In thirty years, maybe less, people will ask: why the hell didn’t we do anything to mitigate and prepare for climate breakdown in the 2020s? Scientific predictions about global heating have been surpassed, and temperature records are now broken with increasing rapidity. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for immediate, radical action on climate change, arguing that the Earth is entered an “era of global boiling”. News reports are filled with stories about people being evacuated to escape uncontainable wildfires in Europe. Globally, heat and floods are killing and displacing people.
Yet despite all this, our leading politicians are rowing back on net zero promises and policies, finding reasons not to act positively for a transition to a socially just and sustainable future. We need environmental policies like those in Labour’s 2019 manifesto and an unswerving commitment from politicians to carry them through. Instead, we have a Tory government that has granted licences for Rosebank, a new oilfield in the North Sea that alone would exceed the UK’s carbon budgets. But this is just the tip of a melting iceberg. The government is also backing airport expansion despite the uncertain and meagre economic benefits.
The government’s failure on climate progress has turned former Climate Change Committee (CCC) chair and Conservative Environment Minister, Lord Deben, into an eco-warrior! The CCC was set up by the Labour government in 2008 to monitor and report on the government’s progress in meeting environmental and climate targets. Their recent report is damning. It highlights a failure to invest in green technologies, to make progress on insulating homes or in rolling out heat pumps to replace gas boilers in homes – and so it goes on. Deben points out that “Defra (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) is a department which has no full programme to reach net-zero, which is a scandal”, and he describes granting planning permission for a new Cumbrian coal mine, as “absolutely barmy”.
Though frequently referencing the climate crisis, mainstream politicians fail to make the connections between climate breakdown, social injustice and the growing risks and crises we face. For example, it’s estimated that environment breakdown will increase forced migration to 1.2 billion people by 2050 and 1.4 billion by 2060. Following that, the numbers will soar. Rather than addressing the urgent underlying factors behind migration, the political response is a poisonous campaign to “stop the boats”!
A major political forecasting website is currently predicting that the Green Party is on track to win two MPs. Electoral Calculus, which issues regular predictions based on the latest opinion polls, is currently projecting that the party’s co-leader Carla Denyer will be elected as an MP for the new Bristol Central constituency.
Presently, Electoral Calculus is predicting that the Green Party would take 46.3% of the vote in the seat which is among the top targets for the party. The same projection has Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire trailing behind on 39.4%. Electoral Calculus therefore gives the Greens a 69% chance of winning in the constituency.
Speaking to Bright Green about the prediction, Denyer said: “We will take nothing for granted, but this prediction that Bristol will have its first Green Party MP after the next general election mirrors what we are sensing on the ground.
“We know from talking to people on the doorstep that many in Bristol Central are uninspired by Labour and are turning to the Greens because they know we stand for real action on the climate crisis and have the policies to create a fairer, more equal society. They also know Green MPs will hold a future government to account.
Members of the public and campaigners from Hastings and St Leonards Clean Water Action, protest against raw sewage release incidents on the beach in St Leonards, Sussex, August 26, 2022
SIX private water companies across England are facing landmark legal action over allegations of under-reporting pollution incidents and overcharging customers.
Severn Trent Water, Thames Water, United Utilities, Anglian Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water could end up forking out more than £800 million in compensation to over 20 million customers if the cases are successful.
Environmental and water consultant Professor Carolyn Roberts, who is being represented by Leigh Day Solicitors, claimed that the firms have broken competition laws by misleading the Environment Agency and regulator Ofwat.
She alleges they have been under-reporting the number of sewage discharges, resulting in customers being “unfairly overcharged” for wastewater services, and that had sewage discharge reporting been accurate it would have lowered customer bills.
“There’s nothing more important than what happens today,” said one environmental lawyer. “And there’s no person in the world with more power to do good than Joe Biden.”
In an interview with The Weather Channel Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden signaled he has no plans to formally declare a climate emergency, claiming that his climate policies are sufficient and that, “practically speaking,” a national emergency has already been declared.
