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Category: Climate Change

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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As Manchin protects coal and his investments, his own constituents are at increasing risk of drowning

As Manchin protects coal and his investments, his own constituents are at increasing risk of drowning

The New York Times reports: In Senator Joe Manchin’s hometown, a flood-prone hamlet of about 200 homes that hugs a curve on a shallow creek, the rain is getting worse. Those storms swell the river, called Buffalo Creek, inundating homes along its banks. They burst the streams that spill down the hills on either side of this former coal-mining town, pushing water into basements. They saturate the ground, seeping into Farmington’s aging pipes and overwhelming its sewage treatment system. Climate…

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Democrats weigh carbon tax after Manchin rejects key climate provision

Democrats weigh carbon tax after Manchin rejects key climate provision

The New York Times reports: Some House and Senate Democrats, smarting from a move by Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, to kill a major element of President Biden’s climate plan, are switching to Plan B: a tax on carbon dioxide pollution. A carbon tax, in which polluting industries would pay a fee for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit, is seen by economists as the most effective way to cut the fossil fuel emissions that are…

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Thanks to Joe Manchin, we’re on the edge of a devastating climate loss

Thanks to Joe Manchin, we’re on the edge of a devastating climate loss

Bill McKibben writes: Last night’s scoop from the New York Times was devastating: the paper reported that Joe Manchin had exercised a firm veto over the Clean Energy Performance Plan (CEPP) at the heart of the Biden administration’s climate efforts. “As a result,” the Times story said, “White House staffers are now rewriting the legislation without that climate provision, and are trying to cobble together a mix of other policies that could also cut emissions.” As Saturday dawned the Wall…

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The climate disaster is here

The climate disaster is here

The Guardian reports: The enormous, unprecedented pain and turmoil caused by the climate crisis is often discussed alongside what can seem like surprisingly small temperature increases – 1.5C or 2C hotter than it was in the era just before the car replaced the horse and cart. These temperature thresholds will again be the focus of upcoming UN climate talks at the COP26 summit in Scotland as countries variously dawdle or scramble to avert climate catastrophe. But the single digit numbers…

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Halt destruction of nature or risk ‘dead planet’, leading businesses warn

Halt destruction of nature or risk ‘dead planet’, leading businesses warn

The Guardian reports: World leaders must do more to prevent the destruction of nature, business leaders have warned before a summit in China that aims to draw up a draft UN agreement for biodiversity. In an open letter, the chief executives of Unilever, H&M and nine other companies have called on governments to take meaningful action on mass extinctions of wildlife and the collapse of ecosystems or risk “a dead planet”. The warning comes as China prepares to assume the…

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Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

Fred Pearce writes: We know how to decarbonize energy production with renewable fuels and land transportation with electric vehicles. Blueprints for greening shipping and aircraft are being drawn up. But what about the big industrial processes? They look set to become decarbonization holdouts — the last and hardest CO2 emissions that we must eliminate if we are to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. In particular, how are we to green the three biggest globally-vital heavy industries: steel, cement, and ammonia,…

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Kyrsten Sinema wants to cut $100 billion in proposed climate funds, sources say

Kyrsten Sinema wants to cut $100 billion in proposed climate funds, sources say

The New York Times reports: Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who began her political career with the Green Party and who has voiced alarm over the warming planet, wants to cut at least $100 billion from climate programs in major legislation pending on Capitol Hill, according to two people familiar with the matter. Sinema is one of two centrist Democrats in the Senate whose votes are crucial to passing two bills that together would comprise President Biden’s legislative agenda: a…

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Defense Department warns climate change will increase conflicts over water and food

Defense Department warns climate change will increase conflicts over water and food

CNBC reports: Climate change poses a serious threat to U.S. military operations and will lead to new sources of global political conflict, the Department of Defense wrote in its new climate adaptation plan this week. Water shortages could become a primary source of friction or conflict between U.S. military overseas and the countries where troops are based, the department warned. It also expects that political efforts to mitigate food and water shortages will result in more frequent physical and cyber…

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Concrete needs to lose its colossal carbon footprint

Concrete needs to lose its colossal carbon footprint

An editorial in Nature says: Wet concrete has been poured into buildings, roads, bridges and more for centuries. Structures using concrete have survived wars and natural disasters, outlasting many of the civilizations that built them. Alongside its strength and resilience, concrete is also a staple of building because it is relatively cheap and simple to make. Worldwide, 30 billion tonnes of concrete is used each year. On a per capita basis, that is 3 times as much as 40 years…

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