Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fuelling (excerpt); The Guardian

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"Rising consumption by the affluent has a far greater environmental impact than the birth rate in poorer nations

When a major study was published last month, showing that the global population is likely to peak then crash much sooner than most scientists had assumed, I naively imagined that people in rich nations would at last stop blaming all the world’s environmental problems on population growth. I was wrong. If anything, it appears to have got worse.
 
Next week the BirthStrike movement – founded by women who, by announcing their decision not to have children, seek to focus our minds on the horror of environmental collapse – will dissolve itself, because its cause has been hijacked so virulently and persistently by population obsessives. The founders explain that they had “underestimated the power of ‘overpopulation’ as a growing form of climate breakdown denial”.

It is true that, in some parts of the world, population growth is a major driver of particular kinds of ecological damage, such as the expansion of small-scale agriculture into rainforests, the bushmeat trade and local pressure on water and land for housing. But its global impact is much smaller than many people claim.

The formula for calculating people’s environmental footprint is simple, but widely misunderstood: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology (I = PAT). The global rate of consumption growth, before the pandemic, was 3% a year. Population growth is 1%. Some people assume this means that the rise in population bears one-third of the responsibility for increased consumption. But population growth is overwhelmingly concentrated among the world’s poorest people, who have scarcely any A or T to multiply their P. The extra resource use and greenhouse gas emissions caused by a rising human population are a tiny fraction of the impact of consumption growth."

Go to the revealing, complete article by George Monbiot in The Guardian


Related: Far-reaching climate change risks to Australia must be reduced and managed: Aigroup

overpopulation, affluence, technology, #climatechange, #cambio-climatico, #foodsecurity, #criminalesclimáticosdelacárcel, #人类灭绝, 

Climate crisis: business, farming and environment leaders unite to warn Australia 'woefully unprepared' (excerpt): The Guardian

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The last generation who can do something about climate change.

 

An extraordinary statement by 10 groups says the nation’s future prosperity is at risk without a coherent response

Business, industry, farming and environmental leaders have joined forces to warn Australia is “woefully unprepared” for the impact of climate change over the coming decades and to urge the Morrison government to do far more to cut emissions and improve the country’s resilience.

Food systems must adapt

An extraordinary statement by 10 organisations, several with close ties to the Coalition, said climate change was already having a “real and significant” impact on the economy and community. The groups, representing the breadth of Australian society, called on the federal and state governments to act immediately to reduce and manage the risks.

Organisations including the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group, the National Farmers’ Federation, the Australian Aluminium Council and the ACTU said public debate about the cost of doing more to reduce emissions had too often not considered the cost of climate change to the economy, environment and society.

They cited evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that emissions would need to be net-zero by 2050 if the goals of the Paris agreement are to be achieved, and said Australia must adopt that target.

Methane produces greenhouse gas.

The statement, issued under the Australian Climate Roundtable banner, said Australia’s future prosperity would be at risk unless it had a coherent national response to the crisis.
“The scale of costs and breadth of the impact of climate change for people in Australia is deeply concerning and will escalate over time,” it said. “It is in Australia’s national interest that we do all we can to contribute to successful global action to minimise further temperature rises and take action to manage the changes we can’t avoid.”

Climate change is the real threat to the economy.

The groups, some of which have been involved in past campaigns to slow action on climate change, agreed to the statement after holding five climate-themed expert workshops. They heard from climate scientists and organisations including the Reserve Bank, the Australian Energy Market Operator and Insurance Australia Group. 

The statement said the expert advice made clear temperatures were increasing, extreme climate-related events such as heatwaves and bushfires were becoming more intense and frequent, and natural systems were suffering irreversible damage. Some communities were now in a constant state of recovery from successive natural disasters with growing economic ramifications. 

 

Agriculture must adapt

It said inaction would lead to unprecedented economic damage to Australia and its regional trading partners, heightened risks to financial stability – particularly as the insurance industry became compromised – and significant threats to the agriculture, forestry, tourism and fishing industries. 

