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Trump Deliberations Continue, and New Delhi’s Hottest Recorded Day
Rightwing NZ government accused of ‘war on nature’ as it takes axe to climate policies
Government of Christopher Luxon has made sweeping cuts to climate projects in its first budget, with no new significant environmental investments
The New Zealand government has been accused of waging a “war on nature” after it announced sweeping cuts to climate action projects, while making no significant new investments in environmental protection or climate crisis-related policy.
In its 2024/25 budget, handed down on Thursday, the rightwing coalition announced spending on law and order, education, health and a series of tax cuts, as the country struggles with inflation and cost-of-living pressures.
Māori knowledge-based approaches to agricultural emissions reduction
Community-based renewable energy schemes
The Climate Change Commission
External and internal specialists who supply evidence and data on environmental monitoring and science
Freshwater policy initiatives
Native forest planting
Development of a circular economy, relating to recycling and reuse
Jobs for Nature, a programme creating jobs to benefit the environment
Reducing biosecurity monitoring
Continue reading...The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates | Mariana Mazzucato
Big tech is playing its part in reaching net zero targets, but its vast new datacentres are run at huge cost to the environment
- Mariana Mazzucato is professor of economics at UCL, and director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
When you picture the tech industry, you probably think of things that don’t exist in physical space, such as the apps and internet browser on your phone. But the infrastructure required to store all this information – the physical datacentres housed in business parks and city outskirts – consume massive amounts of energy. Despite its name, the infrastructure used by the “cloud” accounts for more global greenhouse emissions than commercial flights. In 2018, for instance, the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually.
This is a hugely environmentally destructive side to the tech industry. While it has played a big role in reaching net zero, giving us smart meters and efficient solar, it’s critical that we turn the spotlight on its environmental footprint. Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. It is hardly news that the tech bubble’s self-glorification has obscured the uglier sides of this industry, from its proclivity for tax avoidance to its invasion of privacy and exploitation of our attention span. The industry’s environmental impact is a key issue, yet the companies that produce such models have stayed remarkably quiet about the amount of energy they consume – probably because they don’t want to spark our concern.
Mariana Mazzucato is professor of economics at UCL, and director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
Continue reading...Heatwaves increase risk of early births and poorer health in babies, study finds
Research that looked at 53 million births says Black and Hispanic mothers and those in lower socioeconomic groups most at risk
Heatwaves increase rates of preterm births, which can lead to poorer health outcomes for babies and impact their long-term health, a new study found.
Black and Hispanic mothers, as well as those in lower socioeconomic groups, are particularly at risk of delivering early following heat waves.
Continue reading...Logging in Banff to Save it from Canada’s Wildfires
126 Degrees in India: New Delhi Sweats Through Its Hottest Day Ever Recorded
Get Ready: 85% Chance of Above-Normal Atlantic Hurricane Season that May Break Records
Source: https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-predicts-above-normal-2024-atlantic-hurricane-season
The May 23 outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasts 17 to 25 named storms, eight to 13 of which could become hurricanes.
NOAA https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-predicts-above-normal-2024-atlantic-hurricane-seasonFour to seven major hurricanes are forecast. This is a concerning outlook, and it can be explained as follows.
The recipe for the 2024 hurricane outlookIngredients:
- Record warm sea surface temperature (SST) for most of the Atlantic (currently 1-2 degrees Celsius above average, which is more like temperatures seen in August; promotes rapid intensification).
- High Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE – second highest after 2010; a high ACE is linked with the most destructive hurricanes).
- La Niña (77% chance of forming in late summer-early fall; La Niña is linked to reduced wind shear. High wind shear breaks down cyclone formation, especially in the Western Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean).
NOAA https://www.climate.gov/media/13556
Instructions:
Put everything together leading up to May, test for possible results.
Results:
- A likelihood of higher-than-normal level of activity (record warm SST contributes to the high end of the forecast; the longer the ocean is super warm, the longer and stronger the season is likely to be).
- Potential for rapid intensification of storms when approaching land (in less than 24h, brings intense rainfall and challenges for preparedness; most if not all Category 5 hurricanes in the last few years intensified rapidly).
