The climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet :: Rishi Sunak

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Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch appear.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch appear.

Zac Goldsmith resigned as Rishi Sunak’s Minister of State for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment on 30 June 2023 claiming that UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was uninterested in the environment. This has made reviewing Sunak’s climate credentials relatively easy because there are many news articles doing it for me ;)

Goldsmith says Sunak is apathetic about the environment. It’s hard to disagree by Helena Horton.

There are many similar articles basically saying the same:

He blocked spending on climate and nature when he was Chancellor.

“… Sunak refused to sign a foreword to the Dasgupta report, a review of the value of biodiversity. This review, by the respected professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, was welcomed across the board …”

“He was given a major opportunity to stand on the world stage as the UK’s new prime minister at the UN’s Cop27 climate summit last year, but he flip-flopped on attending, and only flew out to Egypt at the last minute, giving the audience a policy-free speech about how his children care about the environment.”

Authorised the Cumbria coalmine creating more climate destroying pollution.

Sunak and his twat Grant Shapps have repeatedly attacked the Labour Party claiming that “eco-zealots” from Just Stop Oil are “writing Keir Starmer’s energy policy”. Sunak is using the Daily Mail’s eco-zealots taunt and attacking Just Stop Oil’s position as unreasonable.

Since Zac Goldsmith’s resignation Sunak boasted That Oil Funded Think Tank ‘Helped Us Draft’ Crackdown on Climate Protests and wrote an article in Murdoch’s Sun newspaper on 3 July 2023 attacking Just Stop Oil. Let’s take a look at that article.

People want an end to eco-zealot’s disruption – I’ll ensure we do stop it. Firstly Sunak is aligning himself closely with the climate-change denier and climate destroyer Rupert Murdoch. It’s likely that someone at Murdoch’s Sun wrote this article and Sunak has agreed to have it attributed to him.

Sunak claims that Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion attempt to “bypass and undermine” democracy through their tactics and that instead “policy should be decided by those who were elected to do so”.

We don’t permit governments to destroy us and our planet – our very existence – through the ballot box. They don’t have the right to destroy this planet through the ballot box.

[ED: Fekk I forgot: Sunak has never been elected Prime Minister anyway and has no mandate to do anything.]

Sunak also doesn’t represent us the electors – he represents the fossil fuel industry and the ultra-rich (may well be the same few people). He’s admitted as much by saying that big oil helped frame the anti-protest laws.

Sunak doesn’t actually mention his daughters in the Sun article which also lead me to suspect that it was not actually written by him or his staff. Mentioning his daughters is the “I couldn’t be such a cnut, I’ve got young children” sop. He is such a cnut.

Continue ReadingThe climate credentials of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet :: Rishi Sunak

EnergyMonitor.ai: US oil extraction plans will scupper global climate goals

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Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.

https://www.energymonitor.ai/policy/exclusive-how-us-oil-extraction-plans-will-scupper-global-climate-goals/

US oil extraction plans are set to release five times more CO₂ than remains in the country’s 1.5°C carbon budget.

To the dismay of green activists, the Biden administration approved the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska in March 2023. The field will produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day and create as many as 1,800 jobs, and will require an estimated investment of $8bn from lease-owner ConocoPhillips to become operational. 

Prior to the project’s approval, President Joe Biden said he was inclined to block the Willow project – but he was told by his lawyers that in such an instance, ConocoPhillips would most likely sue his administration, and ultimately be able to secure it. Nevertheless, no political excuse can account for the devastating climate environmental impact many now fear the project will unleash: situated in a fragile Arctic environment, Willow will produce enough oil to release 9.2 million tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHGs) each year, equivalent to two million gasoline-powered cars. 

At the start of 2023, the Global Carbon Project – a leading organisation of climate scientists who have pioneered carbon budget modelling – estimated that the world could now only emit a further 380Gt of CO₂ to have a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. A US fair share of that remaining budget would be around 15Gt (4.2% of the total, reflecting the US share of the world’s population).

The fossil fuels the US is currently planning to extract from its oil and gas fields will therefore produce five times more CO₂ than exists in the US’s 1.5°C carbon budget. This would scupper both US – and global – ambitions to keep warming at 1.5°C, as outlined at both the COP26 and COP27 climate conferences.

https://www.energymonitor.ai/policy/exclusive-how-us-oil-extraction-plans-will-scupper-global-climate-goals/

Continue ReadingEnergyMonitor.ai: US oil extraction plans will scupper global climate goals

The Capitalists have destroyed the planet. We need to unite, depose them and move on.

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Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.

The Capitalists have destroyed the planet. The big oil companies knew decades ago that they were destroying the planet and that they will be killing people but continued regardless. World governments have known for decades that the oil companies are destroying the planet and did very little much too late. Temperature records are getting broken on a daily basis. Even today Rishi Sunak’s UK government is refusing to stop oil and gas exploration.

We need to discard these Capitalists who are destroying our planet and replace them with people who can be trusted to take climate action. If you care for the future, you need to express yourself and depose the Capitalist facilitators of Climate destruction.

Continue ReadingThe Capitalists have destroyed the planet. We need to unite, depose them and move on.

‘Terrifying’: Tuesday Was Hottest Day Ever, Breaking Record Set Just 24 Hours Earlier

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“Not a milestone we should be celebrating,” said one climate scientist. “It’s a death sentence for people and ecosystems.”

Data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction shows that the average global temperature reached 17.01°C, or 62.62°F, on Monday—making it the hottest day ever recorded.

The record lasted just 24 hours.

On Tuesday, the global average temperature peaked at a new all-time high of 17.18°C as regions worldwide—from Asia to Africa to the U.S. South—reeled from dangerous heatwaves.

As Bloombergreported, “The heat this summer has already put millions of people around the world at risk.”

“China is experiencing a scorching new heat wave less than two weeks after temperatures broke records in Beijing,” the outlet noted. “Extreme heat in India last month has been linked to deaths in some of its poorest regions. Last week saw a dangerous heat dome cover Texas and northern Mexico, while the U.K. baked in its hottest June on record.”

Earth’s hottest day came after the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) declared the onset of El Niño conditions, which are marked by warming surface waters in the Pacific.

“The onset of El Niño will greatly increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records and triggering more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the ocean,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement Tuesday. “The declaration of an El Niño by WMO is the signal to governments around the world to mobilize preparations to limit the impacts on our health, our ecosystems, and our economies.”

“Early warnings and anticipatory action of extreme weather events associated with this major climate phenomenon are vital to save lives and livelihoods,” he added.

Record temperatures and intensifying extreme weather, including an unprecedented wildfire season in Canada, come as world leaders are facing urgent calls to rein in fossil fuels—the primary driver of the global climate emergency—at the upcoming COP28 climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s top oil producers.

“People around the world are already enduring climate impacts, from heatwaves, wildfires, and air pollution to floods and extreme storms,” Jeni Miller, executive director of the California-based Global Climate and Health Alliance, toldThe Guardian on Tuesday. “Global warming is also exacerbating crop losses and the spread of infectious diseases, as well as migration.”

“Governments must prepare to deliver a commitment at COP28 to phase out all fossil fuels, and a just transition to renewable energy for all,” Miller said.

Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Britain’s Imperial College London, toldReuters that the hottest global temperature ever recorded is “not a milestone we should be celebrating.”

“It’s a death sentence for people and ecosystems,” Otto added.

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘Terrifying’: Tuesday Was Hottest Day Ever, Breaking Record Set Just 24 Hours Earlier