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Economic growth allows the few to grow ever-wealthier. Ending poverty and environmental catastrophe demands fresh thinking
This innovative and comprehensive collection of essays explores the biggest threats facing humanity in the 21st century; threats that cannot be contained or controlled and that have the potential to bring about human extinction and civilization collapse. Bringing together experts from many disciplines, it provides an accessible survey of what we know about these threats, how we can understand them better, and most importantly what can be done to manage them effectively.
When attempting to quantify future harms caused by carbon emissions and to set appropriate energy policies, it has been argued that the most important metric is the number of human deaths caused by climate change. Several studies have attempted to overcome the uncertainties associated with such forecasting. In this article, approaches to estimating future human death tolls from climate change relevant at any scale or location are compared and synthesized, and implications for energy policy are considered. Several studies are consistent with the “1000-ton rule,” according to which a future person is killed every time 1000 tons of fossil carbon are burned (order-of-magnitude estimate). If warming reaches or exceeds 2 °C this century, mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly 1 billion mainly poorer humans through anthropogenic global warming, which is comparable with involuntary or negligent manslaughter. On this basis, relatively aggressive energy policies are summarized that would enable im
There is a growing body of evidence for serious health consequences of exposure to ambient air pollution. The general question of who is susceptible is one of the most important gaps in current knowledge regarding particulate matter (PM)-related health effects. Who is susceptible depends on the specific health endpoint being evaluated and the level and length of exposure. Here, we restrict the review on the impact of fine particle exposure on children's health to the following outcomes: infant death, lung function, respiratory symptoms and reproductive outcomes.
Emmanuel Macron’s government is at least doing the bare minimum to avert the planetary crisis – and putting the UK to shame, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Taxing world’s wealthiest people could help poorer countries shift economies to low-carbon and recover from climate damage
Terrestrial ecosystems have taken up about 32% of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the past six decades1. Large uncertainties in terrestrial carbon–climate feedbacks, however, make it difficult to predict how the land carbon sink will respond to future climate change2. Interannual variations in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate (CGR) are dominated by land–atmosphere carbon fluxes in the tropics, providing an opportunity to explore land carbon–climate interactions3–6. It is thought that variations in CGR are largely controlled by temperature7–10 but there is also evidence for a tight coupling between water availability and CGR11. Here, we use a record of global atmospheric CO2, terrestrial water storage and precipitation data to investigate changes in the interannual relationship between tropical land climate conditions and CGR under a changing climate. We find that the interannual relationship between tropical water availability and CGR became increasingly negative during 1989–2018 compared to 1960–1989
Pools and well-watered gardens at least as damaging as climate emergency or population growth
People in developing countries are feeling increasingly angry and “victimised” by the climate crisis, the US climate envoy John Kerry has warned, and rich countries must respond urgently. “I’ve been chronicling the increased frustration and anger of island states and vulnerable countries and small African nations and others around the world that feel victimised by the fact that they are a minuscule component of emissions,” he said. “And yet [they are] paying a very high price. Seventeen of the 20 most affected countries in the world, by the climate crisis, are in Africa, and yet 48 sub-Saharan countries total 0.55% of all emissions.”
Recent news articles about a breakthrough in nuclear fusion research heralded the potential for “limitless” energy. Whenever I read that word limitless I wince, because I’ve learned to view it as a subtle instruction to readers to “please stop thinking now.” After decades of false promises to delive
At the Hay Festival, BBC Future assembled a panel of thinkers to discuss one of the most pressing questions of our time: how to tackle society’s habit of “short-termism”.
Behind the headlines about billionaire jaunts into space, there's a deeper motivation – the belief that spreading into the cosmos will save humanity's future. How did this idea emerge?
The coasts of Alaska are piled up with dead birds dying of starvation. Experts say that climate change is resulting in shifts in the food chain.
