Environment

( Clean Energy Wire ) – The right-wing nationalist AfD party has called for an end to all major climate action efforts Germany has committed itself to and wants to abandon both the Paris Climate Agreement and the European Green Deal. One year before the general election in autumn 2021, the party that holds 12.6 […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Emergency feedback Loop: Trees are growing faster, dying younger – and will soon store less carbon

The Conversation

By Roel Brienen and Emanuel Gloor | – As the world warms and the atmosphere becomes increasingly fertilised with carbon dioxide, trees are growing ever faster. But they’re also dying younger – and overall, the world’s forests may be losing their ability to store carbon. That’s the key finding of our new study, published in […]

Climate Crisis

Arctic Heat Wave: Block of Ice Twice as Big as Manhattan breaks off Greenland’s largest Ice Shelf, goes into Ocean

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A 42 square mile block of ice has just hived off from the Arctic’s largest ice shelf, in northeast Greenland, alarming climate scientists. That is the size of Santa Barbara, California. It is ginormous. Danish scientists are speaking ominously of “glacier disintegration.” The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland reports, […]

Climate Crisis

Earth may Pass dangerous 1.5℃ (2.7° F.) Heating Limit for First time by 2024

The Conversation

By Pep Canadell and Rob Jackson | – The Paris climate agreement seeks to limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century. A new report by the World Meteorological Organisation warns this limit may be exceeded by 2024 – and the risk is growing. This first overshoot beyond 1.5℃ would be temporary, likely aided by a […]

Climate Crisis

This Is a Climate Emergency. We Need More Than Half-Measures from Democrats

Basav Sen

By Basav Sen | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – From derechos in Iowa to dueling hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, 2020 is promising to be an election year shot through with climate disasters. Even now, raging wildfires have spawned apocalyptic landscapes from Washington State on down to the Bay Area. In style and […]

Climate Crisis

1 in 4 New Cars in Europe will be Electric by 2025 – Study

Clean Energy Wire

( Clean Energy Wire) – One in four cars produced in Europe in 2025 will be fully electric, a study by the Chemnitz Automotive Institute (CATI) has predicted. The researchers say factories across Europe will churn out more than two million electric cars by the middle of the decade, more than half of which will […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Emergency Overdrive: Our Age of Compound Disasters as 10% of Oregon is Evacuated, California Burns and Louisiana Sinks

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is astonishing to me that we still have 287 million gasoline vehicles on our roads and that 20 percent of our electricity comes from burning dirty coal. We just go on blithely pumping over 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, a powerful and dangerous heat-trapping gas, into the […]

Christianity

Why in the World would Evangelical Christians deny the Human-Caused Climate Emergency?

The Conversation

By Adrian Bardon | – U.S. Christians, especially evangelical Christians, identify as environmentalists at very low rates compared to the general population. According to a Pew Research Center poll from May 2020, while 62% of religiously unaffiliated U.S. adults agree that the Earth is warming primarily due to human action, only 35% of U.S. Protestants […]

Green New Deal

When the Pandemic ends, Put People and the Economy back to Work on Solar and Wind Farms and Electrified Transport

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Me. (Special to Informed Comment) – Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans share a problematic assumption: Once the Covid—19 pandemic is reduced to the harm level of the seasonal flu the economy can return to normal levels of at least moderate growth. Liberal Democrats would be more generous in providing the relief needed to […]