These are the stories I found for this roundup:
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Manchin throws 'hand grenade' at Biden's climate change agenda for Glasgow
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‘We may not be able to stop climate change, but we can slow it down”
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Humans only just arrived on this planet, and we wasted no time making a mess of it.
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In Southeast Alaska, a new type of conservation
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Ford Foundation to Divest Millions From Fossil Fuels
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Should we be worried that ‘ice glue’ is melting in Antarctica?
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Mustard-powered planes could cut carbon emissions by nearly 70%
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Marc Morano: I want us to know what he is up to
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Green Public Spending a 'Win-Win Opportunity' for Climate and Workers, Global Study Shows
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The Power of Electric Bike Libraries
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'Policy of Death': Amazon Guardians Sue Ecuador's President Over Oil, Mining Decrees
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Banks Due At UK’s ‘Green’ Investment Summit ‘Financed £700 Billion in Fossil Fuels Since Paris Agreement’
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Air pollution is much worse than we thought
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‘We want sun’: the battle for solar power in Puerto Rico
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Climate change: Fossil fuel production set to soar over next decade
This Is An Open Thread
I found over 50 stories since Sunday’s edition, IMO all good, I tried to cut some out. Then I stop to think about what to do. I’ve decided to leave all the tweets & pick out the ones I like best to add an excerpt of the article from the tweet. I could add more if I keep looking, I’ll stop doing that & put them in the next roundup.
Hope your day goes well.
Manchin throws 'hand grenade' at Biden's climate change agenda for Glasgow
When news broke on Friday evening that the White House was cutting the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP) from President Biden’s budget to appease Sen. Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia Democrat, environmental experts were quick to identify the global implications for the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
“Joe Manchin just launched a hand grenade at Glasgow,” tweeted Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State. “W/out a clean energy standard in the reconciliation package, Biden admin cannot meet pledge of 50% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2030. And international climate negotiations begin to collapse.”
‘We may not be able to stop climate change, but we can slow it down”
We may not be able to stop climate change, but we can slow it down, state Environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray said on Monday.
He was interacting at National Stock Exchange during a panel discussion on ‘Economic opportunity for India to accelerate management of marine & land waste and pollution’, amid members of UN agencies, government, sustainability heads of corporates and select NGOs.
Asking people to make it a habit to adhere to climate change emergencies, making small changes, Thackeray said, “We may not be able to stop climate change, but what we can do as corporates, citizens, industries is slow down what climate change is doing to us.”
Humans only just arrived on this planet, and we wasted no time making a mess of it.
Suppose an alien spaceship will land on earth next week. After many light-years of travel through space, some friendly little green creatures decide to get out and stretch their legs on our planet. What would they report home?
I guess their first description would be ecstatic. Hidden in the fast, cold, and dark universe, they discovered a blue planet that brims with an incredible diversity of life, aided by ideal living conditions.
But after a bit more research, the little aliens write their subsequent reports in a more sobering tone. One intelligent species seems to have worked out how to join hands to dominate all other species. There are 7.6 billion of these humans on the planet; that sounds like a lot, but they represent just 0.01% of all living things. However, their destructive impact is unprecedented.
In Southeast Alaska, a new type of conservation
“Let it exist forever, Ch’u tleix áwé kugaagastee."
The Tlingit phrase serves as a uniting motto for a partnership between environmental scientists, park rangers, hunters, former timber harvesters and tribal council members in Southeast Alaska. 10 years ago, these groups may have been at odds. But today, they are harnessing a combination of Indigenous knowledge and local input to improve the region’s forest management.
It’s only the beginning for these types of community-based programs.
The Alaska Native Regional corporation Sealaska and the non-profit The Nature Conservancy recently donated a combined $17 million to the newly established Seacoast Trust, a fund which will support Southeast Alaska projects like the Hoonah Native Forest Partnership mentioned above. The Nature Conservancy pledged to match Sealaska's initial $10 million contribution by raising an additional $3 million for the fund, bringing the projected total amount to $20 million. Financial oversight will be conducted by Spruce Root, a Juneau-based non-profit.
