Bernie Sanders Calls To Seize the Means of Electricity Production The presidential candidate’s new climate plan includes moving toward 100% public ownership of power.

"A year after a neglected Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) power line sparked a wildfire that tore through northern California, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday visited Chico, Calif., where many who fled the fire made a new home. He held a town hall the same day he released a new climate plan, in which he declared that the days of investor-owned utilities—with their profit incentives to underinvest in the electric grid and double down on fossil fuels—have to end.

He’s right: It is time for a massive public takeover of the nation’s electric grid.

The for-profit companies that reign over our energy system now have shown no meaningful sign of being willing to transform our energy system; they are much more interested in shareholder gains and business as usual. Together, for-profit utilities and fossil fuel companies have created powerful political-economic machines across the country to solidify the status quo of extraction and extortion. In contrast, democratic public ownership of our energy system could prioritize community benefit over profit, paving the way for a just and equitable energy system."

Go to In These Times story 

See also:

It’s Time to Try Fossil-Fuel Executives for Crimes Against Humanity: Jacobin

 

 See also:

The case for renationalising Australia's electricity grid

 

Leaked IPCC report warns of the future of oceans in climate change: Global Landscapes Forum

"This topic will be discussed at the Global Landscapes Forum New York 2019. Learn more about how to join here.

The world’s vast oceans, glacial ice sheets and northern permafrost are poised to unleash disaster, including drought, floods, hunger and destruction, unless dramatic action is taken against human-caused carbon pollution and climate change, warns a leaked draft of a major U.N. report.

The Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) sounds alarm bells over declines in fish stocks, plus “a hundred-fold or more increase in the damages caused by superstorms, and hundreds of millions of people displaced by rising seas,” according to news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), which obtained a copy of the 900-page draft report."

Read the complete article 

Related:

Great Barrier Reef outlook now 'very poor', Australian government review says: The Guardian

It’s Time to Try Fossil-Fuel Executives for Crimes Against Humanity: Jacobin

......"These are welcome attempts to hold the industry responsible for its role in warming our earth. It’s time, however, to take this series of legal proceedings to the next level: we should try fossil-fuel executives for crimes against humanity.

Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Just one hundred fossil fuel producers — including privately held and state-owned companies — have been responsible for 71 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions released since 1988, emissions that have already killed at least tens of thousands of people through climate-fueled disasters worldwide.

Green New Deal advocates have been right to focus on the myriad ways that decarbonization can improve the lives of working-class Americans. But an important complement to that is holding those most responsible for the crisis fully accountable. It’s the right thing to do, and it makes clear to fossil-fuel executives that they could face consequences beyond vanishing profits."

Read the Jacobin story 

Related:

Great Barrier Reef outlook now 'very poor', Australian government review says: The Guardian

Hard Times in the Climate Denial Business for the Heartland Institute: DeSmog

"A Failing Business Model?

The oil industry is still spending heavily against policies to address climate change and in support of efforts to promote fossil fuel consumption. These days, however, the messaging and efforts seem to be moving away from Heartland-style denial attacks on climate science and tuned more toward PR campaigns promoting the idea that oil and gas companies accept climate change is happening and are doing their part to address it.

That's likely driven in part by the fact that public awareness of and concern about climate change has significantly increased since 2008.

The list of talking points at https://t.co/xb4sVkeq7K reads like the list of climate myths at https://t.co/HYOLcOjBof

— John Cook (@johnfocook) July 25, 2019

The industry's new approach appears focused on selling the idea that natural gas is “clean” and that fossil fuels are the future — even a “solution” to climate change. Meanwhile, across the U.S., coal plants are closing, the gas industry is a financial disaster, and renewables are growing rapidly and in many cases can provide electricity more cheaply than gas power plants.

The Cato Institute, another free market think tank that for years pushed climate science denial and received funding from the fossil fuel industry, dropped its climate denial program earlier this year. Cato was founded by the petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch. 

Will Heartland follow a similar path to attract broader appeal and fossil fuel industry funding?"

Read the complete DeSmog article 

Related:

Who is Preventing Kids from Learning about Climate Change? :Green Market Oracle

Who is Preventing Kids from Learning about Climate Change? :Green Market Oracle

"The reason that climate change is not de rigueur in American schools is largely due to powerful economic interests.  Specifically the fossil fuel industry and Republican legislators whom they help elect.

The fossil fuel industry is at the core of the climate crisis and they have known that they are a leading cause of climate change for decades. In a bid to retain their economic power they have declared war on science and sought to subvert the truth through a diverse array of sophisticated campaigns.

The oil and gas industry uses their tremendous wealth to buy politicians and political outcomes. Their immense financial clout is also used to buy scientists and control academia.

Campaign finance is one of the most powerful weapons they have deployed in their war against the facts. The GOP has been working for the fossil fuel industry for years, and in the age of Trump they have consolidated their control over Republicans.

Disinformation is disseminated through lobbyists, think-tanks and front groups. One of the most pernicious purveyors of climate denial is the fossil fuel funded Heartland Group. They promote policy that supports industry and their disinformation campaigns target kids in public schools. They provide "educational" materials (textbooks and lesson plans) that try to circumvent the facts about anthropogenic climate change.

Their lies have been deeply ingrained in the nation's political discourse on education. Such disinformation has prompted a number of state legislators to question whether kids should be given access to the facts about climate change. In Idaho legislators said kids should not be taught that climate change is caused by human activity."

Read the article

Related:

Climate change: Big lifestyle changes 'needed to cut emissions': BBC

 

Video - Kalang: protecting this NSW forest

Conservation of our existing forests is essential to combat climate catastrophe. Whether the tree is in The Amazon or in NSW it is essential as carbon storage.




This short documentary depicts the beauty and unique ecosystem of the Kalang area and the forests of north-eastern New South Wales, while exposing the unsustainability of past and future logging operations and the destruction of endangered wildlife habitats.

What can you do to help protect this amazing biodiverse region and its inhabitants? - Support the proposed Great Koala National Park: http://www.koalapark.org.au - Sign the petition to protect this ancient native forest and its headwaters from logging on Change.org: https://www.change.org/p/premier-of-n...

- Spread the word and share this video !

Related:

Leaked IPCC report warns of the future of oceans in climate change: Global Landscapes Forum

Climate change: Big lifestyle changes 'needed to cut emissions': BBC

"People must use less transport, eat less red meat and buy fewer clothes if the UK is to virtually halt greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the government's chief environment scientist has warned.

Prof Sir Ian Boyd said the public had little idea of the scale of the challenge from the so-called Net Zero emissions target.

However, he said technology would help.

The conundrum facing the UK - and elsewhere - was how we shift ourselves away from consuming, he added.

In an interview with BBC News, Sir Ian warned that persuasive political leadership was needed to carry the public through the challenge.

Asked whether Boris Johnson would deliver that leadership, he declined to comment.

Mr Johnson has already been accused by environmentalists of talking up electric cars whilst reputedly planning a cut in driving taxes that would increase emissions and undermine the electric car market."

Read the BBC article 

Related: Death, blackouts, melting asphalt: ways the climate crisis will change how we live : The Guardian