News update

Global warming ‘set to speed up to rates not seen for 1,000 years’
The Guardian, UK
New evidence suggests the rate at which temperatures are rising in the northern hemisphere could be 0.25C per decade by 2020 – a level not seen for at least 1,000 years. The analysis, based on a combination of data from more than two dozen climate simulation models from around the world, looked at the rate of change in 40-year long time spans.

Amazon rainforest losing ability to regulate climate, scientist warns
The Guardian, UK
The Amazon rainforest has degraded to the point where it is losing its ability to benignly regulate weather systems, according to a stark new warning from one of Brazil’s leading scientists. In a new report, Antonio Nobre, researcher in the government’s space institute, Earth System Science Centre, says the logging and burning of the world’s greatest forest might be connected to worsening droughts – such as the one currently plaguing São Paulo – and is likely to lead eventually to more extreme weather events.

Yemen’s collapse is a taste of things to come
Nafeez Ahmed, Middle East Eye
For more than the last decade, then, Yemen has faced a convergence of energy, water and food crises intensified by climate change, accelerating the country’s economic crisis in the form of ballooning debt, widening inequalities and the crumbling of basic public services. With revenues plummeting in the wake of the collapse of its oil industry, the government has been forced to slash subsidies while cranking up fuel and diesel prices. This has, in turn, cranked up prices of water, meat, fruits, vegetables and spices, leading to food riots.

Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre
Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian UK
This summer I am stepping down after 20 years of editing the Guardian. Over Christmas I tried to anticipate whether I would have any regrets. Very few, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species.

Climate fight won’t wait for Paris: vive la resistance
Bill McKibben
The official view: all eyes are on Paris, where negotiators will meet in December for a climate conference that will be described as “the most important diplomatic gathering ever” and “a last chance for humanity.” The actual story: what happens at Paris will be, at best, one small part of the climate story, one more skirmish in the long, hard-fought road to climate sanity. What comes before and after will count more.

Reclaim Environmentalism!
Derrick Jensen & Lierre Keith
Once, the environmental movement was about protecting the natural world from the insatiable demands of this extractive culture. Contrast this to what some activists are calling the conservation-industrial complex-­big green organizations, huge ‘environmental’ foundations, neo-environmentalists, some academics -­ which has co-opted too much of the movement into ‘sustainability’, with that word being devalued to mean ‘keeping this culture going as long as possible.’

Playing the fear card and playing the hope card
Albert Bates, The Great Change
Lately we have been pondering the strategies by which aware people have been approaching the existential threat posed by climate change. It makes little sense to squander time on strategies that are doomed to fail, so we periodically have to ask ourselves whether time devoted to our raging, reinventing and reframing is well spent.