Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I’d like you to consider that the current middle class is a defended enclosure by those whose income is largely composed of rent. Perhaps as powerful as land enclosure, I ask you to contemplate a modern enclosure – status property. I leave aside the historical middle class – the yeoman, guildsman, bourgeoisie… I think they may have passed away.
It’s not a question of if, but when. Dave Archambault II, the former tribal chief of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, USA, is reluctantly confident the Dakota Access Pipeline will eventually leak.
This installment of the Here Comes the (Trump) Judges series continues the discussion of the potential long-term impact of Trump’s judicial appointments on climate and clean energy policies and programs.
As the year draws to a close, Carbon Brief takes a look at 2017’s top climate and energy stories through the medium of numbers…
The Eagle Creek Fire was one point in a fire season defined by disastrous, fast-moving fires, from the deadly fires that tore through Northern California in October to the fire that decimated thousands of acres of Glacier National Park in Montana this fall. Taken together, however, these fires seemed to prove what scientists have been warning for years — that climate change will tilt the scales of probability in favor of bigger, more destructive wildfires, and that everyone, not just the most isolated rural communities, will start to pay the price.
Last week, at a New Orleans conference center that once doubled as a storm shelter for thousands during Hurricane Katrina, a group of polar scientists made a startling declaration: The Arctic as we once knew it is no more. The region is now definitively trending toward an ice-free state, the scientists said, with wide-ranging ramifications for ecosystems, national security, and the stability of the global climate system.
On December 16 anti-pipeline activists calling themselves water protectors gathered in Rayne, Louisiana, on land located along the proposed route of the Bayou Bridge pipeline. The gathering occurred two days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality granted Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) the last permit needed to build the pipeline.
The exploding craft beer movement is taking on the challenges of a water-constrained world and improving conservation and efficiency in production. Some are even experimenting with using recycled water in their brews.
Coal generation makes up about a third of the United States’ power supply — a share that has been shrinking thanks to a boom in natural gas, among other factors. As the end of coal looks more and more inevitable, so does the need for “just transitions.” That is, the engineering of fair economic and environmental conditions for communities who have historically relied on fossil fuel extraction.
Exhibiting a phenomenon in the social sciences called the “radical flank effect,” McKibben and 350.org have dramatically altered the climate change debate in the United States. Their success on this dimension offers important insights relevant for all social activists to consider.
So what a surprise when an Internet search brought up an intriguing phrase juxtaposing the word “ecological” to “civilisation”. Ecological civilisation? And it was all very official. In a statement to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), a Chinese spokesperson announced to the world that ecological civilisation was China’s new national strategy, that the view of man as conqueror of nature was outdated and that the new approach to modernization would be to strive to live in harmony with nature.
Recently, a number of institutional investors, including Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec in Canada and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, announced their intent to reduce their exposure in investments linked to fossil fuels. The announcements show that investors withdraw their funds to either mitigate financial risks or for ethical reasons. But the question remains whether divestment and divestment announcements have a financial impact on the share price of fossil fuel companies.
