It couldn't be more clear, in the midst of an ongoing climate and environmental catastrophe, that we need to urgently make huge systemic changes.
But those who own the system are not interested. So instead we'll just get more and more of the same — more drilling for oil, more fracking for gas, more digging for coal, more burning of fossil fuels, along with more pollution and even more greenhouse gases. Plus we also get more gigantic government subsidies 💵 to companies actively destroying the climate, AND more outrageously high profits for fossil fuel executives. 💵
Business As Usual must go on, baby!
The 2023 Production Gap Report finds that governments plan to produce around 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C, and 69% more than would be consistent with 2°C.
The Report provides newly expanded country profiles for 20 major fossil-fuel-producing countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. These profiles show that most of these governments continue to provide significant policy and financial support for fossil fuel production.
When combined, government plans would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050, creating an ever-widening fossil fuel production gap over time.
Here's part of the introduction to an article describing "Climate 'solutions' that don’t help"...
Many shiny new 'green' ideas do more to preserve fossil fuels than to replace them.
The world continues to face a major obstacle to addressing the climate crisis: deliberate distraction with a proliferation of new whiz-bang technologies and ideas.
Some are well-intentioned, some are strategic, some delusional, but most are outright greenwashing to justify the continued use of fossil fuels and to distract from the inevitable move to less expensive renewable energy.
Here are the items on their list --
🔴 The mother of all distractions: Carbon Capture and Storage
🔴 Deceptively distracting: Dirty hydrogen branded as “clean” by its proponents
🔴 Net nothing: 2050 Net Zero targets
🔴 BS: Chevron’s “renewable” cow dung
🔴 Silly: Renewable race fuel
🔴 Embarrassing: Exxon’s Ill-fated green algae gas
🔴 Most intense distraction: “Least carbon intensive” oil and gas from Saudi Arabia and the UAE
🔴 Most annoying: A 50 billion tree planting project
🔴 Endlessly distracting: Traditional fission nuclear power
<sigh> Business As Usual will go on into the foreseeable future...
Global coal usage in 2023 hit a record high, surpassing 8.5 billion tons for the first time, on the back of strong demand in emerging and developing countries such as India and China. There are no signs of a slowdown, with the International Energy Agency saying coal consumption in India and Southeast Asia is projected to “grow significantly.”
China and India’s growing economies will continue to fuel demand for coal even as they set ambitious renewable energy targets. While China is the world’s largest energy consumer, India is ranked third globally, and both countries are the top consumers of coal as they strive to fuel economic growth.
“If India and China are still growing economically at decent rates for the next decade, we’re not going to see coal demand disappearing anytime soon, globally,” said Ian Roper, commodity strategist at Astris Advisory.
"Big Oil Launches Propaganda Campaign to Thwart US Energy Transition"
The American oil lobby launched an eight-figure media campaign this week promoting the idea that fossil fuels are “vital” to global energy security, alarming climate experts.
“US natural gas and oil play a key role in supplying the world with cleaner, more reliable energy,” the new initiative’s website says. The campaign comes amid record fossil fuel extraction in the US, and as the industry is attempting to capitalize on the war in Gaza to escalate production even further, climate advocates say.
Launched Tuesday by the nation’s top fossil fuel interest group, the campaign will work to “dismantle policy threats” to the sector, said American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers.
In a CNN interview, Sommers said clean energy can currently only play a limited role. “Renewable sources have a role to play, but oil and natural gas will be needed for decades,” he said.
The ad blitz comes after US oil production reached a record high in 2023, which was also the hottest year ever recorded.
“We’re already moving in the wrong direction on fossil fuels,” said Tim Roberts, professor of environment and sociology at Brown University. “They want to push us further.”
No matter how difficult and how painful it will prove to be, the only sensible choice right now is for the world to unite as one and agree that it is time to totally break our addiction to fossil fuels.
But this almost certainly will never happen.
Even if the UN General Assembly voted in favor, that still would not happen. Why? Because the US capitalist empire would never allow it, and the United Nations is essentially powerless to enforce anything.
And it’s not only the US. It’s also Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada, Australia, India, China, Japan, South Korea — on and on and on and on.
