home in on the energy industry’s greenhouse gas impact. Now that official, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Richard Glick, may see his efforts to put climate change at the forefront of federal energy policy cost him his job. Glick, who was appointed to FERC in 2017 and elevated…

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Germany’s new government had big plans on climate, then Russia invaded Ukraine. What happens now?

Germany’s new government had big plans on climate, then Russia invaded Ukraine. What happens now?

Inside Climate News reports: Vladmir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made Germany’s reliance on Russian oil and gas untenable, and led the center-left government of Chancellor Olav Scholz to accelerate the transition to clean energy. This is more than just talk. German leaders are in the early stages of showing the world what an aggressive climate policy looks like in a crisis. Scholz and his cabinet will introduce legislation to require nearly 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035, which would…

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Ice shelf collapses in East Antarctica, an area previously viewed as stable

Ice shelf collapses in East Antarctica, an area previously viewed as stable

The Associated Press reports: An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday. The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer…

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How Putin’s war is sinking climate science

How Putin’s war is sinking climate science

Andrea Pitzer writes: In the end, the war came three days early. It found me in Moscow, where I watched a Russian news anchor on state television call tanks crossing into Ukraine a “special operation.” A Russian friend watched with me. We sat without speaking, dull and blank as the snow outside. Soon after, another Russian friend came over, and we discussed whether the ticket I’d bought for the next day would get me out of the country soon enough,…

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Shifts in El Niño may be driving climates extremes in both hemispheres

Shifts in El Niño may be driving climates extremes in both hemispheres

Inside Climate News reports: The record-breaking heat wave last week in East Antarctica, the coldest region on Earth, saw temperatures surge as much as 85 degrees Fahrenheit above average, bringing readings near freezing and unexpected surface melting instead of the usual sub-zero conditions. The heat wave adds to a quickly growing list of previously “unthinkable” climate events, and puts an exclamation point on an Austral summer that included brutal heat waves and record-high intensity wildfires in Argentina and Chile and…

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