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Category: Climate Change

Climate change is our World War III. It needs a bold response

Climate change is our World War III. It needs a bold response

Joseph Stiglitz writes: Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with climate change and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States government to the Great Depression. An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II. Critics ask, “Can we afford it?” and…

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My green manufacturing plan for America

My green manufacturing plan for America

Elizabeth Warren writes: While much of the debate around the Green New Deal has focused on the path to aggressive reductions in domestic greenhouse gas emissions, the science is clear: even if we reduce America’s emissions so that they are net-zero by 2030, we will still fall far short of the reduction in global emissions needed to avert a climate crisis. To satisfy this global need, we need rapid innovation on par with the space race along with widespread domestic…

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UK and Trump are diametrically opposed on the necessity of tackling the climate crisis

UK and Trump are diametrically opposed on the necessity of tackling the climate crisis

Mark Lynas writes: Fresh from the latest disasters on Brexit, surely the last thing the UK needs is a state visit from the world’s provocateur-in-chief, Donald Trump. Trump’s position on Brexit — bring it on — may be divisive, but his denialist and pro-coal view on global heating and the climate crisis is even more extreme and makes him particularly unwelcome at this moment in Britain. The British parliament declared a ‘climate emergency’ in May, while a day later the…

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Kids suing the U.S. over climate crisis are getting global support

Kids suing the U.S. over climate crisis are getting global support

Quartz reports: In 2015, when a group of 21 children and teens first sued the US government over climate change, their claim in Juliana v. US was not totally new—youth in Uganda and the Netherlands had filed somewhat similar environmental suits—but it seemed a little strange. Shouldn’t these kids be playing video games or something, doing pretty much anything but litigating to save the planet? Now, the plaintiffs in Juliana v. US are part of an increasingly vocal global movement…

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Facebook is an enemy of the effort to avert catastrophic climate change, scientists say

Facebook is an enemy of the effort to avert catastrophic climate change, scientists say

Joe Romm reports: ThinkProgress asked some experts what Facebook’s latest actions mean for the national conversation on climate change. “Facebook is complicit in spreading outright falsehoods and misinforming the public about matters of public concern,” environmental sociologist Robert Brulle wrote in an email. The company’s “refusal to take down this blatant distortion of Speaker Pelosi shows that they are an irresponsible actor, and contributing to the decline of public discourse.” Brulle explained that Facebook’s actions are particularly disastrous since there…

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Puffins are starving to death because of climate change

Puffins are starving to death because of climate change

New Scientist reports: Hundreds of “severely emaciated” puffin carcasses have washed ashore on an Alaskan island, and researchers believe thousands more have died at sea as warming waters continue to shrink their food supply. Between October 2016 and January 2017, inhabitants of St Paul Island in the Bering sea found the starved bodies of more than 350 seabirds, primarily tufted puffins. Analysing the location of bird carcasses and wind data, Timothy Jones at the University of Washington in Seattle and…

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Influential panel votes to recognize Earth’s new epoch: The Anthropocene

Influential panel votes to recognize Earth’s new epoch: The Anthropocene

Nature reports: A panel of scientists voted this week to designate a new geologic epoch — the Anthropocene — to mark the profound ways in which humans have altered the planet. That decision, by the 34-member Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), marks an important step towards formally defining a new slice of the geologic record — an idea that has generated intense debate within the scientific community over the past few years. The panel plans to submit a formal proposal for…

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Trump administration hardens its assault on climate science

Trump administration hardens its assault on climate science

The New York Times reports: President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis. Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault. In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback…

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Top GOP pollster finds overwhelming support for carbon tax by millennial Republicans

Top GOP pollster finds overwhelming support for carbon tax by millennial Republicans

Joe Romm reports: A new survey finds Republicans under 40 support a carbon tax 7-to-1. And a remarkable 85% of Republican millennials are concerned that “the current Republican position on climate change is hurting the party with younger voters.” But what makes this result so striking is that the survey was conducted by Frank Luntz, a top GOP strategist and pollster. Luntz wrote an infamous memo in 2002 detailing the exact words conservatives should use if they want to sound…

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European trade policy seen going greener after EU parliament vote

European trade policy seen going greener after EU parliament vote

Reuters reports: The rise of the Greens, the “Greta effect” of a young Swedish climate activist and the entry of French President Emmanuel Macron’s party into the European Parliament are likely to result in a more defensive and climate-oriented EU trade policy. Sunday’s European election saw the traditional conservative and socialist parties that have long run the European Union lose dozens of seats each. Between them, they can no longer form a majority, making them more reliant to pass European…

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‘This is bigger’: Palestinian and Israeli teens strike together for the climate

‘This is bigger’: Palestinian and Israeli teens strike together for the climate

Michael Bäcklund writes: The Israeli school strike branch had a very successful strike on Tuesday, which was three times bigger than the last one in March. It was the first sitting day of the new parliament. We had over 500 students marching and shouting slogans in front of the prestigious Knesset in Jerusalem. We had Arab Palestinians and Jewish Israelis participating together. We have multiplied our following on social media and we have started to plan social media campaign with…

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Living on Mars is a misguided fantasy

Living on Mars is a misguided fantasy

Philip Ball writes: Who said this? “I’ve been having to say everywhere I go that there is no planet B, there is no escape hatch, there is no second Earth; this is the only planet we have.” If you’re a science fiction fan the answer might surprise you: it was the writer Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Mars trilogy is an ultimately utopian series of tales that describe the terraforming of Mars – planetary engineering to give it an Earth-like environment…

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Greens surge as parties make strongest ever showing across Europe

Greens surge as parties make strongest ever showing across Europe

The Guardian reports: Green parties have swept to their strongest ever showing in European elections, boosting their tally of MEPs to a projected 71 compared with 52 last time. The result gives them every chance of becoming kingmakers in a newly fragmented parliament. “Thank you so much for your trust in us Greens,” a delighted Ska Keller, one of the European Greens’ two lead candidates for the post of European commission president, told a press conference in Brussels. “This is…

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Methane being released faster than ever, posing new threat to Paris climate goals

Methane being released faster than ever, posing new threat to Paris climate goals

The Independent reports: Record levels of methane in the atmosphere will make it even harder to reach targets set by the Paris climate agreement, scientists have warned. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found increasing amounts of the potent greenhouse gas were coming from the tropics. They are uncertain about the source but believe it is likely to be due to microbial changes in methane-belching tropical wetlands. They believe warmer temperatures could be causing them to emit…

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Misreading the story of climate change and the Maya

Misreading the story of climate change and the Maya

Stucco frieze from Placeres, Campeche, Mexico, Early Classic period, c. 250-600 AD. Wolfgang Sauber/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA By Kenneth Seligson, California State University, Dominguez Hills Carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere have reached 415 parts per million – a level that last occurred more than three million years ago, long before the evolution of humans. This news adds to growing concern that climate change will likely wreak serious damage on our planet in the coming decades. While Earth has not been…

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