Drought

By Tom Athanasiou | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – How to create the political backing for the international effort necessary to achieve a fair and rapid global climate transition, even though that support would be properly denominated not in billions of dollars but rather in trillions, or even as percentages of Gross […]

Batteries

California Briefly Runs on 97% Renewable Energy, Showing a Future in which Oil and Gas Dictators like Putin are defunded

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – California’s energy mix was powered 97% by renewable energy on Sunday, April 3 at 3:39 p.m., the highest contribution of renewables to the state’s grid on record, according to David Knowles at Yahoo News. Although the milestone lasted only for a brief time, it points to a future in which […]

Climate Crisis

France’s Macron: “I am combating the Project of the extreme Right … which is to put an End to Renewable Energy”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The two frontrunners in France’s presidential election who now face a run-off election against one another, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, have diametrically opposed stances on the climate emergency and renewable energy. Le Pen, the far right demagogue known for ugly hate speech and having a soft corner for […]

Climate Crisis

IPCC: Limiting heating to 2C requires CO2 Emissions to peak before 2025, and fall 25% by 2030

China Dialogue

By Catherine Early ( China Dialogue ) – Without “immediate and deep” emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5C will be impossible, according to the latest assessment by climate scientists. The warning came in the third report to be released in the last nine months by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate […]

Climate Crisis

Hearkening Back to Ancient Glory, Greece opens Largest double-sided solar farm in Europe

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Maeve Campbell at Euronews/ Reuters reports that Greece has brought online the continent’s largest double-sided solar facility, which will generate enough electricity to power 75,000 homes. There are about 4.5 million households in Greece, a country of 10.7 million. So this one facility covers 1.6 percent of them. While Greece […]

Climate Crisis

The Navajo Nation takes on the Climate Emergency

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Fiona L.Q. Flaherty | – (Cronkite News ) – PHOENIX – For many years, Tsegi Canyon on the Navajo Nation struggled: Its dry walls and streambanks were eroding, exposing crumbling red soil to the desert sky. Its springs were drying up; native plants were few and far between on the canyon floor, often replaced […]

Agriculture

More Heat, Less Water: Climate Emergency Pushes Iraq’s Farmers off Land as Drought cripples Crops

Middle East Monitor

( Middle East Monitor ) – Until a few years ago, farming in southern Iraq was “as lucrative as oil”, Qasim Abdul Wahad remembers, and his one-hectare farm plot in the Governorate of Basra produced enough to feed his family of eight. Now dust kicks up under his feet as he walks through his land, […]

Climate Crisis

Responsibility for the Invasion of Ukraine and for Climate Change

Paul Clements

Kalamazoo, MI (Special to Informed Comment) – Many are rightly celebrating a resurgence of liberalism as the Free World rallies against Putin’s war of choice. We honor brave Ukrainians fighting for freedom. Pride surges for democratic governments incurring great costs, with skillful and cooperative leadership countering immense and unjustified harm to innocents and arrogant violation […]

Arab World

Climate Crisis: Middle East is Heating up Twice as Fast as Global Average

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Christoph Duenwald et al. at the International Monetary Fund have a new report out that finds that temperatures in the Middle East and Central Asia have already risen by 2.7 degrees F. (1.5C) over the past century, at a rate twice as fast as that of the rest of the […]