CLIMATE CRISIS
Nihar Gokhale writes: 400 parts per million (ppm) refers to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. It is a level that has for long been considered a limit the world should not cross. On 10 May, an Australian monitoring station became the first in the southern hemisphere to record above 400ppm CO2….
Read More about Planet suffocation: Earth’s CO2 levels have crossed the tipping pointALTERNATIVES
“Life in Syntropy” is a short film that was screened at the Paris climate talks. It tells the story of Brazilian farmer Ernst Gotsch, who bought 1,200 acres of completely deforested land on the edge of the rainforest in 1984 and transformed it into a remarkably biodiverse farm that reverses climate change by sequestering carbon….
Read More about Life in Syntropy: The story of a transformation
CLIMATE CRISIS
Nihar Gokhale reports: Tata Steel, which is selling its UK business, has indicated that energy – made expensive by climate change policies – caused its steel to be too costly. But, a new report says companies have made billions in profits from climate change policies like carbon-trading. Tata Steel itself made over a billion Euros….
Read More about How Tata Steel UK made a billion dollars from climate policies
ALTERNATIVES
Sonal Shah writes: Cities have concentrated on bettering vehicle and fuel technologies and building bus rapid transit or metro rail systems. However, they need to focus on managing demand, augmenting their bus transport systems, improving last mile connectivity and enabling compact development. This will shift people towards non-motorised and public transport and avoid motorised trips….
Read More about What other cities can learn from Delhi’s experiments with public transport
NEWS ARCHIVE
Nikhil Dey & Aruna Roy writes: The cynical attitude towards the MGNREGA is an example of how policymakers are deliberately — by squeezing funds and subverting the legal mandate of the law — causing immeasurable misery and suffering. Through the fund squeeze, the government has consciously crippled the MGNREGA’s ability to help people facing drought….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #90CLIMATE CRISIS
Chris Martenson writes: The data seems to confirm this: Humanity is not going to painlessly wean itself off of fossil fuels. Instead, we will hit some sort of a wall: a food/population crisis, a climate crisis, or a debt/fiscal/economic crisis. Each of those candidates has its roots in our global society’s addition to fossil fuels….
Read More about Industrial civilisation can’t wean itself off fossil fuels painlessly
CLIMATE CRISIS
David Roberts writes: The great irony of climate change is that it’s so big we can barely care about it. We’re in a brief window of time when it is still possible to blunt the worst effects of climate change. So let’s try an imaginative exercise: connecting long-term climate consequences to our current political moment….
Read More about The decisions we make about climate change today will reverberate for millennia
Wccftech.com
ALTERNATIVES
In the Union Budget, the government has decided to exempt the new-age cesses on electric and hybrid cars. But are these green cars really green? They do not pollute the areas that they are being used in because all they are doing is move the pollution from the point of movement to the source of electricity….
Read More about In spite of cool advertising, electric cars (also) damage the environmentDevelopment/Growth
Fred Pearce reports: As part of India’s modernization program, Prime Minister Narenda Modi has called for doubling the nation’s coal production by 2020. If it moves forward, India seems set to create a mounting tide of victims — from the cycle-wallahs and refugees of Jharia’s coal fires, to the country’s air quality, to the planet’s climate….
Read More about On burning ground: The human cost of India’s push to produce more coal
CLIMATE CRISIS
Recently, after a great deal of debate, the passengers aboard the Titanic voted to impose modest limits sometime soon on the rate at which water is pouring into the doomed ship’s hull. Despite the torrents of self-congratulatory rhetoric that flooded into the media afterwards, that is the sum of what happened at the COP-21 climate conference in Paris….
Read More about Too little, too late: John Michael Greer on the climate accord
CLIMATE CRISIS
The developed world’s average per capita emissions are now a little more than twice the corresponding level in developing countries. But the emissions gap between rich and poor individuals, regardless of nation, has increased. And rich countries and individuals, as always, can rely on their wealth to protect them from many effects of global warming….
Read More about Why technology cannot adequately address climate change
Miguel Villagran/Getty Images
CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about How viable is renewable energy?CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about Paris Climate Accord: Interactive guide and post-mortem
Indianexpress.com
Digests/Specials
According to a recent survey, air pollution in Delhi is one-and-a-half times worse than in Beijing, which has always been among the world’s most polluted cities. This feature looks at Delhi’s unprecedented air pollution, which is endangering the health of its citizens, especially young children, and making the city a textbook example of urban dysfunction….
Read More about Special: Delhi’s alarming pollution problem
Mohammad Moniruzzaman/Flicker
CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about Surya Sethi: Ten Inconvenient Truths About the Paris Climate Accord
CLIMATE CRISIS
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.”…
Read More about Why India is about to move to the ‘center stage’ of world energy
Doug Grinbergs
CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about What Worries the World’s Most Famous Climate Scientist?CLIMATE CRISIS
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….
Read More about Why have we failed to address climate change?CLIMATE CRISIS
The richest 10% of people produce half of Earth’s climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions, while the poorest half contribute a mere 10%, British charity Oxfam said in a report released Wednesday. “Rich, high emitters should be held accountable for their emissions, no matter where they live,” Oxfam climate policy head, Tim Gore, said in a recent statement….
Read More about World’s richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions
CLIMATE CRISIS
We are already seeing chatter about whether this is our last chance to “save the world” or keep us below 2°C of global warming. But that’s the wrong way to think about Paris. They’re not designed to do that. The actual goal is more modest: to add structure and momentum to efforts that are already underway….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #75 (Climate special)
