CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Climate Crisis
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Posted 3 years ago #
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Where do we go from here?
I want to make two short points here.
1: An avoidable disaster
The first is that the current trajectory we are on is both utterly devastating, and utterly avoidable. The loss of life, human and non-human, will be horrific. There is no way that ecosystems and species can adapt to millions of years worth of climate change in the span of decades. We are already in the midst of the 6th mass extinction and have destroyed biodiversity equivalent to millions of years of evolution of our own branches of the tree of life. This is not looking good.“
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/cogs-in-the-climate-machine-167cf16750dd
Posted 3 years ago # -
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Ban new gas boilers in UK from 2025 or risk missing net zero target, says CBI
Industry group says Britain’s climate goals may be doomed without heating overhaul
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Posted 3 years ago # -
Hm, a cursory glance at the UK Greehouse Gas Emissions stats reveals the following for 2017:
Energy supply - 106.0 Mt
Business - 66.1 Mt
Residential - 64.1 Mt
Transport - 124.6 Mt
Industrial process - 10.2 MtSomehow the CBI seems to have missed the emissions generated by (cough, cough) its members?
Meanwhile, in other news:
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Road transport emissions up since 1990 despite efficiency drive
(This article is more than 9 months old)
ONS says rise is result of growing traffic as campaigners say car use must be curbedBritain’s greenhouse gas emissions from road transport have continued to grow since 1990 despite more efficient cars because traffic has increased by almost a third, according to government figures.
Cutting emissions on Britain’s roads remains a significant challenge, according to the report from the Office for National Statistics, citing a 6% rise in greenhouse gases in the past three decades.
More fuel-efficient vehicles have mitigated but not stopped the increase in emissions, as traffic rates rose from 255bn miles travelled a year in 1990 to 328bn miles in 2018.
Posted 3 years ago # -
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Doomsayers and hopemongers alike may need to revise their climate predictions after a study that almost rules out the most optimistic forecasts for global heating while downplaying the likelihood of worst-case scenarios.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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Big corporations accused of driving environmental and health inequalities in black and brown communities through toxic and climate-changing pollution are also funding powerful police groups in major US cities, according to a new investigation.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/27/fossil-fuels-oil-gas-industry-police-foundations
Posted 3 years ago # -
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From climate change to smoking and cancer, this is the story of how doubt has been manufactured. This 10 part series explores how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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Up to 1.5 million more children in England should get free school meals to help tackle a growing crisis of food poverty and unhealthy eating, according to a blueprint billed as the first national food strategy since war rationing.
The government-commissioned report also warns that the climate crisis will be the source of the next food emergency, demands more than £2bn for farmers to improve the countryside, and condemns faux-healthy food labelling by big brands - including the idea of “healthy” Marks & Spencer Percy Pig sweets.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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Nest, which handles much of the pensions of workers saving under the government’s “auto enrolment” scheme, will shift £5.5bn into “climate aware” investments as it anticipates a green economic recovery from coronavirus.“
Posted 3 years ago # -
This is a cracking thread from Hackney Cllr Jon Burke
https://twitter.com/jonburkeUK/status/1289117803572854785
I cannot overstate the horrors that global warming has in store for us and our children should we fail to take immediate remedial action. Yet, my timeline is still full of dinosaurs of the Right and tech utopian fantasists of the Left.
...that's the easy part. The fact is, demand-side measures that reduce superfluous consumption present the single most effective mechanism for reducing emissions. We - the industrialised world - are objective consuming more than the finite limits of the planet can withstand.
Politicians don't want to level with you about this. They think you love 4x4s and foreign holidays more than your own kids. Maybe 40 years of 'me, me, me' means they're right? Well, I love my children enough to risk unpopularity by telling people things they don't want to hear.
And Guardian article:
https://t.co/Qym7dChL9M?amp=1Posted 3 years ago # -
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6. ‘Reposition Global Warming as theory, not fact’
How They Made Us Doubt EverythingEpisode 6 of 10
'Unless climate change becomes a non-issue…there may be no moment when we can declare victory’. The communication plans drawn up by energy groups
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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Your future risk of dying from heat will be determined more than anything else by where you live and the local consequences of today’s economic inequality. That’s the conclusion of a major paper released today by the Climate Impact Lab, a research consortium that spent years mapping the relationship between temperature, income, and mortality. People in poor regions who benefit less from investment in air conditioning, protective infrastructure, and elder care will die from extreme heat at much higher rates, even compared to wealthier peers who experience similar hot temperatures.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-climate-heat-inequality/?srnd=green
Posted 3 years ago # -
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The report described the plastics industry as “a bloated behemoth, ripe for disruption” by governments eager to reduce its heavy carbon footprint and tackle the scourge of plastics in the world’s oceans.
Earlier this summer the EU proposed a tax of €800 (£713) per tonne for unrecycled waste plastic, months after China announced a ban on non-biodegradable single-use plastics in major cities from the end of this year, and in all cities and towns by 2022.
Meanwhile BP agreed to sell its petrochemicals business for $5bn to Ineos, which is owned by British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, after warning that a ban on single use plastics would hit oil demand over the coming decades.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
...a ban on single use plastics would hit oil demand over the coming decades.
Only the boss of an oil firm and his ilk could think that's anything other than a good thing.
Posted 3 years ago # -
“ilk” presumably covers a disappointing number of politicians too?
Posted 3 years ago # -
Indeed, I'm not convinced the quote has the logic the right way round either.
We need to reduce oil demand and reducing plastic is one way to achieve that.
Posted 3 years ago # -
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Gully Bujak, an XR activist, said: “The climate emergency is an existential threat to humanity. Instead of publishing this on the front page every day as it deserves, much of our media ignores the issue and some actively sow the seeds of climate denial.”
Posted 3 years ago # -
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The unfolding climate and ecological crisis – which scientists say will make future pandemics more likely – presents a multitude of challenges to cities in the 21st century, from more severe heatwaves to rising sea levels and flooding.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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It’s as if there was a fire and the alarm starts and they try to argue about the fire alarm instead of the actual fire.”
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Posted 3 years ago # -
George Kerevan on BiFab in Fife being undercut on contracts to build turbine jackets. New owners DF Barnes are from Newfoundland (@SRD!) and this is their first foray into European energy market.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18821193.forget-virtue-signalling-say-hell-bogus-state-aid-rules/
I last wrote about BiFab in these pages only last month when the company lost out in an order for turbine jackets for the big Seagreen project being built for SSE, a Swiss-registered energy company that pretends to be Scottish.
I was a bit surprised my story did not get the usual internet traction despite my exposing the fact that BiFab had been undercut by a dubious US contractor called Fluor (which works for the Pentagon), and a state-owned Chinese sidekick that takes advantage of operating out of a low-tax port outside of Hong Kong.
The rest of the order has gone to a company called Lamprell, which is based in the low-tax United Arab Emirates where striking is illegal. Lamprell admits to being in serious financial difficulty and is desperate to acquire any contracts it can get by selling cheap. In other words, BiFab has been undercut by unfair competition.
Now BiFab has run into difficulties with its only remaining prospect for work – building eight turbine jackets for use in the Neart Na Gaoithe (NnG) offshore wind project being developed by the French, state-owned energy company EDF.
Posted 3 years ago #
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