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Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?

How U.N. reports and confusing headlines created a generation of people who believe climate change can’t be stopped.

The problem with climate “doom” — beyond the toll that it can create on mental health — is that it can cause paralysis. Psychologists have long believed that some amount of hope, combined with a belief that personal actions can make a difference, can keep people engaged on climate change. But, according to a study by researchers at Yale and Colorado State universities, “many Americans who accept that global warming is happening cannot express specific reasons to be hopeful.”

And it’s not just Americans. Andrew Smith, a retired engineer from Yorkshire, England, is slightly turned off by the term “doomer.” It provokes, he says, a sense of being on the fringes of society, or visions of doomsday preppers filling their bunkers with canned food. “For me, a climate doomer is simply a person who’s taken a look at the peer-reviewed science, taken stock of the natural world around them, and come to a conclusion,” he wrote in a message via Twitter. Smith believes that the world is on track to warm 4 to 8 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial times.

#climate change #global warming

The Inflation Reduction Act finally offers a chance for widespread change.

#bill mckibben #climate change #politics

Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. For the twentieth century, it was The Limits to Growth. Not only did this best-selling 1972 publication help spur the environmental movement, but it showed that the underlying dynamics of the […]

#limits to growth #dennis meadows

The fusion breakthrough that the US Energy Department announced this week is scientifically significant, but the significance relates to the monitoring of the country's nuclear weapons stockpike, not to clean electricity generation.

So, maybe fusion is still the energy of the future (and always will be).

#fusion #renewables #nuclear energy

If current eating and farming trends continue, the world will clear at least one and a quarter Indias’ worth of land by 2050.

Ignores the elephant in the room: population.

#Environment

Moscow told India it will help it get large tankers to avoid the price cap put on Russian oil, as well as access to insurance and shipping

#prices #politics #consumption

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a crucial step in the pursuit of the elusive energy source, though it will not immediately open the floodgates to clean power in American homes.

No longer the energy of the future?

#fusion #renewables

Officials worked over the weekend to mitigate the fallout from the Keystone Pipeline rupture that leaked about 14,000 barrels of crude oil into a Kansas creek.

#production #oil spill #keystone

“Tragedy unfolding on Keystone Pipeline near the Nebraska/Kansas border. What @TCEnergy will not admit is that they cannot “clean” this up. They will scrape the vegetation and topsoil, treat it, and haul to a landfill. Riparian (stream) damage for decade+.”

#production #politics #oil spill

The US has granted Chevron limited authorization to resume pumping oil from Venezuela following the announcement Saturday that the Venezuelan government and the opposition group have reached an agreement on humanitarian relief and will continue to negotiate for a solution to the country's chronic economic and political crisis, including a focus on the 2024 elections.

#production #venezuela #politics #chevron

Dusty wells. Streams ebbing away. Pristine reserves aflame. Some scientists think the tipping point is already here.

For years, scientists have been warning that the Amazon is speeding toward a tipping point — the moment when deforestation and global warming would trigger an irreversible cascade of climatic forces, killing large swaths of what remained. If somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of the forest were lost, models suggested, much of the Amazon would perish.

About 18 percent of the rainforest is now gone, and the evidence increasingly supports the warnings. Whether or not the tipping point has arrived — and some scientists think it has — the Amazon is beginning to collapse.

#climate change #global warming

“Many of the contours of this new world are not yet fully defined, but there is no going back to the way things were.”

Indeed, for the first time, the IEA predicts that global consumption of fossil fuels will reach a high point, or level off, not because of abstract future policies, but because of changes already underway. As EV sales ramp up, global oil demand will peak in the mid-2020s—a decade sooner than the organization previously predicted.

In fact, the IEA believes this year’s seismic events could push countries to speed up their energy transition, since EVs, and solar and wind power, are increasingly seen as far less vulnerable to upheavals from war and sanctions. What is unclear is whether a global recession might rein in government investments in renewable energy. “A key question for policymakers is whether the crisis will be a setback for clean energy transitions or will catalyze faster action,” the IEA says.

Not what I expected peak oil to look like...

#demand #iea #politics

A landmark report by the United Nations concludes that ‘global collapse’ is becoming more likely. But was it watered-down before being published?

Buried in the report, which was endorsed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, is the finding that escalating synergies between disasters, economic vulnerabilities and ecosystem failures are escalating the risk of a “global collapse” scenario.

This stark conclusion appears to be the first time that the UN has issued a flagship global report finding that existing global policies are accelerating toward the collapse of human civilisation. Yet somehow this urgent warning has remained unreported until now.

#collapse #Environment #economy

On Tuesday, March 29, wind turbines in the Lower 48 states produced 2,017 gigawatthours (GWh) of electricity, making wind the second-largest source of electric generation for the day, only behind natural gas, according to our Hourly Electric Grid Monitor. Daily wind-powered electricity had surpassed coal-fired and nuclear electricity generation separately on other days earlier this year but had not surpassed both sources on a single day.

#Renewable Energy #wind power

A release of up to 180 million barrels in all, over 180 days, is aimed at helping ease prices at the pump.

#inflation (economics)#oil prices #politics #supply

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russian gas deliveries will be paid in euros or dollars, per their contract.

Poland is also refusing to pay in rubles.

#group of seven #ukraine #russia #politics

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