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The European Commission said Friday it intends to scrap new rules against greenwashing after they hit a roadblock in the final stretch from conservative lawmakers calling them too onerous for businesses.

For years, climate scientists have warned us of rising temperatures, extreme weather, and ecological breakdown. Now, the very people who calculate financial risk—actuaries—are sounding the alarm. Their latest report projects a 50% collapse in global GDP within decades. That’s not a recession. That’s economic devastation on a scale we’ve never seen.

A new report from U.K. actuaries and climate scientists "shows a 50% GDP contraction between 2070 and 2090 unless an alternative course is chartered," said the lead author.​

he global economy could face 50% loss in gross domestic product (GDP) between 2070 and 2090 from the catastrophic shocks of climate change unless immediate action by political leaders is taken to decarbonise and restore nature, according to a new report The stark warning from risk management experts the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) hugely increases the estimate of risk to global economic wellbeing from climate change impacts such as fires, flooding, droughts, temperature rises and nature breakdown.

Added complexity allows an economy to grow, even as resource limits are reached. But at some point, the complexity itself becomes a problem.

Cet article a pour objectif de montrer que le développement technologique et l’évolution naturelle sont deux forces antagonistes qui s’affrontent depuis l’essor des premières cités-États, de la civilisation. Alors que la technologie s’apprête à porter le coup de grâce à la nature, il devient urgent de prendre position.

Economic growth allows the few to grow ever-wealthier. Ending poverty and environmental catastrophe demands fresh thinking

Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’

04/17/2024 - Even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically cut down starting today, the world economy is already committed to an income reduction of 19 % until 2050 due to climate change, a new study published in “Nature” finds. These damages are six times larger than the mitigation costs needed to limit global warming to two degrees. Based on empirical data from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) assessed future impacts of changing climatic conditions on economic growth and their persistence.

You would think that we have more than sufficient troubles caused by global warming, pollution, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, ecosystem disruption and a few more. But there is a problem that’s not directly related to the natural world, but by a purely human construction: the financial market. Here is a discussion by Ian Schindler — maître de conference émérite (emeritus professor of mathematics) at the University of Toulouse 1, France, who proposes that we are close to a financial collapse.

A focus on economic stability in the near-term makes the climate crisis worse in the long-term.

J’ai reproduit un texte du livre collectif Greenwashing : manuel pour dépolluer le débat public paru en 2022 aux éditions du Seuil et supervisé par Aurélien Berlan, Guillaume Carbou et Laure Teulières. Dans ce texte, l’historien Jean-Baptiste Fressoz explique pourquoi le récit d’une « prise de conscience » écologique récente est en grande partie factice – « la plupart des sociétés se sont préoccupées à leur façon de leur environnement ». Sous l’Ancien régime, les policiers étaient par exemple les premiers écologistes de France. La police locale avait en effet le pouvoir de fermer des établissements qui importunaient le voisinage avec leurs rejets polluants. Le mythe du réveil écologique sert avant tout les industriels. Et les influenceurs pro-industrie qui font leur beurre sur le désastre en cours. Jean-Marc Jancovici ou encore Thomas Wagner (Bon Pote) sont régulièrement présentés comme des prophètes de la « prise de conscience », du « réveil écologique ».

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We’re sharing the open letter published to accompany the start of the “Beyond Growth” conference at the European Parliament, and signed by members of the Zagreb Degrowth Conference team.

This report examines the economic and business models needed to address the impacts of the plastics economy.

Chemicals yield profit of about $4bn a year for the world’s biggest PFAS manufacturers, Sweden-based NGO found

Le délire d’une domestication totale des forces de la nature par le pouvoir des machines ne date pas d’hier. Cette obsession pathologique pour la puissance et le contrôle gangrène l’imaginaire collectif du monde occidental depuis maintenant quelques siècles. Aujourd’hui, cette lèpre s’est étendue au globe entier, la plupart des peuples ayant été contaminés par la pensée-machine à force d’être colonisés par des machines.

Many people believe that wind, solar and electric vehicles are solutions to our energy problems. In this post I talk about the important role complexity plays. Growing complexity uses energy in hidden ways. The result tends to be more energy use, rather than less, as complex solutions such as wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles are added. Many measures of energy desirability give unreasonably favorable ratings to wind and solar and electric vehicles. The problem is that dual systems are needed, driving up energy consumption. Without enough energy, economies tend to collapse. This is a form of simplification.

For a small but growing network of countries, the world's go-to metric of economic health is no longer fit for purpose. Finland, Iceland, Scotland, Wales and New Zealand are all members of the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership. The coalition, which is expected to expand in the coming months, aims to transform economies around the world to deliver shared well-being for people and the planet by 2040.

Carl Safina démonte deux arguments récurrents du discours dominant qui a infusé le monde de la conversation, un discours imposé au fil des années par de puissantes ONG, des fondations de milliardaires, des industriels majeurs et des scientifiques influents, un discours évidemment repris en chœur par les médias, ces chiens de garde du système