Ford Foundation to Divest Millions From Fossil Fuels
The Ford Foundation, one of the largest private foundations in the United States, announced Monday that it will divest millions from fossil fuels, following similar investment decisions made by other sizable foundations in recent years.
For years, climate activists have put pressure on endowed institutions, like Ford, to end their investments in companies involved with producing fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas. MacArthur Foundation, another dominant player in the philanthropy world, and Harvard University both announced last month that their institutions would end investments in fossil fuel related companies.
Should we be worried that ‘ice glue’ is melting in Antarctica?
The looming ice shelves of Antarctica might look immovable, but they are slowly starting to shift due to rising global temperatures.
Scientists are concerned that mélange - the ice-and-snow mixture that holds ice shelves together - is starting to melt due to the increasing heat.
What is ice glue?
Mélange is a mixture of broken icebergs, windblown snow, and sea ice that surrounds ice shelves. This blend helps to hold ice shelves together, packing them tightly and attaching them to rocks and ridges.
But as temperatures above 20 degrees celsius were recorded for the first time last year, there are fears mélange is beginning to melt more rapidly, causing rifts and fractures in Antarctica’s ice shelves.
Mustard-powered planes could cut carbon emissions by nearly 70%
After four years of searching, scientists have found a new plant-based aviation fuel that could significantly reduce the environmental impact of flying.
The fuel is made from a type of mustard plant called Brassica carinata and could reduce carbon emissions by up to 68 per cent, according to research from the University of Georgia, US.
The research, led by scientist Puneet Dwivedi, shows that this sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) could be a “game-changer” in replacing petroleum.
"Carinata-based SAF could help reduce the carbon footprint of the aviation sector while creating economic opportunities and improving the flow of ecosystem services across the southern region,” says Dwivedi, associate professor in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.
Marc Morano I want us to remember what he is up to
Marc Morano is the executive director and chief correspondent of ClimateDepot.com, a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). Morano is also the Communications Director at CFACT, a conservative think-tank in Washington D.C. that has received funding from ExxonMobil, Chevron, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars from foundations associated with Richard Mellon Scaife. According to 2011 IRS Forms (PDF), Morano was the highest paid staff member with a salary of $150,000 per year. Morano’s blog Climate Depot regularly publishes articles questioning man-made global warming. [12], [13], [6], [37]
Although he has no scientific expertise in the area, Morano has become a prominent climate change denier. He has been called “the Matt Drudge of climate denial,” the “King of the skeptics,” and a “central cell of the climate-denial machine.” He was also listed as one of 17 top “climate killers” by Rolling Stone Magazine. He has accused climate scientists of “fear mongering,” and has claimed that proponents of man-made global warming are “funded to the tune of $50 billion.” [15], [16]
Green Public Spending a 'Win-Win Opportunity' for Climate and Workers, Global Study Shows
As congressional Democrats reassess the Build Back Better Act's climate provisions after right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, an unabashed coal profiteer, vowed to gut a key clean electricity program, new research out Monday confirms that green public spending yields more jobs than unsustainable investments—for Manchin's constituents in West Virginia and for workers around the world.
"Continuing to funnel money to unsustainable infrastructure rather than green infrastructure doesn't make sense for the climate, but it also doesn't make sense for workers."
If the U.S. government provides $1 million to fund energy efficiency and renewable energy production, it will generate nearly three times as much employment as it would have created had it used the same amount of money to keep subsidizing the planet-wrecking oil and gas industries, according to an analysis by the World Resources Institute, New Climate Economy, and the International Trade Union Confederation.
The Power of Electric Bike Libraries
Kate McCarthy had no problem biking downtown from her home in Montpelier, Vermont. It was the ride back — and the steep quarter-mile climb up Franklin Street — that killed her enthusiasm. When it came time to pick up her son from school or go shopping, taking the car was easiest. She mostly walked to work.
