"Green Growth" will not stop climate change. It will only continue to make things worse. And there is no such thing as "sustainable" capitalism. That is simply an impossibility.

Let's look into it...
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With global temperatures soaring to record highs, it might be worthwhile to check in on the progress of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law by President Biden one year ago.

Passage of the act was met with accolades. Mainstream environmentalists declared it a “game changer” and a “seismic shift.”

But are we actually on track to avert climate catastrophe? How much money is being spent, and where is it being targeted? Are there trends we can identify at this early stage? To state the obvious, time is not on our side, and an assessment of where we stand in terms of benchmarks and emissions is crucial.

Arguably, the sector where the IRA has had the most immediate impact is the manufacturing of electric vehicles, identified as a primary goal towards “decarbonizing” the transportation system.

For example, Ford Motor Company, whose profit last year was more than $23 billion, was given 9 billion taxpayer dollars to build an electric vehicle factory in Tennessee. Even with the substandard wages they will pay their workers in that “right-to-work” state, Ford claimed it needed this “incentive” to compete with Chinese auto manufacturers.

Setting aside the corporate-friendly way the law encourages the build-out of this new industry, can anyone really believe it is “green”? Is there any accounting for the embedded emissions, not to mention the overall ecological impact, involved in replacing 275 million private vehicles with shiny new electric ones?

Already 52 new mining and manufacturing projects have been announced — with $56 billion in investment proposed.
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The article goes on to examine other #greenwashing initiatives, like direct air capture and so-called green hydrogen, along with the push for even more consumer-driven economic growth.

FULL STORY -- https://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/let-a-million-evs-bloom-the-ira-one-year-later/

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual

'Sooner than expected' — 'Faster than previously thought' — 'Worse than was predicted' — Why do we keep hearing this over and over?

As the article excerpted below suggests, it's due to the difficulty of assessing risks and judging odds when climate tipping points are involved...
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Many current changes are at the upper limit of scientific projections, and sometimes beyond them. This year, heat records have been smashed, and global ocean surface temperatures are at the top of the projected range. Other events, including sea-surface warming in the North Atlantic and the eye-watering decline of sea ice around Antarctica, have simply astounded scientists.

“On the one hand, we knew these things were going to happen. These have been the predictions for a long time,” Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, told the Washington Post earlier this year. “But this year, in particular, has seemed so extreme. The size of the anomalies is surprising.”

This year, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, has become a flashpoint for debating how to express and explain climate risk. This phenomenon refers to the complex web of ocean currents covering the breadth and length of the Atlantic, from the Southern Ocean to the Arctic, which help regulate global weather patterns.

This system has already slowed by 15% since the mid-20th century, and in 2021 researchers concluded there is “strong evidence that the AMOC is indeed approaching a critical, bifurcation-induced transition” (in other words, a tipping point) but the timing was unclear.

Stefan Rahmsdorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University in Germany, said that while there is still “large uncertainty where the tipping point of the AMOC is, the scientific evidence now is that we can’t even rule out crossing a tipping point in the next decade or two. The conservative IPCC estimate, based on climate models which are too stable, is in my view outdated now.”
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There's much more in this highly informative piece from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and I suggest you read the whole thing.

FULL ARTICLE -- https://thebulletin.org/2023/09/betting-against-worst-case-climate-scenarios-is-risky-business/

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency

It's so hard to remain optimistic or to take a positive view about the condition of our world...
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Carbon dioxide (CO2), the predominant greenhouse gas, is emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas, as well as from deforestation and cement production.

In 2021, some 37.12 billion tons of CO2 was emitted across the globe. According to Oxfam, the richest 10% of the world’s population is responsible for more than half of all carbon emissions.

Africa’s carbon emissions are dwarfed by the emissions of other continents. At 11.47 billion tons, China is the world’s largest polluter, followed by the United States (5 billion tons), India (2.7 billion tons), Russia (1.75 billion tons), and Japan (1.07 billion tons).

Comprising about 17% of the world’s population, Africa contributes just 4% of global carbon emissions at 1.45 billion tons.
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The strongest and richest are doing the damage, while the weakest and poorest are paying the price.

There is no #ClimateJustice. Certainly not today, and maybe not ever.

FULL STORY -- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/4/how-much-does-africa-contribute-to-global-carbon-emissions

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual #CO2 #Emissions

So this year's shaping up to be not just the hottest on record (records that started in 1940, that is), but August looks to to have been about 1.5C warmer than the preindustrial average for 1850-1900!

Global air temperature anomalies are only moving in one direction & look to be accelerating - the #climatecrisis is here but politicians seem to be hoping it will all just go away (or a new technical fix will appear).

the world is burning & #RishiSunak & other 'leaders' have their fiddles ready!

Tropospheric warming is usually treated as uniform across the tropics. However, in a recent paper, #MPIM_scientists show that the projected upper tropospheric warming in #ClimateModels is not spatially uniform. Using the classical Gill model, they demonstrate that the pattern of tropospheric warming is coupled to circulation and convective heating changes.

Learn about this interesting paper: https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.4526