Global

Flooding across India, Nepal and Bangladesh leaves parts of cities underwater as storm moves on to Pakistan

[see videos and more graphics with original article]

At least 21 people are dead and more than a dozen others trapped after monsoon downpours caused a building to collapse in Mumbai.

This is a manmade climate-related disaster. To ignore this ensures our greatest challenge goes unanswered and helps push the world towards catastrophe

July 17, 2015

• Energy subsidies sizeable worldwide and projected to stay high
• China top subsidizer in dollar terms, Ukraine in percent of GDP, and Qatar in per capita terms
• Countries can reap fiscal and environment gains by reforming energy subsidies

Energy subsidies are projected at US$5.3 trillion in 2015, or 6.5 percent of global GDP, according to a recent IMF study. Most of this arises from countries setting energy taxes below levels that fully reflect the environmental damage associated with energy consumption.

Climate change is widely recognized as the most urgent issue facing planet Earth. The scientific community is clear: we must take strong action to stop practices that are causing global warming or risk passing a tipping point. [1]

Yet instead of democratic leadership to protect the wellbeing of the planet ahead of all other interests, the UN is giving a stronger role to the fossil fuel industry in setting global climate change policy.

Timber rots, cement crumbles, metal corrodes: plastics are there for ever. By 2050 there could be 12 billion tonnes in the world’s landfills.

The locales say that actions by oil, natural gas and coal companies intensified climate change

Two California counties and a city yesterday sued 37 oil, natural gas and coal companies and trade groups, saying their actions intensified climate change and exacerbated costly sea-level rise.

re: coal mines closing because of cheap renewables: That is probably overstated, and it would be worth it for our networks of ecology minded people to understand this:  [see http://www.ecosocialistsvancouver.org/article/worlds-biggest-coal-company-closes-37-mines-solar-powers-influence-grows]

[But see http://www.ecosocialistsvancouver.org/article/re-coal-mines-closing-because-cheap-renewables-probably-overstated]

Plummeting price of renewable energy puts pressure on fossil fuel firms

The largest coal mining company in the world has announced it will close 37 mines because they are no longer economically viable.