Notes c
Brilliant to see that when peaceful, ordinary people can explain their motives in front of a jury of ordinary people then they quickly agree with their actions... (which also explains much of why the Government chose to push for injunctions against the peaceful folk of Insulate Britain, as they mean you can't be heard by a jury, just a Judge... so no justice is available to them)
#tellthetruth #actlikethetruthisreal
"Six XR protesters who stopped a Docklands Light Railway train at Canary Wharf in April 2019 have been #acquitted after convincing a #jury their behaviour was a #lawful #response to imminent #climatebreakdown and #ecologicalcollapse.
The six – 85 year old grandad Phil Kingston, Dr Diana Warner, 62, Ruth Jarman, 58, Ian Bray, 54, Richard Barnard, 48, and Nick Cooper, 39 – were found not guilty of obstructing trains or carriages on the railway by a jury at Inner London Crown Court this afternoon.
All six admitted their part in the action and its planning, but argued they were within their rights to protest.
During the action on 25th April 2019, five of them climbed on top of the train and displayed banners that read “Business As Usual = Death” and “Don’t Jail the Canaries” (in reference to three protesters who were at the time on remand for an earlier protest), while one, Dr Diana Warner, glued herself to a train window.
When giving evidence, all six spoke of the priority given, when planning the action, to minimising the safety risk to the public and to themselves, while still attracting media attention.
This is one of the first protest cases to be heard in the crown court following the Supreme Court’s landmark ‘Ziegler’ ruling and could influence the prosecution of future cases. Extinction Rebellion has a number of other crown court cases coming up next year that will also be heard before a jury. The vast majority of Extinction Rebellion trials (around 2000 to date) have been heard in the lower magistrates courts by a single judge or lay bench.
Following the acquittal, Ian Bray said: “We are grateful for the love, compassion and moral clarity of the jury which enabled them to reach a unanimous verdict within an hour.”
Richard Barnard said: “Obviously it’s great to win but this cannot be the end until we can change the system so that all species, people and the planet are protected before profit. So we call on all people to go out and take action.”
Lawyer Mike Schwartz, of Hodge Jones and Allen said: “The defendant’s motives chimed with the concerns of 12 citizens representative of the wider public. The jury all agreed the climate crisis requires radical action. This reinforces the importance of both civil disobedience and juries in a healthy democracy.” "...
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"When the European first came here, Columbus, we could drink out of any river. If the Europeans had lived the Indian way when they came we'd still be drinking out of the water. Cause the water is sacred. The air is sacred.
Our DNA is made of the same DNA as the tree. The tree breathes what we exhale. When the tree exhales we need what the tree exhales, so we have a common destiny with the tree…
We are all from the Earth. And when the Earth & atmosphere is corrupted, then it will create its own reaction. Our mother is reacting…"
~Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman
"The world has become a market, and its this market we have to deal with, this idea of boundless and endless resources. When you say resources you are talking about our relatives, talking about our family. Fish are not a resource, they are our family and require respect…
The structure of the world itself, it functions on natural law, and the natural law is a powerful regenerative process. Its a process of regeneration that continues and grows and is endless. Its absolutely endless if everyone agrees to the law and follows the law.
But if you challenge the law, and you think you are going to change the law, then you are bound to failure…"
~John Trudell (American Indian Movement)
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Avoiding temperature "overshoot" reduces multiple #climatechange risks. Two new studies indicate that the pathways to reach 1.5C and 2C warming targets by 2100 are not comparable.
The pathways that keep temperature below 1.5C or 2C throughout the 21st century reduce the risks such as #heatwaves, agricultural droughts...
the pathways that overshoot the #parisagreement temperatures targets and that rely on #negativeemissions, such as #carbonremoval, lead to higher mitigation costs and economic lesses from additional climate impacts.
Upfront investments to limit temperature overshoot, bring long-term economic gains – adding that global GDP in 2100 will be up to 2% higher in scenarios that avoid overshoot
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Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson and his team continue to demonstrate that renewable energy from wind, water, solar and storage are ready to deploy at scale. This study shows not only that this mix is zero carbon point of use emissions, but is lower cost for the consumer and does not cause any blackouts, all while netting millions of high value long-term jobs. Amazing study. #scienceandenvironment #solar #jobs #renewableenergy #netzeroemissions #windenergy #gridstability #sustainability
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G20 financial institutions have nearly $22 trillion of exposure to carbon-intensive sectors.
