The Green New Deal is everywhere, perhaps in part because it has remained nebulous. Years, cuts and specifics are all over the place depending on who you ask. The U.S. Green Party, for example, has detailed plans for what it might mean because they were the first to champion the concept here over the past decade, rather than just the past few months. Those plans include decarbonisation of the whole economy by 2030.
We interviewed Dahr Jamail about his new book, “The End of Ice,” for our podcast, Clearing the FOG, this week. It will be available Monday. Jamail describes the grim reality of human-caused climate distortion. The bottom line is: It is here. It is accelerating. We need to take swift action to attempt to mitigate it and adapt to it as best we can.
There is no greater failure than the failure to respond to this ecological crisis. We need a wartime-speed mobilization and a just transition to race to zero greenhouse gas emission and to take carbon out of the atmosphere in order to restore a safe climate. We are called to heroism in this hour of grave consequences. We still have an opportunity to fight for all humanity and all life on Earth to avert the worst of the disaster as it is still technically and economically possible.
Two hundred nations at Katowice COP24 Poland just wrapped up two-weeks of climate meetings. If history is a guide, CO2 emissions will continue to accelerate until COP25 next year in Chile. Still, the delegates did adopt a rule book to put Paris ’15 into action, Ahem!
But, hark! There’s a ray of sunshine peering out from behind the Katowice coal-clouded skyline because big money interests may be altering the landscape for combating global warming.
Exxon Mobil’s Billings Refinery in Billings, Mont. (AP/Matthew Brown)
The world as we know it is changing– dramatically and permanently. Several common species of animals are approaching extinction, along with various plants, and the homogenization of crops could incite a global food scarcity. Day to day human activities are a contributor, but there are 100 businesses that really take the cake in carbon emission.
In this photo taken Saturday, Oct. 10, 2015, solar panels at a solar power farm soaks in the sun in northwestern China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region. (AP/Ng Han Guan)
Carbon emissions from China’s energy sector stalled last year for the third year running — as coal use fell again and solar deployment nearly doubled.
The newly released government figures, analyzed by Greenpeace, also suggest that emissions are on track to fall this year by around 1%.
It is now almost six months since the Paris climate deal was agreed—the first legally binding commitment on curbing carbon emissions by all 195 United Nations countries. Nearly 170 of these countries have now formally signed the deal, notwithstanding concerns that the UK’s decision to leave the EU may jeopardise its full ratification. But what are the longer term prospects of governments drastically ramping up their mitigation efforts in order to meet the ambitious 1.5°C emissions target and prevent runaway global warming?
No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.
— Barack Obama, leader of the US global dominance regime, Nobel Peace Prize laureate. (Any questions?)
The current world energy sources are like this:
Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell tagged along on President Obama’s recent climate-change themed trip to Alaska. Goodell’s report included an interview with the President. The interview provides a window into central features of Barack Obama’s politics and policies.
Style Over Substance
Last weekend, about 100 U.S. Veterans for Peace gathered in Red Wing, Minnesota, for a statewide annual meeting. In my experience, Veterans for Peace chapters hold “no-nonsense” events. Whether coming together for local, statewide, regional or national work, the Veterans project a strong sense of purpose. They want to dismantle war economies and work to end all wars. The Minnesotans, many of them old friends, convened in the spacious loft of a rural barn.
