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CLIMATE CRISIS

CLIMATE CRISIS

A Farmer’s Life Crisis — And India’s Farming Predicament

8th January 2016

IndiaSpend reports: Indian farms depend too much on increasingly uncertain rainfall: while there was not enough rain during the pre-monsoon kharif season (July-October) last year, there has been vastly excess rainfall during this rabi season (October-March). For instance, Eastern Rajasthan, the farm belt of the desert state, had more than 14 times the normal rainfall during this pre-monsoon season….

Melting asphalt distorts road markings in New Delhi, May 27, 2015

Harish Tyagi/EPA

IISc study shows minimum temperatures rising in India

7th January 2016

IISc scientists report that minimum temperatures show “more pronounced” changes, compared to maximum temperatures in India. While maximum temperatures showed “a significant upward trend” in post-monsoon months in most regions, there was a rise in minimum temperatures across India in most seasons. The number of “significant trends” was greater for minimum temperatures than for maximum….

Post Carbon Institute

Can We Have Our Climate and Eat It Too?

6th January 2016

Noted energy expert Richard Heinberg writes: Our primary task this century will be to shrink the economy and rein in population while promoting human well being. We can do so as we minimize climate change by reducing energy consumption and by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy resources. Otherwise, we get climate chaos and economic collapse….

The world’s wealthiest few can fund an energy revolution

5th January 2016

The personal fortunes of just 782 of the world’s wealthiest people could power half the world—Africa, Latin America, and “most of Asia”—with 100 percent renewable energy within 15 years, according to a new Friends of the Earth report. Broken down by continent, it would take the wealth of just 53 rich people to power Africa….

NEWS UPDATE #78

3rd January 2016

The hottest year in recorded history is coming to a close with a wave of extreme weather and ecosystem shifts, from unprecedented flooding in the United Kingdom to dangerous deluges in South America. Looking back at 2015, it’s clear that such extremes are not the exception, but the rule for the last year and beyond….

Miguel Villagran/Getty Images

How viable is renewable energy?

28th December 2015

Both solar and wind energy depend on rare earth elements that will likely become scarce in 20 years or so. China accounted for 95 percent of the world’s rare-earth production, raising fears that it might exert monopolistic control. Meanwhile, renewable energy technologies that could function without rare earths, particularly photovoltaic technologies, aren’t close to deployment….

NEWS UPDATE #77

24th December 2015

As many as 50 million people across the world face potential hunger, disease, and water shortages by early 2016 if countries do not act immediately, declared Oxfam on Monday, addressing those nations predicted to be ravaged by this year’s Super El Niño as well as wealthy governments indebted to those most vulnerable to climate change…

Energyemp.com

Why no meat at the Paris climate talks?

23rd December 2015

Devinder Sharma writes: The cumulative impact of cattle rearing in Australia, transportation of cattle from the ranches down under to China, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions alone is going to be enormous. And yet meat consumption has not been mentioned at Paris climate talks. The reason is simple. The western lifestyle has not to be disturbed….

Dead mango trees at the author's farm during the drought of 2011-2015

Uma Shankari

Did Marx call the peasant an idiot? He was right, I am an idiot.

22nd December 2015

Chittoor-based farmer and activist Uma Shankari writes: After the year 2010, for the first time we’ve had good rains; in fact exceptionally good rains, a side effect of the Chennai disaster. My husband used to say, “If Chennai drowns, we’ll be saved”. This time it came true. We’ve not seen such heavy rains in twenty, thirty years….

Paris Climate Accord: Interactive guide and post-mortem

20th December 2015

This interactive graphic by Carbon Brief outlines and explaines all the fundamental components of the Paris climate deal. Among other issues, the graphic covers mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance and transparency. It looks at the elements of the so-called “ambition mechanism”, the inclusion of a 1.5C aspirational target, the long-term goal, and much more….

Mohammad Moniruzzaman/Flicker

Surya Sethi: Ten Inconvenient Truths About the Paris Climate Accord

18th December 2015

Surya P. Sethi, India’s former Core Climate Negotiator, writes in The Wire: To those who say the Paris Accord “signals an end to the fossil fuel era”; I say please look at Bloomberg’s commodities page – fossil fuels are being produced in never before quantities and sold at the lowest ever prices in real terms….

Frida Kahlo

Charles Eisenstein: What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves

17th December 2015

Author Charles Eisenstein writes: We will not escape this crisis so long as we see the planet and everything on it as instruments of our utility. The present climate change narrative veers too close to instrumental utilitarian logic — that we should value the earth because of what will happen to us if we don’t….

Why India is about to move to the ‘center stage’ of world energy

16th December 2015

Chris Mooney reports: “India is moving to the center stage of global energy,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol says. “All the numbers are indicating that India will be the number one country in terms of coal consumption and oil demand growth worldwide. India will also have more than 20 percent of the solar PV worldwide.”…

Richard Heinberg: An open letter to climate leaders

Author and Post Carbon Institute founder Richard Heinberg writes: Here are nine critical issues to consider as we come away from COP21–because as media commentaries about whether the COP21 meetings were a success or a failure run their course, the burden falls on our shoulders to return to the hard work of fighting for, and implementing, the energy transition….

NEWS UPDATE #76 (Climate special)

14th December 2015

Lekha Sridhar writes: The picture that emerges is of India demanding climate justice from an unrepentant West, which happily belched out carbon emissions for centuries and now does not want to allow developing countries their fair share of the carbon space. However, the Indian media should steer clear from lionising India’s rhetoric on climate change….

Doug Grinbergs

What Worries the World’s Most Famous Climate Scientist?

13th December 2015

Climate scientist James Hansen doesn’t regard a carbon levy and dividend as a panacea. The globe will have to address its old cheap energy addictions to speed, quantity and mobility too. We might also have to abandon the myth of “clean energy,” because every form of energy comes with an ecological price tag and a moral quandary….

Why have we failed to address climate change?

12th December 2015

In this essay, leading Australian public intellectual Robert Manne writes: Our conscious destruction of a planet friendly to humans and other species is the most significant development in history. No less important than the impact of climate change is the question of why human beings have so far failed so comprehensively to rise to its challenge….

Reuters

COP21 Could See a Political Victory But There’s a Reason to Be Very Cautious

11th December 2015

The figure quoted most often in climate change literature is a further warming of 0.6 ºC. This is unavoidable warming-in-the-pipeline, over and above the 1ºC rise the world has touched in 2015. This is not to minimise the political significance of the demand of 1.5 ºC, but to point out that it has already been breached….

From Hopelesshagen to Flop21: the shenanigans of climate change negotiations

Even if all emission pledges are fully implemented, temperature rise by 2100 will exceed 2oC, and may be in the range 3-4oC. The additional carbon space of 1,000 GtCO2 will fill by 2040, just 5 years later than had emissions continued in a business-as-usual manner. Clearly, the pledges are too little and have come too late….

Video: The Great Derangement – Amitav Ghosh on climate change

10th December 2015

There is no threat to any society, anywhere, that is remotely comparable to that of climate change. How can people summon so much indignation on so many matters and yet remain indifferent to a process that threatens their very existence? Nowhere is the disjunction more confounding than in India, which will be among the worst-affected….