CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » This site

Dealing with Climate Change & Justice

(1257 posts)
  • Started 2 years ago by chdot
  • Latest reply from chdot
  • This topic is sticky

No tags yet.


  1. chdot
    Admin

  2. chdot
    Admin

  3. chdot
    Admin

  4. chdot
    Admin

    You may be thinking: if we’re climate activists why are we getting involved in refugee legislation? It’s all connected. For one, the climate crisis will force many people to move. And many of the crises in the global south are the direct result of centuries of colonial exploitation by wealthy countries such as the UK. We believe it is the responsibility of our government to provide safety for people facing these situations. The “Rwanda plan” and the nationality and borders bill must continue to be challenged and scrutinised in parliament and in public. How we treat people seeking refuge and how we treat the most vulnerable people in the global community says a lot about Britain. Why wouldn’t we want to live in a country that supports people to rebuild their lives and to live free from persecution and violence?

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/09/priti-patel-inhumane-rwanda-plan-tory-dinner

    Posted 1 year ago #
  5. chdot
    Admin

  6. chdot
    Admin

    Oil and gas majors are planning scores of vast projects that threaten to shatter the 1.5C climate goal. If governments do not act, these firms will continue to cash in as the world burns

    The world’s biggest fossil fuel firms are quietly planning scores of “carbon bomb” oil and gas projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global impacts, a Guardian investigation shows.

    The exclusive data shows these firms are in effect placing multibillion-dollar bets against humanity halting global heating. Their huge investments in new fossil fuel production could pay off only if countries fail to rapidly slash carbon emissions, which scientists say is vital.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/may/11/fossil-fuel-carbon-bombs-climate-breakdown-oil-gas

    Posted 1 year ago #
  7. chdot
    Admin

  8. chdot
    Admin

    Environmental tipping points are fast approaching in the UK, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) has said.

    Potential tipping points – where gradual decline suddenly becomes catastrophic – include loss of wildlife, fisheries collapse and dead, polluted rivers, the watchdog said. The OEP is a new official body set up after Brexit to hold the government to account. Its first report, published on Thursday, says ministers have shown ambition but that action is too slow.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/12/environment-tipping-points-fast-approaching-in-uk-says-watchdog

    Posted 1 year ago #
  9. HankChief
    Member

  10. chdot
    Admin

    Fossil fuel companies need spend just a fraction of their income on lobbying – funding politicians and their parties, buying the services of thinktanks and public relations agencies, using advertising to greenwash their credentials – to impede the energy transition and defend their investments. Fossil fuels will become stranded assets only when governments insist that they be left in the ground. Yet, somehow, a major strand of thinking in rich nations continues to ignore this obvious truth.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/13/optimism-climate-predictions-techno-polluters

    Posted 1 year ago #
  11. chdot
    Admin

    Our new research, led by the University of Exeter, highlights a distinct problem with how the European media visually represents news of extreme heat. We examined media coverage from the UK, the Netherlands, France and Germany during the summer of 2019. Importantly, we only included news stories that mentioned both the keywords “heatwave” and “climate change”, reasoning that if we were to see responsible and accurate reporting of heatwave risks, it would be in coverage that at least alluded to the increasing risk of heatwaves becoming longer, more frequent and more intense under climate breakdown.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/14/sun-photos-climate-breakdown

    Posted 1 year ago #
  12. chdot
    Admin

    “If you want to address climate change, and you’ve got eight years to do it, then buses, bikes and walking are the only tools you’ve practically got to make that happen,” he said. “That’s it. And buses don’t work unless you make space for them.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/may/14/promote-safety-benefits-of-low-traffic-schemes-boardman-tells-councils

    Posted 1 year ago #
  13. chdot
    Admin

    A new coalmine proposed for Cumbria is likely to be redundant before it even opens because the steelmakers that are its target market are moving so rapidly away from fossil fuels, analysis from green campaigners claims.

