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Category: Climate Change

Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11 million a minute, IMF finds

Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11 million a minute, IMF finds

The Guardian reports: The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon…

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Deluge in Italy sets European record: 29 inches of rain in 12 hours

Deluge in Italy sets European record: 29 inches of rain in 12 hours

The Washington Post reports: An intense complex of thunderstorms stalled over northwestern Italy on Monday, unleashing a 12-hour torrent unrivaled in the history of European weather observations. It’s the latest extreme rain event supercharged by climate change that follows a summer of historic deluges in the Northern Hemisphere. In just 12 hours, 29.2 inches of rain fell in Rossiglione in Italy’s Genoa province, roughly 65 miles south-southwest of Milan and 10 miles north of the Mediterranean coastline. It marked the…

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Urban heat is getting more dangerous

Urban heat is getting more dangerous

Gizmodo reports: Urban heat is more dangerous—and even deadly—than ever. That’s true for two reasons: Globally, more people are flocking to cities, and cities themselves are getting hotter due to the climate crisis. Those are the findings of a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. In it, researchers examined heat exposure in 13,115 global cities from 1983 to 2016. The findings are a warning to cities as the climate crisis turns up…

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Can nuclear fusion put the brakes on climate change?

Can nuclear fusion put the brakes on climate change?

Rivka Galchen writes: Let’s say that you’ve devoted your entire adult life to developing a carbon-free way to power a household for a year on the fuel of a single glass of water, and that you’ve had moments, even years, when you were pretty sure you would succeed. Let’s say also that you’re not crazy. This is a reasonable description of many of the physicists working in the field of nuclear fusion. In order to reach this goal, they had…

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Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Disney are among companies backing groups against U.S. climate bill

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Disney are among companies backing groups against U.S. climate bill

The Guardian reports: Some of America’s most prominent companies, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Disney, are backing business groups that are fighting landmark climate legislation, despite their own promises to combat the climate crisis, a new analysis has found. A clutch of corporate lobby groups and organizations have mobilized to oppose the proposed $3.5tn budget bill put forward by Democrats, which contains unprecedented measures to drive down planet-heating gases. The reconciliation bill has been called the “the most significant climate…

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Joe Manchin, America’s climate decider-in-chief, is also a coal baron

Joe Manchin, America’s climate decider-in-chief, is also a coal baron

Mark Hertsgaard writes: Joe Manchin has never been this famous. People around the world now know that the West Virginia Democrat is the essential 50th vote in the US Senate that president Joe Biden needs to pass his agenda into law. That includes Biden’s climate agenda. Which doesn’t bode well for defusing the climate emergency, given Manchin’s longstanding opposition to ambitious climate action. It turns out that the Senator wielding this awesome power – America’s climate decider-in-chief, one might call…

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Microsoft’s million-tonne carbon dioxide removal purchase — lessons for net zero

Microsoft’s million-tonne carbon dioxide removal purchase — lessons for net zero

Lucas Joppa et al write: In January this year, Microsoft made a major announcement: it had paid for the removal of 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Among its purchases were projects to expand forests in Peru, Nicaragua and the United States, as well as initiatives to regenerate soil across US farms. Microsoft will pay the Swiss firm Climeworks to operate a machine in Iceland that pulls CO2 from the air and injects it into the ground,…

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A radical group of centrists is wasting our best – and maybe last – chance to save the planet from climate change

A radical group of centrists is wasting our best – and maybe last – chance to save the planet from climate change

Dan Pfeiffer writes: There is no global solution to climate change without the United States; and our best chance to save the planet may be slipping through our fingers. John Podesta, the wisest of Washington wisemen, recently sent an urgent memo to every Democrat in the House and in the Senate, pleading with them to stop bickering and start legislating. Podesta spearheaded climate policy in the Obama White House during the second term and has been pushing the Democratic Party…

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As California burns, much of America breathes toxic smoke

As California burns, much of America breathes toxic smoke

Inside Climate News reports: Western wildfires pose a much broader threat to human health than to just those forced to evacuate the path of the blazes. Smoke from these fires, which have burned millions of acres in California alone, is choking vast swaths of the country, an analysis of federal satellite imagery by NPR’s California Newsroom and Stanford University’s Environmental Change and Human Outcomes Lab found. The months-long analysis, based on more than 10 years of data collected by the…

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The transformation of Greta Thunberg

The transformation of Greta Thunberg

Simon Hattenstone writes: Three years ago Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg was an unknown 15-year-old terrified that we were destroying the planet and furious that adults were letting it happen. Her fury was particularly directed at those with power. She decided to take unilateral action, and tweeted her plan. “We kids most often don’t do what you tell us to do. We do as you do. And since you grownups don’t give a damn about my future, I won’t either….

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President Xi declares end to Chinese support for new coal power abroad

President Xi declares end to Chinese support for new coal power abroad

Climate Change News reports: China will end its support for new coal power projects overseas, president Xi Jinping told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. For years, China has been the biggest public financer of foreign coal, particularly in rapidly-growing Asian economies, but has slowed down recently. President Xi’s speech was translated as: “China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.” The announcement…

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We’re finally catching a break in the climate fight

We’re finally catching a break in the climate fight

Bill McKibben writes: So far in the global warming era, we’ve caught precious few breaks. Certainly not from physics: the temperature has increased at the alarming pace that scientists predicted thirty years ago, and the effects of that warming have increased even faster than expected. (“Faster Than Expected” is probably the right title for a history of climate change so far; if you’re a connoisseur of disaster, there is already a blog by that name). The Arctic is melting decades…

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U.S. and EU pledge 30% cut in methane emissions to limit global heating

U.S. and EU pledge 30% cut in methane emissions to limit global heating

The Guardian reports: The US and the EU made a joint pledge on Friday to cut global methane emissions by almost a third in the next decade, in what climate experts hailed as one of the most significant steps yet towards fulfilling the Paris climate agreement. The pledge came as the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned of a “high risk of failure” at the vital UN climate talks, Cop26, set for Glasgow this November. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas,…

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Biden’s climate legislation to be shaped by fossil fuel industry’s favorite senator, Joe Manchin

Biden’s climate legislation to be shaped by fossil fuel industry’s favorite senator, Joe Manchin

The New York Times reports: Joe Manchin, the powerful West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate energy panel and earned half a million dollars last year from coal production, is preparing to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry — despite urgent calls from scientists that countries need to quickly pivot away from coal, gas and oil to avoid a climate catastrophe. Mr. Manchin has already emerged as the crucial…

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Exxon helped cause the climate crisis. It’s time they owned up

Exxon helped cause the climate crisis. It’s time they owned up

Mark Hertsgaard writes: Fossil fuel companies bear as much responsibility as governments do for humanity’s climate predicament – and for finding a way out. Our planetary house is on fire, and these companies have literally supplied the fuel. Worse, they lied about it for decades to blunt public awareness and policy reform. There’s no better time for ExxonMobil and other petroleum giants to be held accountable than at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November. The Glasgow summit is…

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Drought puts 2.1 million Kenyans at risk of starvation

Drought puts 2.1 million Kenyans at risk of starvation

The Guardian reports: An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans face starvation due to a drought in half the country, which is affecting harvests. The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) said people living in 23 counties across the arid north, northeastern and coastal parts of the country will be in “urgent need” of food aid over the next six months, after poor rains between March and May this year. The crisis has been compounded by Covid-19 and previous poor rains, it said,…

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