Energy

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – ( Matthew Daly at the Associated Press reports that President Biden will announce at Thursday’s virtual international Climate Summit that the US will commit to reducing its annual carbon dioxide emissions by half of the 2005 peak by 2030. Joe Biden famously used an expletive to describe the passage of […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s Green Future? Earth Minerals and Renewables

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Can Afghanistan’s mineral wealth finance a transition to a carbon-neutral future? By John Feffer | April 21, 2021 Everyone has a different Doomsday scenario for Afghanistan once U.S. and NATO troops withdraw by September 11. The Taliban will take over and reimpose their repressive social agenda. Al-Qaeda will […]

Climate Crisis

On Top of Causing Deadly Global Heating, Fossil fuels cause 1 in 5 Adult deaths each year

Sustainability Times

( Sustainability Times) – Researchers at Harvard University in the United States, working with colleagues at the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London in the United States, estimate in a new study that exposure to airborne fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from fossil fuel emissions resulted in nearly one in five […]

China

Despite Hawks Seeking new Cold War, the US and China can only Confront Climate Emergency by Cooperating

Juan Cole

( China Dialogue ) – They say don’t mess with Texas, but Mother Nature didn’t get the memo. A surprise winter storm killed at least 111 people in March, when rolling blackouts left several million Texans without power for several freezing days. Their misery came just a few years after Hurricane Harvey put a US$125 […]

China

New Wind and Solar up 50% globally in 2020, as China beats US by over 4 to 1

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The new report on 2020 by the International Renewable Energy Agency reveals that the world’s renewable energy generation capacity increased by an astonishing 10.3% in 2020 despite the global economic slowdown during the coronavirus pandemic. It beats the previous record for an annual increase in this sector by a healthy […]

Environmentalism

Young Indigenous organizers are taking the fight against oil pipelines to Biden

Waging Nonviolence

( Waging Nonviolence)- Hundreds of people rallied in front of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers headquarters in Washington, D.C. on April 1 to deliver 400,000 petition signatures calling on the Biden administration to stop a pair of major oil pipelines threatening Indigenous nations’ land and water. “We as Indigenous people are done being silenced,” […]

Climate Crisis

Technology innovation gives government leverage to drive down CO2 emissions fast – here’s how

The Conversation

By Jessika E. Trancik | – To avert the worst effects of climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions should fall at faster rates than they have risen for over a century. Economies must essentially turn on a dime and then move quickly toward a carbon-free future. In the U.S., the Biden-Harris administration has recommitted the […]

Featured

With Cyber-Attack on Iran’s Natanz Nuclear Enrichment Facility, is Israel’s Netanyahu trying to derail Biden talks and Escape Jail?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The BBC reports that a power outage and consequent explosion at the Natanz nuclear enrichment site in Iran on Sunday is being blamed by Iranian officials on sabotage. It reports that some Israeli outlets have speculated that the cause was an Israeli cyber-attack. The head of Iran’s nuclear energy program, […]

Climate Crisis

Greening Earth and creating Jobs, Biden to slash Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Extend Wind, Solar Credits

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Reuters reports that President Biden intends to slash tax subsidies for fossil fuels like coal and petroleum and to use taxes instead to encourage renewable energy. Since jobs in the coal industry are plummeting, and since job growth in renewable electricity is over 3 percent a year, Biden’s plans will […]