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The World’s Top Diplomat Has Had It Up to Here -Bill McKibben

Source: The World’s Top Diplomat Has Had It Up to Here – by Admin

…UN Secretary General Guterres speaking recently:

 Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals.  But, the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.

And, perhaps most importantly of all:

Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.  Such investments will soon be stranded assets — a blot on the landscape and a blight on investment portfolios

These are the howls of a man who is charged—more than anyone else in the world—with representing the whole planet. The only other human with an audience and a mandate this global is probably Pope Francis—and he’s been just as scared and just as strong. It’s a poignant reminder of how different our politics would look, and our behavior would be, if we actually thought locally.

Instead, this week, nations forged ahead with business as usual—with precisely the moral and economic madness Guterres decried. Canada announced plans for a new oil mega-prject off the Newfoundland coast; France’s Macron, on the edge of an election, continued his quiet support for a huge new African pipeline to be built by French oil giant Total; Australia approved what the invaluable analyst Ketan Joshi called “comfortably the most climate-damaging project” in its history, even as the Great Barrier Reef underwent yet another round of catastrophic bleaching. And in the US, awash in windfall profit Big Oil seemed to have persuaded the Biden administration that it could help Ukraine only by giving it license to pump yet more.

We’re at a breaking point. The IPCC report got too little press (please read Amy Westervelt’s deep dives into its fascinating contents) but it got far more than the thousand noble climate scientists who engaged in civil disobedience around the world this week, to almost no notice.

When all the people without a vested interest—Guterres, the pope, climate scientists—have dropped their usual habit of caution, it should tell you something. Instead of diplomacy they are engaged in all-out advocacy—because we are scarily close to the brink, and because it’s become clear to them that our governments and corporations simply aren’t willing to change with anything like the speed required. We must all join in.

Other climate news from around the world

+In West Virginia, activists are planning a day-long blockade of the filthy little power plant that burns Joe Manchin’s coal. The New York Times recently told this story in all its ugly detail; read it but prepare for your blood pressure to rise. If you then need your blood pressure to drop a little, Terry Mollner’s essay about walking as activism should do the trick! But if it drops too low, then read this account of how Manchin, once again, is teasing his colleagues with hints he might vote for some watered-down climate bill, as long as it has lots of gifts for big oil. Environmental and labor groups are coming together for a DC rally on April 23 to try and make something happen

+Atmospheric levels of methane soared again last year, and by a record amount; much of the heat-trapping gas is spewing from frack wells. This is why it’s such utter folly to increase LNG exports in reaction to the war in Ukraine. In other deeply ungood news, California’s snowpack checked in at minuscule levels, after the driest winter season ever recorded in the Golden State.

+The need for funding to help developing countries adapt to climate damage is growing rapidly, a new assessment finds. But as usual it’s going to be hard to meet it, because the U.S. is lagging in its contributions. The scale of this problem was highlighted last week when the Congress cut any global vaccine aid from new covid appropriations; the GOP apparently has trouble understanding that viruses, and carbon, cross borders easily

+A new report details the shocking level of windfall profit that Big Oil is extracting from the suffering in Ukraine.

Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings — a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses. So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends. 

Big Oil is not the only one gaming the system. A fascinating report from Duncan Campbell describes how utilities are charging ever more to deliver ever-cheaper renewable energy, thus undercutting the savings that could drive a rapid conversion to clean power.

If delivery costs continue to increase at the current pace, they’ll eat any savings generated by large-scale solar and wind. This is a problem for decarbonization, when around 130 million Americans live in a state where replacing an old gas furnace with a heat pump would create higher energy costs than simply buying another gas furnace.

+Iowa’s pigs outnumber its people 7-1 and produce more waste than the human populations of California, Texas, and Illinois combined. May I recommend pre-ordering Brian Kateman’s new book about reducing somewhat your bacon consumption, Meat Me Halfway?

+I’ve been writing a good deal about climate migrants lately; here’s a stellar 90 second video that makes the point more succinctly

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