This is the highest ever May hurricane outlook issued by NOAA. But that is not what we should focus on, because we know it only takes one landfall to bring disaster.
We must be ready. US coastal communities are tired of crossing their fingers and hoping these storms of epic, record-breaking proportions veer away from their homes, dissipate, or spin out over the Atlantic.
It’s imperative that local, state, and federal policymakers and emergency planners help keep communities safe by prioritizing investments to get homes, businesses, and infrastructure in frontline communities climate-ready and be prepared to ensure a quick and just recovery should disaster strike. Reining in heat-trapping emissions driving the climate crisis is also essential.
If we act on climate, we may be able to substitute some of the ingredients in the outlook recipe, and come out with better results in future tries. And who doesn’t like a good recipe substitution?
Severe thunderstorms pummel Texas causing widespread power outages
Hurricane-force winds have left nearly 650,000 buildings in the greater Dallas area without electricity
Severe weather continues to pummel parts of the US, particularly Texas, which is once again experiencing widespread power outages with no clear end in sight that left nearly 650,000 buildings without electricity.
The US Great Plains and south-east regions are experiencing an outbreak of storms that have wreaked havoc on local populations.
Continue reading...Widening the Lens: using photography to re-examine our environment
In a new exhibition, artists find new ways to look at and investigate their natural surroundings and how they interact with human stories
The striking collection of photographic art presented in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Widening the Lens is very much a revision of the long tradition of landscape photography in the US. It may be very directly revising – as in AK Burns’s reinvention of landscape photographs literally ripped from photo books – or it may be much more subtly so, as with Sam Contis’s careful deconstructions of the iconography of the American west. However so, this is a show very much about counter-narratives, hidden histories, reinscription, reinvention, and revision.
Borne of a desire to consider how our relationship with images has shifted as photography has become shockingly more ubiquitous and prolific, Widening the Lens looks at photographs both as singular objects as well as pieces integrated into larger objects. It is a show that strives to be responsive to how the lines between photography and other artistic media have become blurred, and one that seeks to imagine what environmental photography looks like now.
Continue reading...Increasing use of renewable energy in US yields billions of dollars of benefits
New study published in Cell Reports Sustainability finds emission reductions provided $249bn of climate and health benefits
By increasing its use of renewable energy, the US has not only slashed its planet-warming emissions but also improved its air quality, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars of benefits, a new report has found.
The study, published in Cell Reports Sustainability on Wednesday and based on publicly available data, focuses on uptick of renewable energy in the US from 2019 to 2022.
Continue reading...Protesting Indian farmers endure severe heatwave – video
Hundreds of Indian farmers who have been camping for more than 100 days between the Punjab and Haryana states to demand better prices for their crops have been enduring a savage heatwave sweeping swathes of northern India.
Temperatures in Delhi, not far from the protest, have hit a record high of 49.9C (121.8F), as authorities warned of water shortages in the capital
Continue reading...Revealed: the rural Californians who can’t sell their businesses – because LA is their landlord
Los Angeles has long owned large swathes of the Owens valley. An investigation reveals how the city has tightened its grip
This article is reported by AfroLA and co-published by AfroLA, Guardian US and Inyo County’s The Sheet. It’s the first of several stories examining the impact of Los Angeles’s extensive landownership in the Owens Valley.
A red horse statue perched on a 12ft pole greets drivers coming to the town of Bishop from the south. It’s one of the first landmarks here, part of Mike Allen’s corrugated metal feed store – a local institution that sells camping gear, livestock feed and moving equipment in this expansive region of inland California.
Continue reading...Wealthy white men are UK’s biggest transport polluters, study finds
IPPR research examines transport emissions by income, gender, location, ethnicity and age
Wealthy white men from rural areas are the UK’s biggest emitters of climate-heating gases from transport, according to a study.
Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) looked at transport emissions by income, gender, location, ethnicity and age. The study broke down the transport emissions into international and domestic flights, private road transport and public transport.