When asked if he will take the unprecedented step in order to unlock executive powers to drastically cut fossil fuel emissions, Biden told correspondent Stephanie Abrams, “I’ve already done that.”
The president pointed to $368 billion that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act to invest in clean energy production, actions being taken to conserve land, and his decision to rejoin the Paris climate agreement as evidence that he is taking all the steps that experts have said are necessary to fight the climate crisis.
The interview aired days after a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the status of Biden’s reported climate emergency deliberations, noting that NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus recently wrote in an op-ed that not declaring an emergency is “anti-science.”
Jean-Pierre did not directly address the question but defended Biden’s record, saying he “believes in science” and “talks about climate change.”
“And, you know, it is such a difference to what we see from Republicans who don’t even acknowledge climate change,” she added. “We’re going to continue to move forward to do everything that we can not just here in America, but globally, to be a leader in fighting climate change.”
Kalmus called Jean-Pierre’s response “barely coherent” and demanded to know why the White House won’t declare a climate emergency.
“It’s not enough for Biden to ‘practically’ declare a climate emergency,” said the Institute for Policy Studies on Wednesday after Biden’s interview aired. “It’s time to officially announce one.”
July 2023 was the hottest month ever recorded on the planet.
It's not enough for Biden to "practically" declare a climate emergency. It's time to officially announce one—and mobilize the tools that this declaration would unlock. https://t.co/YR5lwmS6qI
Last summer, Biden reportedly began considering declaring a climate emergency as extreme heat overtook much of the country.
As numerous climate action groups have outlined, a climate emergency declaration would be far from a symbolic gesture. The action, taken under the National Emergencies Act, would allow the White House to:
Reinstate the federal ban on crude oil exports—lifted by Congress in 2015—which could slash fossil fuel emissions by as much as 165 million metric tons per year;
End oil and gas drilling in more than 11 million acres of federal waters;
Halt the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in fossil fuel projects abroad; and
Unlock federal funds that could be used to construct renewable energy infrastructure in communities that are especially vulnerable to climate disasters.
Biden’s comments came weeks after scientists said last month was the hottest month on record, with millions of people from Asia to Western Europe and the United States facing temperatures close to 130°F. The World Weather Attribution said in late July that the extreme heat would have been “virtually impossible” without the climate crisis and continued emissions of heat-trapping gases by the fossil fuel industry.
“As we suffer through these fossil fuel heatwaves, megafires, and floods, [Biden]’s leaving immense powers on the shelf for combating the crisis,” Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute of the Center for Biological Diversity, told Common Dreams. “But now is the time for him to actually declare a climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act.”
Siegel added that by dismissing direct questions about an official climate emergency declaration, the White House appears to be employing “the oldest strategy in the book,” long used by administrations that have denied the climate crisis and the need to shift the renewable energy.
“The unfortunate reality is that doing some good things is simply not enough, because we are in a physical climate emergency,” Siegel said. “It is a question of survival and every day counts. There’s nothing more important than what happens today… And there’s no person in the world with more power to do good than Joe Biden.”
While the president has taken some steps to undo harm done to communities by extractive industries—announcing protections from uranium mining for one million acres near the Grand Canyon on Tuesday and launching a $20 billion initiative to invest private capital into clean technology projects last month—he also infuriated climate advocates and experts earlier this year when he approved the Willow drilling project in Alaska. The project could produce more than 600 million barrels of crude oil over three decades and lead to roughly 280 million metric tons of carbon emissions.
The White House also drew criticism last month for its announcement of new regulations for fossil fuel leasing, despite Biden’s campaign promise to ban oil and gas leases on federal lands.
“The truth is, the Biden administration has devastated communities and wildlife by backing disastrous fossil fuel projects from Alaska to Appalachia,” Siegel told Common Dreams. “And what he does today is going to make a huge difference for how much devastation comes in the future.”
Siegel added that with the United Nations set to convene a Climate Ambition Summit on September 20 in New York, “there has never been a better time for Biden to actually declare a climate emergency.”
