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Category: Climate Change

Energy requirements of a good life are surprisingly low

Energy requirements of a good life are surprisingly low

Anthropocene magazine reports: The average global energy consumption—79 gigajoules per person per year—is sufficient to power a healthy, comfortable life for everyone on the planet, according to a new study. The analysis is part of a growing body of research aimed at figuring out how to achieve climate goals while also providing modern energy resources to those who lack it. The findings suggest that this balance might be easier than expected to strike: the world doesn’t need a massive expansion…

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Rep. Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

Rep. Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

The Guardian reports: When it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change – two of Jamie Raskin’s top priorities – the whole thing feels a bit like a game of chicken and egg to the Democratic congressman. On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit that is safe and necessary for human survival, while Congress stalls on a $555bn climate package. On the other, a pernicious movement, spurred by Donald Trump and other…

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Democratic state activists are working to decarbonize trillions. They don’t need Joe Manchin’s permission

Democratic state activists are working to decarbonize trillions. They don’t need Joe Manchin’s permission

The Nation reports: Republican state leaders are on the warpath against BlackRock, the largest financial asset manager in the nation. The company’s sin? Statements by BlackRock leadership that climate change is a long-term threat, and that the company will pursue investments that promote a reduction in emissions. In January, West Virginia declared that it was barring the company from managing its state pension funds. Texas passed legislation in February prohibiting any firm divesting from fossil fuels from managing state assets….

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Fossil fuels v. our future — young Montanans wage historic climate fight

Fossil fuels v. our future — young Montanans wage historic climate fight

The Guardian reports: When Grace Gibson-Snyder was 13, she launched an independent project in her home town of Missoula, Montana, to encourage restaurants not to use single-use plastic containers. She found that youth activism enabled her to press the adults in her life to take the climate crisis seriously. Even if she was too young to vote, she could still be heard. Three years later Gibson-Snyder upped the ante by teaming up with 15 other young people on a novel…

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Thawing permafrost is roiling the Arctic, driven by hidden changes beneath the surface as the climate warms

Thawing permafrost is roiling the Arctic, driven by hidden changes beneath the surface as the climate warms

Permafrost and ice wedges have built up over millennia in the Arctic. When they thaw, they destabilize the surrounding landscape. Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images By Mark J. Lara, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Across the Arctic, strange things are happening to the landscape. Massive lakes, several square miles in size, have disappeared in the span of a few days. Hillsides slump. Ice-rich ground collapses, leaving the landscape wavy where it once was flat, and in some…

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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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