Continue reading...As Interest in Clean Energy Grows, Saudi Arabia Eyes a Future Beyond Oil
Hold the French Fries! Paris Olympics Chart a New Gastronomic Course.
Here’s What We’re Asking Major Fossil Fuel Corporations at This Year’s Annual Meetings
At this year’s annual general meetings, major investor-owned fossil fuel corporations are facing fewer climate-related shareholder proposals than at any time since the adoption of the Paris climate agreement in 2015. But that doesn’t mean they’re under less pressure over their role in driving the climate crisis. As ExxonMobil retaliates against its own shareholders with an unprecedented lawsuit over a resolution requesting medium-term targets for reducing global warming emissions, institutional investors are upping the ante with calls to vote against members of the company’s board of directors.
And this spring’s corporate annual meetings are taking place against a backdrop of protests, new climate lawsuits (including a criminal complaint against the CEO and directors of TotalEnergies), a bicameral congressional investigation into Big Oil’s climate disinformation, and a call by congressional leaders for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long history of engaging in deceptive practices.
Here’s what’s happening—and what to expect as Big Oil’s annual meetings wrap up this week.
Shell evades questions and highlights “uncertainty”On May 21, Shell held its hybrid annual meeting—disrupted by shareholders fed up with the corporation’s weak-and-getting-weaker climate action.
Attending virtually thanks to a proxy provided by the UK responsible investment organization ShareAction, I was able to ask our question:
Internal corporate documents made public through a bicameral Congressional investigation in the US demonstrate that days after President Trump was elected, a Shell media manager worked to “soften [methane reduction] language and still be true to ourselves” in an effort not to upset the Trump Administration, which sought to roll back methane standards. Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute (API)—in which Shell holds a leadership role—launched a voluntary methane program in 2017 that internal documents reveal was explicitly designed “to stave off future regulation.” Why, then, did Shell’s Gretchen Watkins call the final watered down Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations “frustrating and disappointing” in 2020?
Unfortunately, Shell CEO Wael Sawan’s response failed to address the blatant inconsistency between Shell’s internal and external communications about methane regulations, or between the corporation’s stated support for methane regulations and its trade association’s creation of a voluntary initiative to block mandatory rules.
Throughout the meeting, Shell used “uncertainty” as an excuse for rolling back its climate targets, claiming that the corporation can’t stick with medium-term emissions reduction benchmarks because it doesn’t know what governments or customers will do. Such doublespeak is the latest evolution in the fossil fuel industry’s deception playbook. These corporations may no longer be disputing climate science—now they are creating doubt about climate policy even as they seek to water it down, directly and through trade associations such as API. Yet no such uncertainty prevents them from planning further expansion of their oil and gas business.
In the face of opposition by the board, about one-fifth of Shell’s shareholders nonetheless voted in favor of a resolution put forward by the climate advocacy organization Follow This, calling for the corporation to align its medium-term emissions reduction targets—including emissions from use of its oil and gas products—with the goals of the Paris agreement.
BP keeps climate-conscious shareholders outBP faced no climate-related shareholder proposals this year. On April 25, the corporation held only an in-person annual meeting, with no webcast and very little news coverage—even as activists protested the corporation’s role in the climate crisis and fueling the war in Gaza.
A supporter of ShareAction had planned to ask a question on behalf of the Union of Concerned Scientists, but was wrongly denied entry into the meeting.
Here’s the question we wanted to ask BP:
In its annual report, BP disclosed that total emissions had increased over the past year as a result of increased oil and gas production, representing a setback to corporate climate goals. Climate attribution science has quantified BP’s historical responsibility for global emissions, and social science is building a base of evidence of past and ongoing climate disinformation and obstruction campaigns by the fossil fuel industry. In recent weeks, two more jurisdictions in the US brought lawsuits to hold BP and other major fossil fuel producers accountable for climate damages and deception. Also, a report by the NGO Carbon Tracker found that BP’s transition plan is not aligned with the Paris climate goals. How do you calculate BP’s potential liability for its past actions and future foreseeable and preventable harms associated with its business plans?
We are still waiting for an answer.
