These are the stories I have found for this roundup:
-
Greta Thunberg: 'We need public pressure, not just summits'
-
UN: Africa's glaciers to disappear by 2040s from climate change
-
Hispanic organizations call for Latino climate justice in reconciliation
-
‘Climate change is hitting us’: French beekeepers expect worst honey harvest in half a century
-
Local activists in long battle to stop oil drilling on Isle of Wight
-
Over 100 million people in Africa threatened by climate change
-
U.N. finds that governments are still planning to increase oil and gas production despite climate warnings
-
Facebook climate disinformation called out by climate groups
-
French Oil Company Total ‘Knew About Global Warming Impact in 1971’, Study Finds
-
The Great Melt: This village in Fiji has been forced to move inland as sea levels rise
-
Climate crisis: Why do we need COP anyway?
-
The biggest green hydrogen hub in the US could be coming soon to Mississippi
-
'Who's Next?': Quebec Declares End to Fossil Fuel Extraction in Province
-
Diplomats Are Lowering Expectations Ahead of COP26
-
Revealed: The polluting nations trying to 'water down' crucial UN climate report
-
Electric Vehicles Are Having a Banner Year. Here Are the Numbers
-
US intelligence services see security threat in climate change
-
Australia sought to weaken UN climate report on need to close coal-fired power stations, leak suggests
-
Solar energy can account for 40% of U.S. electricity by 2035 -DOE
-
Revised Kerala state action plan on climate change on the anvil
-
Unchecked Oil and Gas Wastewater Threatens California Groundwater
-
EV Turning Point: Momentum Builds for U.S. Electric Vehicle Transition
This Is An Open Thread
Greta Thunberg: 'We need public pressure, not just summits'
Climate activist Greta Thunberg has told the BBC that summits will not lead to action on climate goals unless the public demand change too.
In a wide-ranging interview ahead of the COP26 climate summit, she said the public needed to "uproot the system".
"The change is going to come when people are demanding change. So we can't expect everything to happen at these conferences," she said.
She also accused politicians of coming up with excuses.
The COP26 climate summit is taking place in Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, from 31 October to 12 November.
It is the biggest climate change conference since landmark talks in Paris in 2015. Some 200 countries are being asked for their plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming.
UN: Africa's glaciers to disappear by 2040s from climate change
Glaciers capping three of Africa's iconic mountains — Mount Kenya in Kenya, the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania — will likely disappear over the next two decades because of human-induced climate change, the World Meteorological Organization's estimated in a new report Tuesday.
Why it matters: The WMO warned that glacier loss is just one effect climate change will have on the continent, as rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, rising sea levels and more extreme weather will also likely exacerbate food insecurity, economic and political instability and population displacement.
Hispanic organizations call for Latino climate justice in reconciliation
A wide array of Hispanic-serving organizations on Friday announced an initiative to promote environmental standards focused on Latino communities, which are disproportionately affected by climate change and pollution.
The Latino Climate Justice Framework Project is an alliance of 23 organizations ranging from the two largest Hispanic civil rights groups, UnidosUS and the League of United Latin American Citizens, to environmental groups like GreenLatinos, to grassroots voting organizations like Mi Familia Vota.
The alliance is asking political leaders to include Latino-specific climate priorities in the Build Back Better plan and beyond, including funding for culturally appropriate information on the environment, better access to emergency response and attention to climate change-related crises throughout the Americas.
‘Climate change is hitting us’: French beekeepers expect worst honey harvest in half a century
French beekeepers expect their worst harvest in decades as unseasonably cold and wet weather due to climate change has prevented bees from producing honey.
Beekeepers association UNAF said that based on information received from regional associations it expects the honey harvest for 2021 to come in at 7,000 to 9,000 tonnes, or about a third of the 2020 harvest.
“This will be worst harvest in the history of our organisation, the worst in at least 50 years,” UNAF president Christian Pons said on Tuesday.
Local activists in long battle to stop oil drilling on Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight Council has rejected UK Oil and Gas Investments proposal to drill for oil on the island.
The council voted unanimously to refuse UKOG's application. The oil company had applied to drill two exploratory boreholes near the village of Arreton in the hope of recovering 15.7 million barrels of oil.
The decision brought immediate relief to the campaign group 'Don't Drill the Wight' which has been opposing the plans for the past five years. Euronews Green reported on efforts to stop UKOG's oil drilling plans on the island last year.
Over 100 million people in Africa threatened by climate change
A new report by the United Nations has warned that more than 100 million “extremely poor” people across Africa are threatened by accelerating climate change that could also melt away the continent’s few glaciers within two decades.
The report released on Tuesday by the World Meteorological Organization presented a grim reminder that Africa’s 1.3 billion people remain “extremely vulnerable” as the continent warms more and at a faster rate than the global average – when the continent’s 54 countries are responsible for less than 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
U.N. finds that governments are still planning to increase oil and gas production despite climate warnings
Limiting global warming to 1.5°C is vital to reducing the risk of catastrophic natural disasters and weather events. Global leaders have spent months committing to make this happen, but on Wednesday, the United Nations released a report showing that their actions are falling short.