There would be severe pressure on government budgets due to a dramatic fall in tax revenue and a rise in natural disasters that demanded emergency response and recovery spending and there would be major and long-lived social and health impacts, including loss of life.

The roundtable concluded Australia must play its fair part in international efforts to limit average global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, or at most to well below a 2C increase.

That meant setting a target of net-zero emissions by mid-century and introducing policies to meet it that aimed to lift social equity and the country’s global competitive advantage in a zero-emissions world.

The Morrison government has rejected calls that it back the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. The target has been adopted by more than 70 countries, all Australian states and a growing number of business and investors, including fossil fuel companies. National emissions have dipped 1.5% since the Coalition was elected in 2013 after falling about 14% in six years under Labor.

Our cities will inundate from sea rise.

The roundtable said even with ambitious global action Australia faced escalating costs due to unavoidable climate change from historical emissions, and must act swiftly to improve resilience. It said the country was “woefully unprepared” for the scale of threats that would emerge as it lacked a systemic government response at any level.

Go to the complete story in The Guardian by Adam Morton

#Australia, #bigbusiness, #cambio-climatico, #climate crisis, #climatecriminals, #climateemergency, #economy, #methanegas, #icemelting, 

Related: 2020 is a Warning That Our Civilization is Beginning to Fall Apart (excerpt): Medium

IPCC: the dirty tricks climate scientists faced in three decades since first report (excerpt): The Conversation

(Pics added by this blog)

Wildfire

..... "The path to the summit

The accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, had been worrying scientists since the 1970s. The discovery of the “ozone hole” above Antarctica had given atmospheric scientists enormous credibility and clout among the public, and an international treaty banning chlorofluorocarbons, the chemicals causing the problem, was swiftly signed. 

Greenhouse gases

The Reagan White House worried that a treaty on CO₂ might happen as quickly, and set about ensuring the official scientific advice guiding leaders at the negotiations was under at least partial control. So emerged the intergovernmental – rather than international – panel on climate change, in 1988.

Already before Sundsvall, in 1989, figures in the automotive and fossil fuel industries of the US had set up the Global Climate Coalition to argue against rapid action and to cast doubt on the evidence. Alongside thinktanks, such as the George Marshall Institute, and trade bodies, such as the Western Fuels Association, it kept up a steady stream of publishing in the media – including a movie – to discredit the science.

But their efforts to discourage political commitment were only partially successful. The scientists held firm, and a climate treaty was agreed in 1992. And so attention turned to the scientists themselves.

The Serengeti strategy

In 1996, there were sustained attacks on climate scientist Ben Santer, who had been responsible for synthesising text in the IPCC’s second assessment report. He was accused of having “tampered with” wording and somehow “twisting” the intent of IPCC authors by Fred Seitz of the Global Climate Coalition.

Wildfire

In the late 1990s, Michael Mann, whose famous “hockey stick” diagram of global temperatures was a key part of the third assessment report, came under fire from right-wing thinktanks and even the Attorney General of Virginia. Mann called this attempt to pick on scientists perceived to be vulnerable to pressure “the Serengeti strategy”.

As Mann himself wrote

Vote for your children's future

By singling out a sole scientist, it is possible for the forces of “anti-science” to bring many more resources to bear on one individual, exerting enormous pressure from multiple directions at once, making defence difficult. It is similar to what happens when a group of lions on the Serengeti seek out a vulnerable individual zebra at the edge of a herd."

Go to complete The Conversation article
by
Marc Hudson

Research Associate in Social Movements, Keele University

Related:  2020 is a Warning That Our Civilization is Beginning to Fall Apart (excerpt): Medium

#bigbusiness, #bushfires, #carbonstorage, #climatecriminals, #criminalesclimáticosdelacárcel, #climateemergency, #jailclimatecriminals, #jail the climate criminals, anti-science, climate science,

2020 is a Warning That Our Civilization is Beginning to Fall Apart (excerpt): Medium

(Pics from this blog)

we want climate action now

  "Some Ages Have World Wars. Others Have Moonshots. Our Great Challenge is Preventing the Collapse of Civilization.

