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Category: Climate Change

Vegans are right about ethics and the environment

Vegans are right about ethics and the environment

Farhad Manjoo writes: Many of us, myself included, engage in painless, performative environmentalism. We’ll give up plastic straws and tweet passionately that someone should do something about the Amazon, yet few of us make space in our worldview to acknowledge the carcass in the room: the irrefutable evidence that our addiction to meat is killing the planet right before our eyes. After all, it takes only a few minutes of investigation to learn that there is one overwhelming reason the…

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Climate silence: Why we need to all start talking about climate change

Climate silence: Why we need to all start talking about climate change

Joe Romm writes: Americans rarely talk about climate change with family and friends. Tragically, research shows that this climate silence reinforces the dangerously wrong belief that climate change isn’t an existential threat requiring urgent action. But a major new study led by Yale researchers finds that just discussing the issue with friends and family leads them to learn more facts about the climate crisis, which in turn leads to greater understanding and concern about the issue. The study, titled “Discussing…

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Educators must join students in demanding climate justice

Educators must join students in demanding climate justice

Jonathan Isham and Lee Smithey write: Sometimes it’s the students who teach. This week, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg arrived in New York City in a zero-emissions yacht, en route to the United Nations climate change summit. The purpose of the trip? Let’s call it a teachable moment. Over the past year, Greta and more than 2 million teens around the world have led school strikes for climate justice, demanding that their leaders end the age of fossil fuels. Now these young…

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A new strategy on climate: Try to outlast Trump

A new strategy on climate: Try to outlast Trump

Politico reports: World leaders and major companies intent on dealing with climate change have settled on a strategy for handling President Donald Trump: snub him. When Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency this week proposed withdrawing Obama-era rules to limit emissions of methane from oil and gas wells or pipelines, major oil companies said they wanted the rules to remain. Some of the world’s largest automakers are ignoring the administration’s attempt to do away with rising fuel efficiency mandates. And when Trump…

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How Brazil’s nationalist leader built a bond with Trump and won his support in the Amazon fires dispute

How Brazil’s nationalist leader built a bond with Trump and won his support in the Amazon fires dispute

The Washington Post reports: President Trump was preparing for the Group of Seven summit in France when he learned that one of his most ardent suitors was trying to reach him. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro needed a favor, and Trump told aides to patch the call through. Bolsonaro got right to the point: The powerful G-7 countries, including France and Canada, were unfairly ganging up on Brazil over their criticism of his government’s response to massive fires ravaging the Amazon…

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Amazon fires show world heading for point of no return, says UN

Amazon fires show world heading for point of no return, says UN

The Guardian reports: The fires in the Amazon are “extraordinarily concerning” for the planet’s natural life support systems, the head of the UN’s top biodiversity body has said in a call for countries, companies and consumers to build a new relationship with nature. Cristiana Paşca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest was a grim reminder that a fresh approach was needed to stabilise the climate and prevent…

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Europe is warming even faster than climate models predicted

Europe is warming even faster than climate models predicted

Gizmodo reports: Over the past seven decades, the number of extreme heat days in Europe has steadily increased, while the number of extreme cold days has decreased, according to new research. Alarmingly, this trend is happening at rates faster than those proposed by climate models. For most Europeans, this new study will hardly come as a surprise. This summer, for example, temperatures in southern France reached a record 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit), with similar temperature extremes happening at…

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EPA to remove regulations on methane, a potent greenhouse gas

EPA to remove regulations on methane, a potent greenhouse gas

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration laid out on Thursday a far-reaching plan to cut back on the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency, in its proposed rule, aims to eliminate federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. It will also reopen the question of whether the E.P.A. even has the legal authority to regulate methane…

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Hurricanes and the climate crisis: What you need to know

Hurricanes and the climate crisis: What you need to know

Climate Reality reports: Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas is warming our planet and driving climate change. It’s throwing natural systems out of balance – to often devastating effect. One result among many is that average global sea surface temperatures are rising – and when sea surface temperatures become warmer, hurricanes can become more powerful. “For a long time, we’ve understood, based on pretty simple physics, that as you warm the ocean’s surface, you’re…

