Climate Change

John Oliver | Last Week Tonight | HBO Video Clip | – With the Green New Deal sparking a national conversation about all the ways to combat climate change, John Oliver looks at a few potential solutions. Green New Deal: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Climate Change

It will be Very Hot and very Wet–We’ve exceeded 415ppm of Carbon Dioxide for the first Time since the Pliocene

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration measures atmospheric carbon dioxide at its Moana Loa observatory. You can see that on May 11 we were just about at 415 parts per million of CO2. A couple of days this week, we’ve gone over 415. When I say that, you should run […]

Climate Change

The Meaning of the Green New Deal: Tackling Climate Change but with Good Union Jobs

OtherWords

By Héctor J. Figueroa | – Across the country, you’ll find millions of working families whose wages haven’t budged in a generation, even as the cost of living has skyrocketed. Many of these same communities are now getting hit hardest by floods, droughts, storms, and other climate disasters. How are workers going to withstand rising […]

Climate Change

Tipping Point: For 1st Time in US History, Renewables made more Electricity than Coal in April

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Avery Thompson Popular Mechanics reports that in the month of April for the first time in US history, the country produced more electricity with renewables than with coal. Part of the solution to this puzzle is economic. In much of the US, Thompson notes, you could actually make more money […]

Climate Change

Ruining the Planet: Not only are the German Far Right Scary Racists, they’re Climate Denialists to Boot

Clean Energy Wire

By Rachel Waldholz | – Der Spiegel: ( Clean Energy Wire) – Right-wing populist parties could make major gains in the coming European elections, with many of them bringing a new climate scepticism to the chamber and making it harder to pass ambitious climate policies, Annika Joeres and Susanne Götze report in Der Spiegel. Parties […]

Climate Change

Scottish Gov’t Announces ‘Climate Emergency’ in response to Extinction Rebellion Call

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon of the social-democratic Scottish National Party has called a “climate emergency,” doing so in response to a call from “Extinction Rebellion Scotland.” The latter is a youth protest group that has staged walk-outs from high schools and engaged in civil disobedience in numerous cities around […]

Climate Change

Global Inequality is 25% Higher than it would have been in a Climate-Stable World

The Conversation

By Nicholas Beuret | – Those least responsible for global warming will suffer the most. Poorer countries – those that have contributed far less to climate change – tend to be situated in warmer regions, where additional warming causes the most devastation. Extreme weather events such as Syria’s prolonged drought, South Asia’s catastrophic monsoon floods, […]

Climate Change

Not just Notre Dame: With Global Heating, Arsonists have set the whole World on Fire

Tom Engelhardt

(Tomdispatch.com) – As Notre Dame burned, as the flames leapt from its roof of ancient timbers, many of us watched in grim horror. Hour after hour, on screen after screen, channel after channel, you could see that 850-year-old cathedral, a visiting spot for 13 million people annually, being gutted, its roof timbers flaring into the […]

Climate Change

Our Climate Emergency and ‘Extinction Rebellion:’ disruption and arrests can bring social change

The Conversation

By Alexander Hensby | – Extinction Rebellion burst onto everybody’s screens with disruptions and mass arrests across the UK and around the world, in protest against government inaction on climate change. Radical disruptions have been at the heart of Extinction Rebellion’s activism since it was founded in 2018 – from January’s disruption of London Fashion […]