Capitalism & Climate Change:
The Science and Politics of Global Warming
By David Klein, illustrated and edited
by Stephanie McMillan
An ebook available for download at Gumroad, a site where people can sell their work directly to their audience: https://gumroad.com/l/climatechange#. You choose your own price.
Think weapons, air conditioners, and ice cream, for starters.
Climate change will have some pretty terrifying consequences. Experts have predicted everything from deadly heat waves and devastating floods to falling crop production and even increased political instability and violence. But according to some of the world's biggest companies, these future disasters could also present lucrative business opportunities.
The recent Paris talks on climate change failed utterly to slow the planetary slide towards extinction. The human-induced heat wave will continue to build. President Obama and other world leaders “say they want to reverse fossil fuel emissions and yet they agreed to what amounts to a 3 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase.”
“The talks in Paris ended with an agreement to keep heating up the planet.”
The circus is over. The suits are leaving Paris. There have been millions of words written about the text. But one fact stands out. All the governments of the world have agreed to increase global greenhouse gas emissions every year between now and 2030. [1]
Leading climate sceptic who will testify at Ted Cruz senate hearing today agrees to write pro-fossil fuel paper secretly funded by oil company
A Greenpeace undercover investigation has exposed how fossil fuel companies can secretly pay academics at leading American universities to write research that sows doubt about climate science and promotes the companies’ commercial interests.
A friend sent me an email note two days ago, with the intro line “The NGO’s finally did it!” which caused a moment of terrorized confusion. I didn’t realize it would relate to this, but for the first time ever last November, the province of Alberta has instituted a potential cap on tar sands development. However, this is not the achievement my colleague was referencing. It was more a statement of alarm than laudatory glee.
“For traditional conservationists, it was a little like finding out that Amnesty International had opened its own prison wing in Guantanamo.” That’s how Naomi Klein described the Nature Conservancy’s decision to allow oil drilling on land it was conserving to protect an endangered bird in 1999.
Secret trade talks in Geneva could outlaw subsidies for renewable energy, undermining climate discussions in Paris that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions, anti-poverty campaigners have warned.
The Geneva summit involving 22 countries including the US, Mexico, Australia and the 28 EU member states, aim to create a “level playing field”, with the possible consequence that fracking companies could dispute subsidies for solar or wind power.
