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Arabica Robusta

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate review - Naomi Klein's powerful and ... - 0 views

  • Much of this book is concerned with showing that powerful and well-financed rightwing thinktanks and lobby groups lie behind the denial of climate change in recent years.
  • Klein interprets the marginalisation of climate change in the political process as the result of the machinations of corporate elites. These elites “understand the real significance of climate change better than most of the ‘warmists’ in the political centre, the ones who are still insisting that the response can be gradual and painless and that we don’t need to go to war with anybody… The deniers get plenty of the details wrong… But when it comes to the scope and depth of change required to avert catastrophe, they are right on the money.”
  • Klein is a brave and passionate writer who always deserves to be heard, and this is a powerful and urgent book that anyone who cares about climate change will want to read. Yet it is hard to resist the conclusion that she shrinks from facing the true scale of the problem. When I read The Shock Doctrine (Guardian review headline: “The end of the world as we know it”), I was unconvinced that corporate and political elites understood what they were doing in promoting the wildly leveraged capitalism of that time, which was already beginning to implode. The idea that corporate elites are in charge of the world is even less convincing today. The neoliberal order has recovered, and in some countries even achieved a spurious kind of stability, but only at the cost of worsening global conflicts.
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  • Another problem with pinning all the blame for climate crisis on corporate elites is that humanly caused environmental destruction long predates the rise of capitalism.
  • Though she identifies the prevailing type of capitalism as the culprit in the climate crisis, Klein doesn’t outline anything like an alternative economic system, preferring instead to focus on particular local struggles against environmental damage and exploitation. In many ways this makes sense, but in a global environment of intensifying scarcities, giving priority to local needs is unlikely to be a recipe for harmony. Whether in the Congo in the 1960s or Iraq at the present time, internecine conflicts – exploited and aggravated by the geopolitical stratagems of great powers – have led to a condition of endemic war.
  • Throughout This Changes Everything, Klein describes the climate crisis as a confrontation between capitalism and the planet. It would be more accurate to describe the crisis as a clash between the expanding demands of humankind and a finite world, but however the conflict is framed there can be no doubt who the winner will be. The Earth is vastly older and stronger than the human animal.
Hans De Keulenaer

Is nuclear power essential to addressing climate change and energy independence? - NewTalk - 0 views

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    Calling climate change one of the greatest challenges ever faced by the human race, some former opponents of nuclear power have recently become its advocates, if cautious advocates. Our purpose here is not to debate climate change, but rather "Is nuclear power essential to addressing climate change and energy independence?"
Jeff Johnson

The Ethics of Climate Change: Pay Now or Pay More Later?: Scientific American - 0 views

  • What should we do about climate change? The question is an ethical one. Science, including the science of economics, can help discover the causes and effects of climate change. It can also help work out what we can do about climate change. But what we should do is an ethical question.
  • Weighing our own prosperity against the chances that climate change will diminish the well-being of our grandchildren calls on economists to make hard ethical judgments
Hans De Keulenaer

Virtual power plants could tame coming grid chaos - tech - 11 June 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

  • Fears over energy security and climate change have led to record investment in renewable energy. But a major problem threatens to stall progress towards a more sustainable future: national electricity grids are far from ready to cope with the variable output from the new technologies. A solution might be at hand, though, and would not involve radical changes to the existing infrastructure. Treating groups of dispersed power sources, such as solar and wind generators, as a single entity could solve the problem, creating the virtual equivalent of a single large power station.
Arabica Robusta

Climate Change Messaging: Avoid the Truth » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Na... - 1 views

  • Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger published the op-ed “Global Warming Scare Tactics” in the New York Times on April 8. Participants in recent debates over climate change may recognize their names. They’re the guys who run the Breakthrough Institute, a pseudo-contrarian “environmental research organization.”
  • While occasionally on point in its charges against the big organizations, the essay (based on interviews with mostly white male leaders of large national groups) had nothing to say about the environmental justice movement, or other grassroots groups led by women and people of color. It neglected as well the environmental movements of the Global South, today the heart of the climate justice movement.
  • Is fear of disruption of what Habermas calls the life-world the sole inducer of civic action? Of course not: social movements also cohere around other shared, negotiated understandings, identities, diagnoses of problems, and assessments of opportunities. Might fear paralyze rather than mobilize? Yes: in cases when the perceived threat appears impervious to resistance, and when commitment to the cause flags over time. Fear-based campaigns require a tangible evil: a draft card, a nuclear plant cooling tower, a polluting facility’s smoke plume, an Operation Rescue picket line.
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  • Of the massive, coordinated, ongoing effort by Exxon-Mobil, the Koch brothers, and the Heartland Institute (et al.) to do to climate science what the Tobacco Institute did to cigarette science, Nordhaus and Shellenberger have only this to say, “Some conservatives and fossil-fuel interests questioned the link between carbon emissions and global warming.” There’s no mention of how under- and mis-educated TV weathermen have been central progenitors of climate change skepticism. There’s no acknowledgement of how Big Coal, Oil and Gas have bought off local and national legislators, stalled attempts to put forward even wimpy programs (like cap and trade), or underwritten NPR’s gushing embrace of fracking.
Colin Bennett

The Energy Blog: Big Business Says Addressing Climate Change 'Rates Very Low on Agenda' - 0 views

  • Nearly nine in 10 of them do not rate it as a priority, says the study, which canvassed more than 500 big businesses in Britain, the US, Germany, Japan, India and China. Nearly twice as many see climate change as imposing costs on their business as those who believe it presents an opportunity to make money. And the report's publishers believe that big business will concentrate even less on climate change as the world economy deteriorates. . . . more
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    Climate is a global and an outcome measure. No wonder 'business does not care', or better - gives it only lip service. But as for the multi-B$ carbon markets, that's a different story. The term 'shark pit' comes to mind.
Hans De Keulenaer

T2419.pdf (application/pdf Object) - 0 views

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    The report presents how climate will change according to climate models concerning the planning and building of electric power networks from the present state to the period from 2016 to 2045. The essential impacts of changes in weather conditions on planning and building of electric network are defined regionally based on the climate change scenarios. The importance of the effects is shown as costs and failure durations for different line structures. Moreover, the influence of the climate change on the loading capacity of the power system components is presented. On the basis of all these factors it will be judged how strong an effect the climate change has in the present electric power network and how one should be prepared for it.
Hans De Keulenaer

Companies, Carbon and Climate Change: The Carbon Disclosure Project Issues its 5th Glob... - 0 views

  • Today, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) released its much-anticipated Global Corporate Climate Change Report (CDP5). This is the fifth annual report by the CDP tracking carbon disclosure and attitudes toward climate change in the world's largest companies. The CDP additionally this year launched the Climate Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI), an honor roll for companies who are best addressing climate change issues.
Jeff Johnson

Friedman: Learning to Speak Climate (NYTimes) - 0 views

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    Some countries have vintage whiskey. Some have vintage wine. Greenland has vintage ice. Sometimes you just wish you were a photographer. I simply do not have the words to describe the awesome majesty of Greenland's Kangia Glacier, shedding massive icebergs the size of skyscrapers and slowly pushing them down the Ilulissat Fjord until they crash into the ocean off the west coast of Greenland. There, these natural ice sculptures float and bob around the glassy waters near here. You can sail between them in a fishing boat, listening to these white ice monsters crackle and break, heave and sigh, as if they were noisily protesting their fate. Greenland is one of the best places to observe the effects of climate change. Because the world's biggest island has just 55,000 people and no industry, the condition of its huge ice sheet - as well as its temperature, precipitation and winds - is influenced by the global atmospheric and ocean currents that converge here. Whatever happens in China or Brazil gets felt here. And because Greenlanders live close to nature, they are walking barometers of climate change.
Peter Fleming