Rich countries must urgently develop a plan to assist countries suffering the ravages of extreme weather, as failure to take early action on the climate crisis has left them increasingly vulnerable, developing nations have said. The V20 – made up of the 20 vulnerable countries facing the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and least able to cope with them – set out its proposals on Monday for how rich countries should pay for the “loss and damage” caused by the climate crisis.
Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences
Eleven of the 20 largest economies got a C or worse on a renewable energy report card, which assessed their plans to reach net zero and their targets for producing and using renewable energy
Mainstream energy analysts then and now assume that technology will continue to overcome resource limits in the immediate future, which is all that really seems to matter. Much of what is left of the peak oil discussion focuses on “peak demand”—i.e., the question of when electric cars will become so plentiful that we’ll no longer need so much gasoline. Nevertheless, those who’ve engaged with the oil depletion literature have tended to come away with a few useful insights....
Anotion prominent in the news today is that the world of 2019 and the decades leading up to it were some kind of “normal” to which civilization might return after the COVID-19 pandemic. Talk of such a return dramatically underlines the educational system's failure to inform most people about human history and our present predicament
Just 20 companies are responsible for 35% of carbon emissions yet they continue to ignore calls for change
When the lights went out at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 9 March, the Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian workers at gunpoint became the least of Anatolii Nosovskyi’s worries. More urgent was the possibility of a radiation accident at the decommissioned plant. If the plant’s emergency generators ran out of fuel, the ventilators that keep explosive hydrogen gas from building up inside a spent nuclear fuel repository would quit working, says Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv. So would sensors and automated systems to suppress radioactive dust inside a concrete “sarcophagus” that holds the unsettled remains of Chornobyl’s Unit Four reactor, which melted down in the infamous 1986 accident.
The Ukrainian crisis has revived an old debate: how to effectively sanction a state like Russia? Let’s say it straight away: it is time to imagine a new type of sanction focused on the oligarchs who have prospered thanks to the regime in question. This will require the establishment of an international financial register, which will not be to the liking of western fortunes, whose interests are much more closely linked to those of the Russian and Chinese oligarchs than is sometimes claimed. However, it is at this price that western countries will succeed in winning the political and moral battle against the autocracies and in demonstrating to the world that the resounding speeches on democracy and justice are not simply empty words.
Politician says droughts and climate-induced famine in the country are a result of the behaviours of rich nations
If Cop26 were to be staged, it would be as a political drama in two long acts. Act one would see the leaders of wealthy countries such as Britain, the US and Australia smiling broadly as they strut the Glasgow stage with their friends, wring their hands and manage the world’s expectations. Act two would see them knifing each other offstage and kicking poor countries hard before running away.
Pandering to the rich has got us into this mess. The correlation between wealth and polluting behaviour could not be clearer
At Cop26 the wealthy countries cast themselves as saviours, yet their efforts are hopelessly inadequate and will prolong the injustice. the story of the past 500 years can be crudely summarised as follows. A handful of European nations, which had mastered both the art of violence and advanced seafaring technology, used these faculties to invade other territories and seize their land, labour and resources.
Richard Heinberg est un des penseurs qui m’a le plus influencé ces derniers temps. Il fait partie de ces trop rares personnes qui parviennent à prendre de la hauteur pour remettre en perspectives plusieurs des grands enjeux actuels, parmi lesquels l’économie, l’énergie, l’écologie. En étudiant le pouvoir et la puissance, leur signification, leurs différents aspects, il parvient à capturer une des grandes dynamiques d’évolution de l’humanité et pose un diagnostic limpide et sans appel sur les enjeux actuels.
Fried crickets on the school menu, milk made from fly larvae and mealworm bolognese for dinner? These are the environmentally friendly meals we can look forward to. Bon appetit!
47 major emitting companies could be found liable for human rights violations arising from climate change. It also claimed that companies which had obstructed evidence or deceived the public about the link between emissions and climate change could be liable under criminal laws. How likely any of these companies or states are to pay damages will depend on how courts respond.
The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.
Hundreds of thousands of trees have died after costly real estate projects thwarted attempts to halt desertification.
