Climate Crisis

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A lot of studies have focused on the economic cost of global heating, caused by humans burning fossil fuels. A new study in Nature Sustainability “Quantifying the human cost of global warming,” by Timothy M. Lenton et al. instead concentrates on what heating will mean for the lives of human […]

Climate Crisis

The Market Won’t Save Us: How to Rapidly Reduce Deadly Fossil Fuel Use

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The burning of fossil fuels—oil, coal, natural gas—is responsible for nearly 90 percent of global carbon emissions. Despite almost-universal recognition of the need to reduce the use of those fossil fuels, the industrialized world is having the hardest time breaking its addiction. The economic rebound from the COVID-19 […]

Climate Crisis

More than two dozen Cities and States are suing Big Oil over Climate Change – they just got a Boost from the US Supreme Court

The Conversation

By Patrick Parenteau, Vermont Law & Graduate School and John Dernbach, Widener University | – Honolulu has lost more than 5 miles of its famous beaches to sea level rise and storm surges. Sunny-day flooding during high tides makes many city roads impassable, and water mains for the public drinking water system are corroding from […]

China

China’s Solar Power Installations Skyrocket by 36.6%, may install 100 Gigs of New Solar this Year

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In the first four months of 2023, China’s solar power installations increased by an incredible 36.6 percent year over year, to a total of 440 gigawatts.And no wonder. China’s major power firms’ investments in solar energy skyrocketed by 156.3% over those four months in the previous year, to $10.6 billion. […]

Climate Crisis

Spain Runs entirely on Green Energy for 9 Hours for First time, in Harbinger of Green Future

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Spain, the world’s 15th largest economy and the fourth-largest in Europe, recently ran for 9 hours entirely on wind, solar and hydro. It is not the first time the renewables supplied all of the country’s domestic electricity needs on the peninsula, but it is the first time they did so […]

Climate Crisis

The Hottest Days are warming twice as fast as the Average Summer Temperature in Northwest Europe

The Conversation

By Matthew Patterson, University of Oxford | – (The Conversation) – On July 19 2022, the UK experienced its highest ever temperature. At 40.3℃ [104.5°F] (Coningsby, Lincolnshire), the temperature surpassed the previous record of 38.7℃ [101.6°F] (Cambridge) – a record that had been set a mere three years previously. My new study shows that this […]

Climate Crisis

Global Heating to Bring a Record-Breaking Hot Year by 2028 — Probably our First above the 2.7F /1.5C Threshold

The Conversation

By Andrew King, The University of Melbourne | – One year in the next five will almost certainly be the hottest on record and there’s a two-in-three chance a single year will cross the crucial 1.5℃ global warming threshold, an alarming new report by the World Meteorological Organization predicts. The report, known as the Global […]

China

Goodbye to the American Century: China India and the Emerging New World Order

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com) – Not so long ago, political analysts were speaking of the “G-2” — that is, of a potential working alliance between the United States and China aimed at managing global problems for their mutual benefit. Such a collaborative twosome was seen as potentially even more powerful than the G-7 group of leading Western […]

Climate Crisis

EPA Again Proposes Restrictions on Power Plant Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Wisconsin Examiner

By: Robert Zullo ( The Wisconsin Examiner ) – The Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Power Plan — intended to cut carbon emissions from power plants — was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Trump administration’s much-criticized replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, derided as a “tortured series of misreadings” of the […]