At the summit, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres aims to “accelerate action by governments, business, finance, local authorities, and civil society.”
The People vs. Fossil Fuels coalition, comprised of more than 1,200 advocacy groups, said it plans to mobilize ahead of the summit for a March to End Fossil Fuels in New York, aiming to “push President Biden to make a climate emergency declaration official and stop approving these deadly fossil fuel projects once and for all.”
“Now that President Biden says he’s ‘practically’ declared a climate emergency, it’s time to do it for real,” said the coalition. “The president should follow through on his rhetoric and immediately declare a national emergency that would unlock new executive powers to speed up the deployment of clean energy and halt fossil fuel expansion.”
Slashing greenhouse gas emissions is “our best hope of preserving Antarctica,” said the lead author of a new study.
The warming continent of Antarctica will face increasingly extreme and damaging weather events in the coming years if world leaders don’t take “drastic action” to rein in fossil fuels, the primary driver of global climate chaos.
That’s the conclusion of a study published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science amid growing alarm over the failure of Antarctic sea ice to replenish during the continent’s winter. According to scientists, Antarctica was missing an Argentina-sized amount of sea ice as of July—the hottest month on record.
The new study, led by glaciologist Martin Siegert of the University of Exeter, finds that it is “virtually certain that future Antarctic extreme events will be more pronounced than those observed to date” as countries continue to burn fossil fuels at a pace incompatible with warming targets set by the Paris climate accord.
The study notes that “the most extreme ‘heatwave’ ever recorded globally occurred over East Antarctica in March 2022 when surface temperature anomalies of up to 38.5°C were observed.” The heatwave was associated with an atmospheric river, which transports “heat and moisture from the subtropics into the heart of the Antarctic continent.”
“Although it was so extreme, a formal attribution of the March 2022 event to human factors has not yet been conducted,” the study adds. “However, an attribution analysis of an earlier record-breaking heatwave, that affected the Antarctic Peninsula in February 2020 and led to the highest recorded temperature in the Antarctic mainland (18.3°C at Esperanza Station), concluded a likely significant contribution from fossil-fuel burning.”
The analysis also points to extreme cyclones that were “implicated in a major iceberg calving event of the Brunt Ice Shelf in 2020” as well as “the rapid sea ice decline in the Weddell Sea in 2016/17.”
“Possibly the most recognizable extreme event that occurred in the atmosphere was the loss of stratospheric ozone, discovered above Antarctica in the 1980s,” the study continues. “This loss was caused largely by a particular class of chemicals: Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Whilst this event catalyzed rapid and effective policy action by the global community in the development of the Montreal Protocol (adopted in 1987), the effects of the ‘ozone hole’ are being felt decades later.”
“This must matter to every country—and individual—on the planet.”
Anna Hogg, professor in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and a study co-author, said the new research makes clear that “while extreme events are known to impact the globe through heavy rainfall and flooding, heatwaves, and wildfires, such as those seen in Europe this summer, they also impact the remote polar regions.”
“Antarctic glaciers, sea ice, and natural ecosystems are all impacted by extreme events,” said Hogg.
According to the new study, the Antarctic ice sheet today “contributes six times more mass to the ocean than it did just 30 years ago,” an increase that the authors attributed to the burning of fossil fuels.
Siegert stressed that “Antarctic change has global implications.” A study published earlier this year in the journal Nature found that melting Antarctic ice could impact global oceans for “centuries to come” by disrupting the critical process of overturning circulation.
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero is our best hope of preserving Antarctica, and this must matter to every country—and individual—on the planet,” said Siegert.
Dozens of countries—including the United States, the world’s top historical emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide—are party to the Antarctic Treaty, an agreement that obliges signatories to protect the continent from “considerable stress and damage.”
“Nations must understand that by continuing to explore, extract, and burn fossil fuels anywhere in the world,” Siegert said Tuesday, “the environment of Antarctica will become ever more affected in ways inconsistent with their pledge.”
