Drought

Wind and Solar generate Fully 20% of US Electricity in April for First time as Renewables Jump to 26.5%

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United States generates 6.5% of its electricity from dams, producing hydroelectricity, mainly in the West. Up until about a decade ago, that was the major renewable source of electricity in the country. In 2021, the total proportion of renewables in the US energy mix was 20%, i.e. 13.5% came […]

Climate Crisis

Phasing out Oil can offer a better Life for Many

The Conversation

By Jack Marley | – The EU could ban crude oil imports from Russia within six months if a new round of sanctions is approved. Excluding a handful of countries, refined Russian oil products like petrol and diesel could cease to flow into the EU by the end of 2022. The EU currently relies on […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Emergency: Dangerously Early Southwest Wildfire Season Encroaches on iconic Towns and Nature

The Conversation

By Molly Hunter, University of Arizona | – New Mexico and Arizona are facing a dangerously early fire season. It has left neighborhoods in ashes and is having such devastating effects that the governor of New Mexico on May 3, 2022, urged President Joe Biden to issue a disaster declaration. Over 600 fires had broken […]

Climate Crisis

Extinction Rebellion Climate Scientists: why we glued Ourselves to a Government Building

The Conversation

By Charlie Gardner, University of Kent; Emily Cox, Cardiff University: and Stuart Capstick, Cardiff University | – One recent Wednesday, while most scientists around the world were carrying out their research, we stepped away from our day jobs to engage in a more direct form of communication. Along with more than 20 others from Scientists […]

Authoritarianism

How Big Oil fuels both Rising Authoritarianism and worsening Climate Crisis

The Conversation

By Eve Darian-Smith, University of California, Irvine | – Around the world, many countries are becoming less democratic. This backsliding on democracy and “creeping authoritarianism,” as the U.S. State Department puts it, is often supported by the same industries that are escalating climate change. In my new book, “Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate […]

Australia

Biggest Solar-and-Battery Installation in World, at Darwin, Australia, to Power Singapore 3,000 miles Away

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Moving the world to renewable energy can’t be done purely on the basis of the nation-state. The challenge of the climate crisis requires cross-border cooperation among nations. Sun Cable‘s plans for an enormous 20 gigawatt (GW) solar farm outside Darwin, Australia, along with 42 GW of battery storage, which will […]

Climate Crisis

Stop the Wars. Save the Planet

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – This report “is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” Such was the response of UN secretary general Antonio Guterres to the February 28, 2022 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) documenting the present and future impact of the […]

Climate Crisis

Colonialism: why leading Climate Scientists have finally acknowledged its Link with Climate Change

The Conversation

By Harriet Mercer, University of Cambridge | – The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)‘s sixth and latest report on the impact of global warming on our planet, published earlier this month, reiterates many of its predecessors’ warnings: chiefly that climate change threatens global disaster if we do not act to avert it. Yet it […]

Climate Crisis

Are We Approaching the most Dangerous Point in Human History?

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Face it, we’re living in a world that, while anything but exceptional, is increasingly the exception to every rule. Only the other day, 93-year-old Noam Chomsky had something to say about that. Mind you, he’s seen a bit of our world since, in 1939, he wrote his first article for his […]