The 2021 Production Gap Report compares government's plans for coal, oil and gas production to the levels required to limit warming under the Paris Climate Agreement. Researchers looked at 15 major producers of fossil fuels, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.
They found that most of these governments have significant policies in support of fossil fuels, and that many are planning to increase their production. These 15 countries, the report found, are planning to produce roughly 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than what can be done to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The projected production levels are 45% higher than what's needed to limit warming to 2°C.
Facebook climate disinformation called out by climate groups
Ahead of November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), the Climate Disinformation Coalition is calling on all big tech platforms to take concrete, transparent steps to eliminate climate disinformation. While the broader corporate world is making bold climate commitments, the lack of oversight, accountability, and transparency to eliminate climate disinformation by social media companies significantly harms society’s ability to meet Paris commitments and beyond.
The Facebook whistleblower’s testimony and Google/Youtube’s recent move to demonetize climate denial shows that it’s possible for platforms to take meaningful steps to protect their users from disinformation.
“Climate disinformation has declined in traditional media, but is still pervasive on Facebook,” said Julia Masters, Climate Disinformation Coalition campaign manager. “If climate talks get torpedoed by disinformation, these social media companies should be held responsible. We urge Facebook to take the simple steps needed to reduce its amplification of professional climate deniers before it’s too late.”
French Oil Company Total ‘Knew About Global Warming Impact in 1971’, Study Finds
French oil giant Total knew that its fossil fuel extraction could contribute to global warming as early as 1971 but stayed silent about it until 1988, according to a new study.
Research published today in the journal Global Environmental Change, based on internal company documents and interviews with former staff, found that personnel “received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global warming from its products by 1971”.
Total – which this year rebranded as TotalEnergies – “became more fully informed” about climate change in the 1980s and “began promoting doubt regarding the scientific basis for global warming by the late 1980s”. The company publicly accepted climate science in the 1990s but promoted “policy delay or policies peripheral to fossil fuel control”, the authors found.
The Great Melt: This village in Fiji has been forced to move inland as sea levels rise
“This is my house,” the chief of a Fijian village says, pointing to an old lump of concrete and a few wooden posts jutting out of the brownish sand of a beach shaded by coconut palms.
This is all that remains of the boyhood home of Simione Botu, head of Vunidogoloa village in eastern Fiji. He has already moved inland – not once, but twice – to escape worsening floods along the coast.
“Our heart is here. Our forefathers were here,” he tells me, standing on the narrow beach by the rotted foundations of his first home, washed away decades ago by the Pacific Ocean.
During a 2018 visit to Fiji, in the South Pacific east of Australia, Britain’s Prince Harry mentioned Vunidogoloa village as the first to move inland anywhere in the world because of sea level rise. It is a dismal title that could be competed over by several other communities around the globe.
Climate crisis: Why do we need COP anyway?
It's nearly time that the Conference of the Parties (COP), the supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), takes place, this time in Glasgow from October 31 until November 12.
At the COP's very first meeting, in Berlin in 1995, the members already saw the need to reduce emissions and agreed to meet annually to discuss how to maintain control over global warming.
But what concrete actions have 25 years of these meetings resulted in so far? According to most climate change activists, not that many.
Greta Thunberg recently told the Guardian: "Nothing has changed from previous years really. … We can have as many COPs as we want, but nothing real will come out of it."
The biggest green hydrogen hub in the US could be coming soon to Mississippi
The United States could see its biggest green hydrogen hub by far up and running in Mississippi by 2025 — if a team of former natural-gas storage developers and a major Canadian energy infrastructure developer can pull off their plans.
On Tuesday, Hy Stor Energy announced that it intends to build a green hydrogen production and storage complex that could match the large size of such projects being constructed in Europe. By 2025, the first phase of the project could be making 110,000 metric tons of green hydrogen per year and storing more than 70,000 metric tons of it in underground salt caverns.
That’s more than 10 times the 5,500-metric-ton storage capacity of the next-largest green hydrogen project announced in the U.S. to date, the Advanced Clean Energy Storage project in Utah, which is expected to come online in 2025 and cost more than $1 billion to build.
'Who's Next?': Quebec Declares End to Fossil Fuel Extraction in Province
Climate campaigners are welcoming Quebec Premier François Legault's Tuesday announcement that his government has decided to put an end to any further fossil fuel extraction in the province.
"This is the climate leadership we need."
"This is excellent news," said Patrick Bonin, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Canada, in a statement.
Legault's announcement—that the government "decided to definitively renounce the extraction of hydrocarbons on its territory"—came during the conservative's speech to a new parliamentary session in which he covered a range of topics from the healthcare system to "national cohesion" to a Covid-19 recovery plan.
Diplomats Are Lowering Expectations Ahead of COP26
We’re on the cusp of a major climate event — the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland — and already world leaders are lowering expectations. But it’s essential as journalists that we remember our responsibility to the public and not let politicians and diplomats treat us as stenographers. The summit, which runs from October 31 to November 12, has been called humanity’s “last best chance” by the COP26 president to keep average global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The world has no choice but to aim high and demand that leaders rise to the occasion.