Let me explain what I mean by “accelerating pulsation of disaster.” Take the example of California’s wildfires. They’re the direct result of climate change. Hotter temperatures, hotter oceans, bigger storms, more lightning, drier vegetation — bang! A near certainty of historic fires igniting."

Wildfire emergency

"So California’s burning…again. Just like it was last year, and the year before that, and so on. In a few months, it’ll be Australia’s turn to be hit by megafires, all over again. They’ll be worse than last year, at least if we average it all over a decade or so. That’s because, of course, fire is seasonal. And as we head into the age of catastrophe, “megafire season” will become a part of our lives. The world will develop Fire Belts, of which California and Australia are becoming a part."

"Then there are Flood Belts. While the pandemic raged, much of Asia flooded. The West didn’t take much notice — even though China’s largest dam is now at it’s limits. And yet the megafloods Asia just experienced are just like megafires — natural phenomena that are getting worse on a seasonal, yearly cycle. Within a decade or two, these floods will also threaten habitability.

Expect much greater sea level rise as land-ice melts

...................................

"Are you beginning to get what I mean by “accelerating pulsation of disaster” yet? As we head into the age of catastrophe, a new range of calamities will become our dismal new normal. They’ll recur, in cycles. Only each time the cycle spins, they’ll get worse and worse. Megafires, megafloods, pandemics, extinctions."

Sea Rise will flood cities

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The accelerating pulsation of disaster. Life is going to feel scary, strange, dislocating, anxiety-inducing. As soon as this disaster ebbs — phew, the megafire’s over! — here comes another one. Now it’s megaflood season. Now it’s Covid season. Christ, now there’s a new pandemic. What the? You and I were born live at the very tail end of a golden age of human stability. That age is now over, and the transition into the age of apocalypse is going to feel deeply frightening. 2020 was just the beginning. It’s going to get much, much worse, before — if — it ever gets better.

Melting Land ice on Greenland

As all those cycles of catastrophe, operating at annual, semiannual, decadal scales get worse and worse, ultimately, our systems will begin to buckle, and then break. Faster and harder than we think.

Think of California right about now. A wildfire is bad. A respiratory pandemic is really bad. But megafires during a respiratory pandemic? What now? They have conflicting objectives: quarantine and stay at home, versus evacuate and firefight."

........................

Heatwaves kill

"They then face a stark dilemma. To fight accelerating waves of natural calamity, fire, flood, drought, famine, then saps resources that are needed to invest in tomorrow. We fight that megafire, we try to build a barrier against tomorrow’s mega flood. There go all those schools, hospitals, universities, libraries, parks, roads, high-speed trains we wanted to build, expand, renew.

Simply fending off catastrophe will take a larger and large share of our resources. That leaves less left over to invest in the things which really improve people’s quality of life, whether healthcare, education, retirement, and so on.

What happens as a result of that? Well, people’s qualities of life fall. Depression and frustration and unhappiness grow. And the predictable consequence of that is more extremism. Discontented masses tend to turn to demagogues, who blame all of a society’s problems on hated minorities. The age of catastrophe will be a boon to tomorrow’s Trumps.

And yet even all this just takes to about the mid 2030s or so. After that? That’s when the real fireworks begin."

"By about then, the limits of our civilization’s fundamental systems will have been breached. Insurance and banking systems won’t be able to cover the losses of burning states and flooded cities. They’ll go bankrupt, and probably demand huge bailouts. Those bankruptcies will have a devastating consequence. Not just the lack of credit, but a sharp rise in the cost of it. Translation, you’re probably living in debt right now — whether mortgage, credit card debt, car loans, student debt, medical debt, or all of the above — and the interest rates on all that are going to skyrocket. Somebody has to pay for the risk and costs of all this sudden catastrophe. And it’s probably going to be you, in the hidden form of paying massively more interest on all that debt you already can’t pay off."

