Part 4 – Capitalist agriculture: class formation and the metabolic rift Libcom.org In this fourth installment on our series on food and climate, we look at the dynamics of capitalist agriculture in terms of production, class formation, and the ‘metabolic rift’ in the nitrogen cycle. Part 1 (Climate, class, and the Neolithic revolution) looked at the…
Read More about LibCom series on Capitalist agricultureCalifornia Drought Tests History of Endless Growth The New York Times For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley,…
Read More about News updateEditor’s note: Allan Savory is the recipient of the 2003 Australian International Banksia Award for the person or organization doing the most for the environment on a global scale. Below is Executive Summary of his paper on combating Climate Change. Executive Summary Simplistic and counter intuitive as it may be, the fate of civilization today hangs…
Read More about Allan Savory: A Global Strategy for Addressing Global Climate ChangeGreen energy: Unrealistic targets Pandurang Hegde, Deccan Herald Recently the Minister of Power, Coal and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal reassured the commitment of the Central government in achieving the target of 1,75,000 MW of green energy by 2022. The performance of green energy projects needs to be assessed in the light of ground level experiences…
Read More about News updateKevin Anderson, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Exeter University Read Kevin Anderson’s open letter to the UK Prime Minister on Climate Change The letter summarises why the IPCC’s carbon budgets for a “likely” chance of not exceeding the international community’s 2°C commitment, requires the EU to reduce the emissions from its energy system by 80% by 2030, with…
Read More about Video: Climate Change – Delivering on 2°CCould India’s Coal Plans Derail the Global Climate? Tobias Engelmeier, The Energy Collective If India were to grow its electricity system based on coal (as China has done), would it derail the global climate? According to our calculations, under a “coal-heavy” scenario, India would need to increase is coal-fired power generation capacity from the 156…
Read More about News updateEnvironmental Risks Dominate the WEF Global Risks Report 2015 Edge Environment Surveyed responses ranked the risks of ‘Water Crises’, ‘Failure of Climate Change Adaptation’ and ‘Extreme Weather Events’ among the topmost likely and impactful global risks in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2015. These potential risks were considered of greater importance than other…
Read More about Four Reports: Global Risks, Water, Food Policy & ‘Natural Capital’Goldilocks Is Dead Richard Heinberg Five years ago I wrote an article for Reuters titled “Goldilocks and the Three Fuels.” In it, I discussed what I call the Goldilocks price zone for oil, natural gas, and coal, a zone in which prices are “just right”—high enough to reward producers but low enough to entice consumers….
Read More about News updateArctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter maximum The Guardian, UK Arctic sea ice has hit a record low for its maximum extent in winter, which scientists said was a result of climate change and abnormal weather patterns. The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) said on Thursday that at its…
Read More about News updateAsian Youth Climate Network Last year in COP 20- Lima, youth from many Asian countries came together to form a mega coalition – Asian Youth Climate Network, which has participant organizations from countries including Nepal, India, China, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan. The idea of having the Asian network is to ensure that youth voices from…
Read More about Call for participation: Asian Youth Climate Network Working GroupsCan Solar be the Backbone of India’s Energy System by 2035? Tobias Engelmeier, The Energy Collective Around 70% of India’s power comes from coal, less than 1% from solar. Will that change in the next 20 years? Can solar become the new backbone of the Indian energy system? I think there is a good possibility…
Read More about News updateGlobal 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…
Read More about News updateLester Brown: ‘Vast dust bowls threaten tens of millions with hunger’ The Guardian, UK Vast tracts of Africa and of China are turning into dust bowls on a scale that dwarfs the one that devastated the US in the 1930s, one of the world’s pre-eminent environmental thinkers has warned. Over 50 years, the writer Lester…
Read More about News updateIncrementum ad Absurdum: Growth and Inequality in a Carbon-Constrained World David Woodward The paper seeks to assess the timeframe for eradication of poverty, defined by poverty lines of $1.25 and $5 per person per day at 2005 purchasing power parity, if pre-crisis (1993-2008) patterns of income growth were maintained indefinitely, taking account of the differential…
Read More about Growth and Inequality in a Carbon-Constrained WorldIndia’s 100 GW Solar Target Could Create 1 Million Jobs by 2022 The Energy Collective Delhi is abuzz as the first renewable energy-financing summit organized by the Indian government, RE-Invest 2015, wrapped up with commitments totaling a whopping 266 GW of renewable energy in the next 5 years. For context of the magnitude of these…
Read More about News updateMadhya Pradesh to get world’s largest solar power plant Times of India Next year on Independence Day, India will have the world’s largest 750MW solar power plant in Rewa district of Madhya Pradesh, which will pip America’s much-vaunted 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar project in California, commissioned four days ago. The state government is setting up…
Read More about News updateRichard Matthews, Global Warming Is Real We need new narratives to combat the pervasive popular and political inertia. Our old narratives are not working and may even lead to apathy and indifference. Despite the scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change we are not moving fast enough to change our perilous course. According to a 2013…
Read More about Richard Matthews: Why We Need a New Climate Change NarrativeThe Fracking Bust Hits Home Wolf Richter, Wolf Street In the latest reporting week, drillers idled another 84 rigs, the second biggest weekly cut ever, after idling 83 and 94 rigs in the two prior weeks. Only 1056 rigs are still drilling for oil, down 443 for the seven reporting weeks so far this year…
Read More about News updateCommodities crash: Bad news for the world economy, but is anyone listening? Kurt Cobb Reading the general run of financial headlines might lead one to believe that price declines in those commodities which are highly sensitive to economic conditions such as iron ore, copper, oil, natural gas, coal, and lumber are good on their face… Food…
Read More about News updateContrasting outcomes of recent global warming meetings Sagar Dhara Two recent meetings on global warming, one scientific and the other political, are of great public interest as they have a bearing on human society’s future course to become a sustainable global community. The meetings contrasted each other in the clarity of their outcomes. The first…
Read More about Sagar Dhara: Keep the Climate, Change the Economy