Virtually every nation-state in the world is far too invested in capitalism’s fever dream of endless growth to ever consider calling a halt or urging their citizens to adopt a carbon-free lifestyle.
Instead we’ll simply carry on with Business As Usual, with politicians making their phony pledges and corporations doing their greenwashing, and with temperatures rising and ecosystems declining and species dying, while billionaires turn into trillionaires.
You know what’s awesome about Business As Usual? Not only is our biosphere being trashed, and not only are countless species of plants and animals disappearing forever — but the world’s richest men are getting even richer!!!
The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes to $869 billion (£681 billion) since 2020, while the world’s poorest 60% – almost five billion people – have lost money.
The details come in a report by Oxfam as the world’s richest people gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum meeting of political leaders, corporate executives, and the super-rich.
The yawning gap between rich and poor is likely to increase, the report says, and will lead to the world crowning its first trillionaire within a decade. At the same time, it warns, if current trends continue, world poverty will not be eradicated for another 229 years.
@breadandcircuses
As someone born in Arica, in the northernmost part of Chile, it's a bit of a shame that the English article fails to portray the wordplay and multiple meanings of Desierto Vestido (desert dress, dressed desert, deserted dress) and thus the probable creativity in their work.
The "No votar basura" is probably also such a word-play, although in no way certain. Chilean Spanish often switches the pronunciation of b and v (:
Capitalism triumphs again. It’s another big win for Business As Usual. When there are potential profits to be made, that always will override any concerns about the environment or pollution or other species.
Norway has taken a step closer to becoming the first country in the world to open up its seabed for commercial deep-sea mining after giving the go-ahead in a parliamentary vote on Tuesday.
The decision comes despite warnings from scientists that it could have a devastating impact on marine life, and despite opposition from the EU and the UK, which have called for a temporary ban on deep-sea mining because of environmental concerns.
The proposal, voted in 80-20 by Norway’s parliament, is expected to speed up exploration of minerals – including precious metals – that are in high demand for 'green' technologies.
While the decision will initially apply to Norwegian waters, it will expose an area larger than Britain – 280,000 sq km (108,000 sq miles) – to potential mining by companies, which will be able to apply for licences to mine minerals including lithium, scandium, and cobalt.
This is why we can't have nice things. Nice things like a healthy environment, or a future for our children. We can't have them because capitalism says they don't matter.
By now you’ve probably seen news reports about 2023 blowing away all previous global heat records, along with warnings that 2024 might be even hotter. We’re already very close to surpassing 1.5°C.
From the Associated Press — “Earth shattered global heat record in ’23”
The European climate agency Copernicus said 2023 was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. That’s barely below the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit that the world hoped to stay within in the 2015 Paris climate accord to avoid the most severe effects of warming.
And January 2024 is on track to be so warm that for the first time a 12-month period will exceed the 1.5-degree threshold. Scientists have repeatedly said that Earth would need to average 1.5 degrees of warming over two or three decades to be a technical breach of the threshold.
Hold on, wait a minute, what?!!
That last sentence above is BS. It's the capitalist establishment and Big Oil trying to change the narrative, NOT scientists. No responsible climate scientist has ever said we should wait "two or three decades" before deciding if we're in a crisis.
But that's what the next move will be. Our rulers will try to convince you that 1.5C won't be so bad. It's maybe 2C or even 3C we should focus on, and that's FAR in the future. So just relax, keep going to work, keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying. We've got this, everything's fine. 😃
Tough words here from Elisabeth Robson about the severe danger of a singular focus on carbon emissions, when the crisis we face is much broader than that.
"Why are we not talking about Ecological Overshoot?"
I’m writing this as COP28 is wrapping up in Dubai, UAE. There was a lot of talk about climate change and fossil fuels — mostly whether we will “phase down” or “phase out” our use of fossil fuels — and about so-called “renewables.” The conference ended with a global goal to “triple renewables and double energy efficiency.”
“We acted, we delivered,” claimed COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber, as if building more industrial technologies like wind turbines and solar panels and making more energy efficient buildings and cars will somehow restore biosphere integrity, regrow all the old-growth forests, un-pave the wetlands, un-pollute the water, land, and air, and reverse the 1000x-faster-than-normal rate we are exterminating species.