Properties will become uninsurable

As insurance and financial systems go broke, and the costs of accessing money and credit spike, huge waves of businesses will close. Most small businesses exist on razor-thin margins, from restaurants and bars to nail salons and hobby shops. When their rents double and the interest on their loans triples and they can’t get any more credit — at exactly the same time as their customer base is falling apart? Bang! They go broke, too. And all the millions of people they employ — small businesses are still the heart of the economy — are unemployed. The cycle of depression and poverty accelerates."

....................................................

"This is not a drill, my friends. It’s time to stop acting like it is, burying our pretty vacant little heads in Netflix-and-chill and Instagram envy and the latest gender pronoun and Fakebook friends. That’s all, history will rightly say, garbage for the human mind and spirit. This is it. We’re not going to get another chance." "

Go to the original, complete article

by umair haque

Aug 23 ·2020 
from Medium

Related: The Observer view on the climate catastrophe facing Earth : The Guardian

#heatwaves, climate catastrophe, depression, economic impact, #cambio-climatico, #climate crisis, #climateaction, #criminalesclimáticosdelacárcel, #firestorms, #jailclimatecriminals, #climateemergency, 

As QAnon Conspiracy Spreads on the Far Right, Climate Science Deniers Jump Aboard (excerpt): DeSmog

QAnon signs at a Trump rally

(Photos added by this blog)

"Back in December 2019, two conspiratorial worldviews collided as, for the first time, QAnon’s Q suggested his followers should question anew a topic that, by now, has been considered, and reconsidered, for decades: climate change.

QAnon sign at a Trump rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on August 15, 2019. Credit: Marc Nozell, CC BY 2.0

“The Paris Agreement on Climate is Another Scam to Ripoff Taxpayers and Enrich the Politicians,” the Q-Drop (the term QAnon followers use to refer to messages they believe come from some sort of government insider who signs messages with the letter Q) claimed, labeling climate action a “con.”

Wikipedia says

In May, a second Q-Drop riffed on climate change, with a link to a snarky tweet about science and the Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg by a would-be House Republican who’d lost her primary race in March.

Both of those Q-Drops were picked up by a report commissioned by a coalition of environmental groups and conducted by the research firm Graphika, which found that a group of vocal climate science deniers began using QAnon hashtags in May — and they haven’t stopped since.

“The QAnon movement hasn’t traditionally covered climate change, but in May, when an influential QAnon account tweeted about climate denial, there was a notable and sustained increase of QAnon content shared within the climate denial group,” Michael Khoo, an advisor on disinformation for the environmental group Friends of the Earth, and Melissa Ryan, CEO of CARD Strategies and author of the Ctrl Alt-Right Delete weekly newsletters, wrote in an article published today on Medium."

......................

Trump says QAnon conspiracy theorists are people who 'love our country' - National | G

...........................

"Clutching at Q’s Coattails


Not only is QAnon taking up climate denial, but prominent climate deniers have been taking up QAnon.

“The other thing we see is that the right needs QAnon more and more to amplify their messaging,” said Ryan.

Take, for example, Naomi Seibt, a young German YouTuber who has questioned climate science and who has worked with the Heartland Institute, a U.S. think tank and notorious promoter of climate science denial.

“So do you want a beautiful planet that you can stare at but that’s it? It’s just like looking at a TV screen,” the Express, a UK newspaper, quoted Seibt as saying in May. “As a climate realist, I don’t deny that we don’t have some negative impact on the planet. But I don’t think that it’s related to CO2 emissions.”

