The dilemma of growth: prosperity v economic expansion
Tim Jackson, The Guardian
Rethinking prosperity is a vital task because our prevailing vision of the good life – and the economics intended to deliver it – have both come badly unstuck. Financial markets are unstable; inequality is rising; and despite the 500,000 or so people who took to the streets before Tuesday’s UN Climate Summit in New York, tackling climate change still faces a “frustrating lack of progress”. If this were not enough, the proposition that more is always better has signally failed to deliver, particularly in the affluent west. But questioning these values is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.
This was brought home to me at the launch of the Sustainable Development Commission’s inquiry, Redefining Prosperity, which explored the relationship between economic growth and sustainability. “So this is what sustainability means,” fumed one disgruntled Treasury official. “Going back to live in caves.” This visceral response served as a foundation for my work at the commission, prompting me to frame our entire inquiry as a careful attempt to unravel the “dilemma of growth”. Beneath the dynamics of unemployment and the pervasive logic of consumerism, it was disconcerting to find an even deeper cause, a kind of existential angst about our place in the world…
Climate Action "Floods" Wall Street
Palina Prasasouk, Truthout
Climate change activists gathered in Battery Park in New York City, meeting at 9 am on Monday morning for breakfast and music by the Rude Mechanic Orchestra. During breakfast, activists participated in a nonviolent training, followed by speakers, including Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, Rebecca Solnit and others. People were then instructed in a practice of what the flood and sit-in of Wall Street would look like…
Climate change is a global emergency. Stop waiting for politicians to sound the alarm
Naomi Klein, The Guardian
The truth about our planet is horrifying, but the true leaders aren’t the ones at the UN – they’re in the streets. This is why the People’s Climate March matters…
Carbon Supply Cost Curves: Evaluating Financial Risk to Coal Capital Expenditures
Carbon Tracker
Core themes:
- Profits in thermal coal are already hard to find in today’s market. Coal companies are facing greater headwinds all the time with greater energy efficiency, cheaper alternatives and new pollution regulations eroding demand.
- Future demand and price levels may not meet current industry expectations. High cost coal producers are gambling on survival in the hope that prices will somehow recover.
- Peak thermal coal demand in China could be imminent. OECD demand is already falling. The resulting oversupply could flood the market, further weakening prices and asset values.
- Deploying additional capital expenditure into high cost production is risky, especially for new mines, which typically require expensive new rail infrastructure and port facilities to get coal to market.
How State Public Money Pays for Coal Exports and Oil Trains
Eric de Place, Sightline Daily
Communities across Oregon and Washington are growing increasingly agitated about the risks of fossil fuel export. Proposed coal terminals generated unprecedented opposition from local residents and, more recently, dramatic increases in oil train traffic have many questioning the grave safety risks associated with a cargo so prone to explode. Yet at the very same time, the state governments of both Oregon and Washington are bankrolling coal, oil, and gas infrastructure.
In some cases, the subsidies and expenditures are known but relatively small. But in other cases, large quantities of public money fund the very same facilities so bitterly opposed by the taxpayers that the states are supposed to be investing for…
Rockefellers to switch investments to ‘clean energy’
Staff, BBC
Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, spoke to the BBC about the decision.
Heirs to the Rockefeller family, which made its vast fortune from oil, are to sell investments in fossil fuels and reinvest in clean energy, reports say.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is joining a coalition of philanthropists pledging to rid themselves of more than $50bn (£31bn) in fossil fuel assets…
‘This Changes Everything,’ by Naomi Klein: review
Mason Inman, San Francisco Chronicle
Naomi Klein’s latest book may be the manifesto that the climate movement — and the planet — needs right now. Mainstream environmental groups and politicians alike support the notion of “green growth,” in which the world can continue with largely unfettered markets and still manage to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions. Klein argues that this is a fallacy, that capitalism and the climate are fundamentally at odds…
Why We Still Need Wilderness in the Era of Climate Change
Jason Marks, The Nation
Trust the academics, God bless ’em, to confirm the obvious.
