Why Growth Can’t Be Green

"New data proves you can support capitalism or the environment — but it’s hard to do both."

"But ending growth doesn’t mean that living standards need to take a hit. Our planet provides more than enough for all of us; the problem is that its resources are not equally distributed. We can improve people’s lives right now simply by sharing what we already have more fairly, rather than plundering the Earth for more. Maybe this means better public services. Maybe it means basic income. Maybe it means a shorter working week that allows us to scale down production while still delivering full employment. Policies such as these — and countless others — will be crucial to not only surviving the 21st century but also flourishing in it."

Read the Medium article

This Statistic Changed My Entire Perspective about Climate Change: Medium

Climate Criminals

"It’s time to stop blaming individuals and start holding institutions and corporations responsible for climate change. This is not to say that individuals cannot do their part to take care of the planet, but that it is going to take more than aggregate small scale change to fix the problem. It is important to remember that we live in a democratic country, and it is our civic duty to contribute to and protect our democracy, especially in a world where the idea of a government by the people, for the people is at risk. 

As election day approaches, remember that voting on its own does not fulfill our responsibility as free American citizens — informed voting does. By staying informed and engaged, we make better decisions both in and out of the voting booth; in a capitalist society, we vote with our dollar too."

Read the Medium article 

Related: Out on its own: Australia the only country to use climate funding to upgrade coal-fired plants

2018 fourth warmest year in continued warming trend, according to NASA, NOAA

"Earth's global surface temperature in 2018 was the fourth warmest since 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Global temperatures in 2018 were 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.83 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Globally, 2018's temperatures rank behind those of 2016, 2017 and 2015. The past five years are, collectively, the warmest years in the modern record."

Read article  NEWS | February 6

Out on its own: Australia the only country to use climate funding to upgrade coal-fired plants

"Green finance experts say Australia is out of step with World Bank, Europe and the US, which are using funding to combat global warming.

Australia is the only developed country that allows climate change funding to be used to upgrade coal-fired power plants, green finance experts say.

Experts say allowing Vales Point coal-fired power station to register with the Morrison government’s emissions reduction fund, rebadged this week as a “climate solutions” policy, puts Australia out of step with the World Bank, Europe and the US, which have all rejected using climate financing for coal power retrofits.

The World Bank has issued US$13bn in green bonds since

Criminal Countries

2008 to stimulate spending to combat global warming.

China has used green bonds to help build new coal-fired plants to replace older, dirtier stations on the grounds it reduces nitrogen-based emissions causing the country’s oppressive air pollution. But it announced in December it would no longer consider “clean coal” plants – which still emit significant amounts of greenhouse gas – investments in green technology.

Sean Kidney, chief executive of the London-based Climate Bonds Initiative, says China’s shift leaves Australia out on its own."

Read the complete article

Related: The worst-case scenario
 

The worst-case scenario

Vote for my future climate

"Stephen Schneider explores what a world with 1,000 parts per million of CO 2 in its atmosphere might look like."

.... "Fairness must also be taken into account, given that some people would be at much greater risk than others: poor people in hot countries with little adaptive capacity, for instance, indigenous peoples and those exposed to hurricanes or wildfires, or living in low-lying areas. The elderly and children with asthma or other lung ailments would be particularly affected by urban air pollution or wildfire smoke plumes exacerbated by the extreme warming.

The economic outlook is no better. With warming of just 1–3 °C, projections show a mixture of benefit and loss. More than a few degrees of warming, however, and aggregate monetary impacts become negative virtually everywhere; and in a 1,000 p.p.m. scenario current literature suggests the outcomes would be almost universally negative and could amount to a substantial loss of gross domestic product. Millions of people at risk from flooding and

water supply problems would provide further economic challenges." ...

Read Stephen Schneider's essay

See also:

Climate Hackers - 'last ditch solutions to slow global warming': ABC 

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The (Australian) government thinks we’re idiots and is not serious about reducing emissions : The Guardian

Australia's gas comparative emissions 2016- Click to enlarge

"Tackling climate change is tough and Scott Morrison’s latest policy is an insult"

"This fund of $2bn over 10 years is not just a rebranding of Tony Abbot’s Direct Action, it is actually a diminishment of it. At $200m a year on average it is less than half the money a year that was spent on Direct Action – a policy that was so laughably bad that a government with any level of shame would quietly have dumped it and pretended it never happened.

Yet, here we are. Nine years after Lenore Taylor ripped apart 
 

Vote for my future climate

the Liberal party’s policy of reliance on “soil magic”, we have the prime minister still thinking such measures of carbon sequestration are worth pursuing and will achieve anything close to what is required."

Read the excellent, original The Guardian article 

Related: California votes to extend cap-and-trade climate law to 2030

#carbon emissions  #carbon   #Australia   #scottmorrison   #climate action   #2degreesC

UK MPs debate climate after school strike – but only a handful turn up: The Guardian

 

A handful of MPs debate climate change in the House of Commons. Photograph: parliamentlive.tv

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 Read The Guardian article

Related: Out on its own: Australia the only country to use climate funding to upgrade coal-fired plants