English references

I am writing this message to the millions of people who have been involved in the climate movement over the past several years. This movement has been an incredible force, thanks to your courage, passion and commitment. It has created a new public consciousness and a powerful sense of popular will. These are major achievements. And yet it is clear that we have now reached an impasse and a new path is needed.

We develop roadmaps to transform the all-purpose energy infrastructures (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, industry, agriculture/forestry/fishing) of 139 countries to ones powered by wind, water, and sunlight (WWS). The roadmaps envision 80% conversion by 2030 and 100% by 2050. WWS not only replaces business-as-usual (BAU) power, but also reduces it ∼42.5% because the work: energy ratio of WWS electricity exceeds that of combustion (23.0%), WWS requires no mining, transporting, or processing of fuels (12.6%), and WWS end-use efficiency is assumed to exceed that of BAU (6.9%). Converting may create ∼24.3 million more permanent, full-time jobs than jobs lost. It may avoid ∼4.6 million/year premature air-pollution deaths today and ∼3.5 million/year in 2050; ∼$22.8 trillion/year (12.7 ¢/kWh-BAU-all-energy) in 2050 air-pollution costs; and ∼$28.5 trillion/year (15.8 ¢/kWh-BAU-all-energy) in 2050 climate costs. Transitioning should also stabilize energy prices because fuel costs are zero, reduce power d

Greenpeace lost – not because it did something wrong but because it was denied a fair trial The stunning $667m verdict against Greenpeace last week is a direct attack on the climate movement, Indigenous peoples and the first amendment. The North Dakota case is so deeply flawed – at its core, the trial was really about crushing dissent – that I believe there is a good chance it will be reversed on appeal and ultimately backfire against the Energy Transfer pipeline company.

Global sea level rose faster than expected in 2024, mostly because of ocean water expanding as it warms, or thermal expansion. According to a NASA-led analysis, last year’s rate of rise was 0.23 inches (0.59 centimeters) per year, compared to the expected rate of 0.17 inches (0.43 centimeters) per year.

Published 1972 – The message of this book still holds today: The earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology. In the summer of 1970, an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began a study of the implications of continued worldwide growth. They examined the five basic factors that determine and, in their interactions, ultimately limit growth on this planet-population increase, agricultural production, nonrenewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. The MIT team fed data on these five factors into a global computer model and then tested the behaviour of the model under several sets of assumptions to determine alternative patterns for humankind’s future. The Limits to Growth is the nontechnical report of their findings. The book contains a message of hope a

This report describes the technical feasibility of creating mirror bacteria and the potentially serious and wide-ranging risks that they could pose to humans, other animals, plants, and the environment. It accompanies the Science Policy Forum article titled “Confronting risks of mirror life”, published December 12, 2024.

Visualize and download global and local sea level projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report.

“L’effondrement de nos sociétés modernes a commencé. Telle est la conclusion de deux années de recherches menées par l’équipe interdisciplinaire à l’origine de S’effondrer ensemble. Comment en est-…

Publié par Good Works de l’Institut Schumacher, S’effondrer ensemble: Vers l’écoliberté écrit par Jem Bendell, est désormais disponible. Yes, the French version of ‘Breaking Together’ is now available, published by Good Works, of The Schumacher Institute. Initialement sur Amazon, il sera disponible sur d’autres plateformes et dans les librairies d’ici novembre, et sera disponible en tant qu’epub gratuit au début de 2025. Je présenterai le livre fin octobre à Grenoble et/ou Genève. Initially, on Amazon, it will be available on other platforms and from book shops by November, and will be available as a free epub in early 2025. I will give a talk about it in Grenoble and/or Geneva in late October.

If modern societies are breaking down, is there a political movement ready to soften the collapse and begin anew? Or do we need new ideas and organisations for collective action? Might a local focus be the only meaningful approach as industrial consumer systems decline? Or is this a period that calls for greater international solidarity with those suffering the most? I think the conversations and initiatives in the Francophone world will provide us many insights on these questions, for a number of reasons, which I’ll come to in a moment.

Mainstream media are ignoring a scientist who is whistleblowing the climate profession. During the five years since new kinds of activism brought the climate issue into the headlines like never before, the topic has more clearly become one where people respond due to their preexisting worldviews. It’s not just believers and sceptics, but there are those who think technology can save us, those who think it’s too late; those who think the science is clear, others who think it is open; those who believe humans will muddle through and those predicting human extinction. Climate scientists themselves now range from those emphasizing ‘we can do this’ to those that express their grief and outrage by gluing themselves to buildings. Meanwhile, misleading narratives are amplified by a variety of vested interests, including fossil fuels, nuclear, and clean tech. Climatologist Dr Wolfgang Knorr is an unusual voice in this cacophony because he has been ‘blowing the whistle’ on the climate science itself and how it is being

Foundational innovation in cloud technology and artificial intelligence will require more energy than ever before—shattering any illusion that we will restrict supplies.

Oil in the North Sea is expected to be net-energy negative by 2031. This means that in 2031, it’ll cost more energy to extract the fossil fuels than we would gain by using them, rendering extraction unfeasibly expensive. Yet, rather than use our remaining years of access to these fuels to turbo-charge new energy infrastructure, fossil fuels are being extracted and burned for business as usual: quick cash. Around the world, the lights will go off in nations that don’t have back-up renewables. That’s most of them.

Temperatures in Iran are hitting record highs, rivers and lakes are drying up, and prolonged droughts are becoming the norm, highlighting a water crisis that is turning much of the country’s territory to dust. The desertification of Iran is occurring at a staggering pace, with officials last month warning that more than 1 million hectares of the country’s territory -- roughly equivalent to the size of Qom Province or Lebanon -- is essentially becoming uninhabitable every year.

There was an interesting interview with Gavin Schmidt recently. He is one of the most senior climatologists in the world, heading up NASA’s department on climate science. Refreshingly, unlike the other senior climatologists, he didn’t sidestep how recent weather was not predicted by mainstream climatology. He told the American science celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson that climatology significantly underpredicted current warming. He said there was “total failure” to predict what happened in 2023. See for yourself, for 3 minutes from 4 minutes in. Gavin is one of the more approachable of the senior climatologists. He provided specific written criticisms of my 2018 Deep Adaptation paper. That was in stark contrast to others who misrepresented it, and me, so as to discourage people from considering that the party is over for modern societies.

Last year I was fortunate enough to be joined by four remarkable women in the British environmental movement. We were speaking at a Deep Adaptation conference in Glastonbury. The way the discussion…

An easy way to start a long, heated debate is to mention global population. Thomas Malthus famously ignited furious arguments in the eighteenth century when

A new paper published in the journal Science has warned that melting areas in the Arctic have become 'frontlines for resource extraction', describing it as a 'modern day gold rush'.

Ahead of the UN’s SDG Summit (18-19 September), ground-breaking analyses shows how by enacting five ‘extraordinary turnarounds’ SDGs implementation can be accelerated.

Just Stop Oil is a coalition of groups working together to ensure the Government commits to halting new fossil fuel licensing and production.