The global focus on climate change, cemented by almost 30 years of UN conferences, has blinded the world to our true predicament — that is, ecological overshoot — of which climate change is just one of many symptoms. Organizations, governments, corporations, the media are all talking about climate change and the supposed “solutions” of renewables and energy efficiency, while essentially ignoring the ongoing destruction of the natural world.
Carbon tunnel vision means other problems get short shrift. And the “solutions” that corporations are selling us in order to meet the goals set by federal and state law will actually make many of the other symptoms of ecological overshoot worse. Far worse.
Everyone’s planning assumes the same — that the economy, population, extraction, development, and consumption will all continue to grow. Indeed, an economy based on debt requires life-as-we-know-it to continue.
But this is simply not possible on a finite planet with finite resources and ecosystems already shattering under pressure. Basic laws of ecology tell us that when a species overshoots the regenerative capacity of its environment, that species will collapse. This is true for humans too.
Corporations have created technologies and industries they can sell to the world as “solutions” to climate change. These “solutions” allow corporations and the governments they influence to believe we can continue with Business As Usual. The pervasive propaganda about these “solutions” allows us regular folk to believe we can continue life-as-we-know-it without having to worry too much because “someone’s doing something about climate change.”
Unlike the “solutions” to climate change that corporations are constantly trying to sell us, there is no profitable technology that will eliminate habitat loss, species extinctions, pollution, and deforestation. And so what we hear from organizations, governments, corporations, and the media is all climate change all the time, because someone’s making money.
The nation of Azerbaijan gets two-thirds of its revenue from oil and gas, one of the highest percentages of any country in the world... which makes it a perfect place to hold the next UN climate summit! Am I right?
"Oil-reliant Azerbaijan Chosen to Host COP29 Climate Talks"
Our Mastodon friend Steve Genco (@sjgenco) offers some excellent ideas on how we might move forward into a better world. ...
Here are the assumptions to start from. If you don’t agree, there is no point in reading any further. You are not operating in the same universe of evidence and facts that I am.
⚠️ It’s going to get hotter, at least 2.0°C above preindustrial temps, possibly 3.0°C or more.
⚠️ The weather is going to get more unpredictable and extreme.
⚠️ Natural disasters are going to arrive at greater and greater frequency.
⚠️ Economic inequality (income and wealth) is going to get worse.
⚠️ We will continue depleting the natural world.
⚠️ The effects of climate change will be unevenly distributed around the planet.
⚠️ Fossil fuels will become financially and energetically unprofitable, ending our temporary Age of Oil sometime in the middle of this century.
What our leaders’ current vision of the future does not include — indeed, what it loudly denies — is the reality of over-consumption and overshoot in the wealthy Global North. In other words, the dominant mental model that rules our imaginations today denies that our rapacious capitalist appropriation of the planet’s natural resources is unsustainable. It denies that overshoot is real, and that it can only end in resource depletion, product and food shortages, out-of-control inflation, rationing, and eventually, a total collapse of our carbon-powered consumption and waste-driven world economy.
Clearly, a vision/mental model that denies the reality of the damage it inflicts on our planet can provide no viable first steps for how to move beyond the pain it produces. Indeed, it denies that any such steps are necessary. Instead, it offers Business As Usual with some tinkering around the edges — a few EVs here, a wind farm there, “green growth”, and promises to clean it all up with magical carbon capture technologies sometime later in the century.
Most politicians operating in the Global North today could never embrace an alternative to economic growth. Even the most passionate climate-focused politicians, like Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington State, are still wedded to the idea that any pro-environmental policies must allow for — indeed, stimulate — the continuation of economic growth.
This is a fundamental assumption underlying the “Green New Deal” concept promoted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others. It also underlies every other “Green Growth” initiative. “Growth” is even in the name.
I really hope you will take the time to read and think about what Steve is suggesting. Those of us who can see that our modern industrial society is in danger of collapse are often criticized for not offering any solutions. That's not true, of course. We have many important and constructive ideas. Let's spread the word.
Left to themselves, the majority of consumers in the Global North will never make all the adjustments that are required. We are in urgent and desperate need of bold leadership, but we’re not getting it.