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The man who got economists to take climate worst-case scenarios seriously

The man who got economists to take climate worst-case scenarios seriously

Bloomberg reports: What if climate change turns out to be worse than we think? That anxiety is now commonplace, but a decade ago it took an influential paper by a Harvard professor to convince the insular world of climate economists to focus more of their attention on worst-case scenarios. Martin Weitzman, who passed away this week at the age of 77, forever connected the notion of “fat tails” to the economics of climate risk. Before his 2009 paper overturned standard…

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A top financier of Trump and McConnell is a driving force behind Amazon deforestation

A top financier of Trump and McConnell is a driving force behind Amazon deforestation

The Intercept reports: Two Brazilian firms owned by a top donor to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are significantly responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest, carnage that has developed into raging fires that have captivated global attention. The companies have wrested control of land, deforested it, and helped build a controversial highway to their new terminal in the one-time jungle, all to facilitate the cultivation and export of grain and soybeans. The shipping…

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Bolsonaro ‘most detested’ leader as he neglects the Amazon, says Brazil’s former environment minister

Bolsonaro ‘most detested’ leader as he neglects the Amazon, says Brazil’s former environment minister

The Guardian reports: Jair Bolsonaro’s neglect of the Amazon has made him “the most despised and detested leader” on earth, Brazil’s former environment minister has claimed, as the far-right leader again rebuked French president Emmanuel Macron for challenging his environmental record. Rubens Ricupero warned Bolsonaro was wreaking havoc on both Brazil’s environment and its global standing, as Bolsonaro used Facebook to scold Macron’s “inappropriate and gratuitous attacks” over the Amazon fires and insult France’s first lady. “These people are lunatics,”…

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The Amazon fires are more dangerous than WMDs

The Amazon fires are more dangerous than WMDs

Franklin Foer writes: When Jair Bolosonaro won Brazil’s presidential election last year, having run on a platform of deforestation, David Wallace-Wells asked, “How much damage can one person do to the planet?” Bolsonaro didn’t pour lighter fluid to ignite the flames now ravishing the Amazon, but with his policies and rhetoric, he might as well have. The destruction he inspired—and allowed to rage with his days of stubborn unwillingness to douse the flames—has placed the planet at a hinge moment…

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David Koch escaped the climate hell he helped create

David Koch escaped the climate hell he helped create

Brian Kahn writes: David Koch is dead. The billionaire died this week at age 79 of causes yet unknown. While he certainly enjoyed the fruits of his labors to deregulate U.S. industry and reduce taxes on the super-wealthy like himself, he will never have to experience the consequences of his biggest achievement: putting the entire planet on the brink of crisis in the service of enriching himself and a few other fossil fuel billionaires. And we, the people and future…

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The Amazon is burning because the world eats so much meat

The Amazon is burning because the world eats so much meat

CNN reports: While the wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest may constitute an “international crisis,” they are hardly an accident. The vast majority of the fires have been set by loggers and ranchers to clear land for cattle. The practice is on the rise, encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s populist pro-business president, who is backed by the country’s so-called “beef caucus.” While this may be business as usual for Brazil’s beef farmers, the rest of the world is looking on…

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Global leaders urged to divert Brazilian government from ‘suicide’ path as Amazonian rainforest burns

Global leaders urged to divert Brazilian government from ‘suicide’ path as Amazonian rainforest burns

The Guardian reports: International pressure may be the only way to stop the Brazilian government from taking a “suicide” path in the Amazon, one of the country’s most respected scientists has said, as the world’s biggest rainforest continues to be ravaged by thousands of deliberate fires. The large number of conflagrations – set illegally to clear and prepare land for crops, cattle and property speculation – has prompted the state of Amazonas to declare an emergency, created giant smoke clouds…

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