This summer the journal BioScience reported that global climate change has eclipsed biodiversity conservation as the top environmental concern among philanthropies and scientific researchers, as well as in media coverage. The shift is hardly news: A glance at the websites of the leading environmental organizations reveals that global warming is the central issue for most campaigning outfits. Over the past fifteen years, as reports about the scope of the climate crisis piled up, much of the green movement has pivoted from a focus on wildlands preservation to human self-preservation.
Environmentalists’ urgency will be on display on Sunday in New York City as crowds gather for the People’s Climate March. Organizers are hoping to recruit more than 100,000 people to rally in Manhattan on the eve of a climate summit at the United Nations, with similar demonstrations to take place worldwide. Greens hope the global day of action will highlight the recklessness of the carbon barons and their political sock puppets, and jolt global leaders into action to stem greenhouse gas emissions…
Hey, Texas: Time for a real climate-change debate
Tim Cloward, Dallas News
My hope is that the People’s Climate March can contribute to this dialogue by helping make clear that the majority of the American people demand some sort of positive action to confront climate change. Fortunately, history has shown that large-scale grassroots movements can reach across partisan divides and create real progress. This is exactly the model of the People’s Climate March. It will be composed of more than a thousand partnering organizations. The message to the world’s leaders is that the people, gathered in organizations from the national to the neighborhood level, want action now.
It is only natural that America should lead this effort. Environmentalism is, in fact, one of our country’s great gifts to the world.
A half century before America Conservatism came into its own, we invented conservationism — the recognition that our collective lives are tied to the land that we live on. A Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, pioneered the idea that our government, acting out the will of the people, would act as the steward and protector of our collective land. Out of this initiative come a model of land management that has spread across the world. It also brought us the National Park Service that has bequeathed us Guadalupe and Big Bend National Park — two great symbols of our state that are essential to our very self-identity…
Now, What Climate Action?
Bill Henderson, Truthout
Naomi and Jim, AndersonBows and Roger, and maybe Lord Stern.
Now that we all agree that climate change is happening, has become an emergency after at least two decades of denial and procrastination, and requires urgent action, I suggest that presently there is no informing dialogue about the full spectrum of climate change danger with the full spectrum of possible solutions.
The build up to the People’s Climate March this weekend, a Chris Hedges article, and many Naomi Klein articles and reviews of her new book, contained within dozens of posts on Landwatch, BC’s major enviro listserve, has led to some half conversations here about what we agree upon and disagree about regarding climate change…
Memo To Obama: Expanded Natural Gas Use Worsens Climate Change
Joe Romm, Think Progress
A new study confirms that “increased natural gas use for electricity will not substantially reduce US GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, and by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies, may actually exacerbate the climate change problem in the long term.” This Environmental Research Letters study should be sobering to fans of expanded gas use who care about global warming — such as the Environmental Defense Fund and President Obama — because it is true even if methane leakage from gas production and delivery could somehow miraculously be reduced to zero…
World population to hit 11bn in 2100 – with 70% chance of continuous rise
Damien Carrington, The Guardian
The world’s population is now odds-on to swell ever-higher for the rest of the century, posing grave challenges for food supplies, healthcare and social cohesion. A ground-breaking analysis released on Thursday shows there is a 70% chance that the number of people on the planet will rise continuously from 7bn today to 11bn in 2100.
The work overturns 20 years of consensus that global population, and the stresses it brings, will peak by 2050 at about 9bn people. “The previous projections said this problem was going to go away so it took the focus off the population issue,” said Prof Adrian Raftery, at the University of Washington, who led the international research team. “There is now a strong argument that population should return to the top of the international agenda. Population is the driver of just about everything else and rapid population growth can exacerbate all kinds of challenges.” Lack of healthcare, poverty, pollution and rising unrest and crime are all problems linked to booming populations, he said…
Living Simply in a Dumpster
James Hamblin, The Atlantic
One professor left his home for a 36-square-foot open-air box, and he is happier for it. How much does a person really need?…
