Environment

By Ruth Saint and Francesco Pomponi | – More than half of the world’s 7.8 billion people live in cities and urban areas. By 2050, an additional 2.5 billion will be living there. As that figure continues to climb and ever more people flock to metropolitan areas in the hope of a better life, the […]

Climate Crisis

The Path to a Livable Future: Or Will Rich Corporations Trash the Planet?

Tomdispatch

By Noam Chomsky and Stan Cox | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This month will mark a critical juncture in the struggle to avoid climate catastrophe. At the COP26 global climate summit kicking off next week in Glasgow, Scotland, negotiators will be faced with the urgent need to get the world economy off the business-as-usual track […]

Climate Crisis

Climate change: Saudi Arabia and OPEC resisting action on fossil fuels

Brian Whitaker

( al-Bab.com) – Leaked documents show that Saudi Arabia and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have been lobbying to water down a crucial scientific report on climate change. News of the lobbying comes just days before the start of the COP26 conference on international action to slow down global warming. Ahead of the […]

censorship

Oil Giant BP paid ex-MI6 spy firm to snoop on green campaigners

Open Democracy

By Martin Williams, Lucas Amin and Gabriel Pogrund | ( Opendemocracy.net ) – Oil and gas giant BP spent years spying on peaceful climate campaigners – and even hired a private intelligence firm set up by a former MI6 agent. A new report by openDemocracy, published on Monday, reveals a “shocking” web of surveillance that […]

Climate Crisis

Pacific Islanders to Climate COP26: Limit Global Heating or We are Sunk

The Conversation

By Wesley Morgan | – The Pacific Islands are at the frontline of climate change. But as rising seas threaten their very existence, these tiny nation states will not be submerged without a fight. For decades this group has been the world’s moral conscience on climate change. Pacific leaders are not afraid to call out […]

Climate Crisis

BBC: Leaks Show Saudis Pressuring UN to Downplay Danger of Fossil Fuels as UN Warns G20 is putting $300 bn into Sector

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new United Nations-sponsored report finds that governments continue to sponsor the extraction of so much coal, oil and gas for human consumption that we cannot possibly, at this rate, hope to keep global heating to an extra 2.7° F. (1.5° C.) beyond per-industrial levels. At the same time, the […]

Environment

Plastic, plastic everywhere – airborne microplastics are settling into the most remote corners of the globe

The Conversation

By Elvis Genbo Xu and Xiaoyu Duan | – Little pieces of plastic can now be found everywhere: from table salt, drinking water and food, to the deep seas, far deserts and most remote mountains. While it’s not surprising to find plastics and microplastics in urban environments where they’re used every day, their appearance in […]

Batteries

How Sen. Manchin just Positioned Chinese Firms to dominate the Green Energy Markets of the 21st Century, Leaving the US in the Dust

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has succeeded in blocking the part of President Biden’s Build Back Better bill that would have moved the U.S. electricity grid quickly to green energy. This development is very bad news for the earth, since human beings burning coal, petroleum and natural […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Change Viewed from the Attic of the World: A Himalayan Journey Toward Hope

Tomdispatch

By William deBuys | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Thirteen thousand feet high on the far side of the Himalaya mountains, we have entered the past and the future at the same time. We are a medical expedition and also a pilgrimage, consisting of doctors, nurses, Buddhist clerics, supernumeraries like me, and a large staff of […]