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Category: Climate Change

Melting permafrost in Arctic will have $70tn climate impact, study predicts

Melting permafrost in Arctic will have $70tn climate impact, study predicts

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The Guardian reports: The release of methane and carbon dioxide from thawing permafrost will accelerate global warming and add up to $70tn (£54tn) to the world’s climate bill, according to the most advanced study yet of the economic consequences of a melting Arctic. If countries fail to improve on their Paris agreement commitments, this feedback mechanism, combined with a loss of heat-deflecting white ice, will cause a near 5% amplification of global warming and its associated costs, says the paper,…

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Earth Day founder thinks we’re close to political breakthrough on climate

Earth Day founder thinks we’re close to political breakthrough on climate

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Joe Romm writes: Denis Hayes, the principal national organizer of the first Earth Day, in April 1970, said on Monday that the upcoming 50th anniversary next year will be “the largest, most diverse action in human history.” The goal is to engage three billion people around the world with a focus on climate change. Thanks to a resurgence in youth-led climate activism, Hayes told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that “2020 will be for climate what…

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We’re losing the war on climate change

We’re losing the war on climate change

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John D. Sutter writes: For years now, people like environmentalist and journalist Bill McKibben have been screaming from the treetops that we need a World War II-scale mobilization to fight the scourge of climate change. They’re right, of course. And on Earth Day — that 24-hour sliver of the calendar when we talk about the fact that humans exist on, and because of, a living planet — it’s clear not only that we are losing this war but that we…

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Global wealth gap would be smaller today without climate change, study finds

Global wealth gap would be smaller today without climate change, study finds

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The New York Times reports: Climate change creates winners and losers. Norway is among the winners; Nigeria among the losers. Those are the stark findings of a peer-reviewed paper by two Stanford University professors who have tried to quantify the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions on global inequality. It was published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Global temperatures have risen nearly 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the start of the industrial age,…

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Our zero-emission future

Our zero-emission future

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Jeffrey D. Sachs writes: The solution to human-induced climate change is finally in clear view. Thanks to rapid advances in zero-carbon energy technologies, and in sustainable food systems, the world can realistically end greenhouse-gas emissions by mid-century at little or no incremental cost, and with decisive benefits for safety and health. The main obstacle is inertia: politicians continue to favor the fossil-fuel industry and traditional agriculture mainly because they don’t know better or are on the take. Most global warming,…

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Flight attendants know the real job killer isn’t the Green New Deal. It’s climate change

Flight attendants know the real job killer isn’t the Green New Deal. It’s climate change

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Sara Nelson writes: “Pretty much everyone on the plane threw up” is not a sentence most travelers want to hear. But that’s a direct quote from the pilots’ report after United Express Flight 3833 operated by Air Wisconsin hit extreme turbulence on approach to Washington, DC, in 2018. Extreme turbulence is on the rise around the world. It isn’t just nauseating or scary — it’s dangerous. In June 2017, nine passengers and a crew member were hospitalized after extreme turbulence…

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Extinction Rebellion and Attenborough put climate in spotlight in the UK

Extinction Rebellion and Attenborough put climate in spotlight in the UK

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The Guardian reports: With Extinction Rebellion making headlines and Sir David Attenborough broadcasting The Facts on BBC One, climate change has gone mainstream this Easter. A nation has been watching protesters glue themselves to trains, turn London’s roads into gardens and actively invite arrest in their hundreds. As a media strategy it is working. How did glueing yourself to a train highlight climate change, Radio 4’s Today presenter Nick Robinson asked Dr Gail Bradbrook, an Extinction Rebellion co-founder. “It gets…

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How people around the world view climate change

How people around the world view climate change

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Pew Research Center reports: Majorities in most surveyed countries say global climate change is a major threat to their nation. In fact, it’s seen as the top threat in 13 of 26 surveyed countries, more than any other issue the survey asked about. People in Greece express very high levels of concern, with 90% labeling climate change a major threat (similar to the 88% there who cite the condition of the global economy). People in South Korea, France, Spain and…

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What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal?

What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal?

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What if we actually pulled off a #GreenNewDeal? What would the future look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated and co-written by Rep. @AOC and illustrated by @mollycrabapple. https://t.co/zAMLAizbN7 pic.twitter.com/PywCR0jPUl — The Intercept (@theintercept) April 17, 2019

The financial sector must be at the heart of tackling climate change

The financial sector must be at the heart of tackling climate change

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Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of Banque de France, and Frank Elderson, chair of the Network for Greening the Financial System, write: The catastrophic effects of climate change are already visible around the world. From blistering heatwaves in North America to typhoons in south-east Asia and droughts in Africa and Australia, no country or community is immune. These events damage infrastructure and private property, negatively affect health, decrease productivity and destroy wealth….

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Notre Dame as a metaphor for our planet

Notre Dame as a metaphor for our planet

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In a world where we are so often told that the indomitable human spirit can accomplish almost anything, the response to catastrophes natural or otherwise, accidental or intentional, is that following every loss we can rebuild or recreate. Whatever falls can rise anew — or so the popular conviction would have it. Likewise, in the realm of our mundane and material life, whatever breaks or wears out, can be replaced — often with something better. We live in collective denial…

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Forget Brexit and focus on climate change, Greta Thunberg tells EU

Forget Brexit and focus on climate change, Greta Thunberg tells EU

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The Guardian reports: The teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has chided EU leaders for holding three emergency summits on Brexit and none on the threat posed by climate change. In a clarion call to Europe’s political leaders ahead of European parliament elections in May, the founder of the school strike movement said if politicians were serious about tackling climate change they would not spend all their time “talking about taxes or Brexit”. In a typically blunt speech, she said politicians…

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Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse

Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse

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George Monbiot writes: By throwing up our hands about the calamities that could one day afflict us, we disguise and distance them, converting concrete choices into indecipherable dread. We might relieve ourselves of moral agency by claiming that it’s already too late to act, but in doing so we condemn others to destitution or death. Catastrophe afflicts people now and, unlike those in the rich world who can still afford to wallow in despair, they are forced to respond in…

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Central American farmers head to the U.S., fleeing climate change

Central American farmers head to the U.S., fleeing climate change

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The New York Times reports: The farmer stood in his patch of forlorn coffee plants, their leaves sick and wilted, the next harvest in doubt. Last year, two of his brothers and a sister, desperate to find a better way to survive, abandoned their small coffee farms in this mountainous part of Honduras and migrated north, eventually sneaking into the United States. Then in February, the farmer’s 16-year-old son also headed north, ignoring the family’s pleas to stay. The challenges…

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Investing in renewable energy in order to increase oil production

Investing in renewable energy in order to increase oil production

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Jesse Barron writes: Rex Tillerson stood under a 32-foot pipe organ at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, explaining how the world worked. It was May 2015, in the middle of an oil-price crash, and Exxon Mobil’s earnings had fallen 46 percent compared with the same quarter the year before. But Tillerson, then Exxon’s chief executive, told his shareholders to be confident in the future. Oil and gas furnished billions of people, including the very poor, with cheap,…

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