Environment

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Pakistan is in the midst of an extreme heat wave with highs around 110 degrees F., which has killed 700 persons in the past 3 days. Three weeks ago it was India’s turn, when extreme heat killed 1200 in the country’s south. Despite the severe dangers […]

Acidification of Oceans

5 Radical Takeaways from the Pope’s Letter on Climate

contributors

By Janet Redman | (Foreign Policy in Focus) | – – Francis recognizes that there’s no way to stop climate change without confronting the way the world does business. That’s huge. Pope Francis just released an “encyclical,” a letter meant to serve as a guide to understanding our personal relationship to some of the most […]

Christians

Pope to Developed World: Greed is Causing Climate Change, Inequality

contributors

Jon Queally, staff writer | ( Commondreams.org ) | – – Leader of Catholic Church says the richest owe the poorest a ‘great social debt’ for creating the climate crisis, ignoring warnings of its dangers, and refusing to act ‘The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all,’ reads Pope Francis’ […]

Christianity

Why Conservatives fear Pope’s Climate Letter: A Radical Attack on the Logic of the Market

contributors

Steffen Böhm | (The Conversation) | – – What makes Pope Francis and his 187-page encyclical so radical isn’t just his call to urgently tackle climate change. It’s the fact he openly and unashamedly goes against the grain of dominant social, economic and environment policies. While the Argentina-born pope is a very humble person whose […]

Climate Change

Can Big Coal, Oil be Put on Trial for Global Warming Damage by Victims?

contributors

By Thalif Deen | – – UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16 2015 (IPS) – The United Nations, which is tasked with the protection of the global environment, has asserted that climate change affects people everywhere – with no exceptions. Campaigners at the September 2014 NYC Climate March say, “We need a cooperative model for climate justice.” […]

Acidification of Oceans

Climate Denial as a Corporate Criminal Conspiracy

contributors

By Naomi Oreskes | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Recently, the Washington Post reported new data showing something most of us already sense: that increased polarization on Capitol Hill is due to the way the Republican Party has lurched to the right. The authors of the study use Senator John McCain to illustrate the point. McCain’s political odyssey is, […]

Climate Change

Europe to reach 20% Renewable Energy Goal by 2020 & You’ll Never Guess How

contributors

Euractiv | – – [ N.B. 13% of US electricity is from renewables, including hydro; almost no transportation is powered by renewables.] While most EU member countries are on track to meet the EU’s binding 2020 targets on renewable energy, France, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and the UK all need to step up their efforts, […]

Acidification of Oceans

The Immorality of harming the Earth: Burning Fossil Fuels is Today’s Golden Calf

contributors

By Tom Giesen | (Informed Comment) – – In the latter half of the nineteenth century, we began to burn fossil fuels rather casually, without much reflection, as if an epoch-marking discovery of an incredible energy source was a routine event. It wasn’t. Crude oil and natural gas are a one-time, enormous bounty of highly […]

Climate Change

Wind Power rapidly bringing Clean Electricity to masses in Global South

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Google is in talks to invest in Kenya’s enormous Lake Turkana Wind Power Project, which will cost $700 million. The project will increase Kenya’s electricity production by a fifth, adding 300 megawatts, in a country where less than a quarter of the population has electricity. Wind […]