Those who live in the poorest nations and also suffer the greatest climate impacts will be watching. In a position paper, more than 100 developing countries, representing half of the world, declared “COP 26 must be a key moment of delivery and there can be no more excuses for unfulfilled promises, particularly climate finance.” They’re working to raise expectations as rich countries have failed to meet their Paris Agreement pledge to provide $100 billion a year to help developing countries quit fossil fuels and protect against climate impacts.
Revealed: The polluting nations trying to 'water down' crucial UN climate report
Comments from some of the most polluting countries in the world sought to “water down” a landmark UN climate report, according to leaked documents seen by Greenpeace UK’s investigative journalism unit.
More than 30,0000 comments from governments, academics, companies and others on the IPCC’s draft ‘Working Group II’ report were shown to Greenpeace Unearthed.
They reveal that a small number of nations wanted parts of the report that would threaten their economic interests to be changed.
China, Saudi Arabia, India and Australia were among those who submitted comments urging scientists to downplay or “omit” phrases about the need to transition away from fossil fuels. Officials from the Australian government reportedly questioned the need for all of its coal-fired power plants to close as part of efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
Electric Vehicles Are Having a Banner Year. Here Are the Numbers
Electric vehicle sales have made a leap this year in the United States.
From January to September, U.S. consumers bought 305,324 all-electric vehicles, an increase of 83 percent from the same period in 2020, according to Kelley Blue Book.
With this bump in sales, all-electric vehicles are now 2.6 percent of all new light duty cars and trucks sold in the country, up from 1.6 percent at this time last year.
Those are huge gains. But when I spoke with auto analysts this week, they said 2021 is only an appetizer for what is coming in 2022.
The increase in sales this year came despite major challenges, including a short-term shortage of computer chips that has led to production delays, and long-term regional differences that mean the EV market barely exists in much of the country.
US intelligence services see security threat in climate change
US intelligence services said Thursday for the first time that climate change poses wide-ranging threats to the United States' national security and stability around the world.
More extreme weather "will increasingly exacerbate a number of risks to US national security interests, from physical impacts that could cascade into security challenges, to how countries respond to the climate challenge," the White House said in a summary of the intelligence reports.
The prediction was made in the first official assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, which oversees the sprawling US intelligence apparatus.
Australia sought to weaken UN climate report on need to close coal-fired power stations, leak suggests
Australia pushed back against a finding in a major climate report that fossil fuel power stations be urgently phased out, and requested the country be removed from a list of the world’s leading producers and consumers of coal, Greenpeace has said citing leaked documents.
Australia was among a handful of major fossil fuel exporting nations that sought to weaken the conclusions of the report, Greenpeace’s investigative arm, Unearthed, said on Thursday.
It released a report based on leaked documents related to the Working Group III paper on solutions to the climate crisis being prepared by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Solar energy can account for 40% of U.S. electricity by 2035 -DOE
The Biden administration on Wednesday released a report showing the United States can get 40% of its electricity from solar energy by 2035, a significant jump.
The Solar Futures Study outlines how solar energy can help decarbonize the U.S. power grid and help achieve a Biden administration goal of net zero emissions in the electricity sector by 2035.
“The study illuminates the fact that solar, our cheapest and fastest-growing source of clean energy, could produce enough electricity to power all of the homes in the U.S. by 2035 and employ as many as 1.5 million people in the process,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
Unchecked Oil and Gas Wastewater Threatens California Groundwater
California has a reputation as a leader on climate and environmental policy. So it doesn’t advertise the fact that it allows the oil and gas industry to store wastewater produced during drilling and extraction in unlined pits in the ground, a practice that began in the early 1900s.
Now, though, researchers have revealed the environmental costs of California’s failure to regulate how its $111 billion oil and gas industry manages the wastewater, known as produced water.
EV Turning Point: Momentum Builds for U.S. Electric Vehicle Transition
Last month’s failure of the Texas electric grid, coming just weeks after General Motors’ pledge to make only electric vehicles by 2035, highlights the daunting task the United States faces as it takes the first steps toward weaning its economy off fossil fuels. While GM’s announcement is striking from a historical vantage point — the nation’s largest automaker choosing to jettison the internal combustion engine — the collapse of the Texas grid underscores how far the country has to go as it attempts to “electrify everything.”
Despite these challenges, the U.S. finds itself at a promising turning point, with new economic, social, and political forces driving a key aspect of the decarbonization of the economy — the electrification of cars and, eventually, trucks. The U.S. lags behind China and the European Union in the transition to electric vehicles, or EVs. But if the private sector and federal and state governments make a commitment to electric vehicles — something that has already begun with the Biden administration and U.S. automakers — we think that within two decades a majority of new automobiles sold in the U.S. will be electric.
The writers in Climate Brief work to keep the Daily Kos community informed and engaged with breaking news about the climate crisis around the world while providing inspiring stories of environmental heroes, opportunities for direct engagement, and perspectives on the intersection of climate activism with spirituality, politics, and the arts.