Climate Crisis

While we fixate on coronavirus, Earth is hurtling towards a catastrophe worse than the dinosaur extinction

By Andrew Glikson | – At several points in the history of our planet, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused extreme global warming, prompting the majority of species on Earth to die out. In the past, these events were triggered by a huge volcanic eruption or asteroid impact. Now, Earth is […]

Climate Crisis

Germany marks first ever Quarter with more than 50 pct Renewable Electricity

Clean Energy Wire

By Rachel Waldholz | – ( Clean Energy Wire) – Germany produced more than half of its electricity with renewable power in the first three months of 2020, the first full quarter in which renewables covered the majority of the country’s electricity needs. The numbers were driven by record wind and high solar production in […]

Climate Crisis

Pandemics as the Revenge of Mother Earth: Human-Caused Climate Change Impels Mass Migrations of Humans and Animals

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com ) – As the coronavirus sweeps across the planet, leaving death and mayhem in its wake, many theories are being expounded to explain its ferocity. One, widely circulated within right-wing conspiracy circles, is that it originated as a biological weapon developed at a secret Chinese military lab in the city of Wuhan that […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Crisis will also be Killing 250K / year Soon, and Needs same Planetary Swift Action as Covid-19

The Conversation

By Eric Galbraith and Ross Otto | – In the past few weeks, governments around the world have enacted dramatic measures to mitigate the threat of COVID-19. It’s too soon to know whether these measures will prove too little to limit mass mortality, or so extreme that they set off economic catastrophe. But what is […]

Climate Crisis

Wind Power surges by 20 Percent! Why Gov’t Should Put Stimulus Money into it to Help Economy and the Earth

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Wind power is growing by leaps and bounds, with new installations up 20 percent in 2019. A whole 60 gigawatts was installed globally last year, mainly by China and the US. So writes Jim Timmer at Ars Technica. The good news is that 20 percent growth year on year is […]

Climate Crisis

US Nat’l Security State Tilted at War on Terror Windmills when Real Threats — Climate and Pandemic — were at Home

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com) – Americans are facing “A Spring Unlike Any Before.” So warned a front-page headline in the March 13th New York Times. That headline, however hyperbolic, was all too apt. The coming of spring has always promised relief from the discomforts of winter. Yet, far too often, it also brings its own calamities and […]

Climate Crisis

A Planet of Missing Beauties: In Memoriam

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – The other morning, walking at the edge of a local park, I caught sight of a beautiful red cardinal, the first bird I ever saw some 63 years ago. Actually, to make that sentence accurate, I should probably have put either “first” or “ever saw” in quotation marks. After all, I was […]

Climate Crisis

Why Countries should use Coronavirus Economic Stimulus to Transition to Green New Deal

Clean Energy Wire

By Rachel Waldholz | – ( Clean Energy Wire) – Foundations are calling on the EU to use any economic stimulus enacted in response to the coronavirus to accelerate the transition to a green economy. The global climate crisis cannot be ignored even as governments focus on the health crisis, said Laurence Tubiana of the […]

Climate Crisis

Why Burning Fossil Fuels is to Today’s Pandemics as Fleas were to the Black Death

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sheri Fink at the NYT reports that Center for Disease Control scientific modeler Matthew Biggerstaff estimated in a conference call that the coronavirus pandemic could last for many months or as long as a year and could infect half to two-thirds of the population of the United States. Between 200,000 […]