Global

20 September, 2017 − Scientists in the UK have good news for the 195 nations that pledged to limit global warming to well below 2°C: it can be done.

[Editor: see video with original]

There’s a very small but distinct possibility that rapid global warming could pose an “existential threat” to the survival of humans by 2050, UC San Diego said Thursday in one of the most dire forecasts yet about climate change.

[ Editor: The diagnosis is powerful, but the cure that's offered surely completely inadequate!]

Capitalism has generated massive wealth for some, but it’s devastated the planet and has failed to improve human well-being at scale.

• Species are going extinct at a rate 1,000 times faster than that of the natural rate over the previous 65 million years (see Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School).

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.