Climate Apocalypse

The “State of Climate Action 2025” report from the World Resources Institute found that the world’s governments are failing on all 45 indicators of progress towards limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees. Of these, 29 indicators are “well off track”, meaning at least a twofold and for most a fourfold acceleration of progress is needed to meet end-of-decade targets.

Five indicators—the carbon intensity of steel production, the share of kilometres travelled by passenger cars, mangrove loss, share of food production lost, and public fossil fuel finance—are heading in the wrong direction.

There is not even enough data to analyse the trend for the remaining five: the rate of retrofitting buildings, the share of new buildings which are zero-carbon, peatland degradation, peatland restoration and food waste.

Billionaire Bill Gates says we should back away from urgent emissions cuts and bet instead on tomorrow’s tech. But unless that innovation is democratically controlled, it will serve the same interests that caused the climate crisis in the first place.

The kingdom says it can punch alongside China and the US in the AI race, and experts say it has the energy firepower to do it

Abby Martin’s new documentary feature, Earth’s Greatest Enemy, takes stock of the US war machine’s environmental damage, tracing a devastating landscape of destruction from poisoned military bases to melting Arctic horizons.

Republicans are attempting to foreclose the ability of cities and states to seek damages linked to climate change.

The latest announcement appears to apply to those working for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and adds to a list that was started some time ago. The list of “words to avoid” now includes the following:

• clean or dirty energy
• carbon/CO2 footprint
• climate change
• decarbonization
• emissions
• energy transition
• green
• sustainability/sustainable
• tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies

Data shows PHEVs emit just 19% less CO2 than petrol and diesel cars, an analysis by the non-profit advocacy group Transport and Environment found on Thursday. Under laboratory tests, they were assumed to be 75% less polluting.

A fierce Trump administration push to stop the global shipping industry from paying for its own climate pollution appeared to have been successful Friday, as efforts to approve the “world’s first global carbon tax” collapsed.

It had been widely assumed the tax would be adopted during a summit in London at the International Maritime Organization, the UN-backed body that governs global shipping. But after four days of fraught negotiations, countries agreed to delay a vote on whether to approve it by 12 months.

The decision came after a vociferous US campaign, with President Donald Trump calling it a “scam tax” and the State Department threatening reprisals on countries supporting it.

One of the most consequential moments in California’s drive to beat back climate change will take place next month. The state will stop receiving electricity from the Intermountain Power Plant in Central Utah, meaning our reliance on coal as a source of power will essentially be over.

A surge in global temperatures has caused widespread bleaching and death of warm-water corals around the world.

Right-wing media personalities are using the arrest of a man charged with igniting the Palisades fire in Los Angeles — a blaze that killed a dozen people and destroyed nearly 7,000 structures in January — to deny climate change.

For example, Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed that the finding that arson started the Palisades Fire “put the final nail in the climate change coffin.”

As the Palisades fire and the nearby Eaton fire were raging in LA, many right-wing media figures attacked those who were connecting the intensity of the blaze to climate change. The arson charge is now serving as a baffling “gotcha” moment for right-wing media figures who are misrepresenting the scientific finding that climate change contributes to, not causes, wildfires.

By attacking a claim no one is making these figures advance their campaign to undermine climate science and decouple the impacts of increasingly destructive extreme weather events from our warming planet.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36867852

What Fox News viewers don't know: Chris Wright owns of the largest private oil company in the US

This oil-industry shill wants to keep people dependent on cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wright#Business

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-18/who-is-chris-wright-trumps-pick-for-energy-secretary

Fox News and Fox Business have not simply covered President Donald Trump’s destructive climate and environmental agenda — they have served as the administration’s preferred vehicles for selling it to the public.

Since late July, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have made dozens of appearances across Fox News and Fox Business programs to defend the proposed repeal of the EPA’s endangerment finding, shift blame for soaring electricity bills away from fossil fuel volatility, and portray offshore wind projects as both unreliable and dangerous.

By turning to Fox networks, senior Trump officials gain a platform where destructive environmental deregulation is framed as common sense and basic policy questions are never asked. What emerges from these appearances is not legitimate debate or accountability journalism, but a symbiotic relationship that allows the Trump administration to launder harmful misinformation through Fox’s news and opinion programming — leaving viewers with a distorted picture of climate science, energy policy, and the real stakes of the administration’s environmental rollbacks.

With the agency no longer collecting emissions data from polluting companies, attention is turning to whether climate NGOs have the tools—and legal right—to fulfill this EPA function.

The terms staffers are forbidden from using include: climate change, green, decarbonization, energy transition, sustainability, sustainable, subsidies, tax breaks, tax credits, and carbon footprint.

Also on the banned word list is the term “emissions.” According to the report, the term apparently implies some level of negativity, despite the neutrally worded dictionary definition. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases aren’t simply emissions, though, but instead can be regulated as air pollutants.

The last two years have witnessed the hottest one in history, some of the worst wildfire seasons across Canada, Europe and South America and deadly flooding and heat waves throughout the globe. Over that same period, the world’s largest fossil fuel producers have expanded their planned output for the future, setting humanity on an even more dangerous path into a warmer climate.

Governments now expect to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas in 2030 as would be consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a report released Monday. That level is slightly higher than what it was in 2023, the last time the biennial Production Gap report was published.

The increase is driven by a slower projected phaseout of coal and higher outlook for gas production by some of the top producers, including China and the United States.

The US administration is attempting to undermine efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. It will ultimately leave that country, and the world, worse off.

The companies frantically building and leasing data centers are well aware that they’re straining grids, driving emissions, and guzzling water. The electricity demand of AI data centers in particular could increase as much as 165 percent by 2030. Over half of the energy powering these sprawling facilities comes from fossil fuels, threatening to reverse progress toward addressing the climate crisis.

Some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence say they have a solution: Just stick these colossal computer clusters in space.