Gaius Publius: Climate Scientist Michael Mann – If We Don’t Stop Now, We’ll Surpass 2°C Global Warming
When will the global warming process, and all the damage it does, get out of control?
Read more...Category Archives: Environment
Gaius Publius: IPCC Accidentally Proves that “International Cooperation” on Climate Change is Dead
As you’ve been reading lately, there’s a new IPCC climate report out, the second of three. This report is from Working Group 2, responsible for studying “impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities.” In other words, what effect is climate change (“global warming”) having now, what impact will it have if we make certain choices, and where are we vulnerable?
Read more...Gaius Publius: How Climate Change Could Cause an Ice Age in Europe
The first major (white) American city to end its life forever following a Haiyan-sized hurricane — Miami, for example — will cause a collapse in American confidence in the future that will never return.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Think Big, Think Bold – A Green New Deal
Yves here. One of the common frustrations expressed by the NC commentariat is that we spend a lot of time on diagnosis and not as much on solutions. I actually don’t think our emphasis on forensics and analysis is misplaced. Too often, people are uncomfortable with examining deep-seated problems and thus rush to devise remedies that are incomplete or worse, counterproductive.
A second frustration, which I sympathize with, is that many of the solutions recommended by economists to our current problems (income disparity, high unemployment, increasing looting of the private sector and government) is based on restoring growth, which will make redistribution and other measures less contentious. Readers correctly point out that more growth is a 20th century remedy, when the 21st century is faces with global warming (meaning an need to start containing and better yet, reducing energy consumption) and resource constraints.
Yanis Varoufakis addresses both issues in his outline of what he calls a “Green New Deal”.
Read more...Rent in a Warming World
What’s rent got to do with climate change? More than you might think.
Read more...Whither the Green Economy?
We aren’t even surveying “the green economy” any more; that program was killed by the sequester. What does that tell you?
Read more...Gaius Publius: Neoliberalism, “Just Desserts,” and the Post-Climate-Crisis Economy
Gaius examines the connections between neoliberalism and the convulsions that climate change will bring to the world.
Read more...Determined Ignorance on Climate Change: Still Impervious to Facts
Climate change is a hard policy question to address because it pits those who believe in evidence against those committed to knowing as little as possible.
Read more...Will the U.S. Follow the U.K. Into Power Shortages?
Britain endeavors to build new nuclear power plants to avert an electric crisis in 20 years – with the retirement of nearly all the nation’s installed capacity, as it falls prey to age. Is the United States is destined for the same crisis?
Read more...Michael Klare: In the Carbon Wars, Big Oil Is Winning
Listening to President Obama’s State of the Union address, it would have been easy to conclude that we were slowly but surely gaining in the war on climate change. Of course, by now, you should know that when Obama claims to have made progress, a reality check is very much in order.
Read more...The Embattled Climate Scientist Who Fought Back
Real News Network interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann, who has come under vicious and persistent attack by right-wing groups who decided to play a reductivist game and focus their attack on one chart Mann developed which became important in popular discussions of climate change.
Read more...As Drought Hits, Fracking Poses Threat to Water Supply
A new report describes how hydraulic fracturing is posing a growing risk to water supplies in several regions around the country.
Read more...Tom Engelhardt: Ending the World the Human Way – Climate Change as the Anti-News
Here’s the scoop: When it comes to climate change, there is no “story,” not in the normal news sense anyway.
Read more...Wikileaks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Environment Chapter: “Toothless Public Relations Exercise”
Wikileaks has thrown yet another wrench in the negotiations over the sellout-to-multinationals-masquerading-as-trade-deal otherwise called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Read more...Are Fracking Fluids to Blame for Rail Car Explosions?
Over the past year or so there seems to have been far more train derailments of cars carrying crude oil that have resulted in huge, deadly explosions, and it is not a coincidence that the oil in these explosions originated from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota.
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