LAURIE PARSONS – Rich countries have exported climate breakdown through extractive industries, creating a “carbon colonialism.”
Tag: carbon emissions
Study Shows Effects of Biomass Burning on Climate, Health
GLEN MARTIN – A Stanford University professor’s calculations indicate that wildfires and other types of fires involving plant matter play a much bigger role in climate change and human health than previously thought. It has long been known that biomass burning — burning forests to create agricultural lands, burning savannah as a ritual , slash-and-burn agriculture and wildfires — figures into both climate change and public health. But until the release of a new study by Stanford University Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, the degree of that contribution had never been comprehensively quantified.
No, EPA’s New Regulations Are Not Going To Make The Poor Poorer
JEFF SPROSS – “The notion that we’re going to have poor people suffering because this measure is pushing up their electric bill is just nonsense. There’s literally nothing to support that.†That’s Dean Baker, a prominent Washington, D.C. economist and the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, reacting to the argument that new federal regulations to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants will drive up energy costs for lower-income Americans.
The Only Way to Stop Climate Change Now May Be Revolution
ERIC HOLTHAUS – So it’s come to this. Last year, a researcher presented a paper on climate change at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting entitled â€Is Earth F**ked?†which advocated “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups.â€
Will 2013 Be the Year Coal Died?
ANGUS DUNCAN – What was the biggest energy story of 2013 in the United States? Most observers would point to the vast, unlooked-for quantities of natural gas and oil released by new “fracking†recovery techniques. National oil production has surged by 30 percent just since 2011. Five yearsago the natural gas industry was looking for sites to import liquefied natural gas (LNG); today it’s flipping those sites around to export the stuff. But, the real energy story of 2013 may turn out to be the death of coal.
350 Or Bust: Scientists Warn Even 2°C Warming Leads To ‘Disastrous Consequences’
JOE ROMM – Humanity is choosing to destroy a livable climate, warn 18 of the world’s leading climate experts in a new study. Led by James Hansen, they make the strongest case to date for a target of 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the air, or about 1°C (1.8°F) total warming.
Why Energy Producers Need to Pay Heed to Global Warming
JEFFREY RUBIN – Global temperatures are the hottest since the last ice age and the planet is only getting warmer. . . . A warming planet clearly holds profound consequences for us all, but one group that should by paying particular attention are the world’s energy producers.
Extreme Weather Link ‘Can No Longer Be Ignored’
STEVE CONNOR – Scientists are to end their 20-year reluctance to link climate change with extreme weather – the heavy storms, floods and droughts which often fill news bulletins – as part of a radical departure from a previous equivocal position that many now see as increasingly untenable.