But when McCarthy and her husband decided to expand their family, they knew they’d need a second option to move everyone around. She didn’t want to have to buy a second car. So when a lending library for battery-boosted e-bikes came to their local outdoors shop in summer 2019, the couple jumped at the opportunity to borrow one for free. For four days, they experimented with a cargo e-bike with a child’s seat to see how it handled the hills for errands and commutes. They liked it so much that they bought a used Yuba Mundo off Craigslist a year later.
'Policy of Death': Amazon Guardians Sue Ecuador's President Over Oil, Mining Decrees
In a bid to halt what one Indigenous leader called a "policy of death," communities from Ecuador's Amazon region on Monday sued the country's right-wing president, who is planning a major expansion of fossil fuel extraction and mining that threatens millions of acres of pristine rainforest and the survival of native peoples.
"President Guillermo Lasso intends to impose an extractive agenda and sacrifice the lives of thousands of Indigenous families who inhabit these territories."
In the first of a series of lawsuits against President Guillermo Lasso, Indigenous nations, groups, and advocates allege that Executive Decree 95—which aims to double the country's oil production to one million barrels per day by deregulating the fossil fuel industry—violates their internationally recognized right to free, prior, and informed consultation and consent.
Banks Due At UK’s ‘Green’ Investment Summit ‘Financed £700 Billion in Fossil Fuels Since Paris Agreement’
Bank bosses due to attend a green investment summit tomorrow head institutions which have provided over £700 billion of financing for the fossil fuel industry since the 2015 Paris Agreement, including £129 billion in 2020 alone.
Campaigners have criticised the expected presence of the “world’s biggest financiers” of fossil fuels at the UK government event, which drew protests by Extinction Rebellion and Biofuelwatch activists on Sunday.
The global investment summit is being held at the Science Museum in London and at Windsor Castle to “galvanise foreign investment in the UK’s green industries of the future” ahead of the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, according to the Department for International Trade.
Air pollution is much worse than we thought
In the late 1960s, the US saw regular, choking smog descend over New York City and Los Angeles, 100,000 barrels of oil spilled off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and, perhaps most famously, fires burning on the surface of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. These grim images sparked the modern environmental movement, the first Earth Day, and a decade of extraordinary environmental lawmaking and rulemaking (much of it under a Republican president, Richard Nixon).
From the ’70s through the beginning of the 21st century, the fight against fossil fuels was a fight about pollution, especially air pollution.
‘We want sun’: the battle for solar power in Puerto Rico
Rosalina Marrero spends the best part of each day ironing and watching telenovelas at her modest bungalow in Puerto Rico’s coastal Guayama province. When it gets too hot or her asthma plays up due to the toxic coal ash from the nearby power plant, the 78-year-old widow rests on an adjustable hospital bed, clicks on the fan and thanks God for the solar panels on her roof.
Earlier this year, Marrero was among two dozen residents in a low-income, predominantly Black neighbourhood blighted by coal pollution, fitted with a rooftop solar and storage system. Campaigners say systems like hers should be rolled out more widely to tackle the island’s energy crisis and the global climate emergency – both of which are exacerbating racialized health inequalities.
The situation with the electricity is dire.
Climate change: Fossil fuel production set to soar over next decade
Plans by governments to extract fossil fuels up to 2030 are incompatible with keeping global temperatures to safe levels, says the UN.
The UNEP production gap report says countries will drill or mine more than double the levels needed to keep the 1.5C threshold alive.
Oil and gas recovery is set to rise sharply with only a modest decrease in coal.
There has been little change since the first report was published in 2019.
With the COP26 climate conference just over a week away, there is already a huge focus on the carbon-cutting ambitions of the biggest emitters.
But despite the flurry of net zero emission goals and the increased pledges of many countries, some of the biggest oil, gas and coal producers have not set out plans for the rapid reductions in fossil fuels that scientists say are necessary to limit temperatures in coming years.