Category Archives: Global warming

Michael Hoexter: Malign Confusion about Growth, Economic Growth or “Degrowth”: Which Way Forward? – Part 2

Yves here. One of the big problems with the growth v. “de-growth” debate is how terrible our measures of productive activity are.

“Loss & Damage” Beyond Charity, into Solidarity, and Suffused with Climate Justice?i

By Patrick Bond, a political economist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies in Durban, South Africa, where since 2004 he has directed the Centre for Civil Society. Originally published at Triple Crisis.

An important article about one facet of the Warsaw Conference of Polluters 19, “Loss & Damage”, was published last week in The Star (Malasia) by the very highly-regarded political-ecologist/economist [and regular TCB blogger] Martin Khor (New climate deal on loss and damage). As always, the South Centre and Third World Network provide invaluable information, and Martin has taught me incalculable amounts since we first met in Johannesburg in 1990.

Ohio’s Official Fracking Water Damage Denialism

Yves here. It is not hard to imagine that the position taken by Ohio officials regarding what sure looks like fracking-induced damage to water supplies is being replicated in other states.

New Study Finds Higher Methane Emissions from Fracking

Fracking skeptics have been concerned about methane releases, since methane is a vastly more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This report is particularly grim and calls the entire case for shale gas into question.

Michael Klare: A Climate Change-Fueled Revolution?

Yves here. The post below by Michael Klare is hardly radical; in fact, the Department of Defense has been for at least the last five years working on geopolitical scenarios that give a large role to climate change induced political instability, such as mass migrations out of heavily populated low-lying areas. So as much as Klare anticipates more and more popular uprisings, I’d anticipate that the powers that be are expecting them and are prepared to suppress them brutally. Thus the places they might succeed are in advanced economies with comparatively little police brutality in large cities (ie, where you’d have lots of media coverage which would constrain how harsh the retaliation would be).

Surely the Lotus F1 Team Isn’t Just Slinking Quietly Away From Its Embarrassing Team Partner, AGT?

Lotus F1 quietly drop AGT from their Official Team Partner list just after Naked Capitalism tells the world that AGT’s a scam.

Why is Google Censoring Search Results to Nix Warnings Just Like Ones Issued by a UK Regulator?

Yves here. One of the things on our very long list of important issues we’d like to write about is the way Google, an unregulated information-screener, can dictate companies’ business models and keep information out of the public eye by how they handle search queries. Richard Smith give an example below.

McLaren F1 & Jenson Button One Minute, Boiler Room Scams the Next: the Remarkable Double Life of Carbon Neutral Investments, Limited, (CNI)

Naked Capitalism notes that Carbon Neutral Investments, subject of a consumer warning by the UK’s FCA, has deals with Formula 1 teams McLaren and Sauber, Lord Heseltine’s publishing firm Haymarket, Newcastle United Football Club, and a host of PR and events companies, and wonders what the hell is going on.

Carbon Neutral Investments’ Trail of Disaster: How Carbon Credit Con Artists use Google Adwords to Work the Recovery Scam

Carbon Neutral Investments and the ‘recovery room’ scam

Greed, Revolution, and Governance

I’m generally very taken with Ian Welsh’s work, particularly two recent posts, A New Ideology and How to Create a Viable Ideology. He then continued with 44 Explicit Points on Creating a Better World. And I hate to say it, but the last piece was no where near as well thought out as the preceding pieces. What troubled me about his latest piece was its combination of confidence (as opposed to modesty and soliciting reactions and input) in combination with it having internal contractions and a lack of precision of language. But perhaps the biggest shortcoming was trying to finesse the question of governance.

The Careless Organizers of Gumball 3000 are Hooked Up with Boiler Room Scam “Servicers” Carbon Neutral Investments (CNI)

The Gumball 3000 event is helping a deeply dodgy British firm with its marketing.

FBI Raids, Lord Heseltine’s Haymarket Media Group, Financial Regulator “Crackdowns”, “What Car” Magazine…and Carbon Neutral Investments Limited

How two wide boys with shady pasts snared a leading British publisher that has major political connections.

Stranded Fossil Fuels? Institutional Investors Concerned About “Unburnable Carbon” Fallout

Yves here. Given the almost innate bullish bias of equity investors, when they start worrying about something, that means it actually has non-trivial odds of happening. So the idea that investors think it’s possible that a lot of current proven fossil fuels won’t be lifted is an unexpected bit of good news on the climate change front. Whether this comes to pass soon enough to save our collective bacon is another question entirely.

Carbon Pricing: The Price Is Wrong

For U.S. climate activists to succeed, they must demand serious government spending on energy efficiency and renewables—spending comparable to the current war budget. Calling for hundreds of billions in annual green public investment has potential for the popular appeal needed to build a powerful grassroots climate movement. That investment would be the best policy as well. Massive clean energy spending would not only provide jobs and economic growth on a grand scale. It is the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

Gaius Publius: Climate Crisis: Why We’re on Track for 7°C Warming or Greater by 2100

If we don’t “stop now” — meaning, hit the carbon brake hard and stop the carbon car — we risk going over a cliff whose edge could be as near as five to ten years away.