    Steelmakers across Europe are moving to “green steel”, which uses renewable energy and modern techniques to avoid the need for coking coal of the type that the proposed mine in Whitehaven would produce.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/16/cumbria-coalmine-redundant-before-it-even-opens-say-campaigners

    Posted 1 year ago #
  14. chdot
    Admin

  15. chdot
    Admin

    Now the global food system must survive not only its internal frailties, but also environmental and political disruptions that might interact with each other. To give a current example, in mid-April, the Indian government suggested that it could make up the shortfall in global food exports caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Just a month later, it banned exports of wheat, after crops shrivelled in a devastating heatwave.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/19/banks-collapsed-in-2008-food-system-same-producers-regulators

    Posted 1 year ago #
  16. chdot
    Admin

  17. chdot
    Admin

    Mines and quarries have scarred the Earth’s surface, altering the landscape irrevocably. As well as destruction of natural habitat, the environmental impact of mining includes air pollution and contamination of surrounding soils and groundwater by oil, acid and chemical spills. On average, every human on the planet uses 16kg of extracted metals, minerals and fossil energy every day. Dozens of metals including cobalt, gold, tin, copper, silver, lithium, coltan and nickel make up the components of our phones and computers. We may feel as if we can’t live without these devices, but upgrading less often will reduce the demand for these limited resources

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2022/may/19/climate-crisis-the-evidence-project-in-pictures

    Posted 1 year ago #
  18. chdot
    Admin

  19. chdot
    Admin

  20. chdot
    Admin

    “People do not understand the magnitude of what is going on,” she said. “This will be greater than anything we have ever seen in the past. This will be unprecedented. Every living thing will be affected.”

    While countries can start to adapt to some of the impacts, for instance with seawalls and flood barriers, and by making their infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather, if global heating is allowed to continue then the world will rapidly reach a point beyond what can be adapted to.

    “If we continue with business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions, there is no adaptation that is possible. You just can’t,” she said, in an interview with the Guardian.

    ….

    “The reality is that we will not have anything left that we value, if we do not address the climate crisis.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/01/we-cannot-adapt-our-way-out-of-climate-crisis-warns-leading-scientist

    Posted 1 year ago #
  21. chdot
    Admin

    Hayhoe has been very critical of Climate Deniers. On September 28, 2018, she said, "The six stages of climate denial are: It's not real. It's not us. It's not that bad. It's too expensive to fix. Aha, here's a great solution (that actually does nothing). And – oh no! Now it's too late. You really should have warned us earlier."

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Hayhoe

    Posted 1 year ago #
  22. chdot
    Admin

    Climate crisis could make humans shrink in size, says fossil expert

    Edinburgh palaeontologist says smaller mammals are better able to cope with increased temperatures

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/07/humans-could-shrink-in-wake-of-climate-crisis-says-fossil-expert

    Posted 1 year ago #
  23. chdot
    Admin

  24. chdot
    Admin

    The IEA said greater efficiency could be readily achieved with existing technologies and would pay back fully the investment through lower running costs, especially at today’s high energy prices. Important measures include the rollout of electric cars and heat pumps, more efficient household appliances such as fridges and TVs, and people nudging down home thermostats and choosing greener travel.

    In the UK, making homes warmer and cheaper to heat through better insulation is key. The UK government has committed £37bn to helping households with energy bills but has not announced any new efficiency measures, leading critics to accuse ministers of spending billions but still leaving people “at the mercy of global oil and gas prices”.

    Launching the IEA report, Birol said: “Energy efficiency is a critical solution to so many of the world’s most urgent challenges. But inexplicably, government and business leaders are failing to sufficiently act on this.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/08/government-failure-to-boost-energy-efficiency-inexplicable-says-iea

    Posted 1 year ago #
  25. chdot
    Admin

  26. chdot
    Admin

  27. chdot
    Admin

  28. chdot
    Admin

  29. chdot
    Admin

    However, Marks & Spencer hit back at Gove’s “political grandstanding”, insisting that in the long term the more energy-efficient new building “will more than offset any emissions from the redevelopment”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/21/michael-gove-inquiry-marks-spencer-oxford-street-demolition-rebuild-co2-concerns

    Posted 1 year ago #
  30. chdot
    Admin

    “I think on the one hand we overestimate climate change because it’s now quite common that every time an extreme event happens, there is a big assumption that climate change is playing a big role, which is not always the case,” said Friederike Otto, a climate change and environment professor at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, who was one of the lead authors of the research.

    “But on the other hand, we really underestimate those events where climate change does play a role in what the costs are, especially the non-economic costs of extreme weather events to our societies.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/28/climate-change-heatwaves-droughts-study-weather

    Posted 1 year ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply »

You must log in to post.


Video embedded using Easy Video Embed plugin