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Category: Climate Change

The psychology of Greta Thunberg’s climate activism

The psychology of Greta Thunberg’s climate activism

Scott Koenig writes: In September 2019, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage activist, excoriated world leaders for their ongoing failure to address the climate crisis. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she said at one point during her speech at the United Nations. Thunberg has been galvanizing public support for climate action since rising to prominence with her school strike about a year ago, and her latest remarks are no exception. They’ve attracted millions of…

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Paris accord pledges are ‘totally insufficient’ to meet critical climate targets, scientists warn

Paris accord pledges are ‘totally insufficient’ to meet critical climate targets, scientists warn

Inside Climate News reports: While nearly all of the world’s countries have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, the reductions they’re planning in the short term—over the next 10 years—aren’t nearly enough, leading scientists warn in a new report. Nearly two-thirds of the pledges under the Paris climate agreement are “totally insufficient” to meet critical climate targets, the report by scientists who have been involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found. To keep global warming under…

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Our fate turns on retiring our dualist view of nature

Our fate turns on retiring our dualist view of nature

Philip Goff writes: Since 1980, the temperature of the planet has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius, resulting in unprecedented melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the acidification of oceans. In 2015, 175 million more people were exposed to heat waves compared with the average for 1986 to 2008, and the number of weather-related disasters from 2007 to 2016 was up by 46 percent compared with the average from 1990 to 1999. This is nothing in comparison to the horrors…

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We are running out of unpolluted air

We are running out of unpolluted air

The Atlantic reports: Officials have implored the people of New Delhi to stay inside, indefinitely. Five million children in India’s capital have been handed face masks. Everyone is to keep windows closed. Contrary to the most fundamental medical advice, the city’s chief minister urged residents this week to “avoid outdoor physical activities.” News images seem cut from an apocalyptic outbreak film. One of India’s holiest rivers is covered in toxic foam that looks like white cotton candy. Midday visibility is…

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Brazil ignores dire climate impact in holding oil auction

Brazil ignores dire climate impact in holding oil auction

Reuters reports: Brazil is overlooking potentially dire climate change consequences by moving ahead with its biggest auction ever of oil exploration blocs that could release millions of tonnes of carbon emissions, according to environmental activists. The country’s oil regulator ANP estimates that the blocs up for sale on Wednesday in the offshore pre-salt oil area could contain up to 15 billion barrels of oil. Consuming that oil would release up to 8.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the standard…

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Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’

Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’

The Guardian reports: The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists. “We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” it states. “To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.” There is no time to lose,…

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The next U.S. president must rejoin the Paris climate accord

The next U.S. president must rejoin the Paris climate accord

Elizabeth Warren writes: President Trump has now fulfilled his disastrous promise to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement represents decades of work by both Democratic and Republican administrations to achieve a common goal: bringing every country of the world together to tackle the climate crisis, the existential threat of our time. President Trump surprised no one with his decision to withdraw from the agreement. It is yet another reckless choice in line with his…

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Bill McKibben on U.S. withdrawal from the Paris accord, California fires, climate refugees & more

Bill McKibben on U.S. withdrawal from the Paris accord, California fires, climate refugees & more

  The Trump administration notified the United Nations Monday that it would withdraw the U.S. from the historic Paris climate agreement, starting a year-long process to leave the international pact to fight the climate crisis. The United States — the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter — will become the only country outside the accord. Trump’s announcement of the withdrawal came on the first day possible under the agreement’s rules. From Middlebury, Vermont, Democracy Now speaks with Bill McKibben, co-founder…

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Indigenous people and illegal miners are engaged in a fight that may help decide the future of the planet

Indigenous people and illegal miners are engaged in a fight that may help decide the future of the planet

Jon Lee Anderson writes: One day in 2014, Belém, a member of Brazil’s Kayapo tribe, went deep into the forest to hunt macaws and parrots. He was helping to prepare for a coming-of-age ceremony, in which young men are given adult names and have their lips pierced. By custom, initiates wear headdresses adorned with tail feathers. Belém, whose Kayapo name is Takaktyx, an honorific form of the word “strong,” was a designated bird hunter. Far from his home village of…

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Fracking banned in UK as government makes major U-turn

Fracking banned in UK as government makes major U-turn

The Guardian reports: The government has banned fracking with immediate effect in a watershed moment for environmentalists and community activists. Ministers also warned shale gas companies it would not support future fracking projects, in a crushing blow to companies that had been hoping to capitalise on one of the new frontiers of growth in the fossil fuel industry. The decision draws a line under years of bitter opposition to the controversial extraction process in a major victory for green groups…

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California is on track to miss its climate targets — by a century

California is on track to miss its climate targets — by a century

MIT Technology Review reports: California has established itself as a global model on climate issues, with Teslas filling its roads and solar farms stretching across its sun-baked Central Valley. The state set up the nation’s first economy-wide cap-and-trade program, put in place aggressive vehicle fuel efficiency standards, and passed a series of ever stricter climate pollution rules. That includes the landmark 2018 law requiring all of the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free sources by the end of 2045. But…

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Climate change is burning down California

Climate change is burning down California

Michael E. Mann writes: Climate change was long regarded as a distant threat, one happening in far off places and future times. That is unfortunately no longer the case. Climate change is here, and it’s burning through California. I spent five years in the San Francisco Bay Area getting my undergraduate degrees in applied math and physics from UC-Berkeley. To see my campus threatened by the fires is heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine how bad it is for those who…

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Rising seas will erase more cities by 2050, new research shows

Rising seas will erase more cities by 2050, new research shows

The New York Times reports: Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, according to new research, threatening to all but erase some of the world’s great coastal cities. The authors of a paper published Tuesday developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new…

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Stanford study casts doubt on carbon capture

Stanford study casts doubt on carbon capture

Stanford News Service reports: One proposed method for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere – and reducing the risk of climate change – is to capture carbon from the air or prevent it from getting there in the first place. However, research from Mark Z. Jacobson at Stanford University, published in Energy and Environmental Science, suggests that carbon capture technologies can cause more harm than good. “All sorts of scenarios have been developed under the assumption that carbon…

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Massachusetts sues Exxon over climate change, accusing the oil giant of fraud

Massachusetts sues Exxon over climate change, accusing the oil giant of fraud

Inside Climate News reports: Oil giant ExxonMobil, already fighting a climate-related investor fraud case in New York, has been hit with a second lawsuit: The Massachusetts Attorney General is accusing the company of defrauding investors and threatening the world economy. This newest legal blow landed Thursday in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston in a complaint alleging Exxon repeatedly violated the state’s consumer and investor protection law and related regulations. The lawsuit accuses Exxon of a broad sweep of misconduct…

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Trump administration to begin official withdrawal from Paris climate accord

Trump administration to begin official withdrawal from Paris climate accord

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is preparing the formal withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to three people briefed on the matter, a long expected move that nevertheless remains a powerful signal to the world. The official action sets in motion a withdrawal that still would take a year to complete under the rules of the accord. Abandoning the landmark 2015 agreement in which nearly 200 nations vowed to reduce…

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