"Climate change is happening, so why do we still act like it's not?"
Climate researchers initially assumed that if you gave people the right information, we would act on it. Burning fossil fuels comes with severe consequences — so let's phase out fossil fuels. But they found out very quickly this was not the case.
For many people, it triggered cognitive dissonance, where they knew climate change was happening but acted like it wasn't. After all, many people still smoke, even though they know it is bad for their health. And many of us still fly to Italy — even though we know how many extra tons of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere.
Why is it so easy to understand but not act?
It's because of public and private narratives we have grown up with. Our expectations of life are geared towards wanting comfort and stability.
Jeff Bezos pledged four years ago that Amazon would lead the way on carbon reduction. Since then, the firm’s emissions have risen by 40% — and its use of deceptive accounting suggests that the real figure is far higher.
EMISSIONS: Amazon uses a creative form of accounting to massively understate its carbon footprint. In its methodology, Amazon acknowledges that it only includes “Amazon-branded product manufacturing, Whole Foods Market brands, and other Amazon Private Brands products.” But this is just the tip of the iceberg: a mere 1% of total sales. With Amazon not counting the sale of 99% of products sold and distributed directly by Amazon or by third-party sellers, most of the emissions the corporation is responsible for will remain unreported.
FOSSIL FUELS: Amazon Web Services is deeply involved in different phases of oil production, focusing on pipelines, shipping, and storage for oil and gas companies. In 2021, Amazon signed a strategic collaboration with TotalEnergies to help them “accelerate their digital transformation” — in other words, ensuring the profitability of fossil fuels by helping them make extraction more efficient. TotalEnergies used its record profits in 2022 to approve more new oil and gas expansions than any other international oil major.
WASTE: Amazon destroys many millions of new and unsold products every week. For instance, in the UK, an Amazon worker leaked a spreadsheet showing more than 124,000 new and unused items including laptops, smart TVs, hairdryers, headphones, drones, and books all marked for destruction — just at one warehouse. Some estimates suggest Amazon may be responsible for dumping about one billion items per year.
Here's Sarah Miller (@sarahmiller_22747) describing how capitalism operates, and how Business As Usual will be extended for as long as possible — until, that is, it collapses. But not until after every last dollar has been squeezed out of us and extracted from our ravaged environment.
News from the climate front has become incoherent. One day a report comes out noting how fast solar and EVs are transforming power generation and transportation, and how the world can still limit climate warming to 1.5℃. A few days later, new reports, including one from the UN, conclude the world is lagging “massively” in efforts to keep climate change within those same 1.5℃ bounds.
Meanwhile, temperatures and ocean levels keep on rising at rates that exceed expectations, suggesting we may be relying on unrealistic assumptions about the impacts of greenhouse gas pollution.
Some of the incoherence is inevitable in an unprecedented, fast-moving, and frightening situation. But some of it is created on purpose. It’s Big Everything throwing up a smoke screen, putting out misleading information designed to improve the chances of its own survival.
Big Everything includes but is not limited to Big Oil. It also encompasses Big Finance, Big Tech, Big Manufacturing, and a bunch of billionaires.
That's what both the United Nations and the International Energy Agency have told us is 100% necessary at this point.
But apparently someone didn't get the message. Because climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects continue to be approved.
The massive Willow oil project on Alaska’s North Slope is all but certain to be built now that a federal judge has ruled against environmental groups hoping to halt the development. While it’s set to be Alaska’s biggest new oil field in decades, it very well may not be the last: Willow could give ConocoPhillips and other oil companies cheaper access to vast, untapped reserves beneath the tundra.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason denied a challenge last week to the $7.5 billion project which the Biden administration controversially approved in March. The judge’s ruling paves the way for Conoco to drill through permafrost and slurp up 600 million barrels of oil in the northeastern corner of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
But that’s not all. As the company moves ahead with construction of the new oil field, it’s looking to gain access to millions, perhaps billions, more barrels farther west and southwest in the reserve.
“It’s not only itself a huge project,” said Erik Grafe, an attorney at Earthjustice, which represents the environmental groups that sued to stop the project. “It’s designed to be a hub for future development and that’s an even bigger problem.”