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“As a growing portion of society may now be irrefutably realizing, certain ethicists have begun to grapple with what effective population policies might ultimately look like under a rapidly warming climate”
Maybe the contemporary climate change challenge is not necessarily tied to various human activities, be they industrial or recreational but rather, that there simply are too many people engaging in those causative activities. In other words, it’s not so much the actions per se, but the number of people who are actually partaking.
This line of argument goes back to those uncomfortable discussions of the early 1970s regarding the nexus between overpopulation and ecological degradation; captured so eloquently for example in sobering essays like that of the late E.F. Schumacher in his 1973 book, “Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered”. Is the climate change dialogue returning us to those early days where the balancing of reproductive rights against other human rights first emerged? See P. Cafaro (2021) in WIRES, Climate Change, “Climate ethics and population policy: A review of recent philosophical work” Photo courtesy of 20th Century FOX: A. Hitchcock, “Lifeboat” (1944)
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WMO has just recognized a new Arctic record of 38°C (June 2020 in Russian town of Verkhoyansk).
The temperature is more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic.
This new Arctic record is one of a series of observations reported to the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes that sound the alarm bells about our changing climate. In 2020, there was also a new temperature record (18.3°C) for the Antarctic continent.
WMO investigators are currently seeking to verify temperature readings of 54.4°C recorded in both 2020 and 2021 in the world’s hottest place, Death Valley in California, and to validate a new reported European temperature record of 48.8°C in the Italian island of Sicily this summer.
The WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes investigators are exceptionally busy!
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#ohdear... the #bidenadministration on the wrong side of history
"...Just a month after arguing that it was not required to hold the sale, however, the department of interior’s bureau of ocean energy management (BOEM) announced it would auction off an area of the gulf that is two times the size of Florida to #oil and #gas companies.
The expanse of the gulf put up for auction contains around 1.12bn barrels of oil and 4.2tn cubic ft of gas, with the leases locking in years – and potentially decades – of planet-heating #emissions. It comes at a time when the International Energy Agency has said no new #fossilfuel projects can be established after this year if the world is to avoid #catastrophic #heatwaves, #flooding and other disastrous impacts from runaway #climatechange.
“The administration has been misleading on this, to put it mildly. It’s very disappointing,” said Thomas Meyer, national organizing manager of Food and Water Watch. “They didn’t have to hold this sale and they didn’t have to hold it on this timeline.
“We know this will exacerbate the climate crisis, it undermines US credibility abroad and it contradicts a campaign promise by Biden. If the administration was taking the climate crisis seriously they would be fighting tooth and nail to keep every molecule of fossil fuel in the ground. They are nowhere near to doing that.”
The auction, held on 17 November , ended up netting the government $191.6m from companies such as ExxonMobil , Chevron and bp , the company responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. A total of 308 tracts of the gulf’s seabed were sold off, covering 1.7m acres, an area larger than the state of Delaware."...
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“What is meant by a ‘tipping cascade’?”
One of the long-feared results of a physically mismanaged world due to environmental neglect, mistakenness, or regulatory incompetence has been the risk of unknowingly crossing irreversible thresholds.
The risk of potential "tipping" events aligning themselves in an irrevocable global cascade is growing, particularly under the ongoing threats of accelerated anthropogenic global warming. The very real prospects of an uncontrolled domino effect is sometimes used to describe the threat posed by such cascades.
Possible sequences of tipping events in a coupled system can include many large-scale linked relationships. For example, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may slow due to an increasing meltwater flux originating from the Greenland Ice Sheet or the potential drying over of the Amazon rainforest basin driven by the AMOC or the effects of an El–Niño Southern Oscillation. See Klose et al. (2021) in Environmental Research Letters, “What do we mean, 'tipping cascade'?”
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“California’s Atmospheric River effects on reservoir hydrology”
As of today, northern CVP storage stands at 57% of its 15-year average for this date, about the same as it was on December 1st.
Interestingly, total north CVP reservoir storage is still some 2.289 million acre-feet (MAF) less than it was on this same date last year.
