Environment

By Sydney Allen | – ( Globalvoices.org ) – The largest international environmental conference, COP27, is set to kick off on November 6 in Sharm El Shiekh, Egypt. Thousands of environmentalists, politicians, scientists, and stakeholders from all over the world will converge on Egypt to attend the summit, though, notably, few Egyptians will be in […]

Climate Crisis

One Billionaire emits a Million times more CO2 than an Average Person, as Protesters block Private Planes at Amsterdam

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Oxfam has a new study, Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people. The Executive Summary says that they concluded that quite apart from the 3,300 or so billionaires, the wealthiest one percent in the world emit twice as much carbon dioxide as the bottom 50%. The top […]

Africa

Armed Conflict and Climate Change: how these two Threats play out in Africa

The Conversation

By Halvard Buhaug, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) | – The world is falling miserably short of reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, a 2015 treaty to keep global warming well below 2℃. The results of this failure are a greater increase in the prevalence and severity of extreme weather events, more […]

Climate Crisis

UN: Past 8 Years have been 8 hottest on Record, in Harbinger of Heating World

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The past eight years have been the eight hottest on record, in further evidence that human-caused global heating is accelerating rapidly and dangerously. So reports the World Meteorological Organization in tandem with the COP27 Climate Summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The report argues that we can see rapid heating […]

Climate Crisis

The Day After: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow on a Broiling Planet

Frida Berrigan

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When I was growing up, there was a parody of an old-fashioned public announcement tacked to the wall of our kitchen that I vividly remember. It had step-by-step instructions for what to do “in case of a nuclear bomb attack.” Step 6 was “bend over and place your head firmly between […]

Agriculture

The Saudis depleted their Own Aquifers: now they’re emptying Arizona’s and Getting Sweetheart Deals to do So

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ella Nilsen at CNN has done an excellent deep dive on the shrinking aquifers of the Southwest and how Arizona has allowed a Saudi and a United Arab Emirates company to establish water-hog farms to grow crops to be shipped back to the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is a country […]

Corporations

Coca-Cola, the world’s largest plastic Polluter, is sponsoring COP27. Here’s why that’s a problem

Global Voices

By Sydney Allen | – In a massive feat of irony, Coca-Cola, the world’s largest plastic polluter, is sponsoring COP27, the world’s largest annual environmental conference, which will take place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, from November 6–18. While there is plenty to criticize about this year’s COP27 summit (such as Egypt’s human rights abuses […]

Climate Crisis

COP27: a year on from the Glasgow climate pact, the world is burning more fossil fuels than ever

The Conversation

By Mathieu Blondeel, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick | – The burning of fossil fuels caused 86% of all CO₂ emissions during the past ten years. Despite being the primary culprits of global heating, coal, oil and gas were barely mentioned in the official texts of previous UN climate change summits. That all changed […]

Batteries

Germany Plans to drive 10 million km of Train Traffic in one Province Electrically with New Charging Technology

Clean Energy Wire

By Edgar Meza | – ( Clean Energy Wire ) – German railway company Deutsche Bahn (DB) has begun to electrify rail lines in the north of the country with an innovative new electrical infrastructure that will charge battery-powered trains and replace diesel locomotives. DB is planning to build so-called “overhead contact line islands” in […]