The world’s wealthiest countries are responding to the climate crisis by militarizing their borders
The biggest emitters of greenhouse gases spend an average of 2.3 times as much on arming their borders as on climate finance. Some spend 15 times as much. They aim to keep migrants away, rather than addressing the causes of displacement.
19 June 2020 — DeSmog UK
It has perhaps been a long time coming, but the UK government is finally thinking about putting its money where it’s mouth is. Or should that be withdrawing its money from where its mouth shouldn’t be?
This week, it was announced that the government was considering steps to stop supporting fossil fuel projects abroad through its various agencies, including UK Export Finance (UKEF) and the development company CDC Group (formerly the Colonial Development Corporation).
5 June 2020 — DesSmog
On your marks, and get set to “race to net-zero”.
That’s the latest language coming from Alok Sharma, the UK’s Business Secretary and COP26 chief (get well soon!), as the government urges countries, companies, and everyone else to “build back better” in the wake of COVID-19.
1 March 2020 — Media Lens
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the most immediate objective is to slow its spread, minimise the death toll and help people through the crisis. But, despite government promises to support citizens who are now losing their jobs and income, the underlying establishment concern will be as it always has been: to preserve the global inequitable system of wealth and power.
7 November 2018 — Climate & Capitalism
Of all the fossil fuels ever consumed, more than half were burned in the last 50 years
In ‘Burning Up’ Simon Pirani shows why fossil fuel consumption has grown so fast, and argues that only radical social change can prevent climate disaster now
Luke Neal is an activist who lives in Berlin.
Simon Pirani
BURNING UP
A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption
Pluto Press, 2018
reviewed by Luke Neal
8 April 2018 — Climate & Capitalism – Common Dreams, April 5, 2018
Secret documents reveal that the giant oil company’s scientists warned executives about the global impact of fossil fuels as early as 1981Royal Dutch Shell’s scientists warned the oil giant about the threat that fossil fuel emissions pose to the planet as early as the 1980s, according to a trove of documents obtained by a Dutch journalist and published Thursday at Climate Files.
22 January 2015 — Media Lens
Last week, climate researchers at both NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that 2014 was the planet’s warmest year in the modern record, going all the way back to 1880. The ten warmest years have now occurred since 2000, with the sole exception of 1998 when there was a strong El Niño warming event in the Pacific Ocean.
14 October 2013 — Dissident Voice
People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us. — Wendell Berry1
‘Humankind is capable of saving the Earth if we recover the principles of solidarity, complementarity and harmony with nature in contraposition to the reign of competition, profits and rampant consumption of natural resources’
By Evo Morales Ayma,
President of Bolivia
From Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
November 28, 2008 — Sisters and brothers, today our Mother Earth is ill. From the beginning of the 21st century we have lived the hottest years of the last thousand years. Global warming is generating abrupt changes in the weather: the retreat of glaciers and the decrease of the polar ice caps; the increase of the sea level and the flooding of coastal areas, where approximately 60% of the world population live; the increase in the processes of desertification and the decrease of fresh water sources; a higher frequency in natural disasters that the communities of the earth suffer[1]; the extinction of animal and plant species; and the spread of diseases in areas that before were free from those diseases.
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
September 9, 2008
Last month, a senior UK government adviser warned of the real risk of a devastating rise in global temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius. Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said:
“There is no doubt that we should aim to limit changes in the global mean surface temperature to 2C above pre-industrial [levels].
“But given this is an ambitious target, and we don’t know in detail how to limit greenhouse gas emissions to realise a 2 degree target, we should be prepared to adapt to 4C.” (James Randerson, ‘Prepare for global temperature rise of 4C, warns top scientist’, Guardian, August 7, 2008
But what would a 4C rise mean for the planet? According to the 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change, up to 300 million people would be affected by coastal flooding annually. Water availability in Southern Africa and the Mediterranean could drop by half, and agricultural yields in Africa may be cut by up to 35%, with devastating consequences for millions at risk of starvation, malnutrition and disease. Half of all animal and plant species could face extinction.
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
November 1, 2007
The Guardian this week published an article by the readers’ editor, Siobhain Butterworth, discussing “the contradiction between what the Guardian has to say about environmental issues and what it advertises”. (Butterworth, ‘Open door – The readers’ editor on… the contradiction between what we say and the ads we run,’ The Guardian, October 29, 2007; www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2200887,00.html)
The New Dark Age 