Nevertheless, because of ample precipitation over the early months of this WY (e.g., American River at Blue Canyon capturing almost 29 inches as of yesterday or 166% of average), accumulated inflows are notably above the average for this date across all northern CVP reservoirs (e.g., Trinity 123%, Shasta 100%, Folsom 114% and New Melones 105%).
Not surprisingly, Folsom Reservoir, because of its size has recovered from depleted storage quickly. Storage currently stands at 395 thousand acre-feet (TAF), or 103% of its 15-year average. In other words, its storage is exactly where it usually is... When compared to the Water Forum Modified LAR Flow Management Standard, Folsom storage is above both the normal and Conference end-of-month storage targets of 300 and 230 TAF, respectively.
We’re still monitoring releases closely and are happy to announce the fine job CVO seems to be doing; for example, lower American River flows are being kept close to regulatory minimums.
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It is increasingly important to apply integrated thinking (and action) to maximise the use of limited resources. In this case, the point is made that renewable energy only would be a feasible energy option for the USA.
New research from Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson seeks to remove any doubts about grid stability in a world powered entirely by renewable energy. The latest study models 100% wind water and solar powered grids across the United States, finding no risk of blackouts in any region and also broad benefits in cost reduction, job creation and land use.
From a risk perspective the message is that it is likely that 100% water, solar and wind powered grids will be adequate and stable.
Considering the fact that renewables are the cheapest energy sources its use would provide energy to grow economies as well as addressing the climate change threat. I would classify this as good news and a win-win outcome.
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This article is just so obviously true. Its just needs saying so again and again: "The Clean Energy Transition is not ESG".
"Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing is at an all-time high, with $30 trillion in total global investment assets, which compares impressively with the market cap of the S&P 500 of $40 trillion.
ESG has significant value because companies that score well on the environment are probably working hard to cut emissions and other types of pollution, but ESG is in a different zip code than investing in the Clean Energy Transition (CET). CET means massive investments in the companies and projects that will cut fossil fuels from the four big emission sectors: electricity generation that powers the grid, vehicles (transportation), homes/buildings and general industry.
CET investing needs to ramp up much faster than ESG, to the tune of $3 to $5 trillion each year (or about 5% of global annual GDP) to get anywhere close to the 1.5 Centigrade goal. Good ESG companies (across all sectors of the economy) are working to cut emissions by utilizing CET technologies and services.
The most important CET investment options don’t score well on ESG or aren’t scored at all. Tesla is the most important CET company on the planet but has a poor ESG score because of Social and Governance issues".
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S&P500
Platts Carbon Emissions Playbook Maps Climate Change Challenge
A post-pandemic economic recovery would see global CO2 emissions return to 2018 levels by 2022, according to Platts Analytics Scenario Planning Service, whose data and forecasts are visualized here.
After 2022, growth in CO2 emissions essentially flattens to 0.2% a year before peaking in 2032. By 2040 emissions remain around 3 Gt above 2020 levels, as abatement efforts are offset by the continued use of coal for power generation in Asia's growth economies.
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In Ukraine, the EBRD, the GEF, the EU, and Japan helped a supermarket adopt green technologies, including the installation of 664 photovoltaic panels on the store’s roof, which are used to generate maximum electricity at peak times. The store’s external lighting is also powered by solar panels on autonomous time-lapse, complemented by batteries if necessary.
In Jordan, the EBRD, the German development finance institution, DEG, the GEF, the EU, and Spain supported Yellow Door Energy with the development, construction and operation of a portfolio of eight solar photovoltaic plants.
These plants will supply all of the electricity they generate to five private companies ‒ Umniah (telecommunications), Carrefour supermarkets, Safeway supermarkets, Taj Mall (retail industry) and Classic Fashion (garment manufacturing). In total, the plants are expected to reduce CO2 emissions by more than 49,000 tonnes per year.
And the list of examples goes on, with the EBRD promoting the use of solar energy in nearly all of the economies in which it invests.
The summer may be coming to an end, but the power of the sun is (almost) limitless. Solar power can be generated in numerous ways, all over the planet. It has so many benefits for our everyday lives and, of course, preserves the environment. With this in mind, we have just one wish for the cooler season ahead: let the sun shine!