Conoco told investors two years ago that Willow could be “the next great Alaska hub” for Arctic oil. The company leases a total of 1.1 million acres in the federal petroleum reserve, sitting on an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil. Other companies lease another 1.4 million acres combined.
Just last month Conoco proposed seismic surveys on about 272,000 acres of frozen earth, including an area west of the Willow site, deeper into the national oil reserve. The company initially said the surveys were intended to “determine the most efficient development” at Willow and “to identify potential future development areas” on Conoco’s leases.
Conoco has drilled two exploratory wells in an area named “West Willow.” The several miles of new roads and pipelines that the company plans to build at Willow could significantly lower the cost of tapping into the estimated 75 million barrels of crude beneath West Willow.
That oil “seems like the obvious next target,” Grafe said. “Willow puts in processing facilities, central operating facilities, pipelines, roads. Once that’s in place, it’s a lot cheaper for Conoco and maybe others to develop their leases and tie into that infrastructure.”
We keep hearing from our friends in the hope-happy corporate media that the clean green revolution is taking off, that solar and wind and other renewable energy sources are growing quickly.
And it's true, they are.
Except you know what? The oil industry isn't going away any time soon. In fact, giant companies like Exxon and Chevron are choosing to invest even MORE in the production of fossil fuels.
But why? Can't they see the writing on the wall?
The world may be shifting to clean energy, but big oil is doubling down on fossil fuel.
The International Energy Agency's (IEA) prediction of oil demand peaking by 2030 amid greater adoption of green energy technology — including solar, wind, and electric cars — undercuts the rationale for increased spending on fossil fuel. It also begs the question of why oil giants flush with cash aren’t diversifying into clean energy projects.
"There's going to be an energy transition, but it's going to be a lot longer, it's going to be a lot tougher, and it's going to be a lot more expensive," Wells Fargo senior energy analyst Roger Read warned.
Exxon’s merger with Pioneer Natural Resources more than doubles the oil giant’s production in the Permian Basin, a highly sought after oilfield straddling western Texas and southeastern New Mexico.
Meanwhile, Chevron’s Hess acquisition will give the company 30% ownership of more than 11 billion barrels-equivalent of recoverable resources in Guyana, which Third Bridge’s Peter McNally referred to as the "real prize" in the portfolio and "one of the most important growth areas for non-OPEC oil production."
If the IEA is right and demand for oil and gas peaks by 2030, it’s important to put the forecasted decline in context. Yes, the expectation is for demand to decline in mature markets but, at the same time, the need for oil will grow in emerging and developing economies.
According to the IEA, the world will consume up to 102 million barrels a day of oil at its peak before falling slightly to 97 million barrels a day by 2050.
"I’d be cautious about predicting a big decline because it’s a very Western view of the world," said Greg Beard, who was Apollo Global Management’s Head of Energy for over a decade. "Population growth and a growing middle class in emerging markets will spur more oil demand in spite of established economies increasing use of EVs."
So if you're an oil investor, don't worry. Your money is perfectly safe.
The fossil fuel industry is betting that governments will NOT meet their "announced pledges" [see chart below] and will never get close to "net zero by 2050."
Instead, they're assuming that demand will continue with perhaps only a slight downturn after 2030. But there is still a HUGE amount of profit to be made in extracting and burning oil and gas while wrecking the climate.
In order to maintain the momentum of the pro-growth economy and continue with Business As Usual, our capitalist rulers will happily allow us to believe that the world is actually changing for the better and that a gradual shift to "clean green energy" will solve all of our problems. It is in their interest, clearly, to preserve the status quo.
But reality does not match up with their rhetoric, as discussed here by Kwolanne Felix at TruthOut...
We must address the appeal of these promised ideal green technologies that continue to capture the public imagination and corporate interest. Emerging technologies like carbon capture and storage and nuclear fusion promise a future where people who live resource-intensive lives, particularly wealthy people in Western countries, can continue to do so in a “green way.” This vision of the world is one where fossil fuels are swapped out for renewable resources without any fundamental challenge to our economic, social, or political systems.
