How the fossil fuel industry turned the plan to solve climate change into a plan to save itself
Climate change
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The modern-day rise in global temperatures is driven by human activities, especially fossil fuel burning since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices release greenhouse gases. These gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight, warming the lower atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere now has roughly 50% more carbon dioxide, the main gas driving global warming, than it did at the end of the pre-industrial era, reaching levels not seen for millions of years.
Correcting climate ‘misperceptions’ may not boost climate action - Carbon Brief
Most people "underestimate" general support for climate change and "overestimate" actual, real-world climate action.
The Death of the Carbon Coalition
Existing models of U.S. politics are wrong. Here’s how the system really works.
China’s Shift to Clean Energy Is Saving the Paris Climate Accord
Beijing’s massive manufacturing investments have driven the costs of clean energy down.
In Deep
The numbers are simply mind-blowing: up to £264 billion for a climate “solution” that will increase emissions. Has the government lost its mind?
Green economic planning for rapid decarbonisation
Sustainable futures require deep social and economic transformations to address climate change adequately. The current landscape of intergovernmental and market-based coordination is not delivering...
The story of CO2 is the story of everything: how carbon dioxide made our world
"How carbon dioxide, the world's most important substance, shaped the planet's past and present-and holds the key to our future Carbon dioxide: this seemingly simple and ubiquitous substance is fundamental to how our planet works. All life is made from CO2, and its behavior on this planet has kept Earth bizarrely habitable for hundreds of millions of years. In its workings lie both the splendor of our world and the potential for life's destruction. In short, it is the most important substance in history. But why is CO2 as essential to life on Earth as it is capable of destroying it? In The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen reveals carbon dioxide's fundamental role in the operation and maintenance of our planet. Starting at the beginning of time and working all the way up to our present reality, he illuminates how CO2 has been responsible for the planet's many deaths and rebirths, the evolution of life, and the development of modern human society. Carbon dioxide's movement through rocks, air, oceans, and life has kept our planet's climate livable, its air breathable, and its oceans hospitable to complex life for more than five hundred million years. And only by understanding CO2 in the context of deep Earth history can we see how it gave rise to today's industrial economy-and more clearly recognize what it means to be churning through hundreds of millions of years of old life in the form of fossil fuels and converting it all to carbon dioxide. With groundbreaking research and a clear-eyed perspective, Brannen shows how a deep exploration into the mechanics of the carbon cycle and the history of our planet can provide hope for averting environmental catastrophe in the future. It all starts with a richer understanding of the essential role of one substance"--
Self-Burn
Thanks to Trump, people around the world are scrambling to get out of fossil fuels.
Sasha Luccioni, PhD 🦋🌎✨🤗 on Twitter / X
Man, this preprint is really the gift that keeps on giving.In case people missed my previous PSA : you can't compare the carbon emissions of people and objects. Humans are more than just the work that they do. (Also, that paper makes a lot of false assumptions in general) https://t.co/bZA414J9YI— Sasha Luccioni, PhD 🦋🌎✨🤗 (@SashaMTL) September 19, 2023
A Reality Check on Our ‘Energy Transition’ | The Tyee
To our peril, there’s been no green revolution. Just green addition to rising fossil fuel use.
France’s big climate problem: The budget crunch
Historic heat is forcing the French government to rethink its spending plans.
The New Geopolitics Of The Green Transition
The only path forward for tackling the climate crisis hinges on cooperative industrial strategies to coordinate clean energy investment and infrastructure development.
Europe must choose between AI and climate goals, data center lobby says
Tech sector says only carbon-emitting gas plants are reliable enough today to power the EU’s AI goals.
Knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene
The technosphere metabolizes not only energy and materials, but information and knowledge as well. This article first examines the history of knowledge about large-scale, long-term, anthropogenic environmental change. In the 19th and 20th centuries, major systems were built for monitoring both the environment and human activity of all kinds, for modeling geophysical processes such as climate change, and for preserving and refining scientific memory, i.e. data about the planetary past. Despite many failures, these knowledge infrastructures also helped achieve notable successes such as the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the ozone depletion accords of the 1980s, and the Paris Agreement on climate change of 2015. The article’s second part proposes that knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene might not only monitor and model the technosphere’s metabolism of energy, materials and information, but also integrate those techniques with new accounting practices aimed at sustainability. Scientific examples include remarkable recent work on long-term socio-ecological research, and the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In terms of practical knowledge, one key to effective accounting may be ‘recycling’ of the vast amounts of ‘waste’ data created by virtually all online systems today. Examples include dramatic environmental efficiency gains by Ikea and United Parcel Service, through improved logistics, self-provision of renewable energy, and feedback from close monitoring of delivery trucks. Blending social ‘data exhaust’ with physical and environmental information, an environmentally focused logistics might trim away excess energy and materials in production, find new ways to re-use or recycle waste, and generate new ideas for eliminating toxic byproducts, greenhouse gas emissions and other metabolites.
Knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene
The technosphere metabolizes not only energy and materials, but information and knowledge as well. This article first examines the history of knowledge about large-scale, long-term, anthropogenic environmental change. In the 19th and 20th centuries, major systems were built for monitoring both the environment and human activity of all kinds, for modeling geophysical processes such as climate change, and for preserving and refining scientific memory, i.e. data about the planetary past. Despite many failures, these knowledge infrastructures also helped achieve notable successes such as the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the ozone depletion accords of the 1980s, and the Paris Agreement on climate change of 2015. The article’s second part proposes that knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene might not only monitor and model the technosphere’s metabolism of energy, materials and information, but also integrate those techniques with new accounting practices aimed at sustainability. Scientific examples include remarkable recent work on long-term socio-ecological research, and the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In terms of practical knowledge, one key to effective accounting may be ‘recycling’ of the vast amounts of ‘waste’ data created by virtually all online systems today. Examples include dramatic environmental efficiency gains by Ikea and United Parcel Service, through improved logistics, self-provision of renewable energy, and feedback from close monitoring of delivery trucks. Blending social ‘data exhaust’ with physical and environmental information, an environmentally focused logistics might trim away excess energy and materials in production, find new ways to re-use or recycle waste, and generate new ideas for eliminating toxic byproducts, greenhouse gas emissions and other metabolites.