There is still a lot of money sloshing around out there for fossil fuel development, but slowing the flow from the spigot sends a powerful signal. “That’s bigger than the GDP of China and the U.S. The fossil fuel divestment movement is snowballing. As activist and writer Bill McKibben noted in The New York Times last week, $40 trillion in endowments and portfolios has vowed to abstain from investing in coal and gas and oil.Mann also roasted Saudi Arabia and Russia for making a mockery of the Glasgow negotiations by agreeing to “a laughably delinquent” date of 2060 for reaching net zero emissions. and the European Union have committed to. As Mann points out, Australia’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 26% to 28% by 2030 is half what other industrialized nations such as the U.S. “Look no further than Australia, a country that deserves better than the feckless coalition government that currently reigns,” he wrote in The Los Angeles Times last week. And they’re calling it out more and more. Michael Mann, Katharine Hayhoe, Gavin Schmidt, Andrea Dutton and Andrew Dessler are all top climate scientists who have a knack for calling out bullshit when they see it. Thanks in part to a big push from the U.S., more than 100 nations signed a Global Methane Pledge in Glasgow, vowing to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030. is pressing forward on other fronts, including new rules to limit methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. Can Biden get it through congress? That remains to be seen, especially after the drubbing Democrats took in this week’s elections. It includes investments for virtually every aspect of the economy, from clean energy transmission and storage to tax credits for electric vehicles and the production of low-carbon steel. But Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which includes $500 billion for climate funding, would still be the biggest investment in clean energy and climate adaptation the U.S. It’s been ransacked and shanghaied by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. President Biden’s climate agenda is big, smart, and serious. It’s been downsized and cut up.Or maybe it was a foreshadowing of climate accountability to come. New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was typically sharp about the dangers of life in a rapidly warming world: “Some of us have to actually live the future that you all are setting on fire for us.” The CEOs squirmed, fidgeted, and blustered. Kati Porter of California used M&Ms and bags of rice to make a point about how much land the oil companies have tied up in land leases. Republicans on the committee, led by James Comer of Kentucky, trotted out 30 year-old myths about energy independence and how fossil fuels are the elixir of working families. House Committee on Oversight and Reform grilled Big Oil CEOs for knowingly spreading lies about the risks of climate change. The Age of Accountability for Big Oil has begun. Last week, the U.S.Even in Big Coal states like Ohio, electricity from solar power will overtake coal by the end of the decade. The cost of onshore wind power declined by 70 percent over the same period. Utility-scale solar power declined in cost by 90 percent between 20. A decade ago, the virtue of coal was that it was cheap and plentiful. The price of clean energy is falling fast.2.5 C of warming is still horrific, but it’s far less horrific than 4 C. And since then, another 25 countries have updated their pledges. With the official pledges updated last month - if successfully translated into effective policies - we would limit warming to around 2.5☌. But now, with the policies that are already in place, we’re heading for just under 3☌, perhaps a little lower. A decade ago, we were heading for a world 4☌ (or more) warmer by 2100, which would have been catastrophic for life as we know it. The worst-case scenarios for climate warming have so far been averted. It’s often argued that the nearly 30 years of climate talks since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 have led to nothing.Just how much is up to us, and always will be. Which means that no matter how hot it gets, no matter how fully climate change transforms the planet and the way we live on it, it will always be the case that the next decade could contain more warming, and more suffering, or less warming and less suffering. It is not a matter of “yes” or “no,” not a question of “fucked” or “not.” Instead, it is a problem that gets worse over time the longer we produce greenhouse gas, and can be made better if we choose to stop. Whatever you may have read over the past year - as extreme weather brought a global heat wave and unprecedented wildfires burned through 1.6 million California acres and newspaper headlines declared, “Climate Change Is Here” - global warming is not binary. It’s not too late. In fact, it never will be. David Wallace-Wells in New York Magazine:
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