ExxonMobil and Chevron on the hot seatThis week, ExxonMobil and Chevron will hold their annual meetings. They’ve both been in the news recently for being represented at a meeting at which former President Trump reportedly requested $1 billion in oil and gas industry contributions to his campaign in exchange for promised deregulation and dismantling of climate measures, accelerated permitting, and preservation of tax breaks.
Chevron bankrolls front groupChevron’s virtual annual meeting comes near the end of what our allies at Amazon Watch are calling #AntiChevronMonth, when people around the world take action to call out the corporation’s horrific track record driving climate change, pollution, environmental injustice, and human rights violations.
Attending on the proxy of a climate-conscious shareholder, my colleague Laura Peterson plans to ask one question of Chevron:
In the first six months of 2023, Chevron directed between $2.5 and $7.5 million to a group new to Chevron’s trade association disclosures—Californians for Energy Independence. The group characterizes itself as a coalition of 200,000 Californians, but research has shown it’s actually a classic “astroturf” group funded by fossil fuel companies and related organizations. The group is behind expensive media campaigns to defeat legislation that would protect communities from harmful emissions resulting from oil and gas extraction, and incorrectly blames high gas prices in California on state politics. A Chevron 2023 report says the company lobbies “ethically, constructively and in a nonpartisan manner.” How does financing a front group that spreads partisan disinformation align with that statement?
ExxonMobil adapts disinformation strategiesExxonMobil’s virtual annual meeting comes amid an unprecedented lawsuit by the corporation against its own shareholders, with growing numbers of institutional investors saying they will vote against one or more board members to protest this bullying. It also marks the end of the Board tenure of climate scientist Dr. Susan Avery.
I’ve submitted two questions to ExxonMobil:
- ExxonMobil Chair and CEO Darren Woods has recently been dismissing evidence of the company’s climate deception as “what was said 30 years ago,” and insisting that “the world has moved on.” But when I asked one of my climate scientist colleagues to evaluate the corporation’s latest “Advancing Climate Solutions” reports, she found them misleading at best, dishonest at worst—and concluded that while ExxonMobil’s strategy may have changed, its output of disinformation continues. And this month, congressional leaders called on US Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate ExxonMobil, other major oil and gas companies, and two of their trade associations for their decades-long climate disinformation campaign—including claims and actions since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015. What legal and financial consequences should shareholders anticipate from the ever-growing mountain of evidence of ExxonMobil’s deceptive practices and other corporate misconduct?
- In its latest Climate Lobbying Report, ExxonMobil revealed that in 2022 it withdrew from the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents “independent” (i.e. smaller) oil and gas producers. The same report found 52 trade associations “aligned” with ExxonMobil’s climate policy positions, and three groups “partially aligned.” Yet many of the associations in which the corporation maintains membership are actively spreading climate disinformation and obstructing climate progress. For example, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers is running a massive ad campaign falsely claiming that the US Environmental Protection Agency has banned gasoline-powered cars. Why is ExxonMobil using a report requested by shareholders to justify its ongoing support for trade associations that promote climate disinformation, oppose climate action, and seek to delay the urgently needed transition to clean energy?
Based on my experience attending ExxonMobil corporate annual meetings on behalf of climate-conscious shareholders since 2016, I don’t expect a sudden rush of candor from Chair and CEO Darren Woods. Yet ExxonMobil’s efforts to censor climate-conscious shareholders—rather than transforming climate-destroying business model—are likely to provoke increased outrage from investors and affected communities.
The leaders of these corporations may think they can escape accountability by stonewalling, greenwashing, blocking shareholders from even discussing climate-related issues, and engaging in a concerted campaign to undermine Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing. They couldn’t be more wrong. These efforts to suppress shareholder input are exactly why investors are turning their attention to unseating oil and gas company board members.
As Danger Season 2024 brings extreme events like heat waves, heavy rainfall, wildfires, and poor air quality to millions of people across the United States, major oil and gas corporations should expect growing scrutiny from policymakers and public prosecutors over their role in driving the climate crisis—and rising votes of no confidence in corporate leadership the longer they continue to delay, deceive, and disinform.