This narrow and unimaginative vision of a sustainable world is unfortunately holding us back from what needs to happen to address the climate crisis. There will be no magical technology that will save us. The answer to climate change has always been much more than just scientific innovation — it is economic, social, and geopolitical.
We are not in this climate crisis because we have bad technology. We are here because our societies have prioritized the resource-intensive livelihoods of a few, at the cost of the environment and well-being of many. The unsustainable and polluting technology we have is only responding to our society’s obsession to go faster, grow bigger, and consume more at any cost. It is that system of value that must be disrupted to solve the climate crisis. Relying on green technology without systemic change is a Band-Aid approach.
In my work as a climate advocate, I’ve had to accept that our world will have to look very different if we hope to address the climate crisis. The logic of our economic system must be fundamentally challenged. We live on an Earth with a finite number of resources, and infinite economic growth is not only impossible, it is destructive.
Our economic logic must shift to calculating success through collective social and environmental well-being, not stakeholder profits. The most carbon-intensive industries and fossil fuel production that continue to jeopardize the livability of our planet must be quickly phased out. Our politicians must prioritize social and ecological health as two sides of the same coin in promoting well-being.
We absolutely MUST have system change. Anything else leaves us treading the road to ruin.
Sometimes in news reports about the increasing pace of climate change, you might see someone refer to a "temporary overshoot."
That means they're essentially admitting we now have zero chance of avoiding 1.5°C above baseline and little chance of staying under 2°C. But they use the word 'temporary' because they want you to believe that even if world temperatures do go that high, it will only be for a short time.
See, the plan is that by 2050 or so we will have invented some fancy new technology that will quickly and easily capture and remove a HUGE amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere — and somehow accomplish that without using an equivalent amount of fossil fuels to do it. It’ll be a green solution! Yay! We’re saved! 😃
No such technology exists, of course, nor is one likely ever to be invented. We might just as well hope to develop perpetual motion machines. 😕
However, by selling you on the idea that a temporary overshoot will be okay, that there's nothing to worry about, that our leaders have everything under control, they're allowed to carry on with Business As Usual.
This carbon capture 'solution' is just a capitalist scam, a snake-oil remedy concocted by the fossil fuel industry and their financiers to buy more time so they can continue making piles of money while trashing the planet.
Here's a nice trick: Hug a few trees, tell lies about net zero, and meanwhile continue pumping oil. That's what we call BUSINESS AS USUAL.
"Stop pretending that planting trees can justify fossil fuel emissions"
Fossil fuel companies are no longer denying the realities of climate change. Instead, they’re attempting to position themselves as players in “low-carbon transition.” And key to that is the companies’ embrace of the mantra of “net-zero” emissions.
But the difficulty in tracking emissions reductions based on promises to reduce deforestation has prompted a rising chorus of scientists, think tanks, UN officials, research institutions, and journalists who say it’s time to blow apart the system of carbon offsets.
It’s time to return to the heart of the matter, they argue: reduce greenhouse gas emissions where they’re produced. Cut through the PR smokescreen, and it becomes clear that the carbon offsets approach to net zero emissions produces practically zero results.
Most forest-based offset projects — the heart of net zero claims — played no significant role in decreasing deforestation, a recent study in Science concluded.
An Associated Press investigation discovered that offsets claimed by oil companies Shell and Total were in forests that were still being deforested. Similarly, in areas of Brazil and Cambodia claimed as offsets by Marathon Oil, and others, deforestation rates actually increased.
And while claiming net zero aspirations, the dozen biggest oil companies are still channeling at least $100 million a day through 2030 in search of new deposits of oil and gas — the burning of which would virtually guarantee that the increase in global heating will exceed two degrees Celsius.
Oil companies are spending $100 million EVERY DAY (!) to extract and burn more fossil fuels. And your government is helping them pay for it.
One reflects a large amount of emotional and psychological damage. When we saw that the iconic tree at Hadrian’s Wall had been cut down, evidently in an act of vandalism, our souls suffered.
The second photo reflects a huge amount of physical damage to our environment, to biodiversity, and ultimately to the climate. Yet it’s just a random shot of quotidian deforestation. Nothing special about it. Nothing unusual at all.
Do you know that over 40,000,000 (forty million!) trees are cut down every day in the world? THAT is the true outrage.