Articles

The growth in US power demand is surging to its highest rate in decades, driven first by the electrification of oil and gas production and then by the build out of data centers. While still below the 5-10% growth seen in China, the world’s first “electrostate," the US power sector is experiencing rapid structural growth. The country is delivering more than a 3.5% annual power demand growth rate for the first time in several decades, potentially positioning the US as the world’s next “electrostate,” despite the strong oil and gas focus of the Trump administration.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet could reach its tipping point with only minimal additional ocean warming – with long-term consequences for global sea levels. But a small window of time remains to take countermeasures.

J’ai l’habitude de voir les écologistes et les futurologues parler des limites de la croissance (« The Limits to Growth »). Je suis moins habitué à voir des spécialistes de l’investissement mentionner des recherches liées aux limites de la croissance. C’est pourtant ce qu’a fait récemment Joachim Klement dans sa lettre d’information quotidienne. Bien entendu, quiconque écrit sur les limites de la croissance doit d’abord procéder à toutes les vérifications d’usage. En effet, la combinaison des mots « limites » et « croissance » dans le titre a suscité un grand nombre de réactions critiques, allant de la déformation pure et simple de l’ouvrage à l’incompréhension du modèle de dynamique des systèmes qui le sous-tend.

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently.

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently. Of course, anyone who writes about Limits of Growth has to do all the usual disclaimers first. This is because the combination of the words “limits” and “growth” in the title produced a lot of critical responses, on a range from straight-up hatchet jobs which misrepresented the book, to people who didn’t appear to understand the systems dynamics model that sat behind it.

HONG KONG — Hong Kong microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung has done battle with some of the world's worst threats, including the SARS virus he helped isolate and identify. And he has a warning.

f global warming reaches or exceeds two degrees Celsius by 2100, University of Western Ontario's Joshua Pearce says it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century. The oil and gas industry, which includes many of the most profitable and powerful businesses in the world, is directly and indirectly responsible for more than 40% of carbon emissions—impacting the lives of billions of people, many living in the world's most remote and low-resourced communities. A new study proposes aggressive energy policies that would enable immediate and substantive decreases to carbon emissions and recommends a heightened level of government, corporate and citizen action to accelerate the decarbonization of the global economy, aiming to minimize the number of projected human deaths.

Researchers found that exceeding the 2C increase has a 50% chance of happening by mid-century

En matière de climat, l’ennemi numéro un, ce sont les énergies fossiles (charbon, pétrole et gaz) - c’est-à-dire, parmi les grandes entreprises françaises, TotalEnergies. Mais beaucoup d’autres groupes ont des liens étroits et des intérêts partagés avec le géant pétrolier et le secteur des énergies fossiles en général. Ce qui explique leur opposition à un action climatique décisive.

In 2005, I was the lead counsel on behalf of the US in one of the biggest corporate accountability legal actions ever filed. That trial proved that the tobacco industry knew it was selling and marketing a harmful product, that it had funded denial of public health science, and had used deceptive advertising and PR to protect assets instead of protecting consumers.

If our next federal government wants to save the reef, it must tackle the main reason it is in trouble by phasing out fossil fuel use and exports as quickly as possible. Otherwise it’s like putting bandaids on an arterial wound.

There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

La 5G dont nous disposons actuellement n'est qu'une partie de ce que proposera à terme cette nouvelle technologie. Les ondes millimétriques (26 GHz) ouvriront de nouvelles perspectives. La 6G ira encore plus loin avec l'usage de « surfaces intelligentes reconfigurables » et un « meilleur suivi de l’utilisateur mobile ».

Climate change is raising flood risks in neighborhoods across the U.S. much faster than many people realize. Over the next three decades, the cost of flood damage is on pace to rise 26% due to climate change alone, an analysis of our new flood risk maps shows.

The founder and director of Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics, Terry Gou, has said that “there will be a shortage of electricity in the next year.” Gou added that “people should not complain about the future lack of electricity.” Instead, they should “prepare”.

At least eight types of bird flu, all of which can kill humans, are circulating around the world’s factory farms – and they could be worse than Covid-19

The second draft of the IPCC Group III report, focused on mitigation strategies, states that we must move away from the current capitalist model to avoid surpassing planetary boundaries and climate and ecological catastrophe). It also confirms our previous reports, covered by CTXT and The Guardian, that “greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years”. The new leak acknowledges that there is little or no room for further economic growth.

Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years, coal and gas-fired power plants must close in the next decade and lifestyle and behavioural changes will be needed to avoid climate breakdown, according to the leaked draft of a report from the world’s leading authority on climate science.

The politics of this new, extreme individualism will make collective responses to social crises impossible

The politics of this new, extreme individualism will make collective responses to social crises impossible, writes Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

Il faut penser ensemble la lutte contre le dérèglement climatique et contre l’effondrement de la biodiversité, selon un rapport du Giec et de l’IPBES. Des mesures de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre qui font fi de potentiels effets sur la faune et la flore sont contre-productives, alertent les chercheurs.

There is about a 40% chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level in at least one of the next five years – and these odds are increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). There is a 90% likelihood of at least one year between 2021-2025 becoming the warmest on record, which would dislodge 2016 from the top ranking, according to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, produced by the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the WMO lead centre for such predictions.

C’est avec ce titre choc que vient d’être présenté le nouveau rapport de l’organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (l’OCDE 2020) qui évalue les performances environnementales de la Belgique. Il était attendu de longue date, la dernière évaluation remontant à 2007. Publié la même semaine que le mémorandum de la coalition climat, cette analyse de l’OCDE est une expertise supplémentaire, qui nous indique qu’il est grand temps de prendre des mesures environnementales importantes

The latest report from the Climate Council of Australia, Aim High, Go Fast: Why Emissions Need to Plummet This Decade, lays out the science behind the necessity of urgent near-term climate action. The diagnosis is in, now the treatment must be ramped up with a greater sense of urgency than ever before, and we have to do it in the next 10 years.

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What kind of economic system is most conducive to human wellbeing? That question has come to define the current era, because, after 40 years of neoliberalism in the United States and other advanced economies, we know what doesn’t work.

Ils sont jeunes, ils ont l’avenir devant eux… mais ils croient en la fin du monde. Ou plutôt en l’effondrement écologique. Eux, ce sont les partisans de la « collapsologie ». Une nouvelle frange de l’écologie qui s’inquiète des conséquences dramatiques que pourrait avoir le réchauffement climatique dans la prochaine décennie. Rencontre avec cinq collapsologues qui cherchent à alerter leurs concitoyens.

Consumerism is the major cause of global warming and wrecking the planet for future generations. It is driven by a growth economy that favors the ever-expanding consumption of the already very affluent and has allowed the gap between the richest and poorest to grow to inflammatory proportions, both within the nation-state and globally. Today 16 percent of the global population consumes 80 percent of its resources. Americans alone are responsible for around 25 percent of global carbon emissions, and their ecological footprint is five times the global capacity of 1.8 hectares per capita.