Seibt briefly rose to broader prominence following a Washington Post article about her in February — though she remains far less well-known than Greta Thunberg, the young environmental activist who the Heartland Institute has sought to compare with Seibt. “She reportedly chose not to renew her contract with [the] Heartland [Institute] in April 2020 after facing potential fines from a regional broadcasting authority,” DeSmog’s profile on Seibt notes.

QAnon

In addition to speaking about climate, Seibt has publicly spoken about her views on race and religion. “Seibt’s rise as the young face of climate skeptics has drawn scrutiny of her past remarks. 

On Friday, video circulated of Seibt’s remarks after a shooting at a German synagogue,” Bloomberg reported on February 28. “'The normal German consumer is at the bottom, so to speak. Then the Muslims come somewhere in between. And the Jew is at the top. That is the suppression characteristic,' she said in comments first reported by The Guardian.”

In July, the trial of that synagogue shooter, charged with murdering two people and the attempted murder of dozens more, began with the accused shooter stating that he felt he was “on the bottom rung of society” and that he was “superseded,” as he sought to justify horrific crimes.

As in Germany, white supremacists in the U.S. have increasingly engaged in racially motivated “mass shooter” armed attacks on unarmed people. And QAnon followers have also begun committing violent acts. 

“I think it's also important to remember that the FBI has declared QAnon a domestic terrorism threat,” said Ryan, “and QAnon has inspired kidnappings, it has inspired at least one murder, it has inspired arson, there is a real danger from these folks who are drawn to this and become just embroiled in it.”

Go to the complete DeSmog article 

Related: Coronavirus doubters follow climate denial playbook: Yale Climate Connections


QAnon, Trump, conspiracy theorists, #fakenews, fake news, climate deniers, Paris Agreement, terrorism, #jailclimatecriminals,  

The Unraveling of America (excerpt): Rolling Stone

*Photos added by this blog.

Elizabeth Warren: Storm is Coming

 "Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era"

"Never in our lives have we experienced such a global phenomenon. For the first time in the history of the world, all of humanity, informed by the unprecedented reach of digital technology, has come together, focused on the same existential threat, consumed by the same fears and uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the same, as yet unrealized, promises of medical science."

"At the root of this transformation and decline lies an ever-widening chasm between Americans who have and those who have little or nothing. Economic disparities exist in all nations, creating a tension that can be as disruptive as the inequities are unjust. In any number of settings, however, the negative forces tearing apart a society are mitigated or even muted if there are other elements that reinforce social solidarity — religious faith, the strength and comfort of family, the pride of tradition, fidelity to the land, a spirit of place.

But when all the old certainties are shown to be lies, when the promise of a good life for a working

"...as a buffoon of a president.."

family is shattered as factories close and corporate leaders, growing wealthier by the day, ship jobs abroad, the social contract is irrevocably broken. For two generations, America has celebrated globalization with iconic intensity, when, as any working man or woman can see, it’s nothing more than capital on the prowl in search of ever cheaper sources of labor.

For many years, those on the conservative right in the United States have invoked a nostalgia for the 1950s, and an America that never was, but has to be presumed to have existed to rationalize their sense of loss and abandonment, their fear of change, their bitter resentments and lingering contempt for the social movements of the 1960s, a time of new aspirations for women, gays, and people of color. In truth, at least in economic terms, the country of the 1950s resembled Denmark as much as the America of today. Marginal tax rates for the wealthy were 90 percent. The salaries of CEOs were, on average, just 20 times that of their mid-management employees."

Far-reaching climate change risks to Australia must be reduced and managed: Aigroup

Photos added by this blog.

Add caption

"The Australian Climate Roundtable (ACR) is a forum that brings together leading organisations from the business, farming, investment, union, social welfare and environmental sectors. Since 2014 we have sought and found common ground on responding to the challenge of climate change."
28 Aug 2020

"What the experts say

Climate change is already having a real and significant impact on the economy and community. Australian temperatures are increasing, extreme climate-related events such as heat waves and bushfires are becoming more intense and frequent, natural systems are suffering irreversible damage, some communities are in a constant state of recovery from successive natural disasters, and the economic and financial impacts of these changes continue to grow.