Climate change fears may worsen depression - Health - Mental health - msnbc.com - 0 views

  • According to accumulating evidence, climate change won't just trigger new cases of stress, anxiety and depression. People who already have schizophrenia and other serious psychological problems will probably suffer most in the aftermath of natural disasters and extreme weather events.
  • Then, there's the general sense of sadness that can come from reading about climate change again and again, and recognizing that the world is changing.
Hans De Keulenaer

Not a sheep: Climate Change scientists - 0 views

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    Junk Science has a selection of quotations from "leading climate change scientists" that I think are worthy of spreading so people can see what kind of people they are and what their real aims are.
Hans De Keulenaer

Presidents' Words on Climate and Energy: 1965 to Now | SolveClimate.com - 0 views

  • Every President for the past 30 years has gone on record in support of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil. U.S. Presidents have been advised since at least 1965 that the greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted as a result of burning fossil fuels will cause significant global warming. In assertive, often eloquent language, past Presidents called upon the nation to unify around the goals of energy independence and climate protection. Yet most of their objectives have not been achieved and their visions of greater energy security and a stable climate have not been realized.
Sergio Ferreira

Global options for tackling climate change | EU - European Information on Climate Change - 0 views

  • xamines some of the main policy options and instruments available for mounting a global response to problems such as rising sea levels, biodiversity loss and failing crops. 
Sergio Ferreira

EurActiv.com - Steelmakers call for global sector-specific climate regime | EU - Europe... - 0 views

  • With the UN Bali conference drawing closer, steelmakers have called on governments to adopt a sector-specific approach to tackling CO2 emissions from the iron and steel industry, saying "regional policies" such as the EU-ETS only shift the problem to Asian countries, where environmental rules are less stringent
Jeff Johnson

Climate groups look post-Bush (csmonitor.com) - 0 views

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    This week, a coalition of scientific societies and university organizations is slated to hand the Obama and McCain campaigns detailed steps and budget estimates for improving America's ability to monitor and forecast climate trends and severe weather. This October, the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), based at the University of Colorado at Denver, is expected to offer up an exhaustive agenda for a president's first 100 and 1,000 days.
Hans De Keulenaer

The (Annotated) Climate Declaration From the Industrial Powers - Dot Earth - Climate Ch... - 0 views

  • Below is the Declaration on Environment and Climate Change from the Group of 8. I’ll be annotating it as time allows and encourage you to weigh in in a comment. I’ll add footnote-style links to your contribution if you allude or refer to specific passages you think are significant, disingenuous, wishful, toothless, powerful…:
Phil Slade

Climate Investment Funds - 0 views

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    "The Climate Investment Funds are a unique pair of financing instruments designed to support low-carbon and climate-resilient development through scaled-up financing channeled through the African Development Bank , Asian Development Bank , European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Inter-American Development Bank , and World Bank Group."
Colin Bennett

Terminology: "Global Warming" or "Climate Change?" - 0 views

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    The terms "global warming" and "climate change" are often used interchangeably. I've pretty much used "global warming" over the years, but now I'm making the switch to "climate change:" It's the term used by the United Nations, academia, and it's more inclusive, since "change" can refer to increased rain, drought, or any type of weather event other than just warming. So is there really a difference in definitions?
Colin Bennett

Biggest Ever Civil Disobedience on Climate - 0 views

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    The event, known as the Capitol Climate Action (CCA), will be the largest mass mobilization on global warming in the country's history. The event reflects the growing public demand for bold action to address the climate and energy crises. It means no more waiting, no more excuses, and no more coal.
Hans De Keulenaer

Tackling Climate Change Achievable And Affordable · Environmental Leader · Gr... - 0 views

  • The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has released its 2008 Environmental Outlook. Without new policies, the world risks irreversibly damaging the environment and the natural resource base needed to support economic growth and well-being, according to the report. But the Outlook finds that tackling climate change, biodiversity loss, water scarcity and the health impacts of pollution is both achievable and affordable.
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