Big banks have funneled nearly $7 trillion in funding to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement on carbon emissions, $3.3 trillion towards expansion.
Major bad #ClimateCrisis news just published in today's #Guardian - "Exclusive: Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for #humanity poll of hundreds of scientists finds - World’s top #climate scientists expect #GlobalHeating to blast past 1.5C target.
Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the #planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed.
Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( #IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit will be met."
Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”
"Younger scientists were more pessimistic, with 52% of respondents under 50 expecting a rise of at least 3C, compared with 38% of those over 50. Female scientists were also more downbeat than male scientists, with 49% thinking global temperature would rise at least 3C, compared with 38%. There was little difference between scientists from different continents."
"UN expert attacks ‘exploitative’ world economy in fight to save planet"
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"It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history" - Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’"
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"The race to save the #planet is being impeded by a global #economy that is contingent on the #exploitation of #people and #nature, according to the UN’s outgoing leading environment and #HumanRights expert.
David Boyd, who served as #UN special rapporteur on human rights and the #environment from 2018 to April 2024, told the #Guardian that states failing to take meaningful #ClimateAction and regulating polluting industries could soon face a slew of lawsuits.
Boyd said: “I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes. But this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature. And unless we change that fundamental system, then we’re just re-shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.”
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Boyd said: “The failure to take a human rights based approach to the #ClimateCrisis – and the #biodiversity crisis and the air #pollution crisis – has absolutely been the achilles heel of those efforts for decades.
... https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/07/un-expert-human-rights-climate-crisis-economy
"The production of plastic, which is made from #FossilFuels, is greenhouse gas-intensive.
By the middle of the century, global #emissions from #plastic production could triple to account for one-fifth of the Earth’s remaining carbon budget, an analysis has found.
The report was released before the 4th Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC4) meeting for a global plastics treaty set to start next week in Ottawa, Canada."
I recently had the misfortune to travel past Shell's huge new plastic factory at Pittsburgh PA, fed by ethane from nearby fracking. And:
"Saudi Arabian Oil, the world’s largest oil company, plans by 2030 to send about a third of its oil to chemical plants, mostly to be used for #plastics.
#Chevron, whose CEO has said that no large-scale fuel refinery will ever again be built in the U.S., is constructing two major chemical plants —one in Texas and one in Qatar."
There's an international plastics treaty meeting coming up.
"A Greenpeace International survey published in April found 82% of respondents from 19 different countries support cutting the production of plastic to stop plastic pollution and 90% of respondents endorse transitioning away from single-use plastic packaging."
So The People want plastics curbed. But national oil companies see growth in plastics. They're going to resist - just like at the climate conferences.
"The rule directs BLM — nation’s largest land manager — to protect intact landscapes, restore degraded habitat, and make wise management decisions based on science and data. The agency will also be tasked with incorporating land health assessments into its decisions about how lands are used"
Fantastic. This is the kind of thing that'll directly drive reductions in fossil fuel projects.
"Zurich Insurance Group AG will no longer underwrite new oil and gas projects, and is cracking down on clients planning to expand in metallurgical coal mining."
Between 2016 and 2022, #China, through #coal burning, was responsible for 25.79% of global #CO2 emissions. (And another 3.21% from cement manufacture). Even looked at historically (between 1854 and 2022), Chinese coal is responsible for 14% of global CO2 emissions over this 168 year period.
@ariadne This was expected. Western coal-mine owning nations got a big head start to wealth while China was mostly agrarian. China only started industrializing around 1960. It was agreed that China could have a few more years to catch up. Meanwhile most Western nations have been cutting back emissions, making China seem larger as a result. On a per-capita basis, though, the US is still a big emitter, as well as having contributed a lot of the CO₂ in the air right now.
Scientists in Antarctic just documented the largest jump in temperature EVER measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region experienced a rise of 38.5 Celcius (100 Fahrenheit) above the seasonal average: A WORLD RECORD.
If you think all the little things we ordinary mortals do are the driver of #ClimateChange, think again - "Just 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse gas #emissions since 2016
Analysis reveals many big producers increased output of fossil fuels and related emissions in seven years after Paris climate deal
A mere 57 #oil, #gas, #coal and #cement producers are directly linked to 80% of the world’s #GreenhouseGas#GHG emissions since the 2016 #Paris climate agreement, a study has shown.
This powerful cohort of state-controlled corporations and shareholder-owned multinationals are the leading drivers of the climate crisis, according to the Carbon Majors Database, which is compiled by world-renowned researchers."
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"During this period, the biggest investor-owned contributor to emissions was #ExxonMobil of the #UnitedStates, which was linked to 3.6 gigatonnes of CO2 over seven years, or 1.4% of the global total. Close behind were #Shell, #BP, #Chevron and #TotalEnergies, each of which was associated with at least 1% of global emissions."
@ariadne absolutely agree. Capitalists decide the fate of the world for their greed desires more. "I can't stop at $1,000,000,000. I have to have more!" Cries the filthy rich. #eattherich#changethesystem#ecocrisis
With help from outside influence groups, #Idaho lawmakers work to ban #climate action
"Idaho is one of several conservative states with bills this year aimed at prohibiting investment practices that use #ESG, or “environmental, social and governance” factors.
Senate Bill 1291 bans companies that do business with the state from boycotting energy industries, including #FossilFuels, and the #firearm industry."
The groups helpfully "helping" to draft the legislation are a band of the usual suspects:
the Heritage Foundation,
the Foundation for Government Accountability,
the Alliance Defending Freedom,
funded by names like Koch, DeVos, Prince, pro-oil, pro-gun, anti-democracy. And loaded with money.
@CelloMomOnCars@chu If money is speech, as SCOTUS ruled in e.g. Citizens United, then this is the state compelling speech, which violates the first amendment.
I know fascists aren't interested in consistency, only in power, and in fact being inconsistent and getting away with it is a flex of how much power they have, showing that they can avoid consequences... but I'm still amazed by how often our society lets them get away with it.
in other words, same old same old #capitalism and business as usual -
"The world’s #FosssilFuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted #oil and #gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the #US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed #climate goals, a new report has found ..."
Fun fact - (sarcasm) - "The US, which has produced more crude oil than any country has ever done in history for the past six years in a row, led the way in new oil and gas projects in 2022 and 2023, the report found. Guyana was second, with countries in the Americas accounting for 40% of all new oil sanctioned in the past two years.
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Last year, at least 20 oil and gas fields were readied and approved for #extraction following discovery, sanctioning the removal of 8bn barrels of oil equivalent. By the end of this decade, the report found, the fossil-fuel industry aims to sanction nearly four times this amount – 31bn barrels of oil equivalent – across 64 additional new oil and gas fields."