Sea Level Rise will affect our cities

Even with ambitious global action in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, Australia will experience escalating costs from the climate change associated with historical emissions. These costs will be significant and will require a concerted national response to manage these now unavoidable climate related damages.

Health risks for children because of climate change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change advises that global emissions will need to reach net-zero by around 2050 to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. If the world fails to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement, and instead continues its current emissions pathway, climate change would have far-reaching economic, environmental and social effects on Australia. It is unlikely that Australia and the world can remain prosperous in this scenario.

Australia requires a risk assessment for climate change.

These effects include but are not limited to:

* Unprecedented economic damage to Australia and our regional trading partners from acute (e.g. extreme events) and chronic (e.g. sea level rise) changes in climate. Significant impacts on coastal regions, agriculture, human productivity and infrastructure. The economy-wide costs of not achieving the Paris Agreement objectives far outweigh the costs of a smooth transition to net-zero emissions.
* Risks to financial stability and particularly the insurance industry. The ability of the insurance and reinsurance markets to support Australian investments and communities would be compromised.

Drought

* Major acute and long-lived human and community social andhealth impacts. This includes both loss of life and livelihood from extreme events through to long-term medical conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Many communities and regions will suffer a constant cycle of natural disaster and rebuilding or face relocation.

* Irreversible damage to Australian unique natural heritage, including Australia's iconic and internationally significant ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu National Park.

* Significant threats to agriculture, forestry, nature-based tourism

Destroyed forests

and fisheries. Unconstrained climate change is a risk to Australia's domestic food security.

The impacts of climate change will also put many governments under fiscal stress. Tax revenues will fall dramatically and increases in the frequency and severity of weather events and other natural disasters, which invoke significant emergency management responses and recovery expenditures, indicate that pressure on government budgets will be especially severe.

Related: Australia fires: Similar or worse disasters 'will happen again' (excerpt): BBC

Major investment firm dumps Exxon, Chevron and Rio Tinto stock (excerpt): The Guardian

"Storebrand says corporate lobbying to undermine climate solutions is ‘unacceptable’"

companies that use their political clout to block green policies

 "A Nordic hedge fund worth more than $90bn (£68.6bn) has dumped its stocks in some of the world’s biggest oil companies and miners responsible for lobbying against climate action.

Storebrand, a Norwegian asset manager, divested from miner Rio Tinto as well as US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron as part of a new climate policy targeting companies that use their political clout to block green policies.

The investor is one of many major financial institutions divesting from polluting industries, but is understood to be the first to dump shares in companies which use their influence to slow the pace of climate action.

Jan Erik Saugestad, the chief executive of Storebrand, said corporate lobbying activity designed to undermine solutions to “the greatest risks facing humanity” is “simply unacceptable”.

It's not OK to profit from the wreckage of the climate.

Storebrand will also divest from German chemicals company BASF and US electricity supplier Southern Company for lobbying against climate regulation, and a string of companies that derive more than 5% of their revenues from coal or oil sands.

“We need to accelerate away from oil and gas without deflecting attention on to carbon offsetting and carbon capture and storage. 

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind power are readily available alternatives,” he said.

“The Exxons and Chevrons of the world are holding us back,” he added. “This initial move does not mean that BP, Shell, Equinor and other oil and gas majors can rest easy and continue with business as usual, even though they are performing relatively better than US oil majors.”"

Go to The Guardian complete article

Related: How Hard Is It to Quit Coal? For Germany, 18 Years and $44 Billion (excerpt): NYT

Related: Prepare for even far more economic chaos than the depression caused by Covid-19


#jail the climate criminals, #jailclimatecriminals, #climatecriminals, Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell,