I could be saying that every day and perhaps I should. Except if I did, if you heard that same statement from me every single day, you might soon start to ignore it.
There has never been a Category 5 hurricane this early. In fact, until a few days ago there had never been a Category 4 hurricane this early.
We are witnessing the result of capitalism gone wild, with Earth’s climate and ecosystem thrown dangerously out of balance.
Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 5 on record overnight following a historic Windward Islands landfall earlier Monday. It's not done yet, with Beryl likely to spread its impacts across Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Yucatan Peninsula.
Beryl is the earliest hurricane to reach Category 5 strength on record in the Atlantic, and it beat the previous record by more than two weeks. The previous earliest Category 5 was Hurricane Emily on July 16 during the hyperactive 2005 Atlantic hurricane season.
⬛️ Tiny plastic particles in the food we eat and in the water we drink, our bodies literally filling up with plastic.
⬛️ Fossil fuel extraction at record levels, greenhouse gas emissions rising faster and faster.
⬛️ Forests still being mowed down, jungles razed, species lost that haven't even been discovered.
⬛️ Our oceans heating up and acidifying, killing coral reefs and threatening the overall food chain.
⬛️ More and bigger storms, more and longer droughts, more climate chaos and much more suffering.
But it didn’t have to be this way. It could have been different.
Our governments knew and industry leaders knew decades ago about all the damage they were doing, about the risks they were presenting to public health, to our environment, and to the climate.
They knew, and they did it anyway. Because capitalism could not be denied. Because economic growth leading to concentration of wealth in the hands of a few greedy plutocrats was more important to them than anything else.
Around 50 years ago, our rulers chose to begin a massive project, essentially conducting a unique scientific experiment, one with potentially foreseen but possibly unpredictable outcomes.
They decided to go all out in (1) extracting fuels buried deep in the Earth, energy from the sun stored via photosynthesis and animal metabolism over a span of 500 million years as coal, oil, and gas, and then (2) burning all of this they could find in the brief period of a few decades.
Our rulers were warned by scientists that their project involved serious risk, but they figured the power they could gain and the money they could make was worth any cost. They didn't care about the negative consequences, and/or foolishly believed that future technologies (still a fantasy in the year 2024) would somehow be able to fix whatever problems their actions caused.
And now, guess what — we're seeing signs that this experiment might be out of control. Feedback loops are kicking in, causing "natural" emissions which could trigger cascading effects, breaking down the ecosystem. It also appears that Earth's climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than first believed. Yet our rulers still continue to recklessly burn fossil fuels, always drilling and fracking for more, hungry for power and compelled by greed.
Here's a reminder of where we are now compared to where we need to be.
As mentioned in my previous post (https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/112671714655278802), fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions are at record highs. Yet scientists have repeatedly warned that we must rapidly reduce emissions or face climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse.
Look at the second graph below. We should have taken action years ago. By 2030, our emissions need to be 48% lower than in 2019. But instead, they keep going up, year after year. We're already halfway to 2030 and have made zero progress.
Today, there are around 1.31 billion personal vehicles (cars, trucks, and SUVs) in the world. Of those, only about 2% are hybrid or electric. The other 98% are ICE vehicles burning gasoline/petrol.
By 2050, it’s estimated we’ll have about 2.21 billion vehicles in the world. That’s a HUGE number, almost 70% greater than today.
But how many of those will be electric? Instead of only 2%, it’s expected they will increase to around 31% of the total.
That sounds great! More EVs is a good thing, right?
Well, if 31% are EVs in 2050, that means the other 69% will still be ICE vehicles burning gas/petrol. So the number of cars and trucks and SUVs burning fossil fuels will go UP from 1.28 billion now to about 1.52 billion by 2050.
That’s… not so good.
We don’t need more cars, more traffic, more congestion, more pollution, more road damage, and more CO2 emissions.
In the usual course of events, Earth’s climate fluctuates naturally. Driven by subtle shifts in solar energy and the slightly wobbling tilt of our planet in space, Earth will experience periodic glacial maximums (ice ages) followed by interglacials (warmer times when the ice retreats). These changes normally operate over thousands of years.
But now something else has happened. Something new.
In an insanely dangerous gambit, capitalist industrialists decided to extract and burn hundreds of billions of tons of coal, oil, and gas. They counted on this to make them rich and powerful, which it did. What they didn’t count on — or didn’t care about — was the destructive impact it would have on Earth’s climate and environment.
The last time the global temperature changed dramatically, when it heated up overall by about 3° Celsius, was at the end of the most recent ice age. Large amounts of CO₂ were released into the atmosphere and temperatures went up. This was a big shift and had a huge effect on the biosphere, driving many plant and animal species to extinction while allowing others to thrive. But that’s just how it goes. That’s what happens naturally.
The difference between then and now is that the previous CO₂ release and corresponding temperature rise took place over a span of about 7,000 years. In geological terms, that’s considered fast.
Today, however, thanks to greedy murdering capitalists, we are in the midst of a rapid heating event unlike anything ever seen in the whole history of Earth. The planet is heating up so fast that species have no chance to respond or adjust. It’s so fast that scientists have no way of knowing how soon it will end or what all the consequences could be.
In order to make themselves look good so they'll be allowed to continue with Business As Usual, huge corporations try to project a public image of being "climate aware" and "green" and on track for "net zero" — but it's just a phony pose.
Some of the world’s most profitable – and most polluting corporations – have invested in carbon offset projects that have fundamental failings and are “probably junk”, suggesting industry claims about greenhouse gas reductions were likely overblown, according to new analysis.
Delta, ExxonMobil, Disney, and Nestlé are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are “likely junk” or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog.
The fossil fuel industry is by far the largest investor in the world’s most popular CO₂ offsetting schemes. At least 43% of the CO₂ credits purchased by the oil and gas majors are for projects that have at least one fundamental flaw and are “probably junk,” according to the analysis.
The transport industry, which accounts for about a fifth of all global planet-warming emissions, has also relied heavily on carbon offsetting projects to meet climate goals. Just over 42% of the total credits purchased by airlines and 38% purchased by automakers are likely worthless at reducing emissions, the analysis found.
“These findings add to the mounting evidence that peels back the greenwashed facade of the voluntary carbon market and lays bare the ways it dangerously distracts from the real, lasting action the world’s largest corporations and polluters need to be taking,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, Corporate Accountability’s director of research.
"If SUVs were a country, they would be the world’s fifth largest emitter of CO₂"
I'm so disgusted, I can't find the words... 🤬
SUVs accounted for 48% of global car sales in 2023, reaching a new record and further strengthening the defining automobile trend of the early 21st century – the shift towards ever larger and heavier cars.
There are now more than 360 million SUVs on the roads worldwide, resulting in combustion-related CO2 emissions of one billion tonnes, an increase of around 100 million tonnes from the previous year.
Despite advances in fuel efficiency and electrification, the trend toward heavier and less efficient vehicles such as SUVs, which produce 20% more carbon emissions than an average medium-sized car, has largely nullified the improvements in energy consumption and emissions achieved elsewhere in the world’s passenger car fleet in recent decades.
I did a post about this from a different source back in January. And the problem is not going away. In fact, it’s only getting worse as capitalist industry and advertising continues to cram 'fast fashion' down our throats.
The Atacama Desert in Chile has attained a distinction as one of the world’s fastest growing dumps of discarded clothes, thanks to the rapid mass production of inexpensive attire known as fast fashion. The phenomenon has created so much waste that the UN calls it “an environmental and social emergency.”
The numbers tell the tale. Between 2000 and 2014, clothing production doubled and consumers began buying 60% more clothes and wearing them for half as long as they once did.
Three-fifths of all clothing is estimated to end up in landfills or incinerators within a year of production. That can translate to a truckload of used clothing dumped or burned every second.
In northern Chile, colossal piles of discarded clothes, with labels from all over the world, stretch as far as the eye can see. In one ravine on the outskirts of Alto Hospicio, a pile of jeans and suit jackets, bleached by the harsh sun, rises above a mound of fake-fur coats and dress shirts, some still bearing price tags.
Andrew Ahern is an ecological organizer and freelance writer based in New England. In a recent essay, he reviewed two books which assure us that capitalism can solve the climate and ecological crisis...
Bloomberg journalist Akshat Rathi’s "Climate Capitalism" and data scientist Hannah Ritchie’s "Not the End of the World" bring the reader to a similar conclusion: our existing social and economic system (capitalism) will deliver the necessary technological change due to market forces and government incentives to bring about an age of abundance, human progress, and the world’s “first sustainable generation.”
Whereas Rathi explicitly defends capitalism, Ritchie takes a different approach in defending business as usual. For her, despite a few cracks here and there, capitalism remains a progressive force. While admitting that certain things do need to change, Ritchie relies on highly selective data to tell a story of seemingly endless progress while ignoring studies and alternatives that counter the kind of green capitalism she is selling.
In the end, Ritchie's and Rathi’s books provide insight on how the capitalist class will continue to defend our destructive economic and social system. For those seeking alternatives to green capitalism, these books will help you understand the arguments of the entrenched powers and how we might counter them.
That's a brief excerpt from a long and detailed piece. Read the whole thing!
Are you shocked by this news? Or is it exactly what you would expect?
Major oil companies have made splashy climate pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, but a new report suggests those plans do not stand up to scrutiny.
“There is no evidence that big oil and gas companies are acting seriously to be part of the energy transition,” David Tong, global industry campaign manager at Oil Change International, who co-authored the analysis, said in a statement.
The report’s authors used 10 criteria and ranked each aspect of each company’s plan on a spectrum from “fully aligned” to “grossly insufficient” and found all eight companies ranked “grossly insufficient” or “insufficient” on nearly all criteria.
The US firms Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil each ranked “grossly insufficient” on all 10 criteria.
“American fossil-fuel corporations are the worst of the worst,” Allie Rosenbluth, US program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement.
The authors found that the companies’ current oil and gas extraction plans could lead to more than 2.4C of global temperature rise, which would probably usher in climate devastation. The eight firms alone are on track to use 30% of the world’s remaining global carbon budget to keep global average temperature rise to 1.5C.
Leaders of capitalist industry will continually lie, cheat, and steal. They will do anything to make a profit. Business As Usual must go on!
Our rulers have known since 1970 — for over half a century! — that burning more fossil fuels would release dangerous emissions and radically alter Earth's climate.
And what action have they taken in response?
None at all, except carrying on with Business As Usual.
Year after year after year — more economic growth, more fossil fuel use, more greenhouse gas emissions, more catastrophic global heating. Will it ever stop?
In the face of an existential climate/environmental crisis, it is blatantly obvious that we need system change. But how likely is that to happen given the entrenched power of billionaire capitalists and the media and politicians they own?
Instead we have this…
Let’s hear it for another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, a co-production of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee, sponsored by Microsoft, the New York Times, and the US military-industrial complex.
They call this a scandal, which it is. But I call it a crime.
The United States has seen some whopping mishaps and scandals in the oil and gas industry over the years, from Teapot Dome in the 1920s to the collapse of Enron in 2001, and the Deepwater Horizon, Exxon-Valdez, and Santa Barbara oil spills.
However, the largest, most egregious, and most profoundly damaging scandal is still underway.
The unholy alliance between America’s governments and the fossil fuel industry has been going on for decades, undeterred and unpunished. Federal and state governments subsidize and facilitate the production and consumption of oil, natural gas, and coal despite knowing these products are permanently damaging life on a planetary scale.
Many of our elected officials have participated in a carbon cartel that has blocked effective climate action. U.S. scientists began warning in the 1950s that fossil fuels were changing the climate. Yet fossil fuels still provide about 80% of U.S. energy, and America has become the world’s biggest oil and gas producer.
Destroying the biosphere by burning fossil fuels is the greatest crime ever committed. But the rich and powerful will never be prosecuted for it — because they own and operate the system.
Earth's climate being tipped out of control? Our precious ecosystem ravaged? Biodiversity in steep decline?
Killer heat waves? Storms and floods? Droughts and famines? CO2 emissions at an all-time high?
Capitalism doesn't care. Oil companies don't care. Banks don't care. Not as long as there is more money to be made. 💵 💵
The world’s big banks have handed nearly $7 trillion in funding to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions, according to research.
US banks were the biggest financiers of the fossil fuel industry, contributing 30% of the total $705 billion provided in 2023, the report found. JP Morgan Chase gave the most of any bank in the world, providing $40.8 billion to fossil fuel companies in 2023, while Bank of America came in third. The world’s second biggest financier of fossil fuels was the Japanese bank Mizuho, which provided $37.1 billion.
As with any other, this fever is a sign that something is wrong. It is the outward symptom of an illness, an infection that’s been allowed to fester for far too long.
When humans have a fever, we pay attention. We track the temperature and we make every effort to keep it under control. We understand that if a fever spirals too high, it is a medical emergency. We know full well that if we can’t control the fever, we die.
If a doctor is aware that their patient has a high fever and they don’t attempt to intervene, we would recognize it as medical malpractice. If the patient were at risk of dying and they stood by and did nothing, we would call it criminal negligence.
If parents or caretakers don’t try to get their child help when they develop a high fever, we would call it abuse, and potentially negligent homicide if the little one doesn’t make it.
What do we call it when the planet’s caretakers not only refuse to help but keep actively cranking up the heat?
If you’re thinking you can turn to the scientific community for a modicum of hope, don’t bother. They’ve given up on limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, and they’re now reporting that we’re more likely to hit 2.5 or even 3 by the end of the century.
The reason? World governments and corporations are looking at the data, shrugging their shoulders, and continuing with Business As Usual.
It’s not that the people in power don’t know what’s going on, they just don’t care. They think their money will offer them protection, and allow them to skate through the coming calamities untouched and free.
Have you noticed that whenever corporate media decides to publish one of their rare articles about global warming, they almost always will headline it with a cheerful photo of people at the beach, or happily enjoying the sun?
It's a subliminal message.
Yes, the words you're reading might be alarming, but that's okay. We've got this. Business and industry and government will work together to solve the problem. There's nothing to worry about.
As you see here, these three young women are smiling as they relax by a fountain. Life is good!
Were you perhaps concerned that all this talk about 1.5°C being exceeded and climate change going out of control might cause Big Oil to cut back and stop drilling?
No worries! They'll never stop!! 😃
As Big Oil returns this week to the industry's annual showcase in Houston, deepwater discoveries off Guyana, Namibia, and the U.S. Gulf Coast will take the spotlight.
Offshore exploration had dimmed after the U.S. shale boom ushered in new and cheaper-to-tap supplies of oil, and as past offshore cost overruns pushed deepwater projects onto the industry's backburner.
But capital spending on all-new deepwater drilling is poised to hit a 12-year high next year, predicts Rystad Energy. Investment in all-new and existing deepwater fields could hit $130.7 billion in 2027, a 30% jump over 2023, it said.
Enthusiasm for offshore has climbed with discoveries and technology breakthroughs. Namibia's Mopane is forecast to hold as much as 10 billion barrels of oil, Portuguese oil company Galp Energia said last month.
Chevron and TotalEnergies have made a breakthrough in ultra-high pressure environments with their Anchor project in the Gulf of Mexico, the world's first to operate at once-unfathomable 20,000 pounds per square inch pressures. The Anchor platform is preparing to start production off the Louisiana coast, and at its peak will produce up to 75,000 barrels per day of crude and operate for 30 years.