… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Climate Crisis

  • 13 Months of Record-Smashing Heat Called ‘Another Red Alert’ for Humanity

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

    Rescuers carry away a man, affected by the scorching heat, on a stretcher as Muslim pilgrims arrive to perform the symbolic “stoning of the devil” ritual as part of the Hajj pilgrimage in Mina, Saudi Arabia on June 16, 2024. (Photo: Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)

    “This alarming record underlines the need to urgently phase out fossil fuels, and to hugely increase climate finance,” said one campaigner.

    Scientists on Monday underscored the urgent need to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy following the publication of data from the European Union’s climate change monitor showing that last month was the hottest June ever recorded and that 2024 is likely to be the planet’s hottest year on record.

    Each month since June 2023 has been the hottest since records have been kept, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said last week in its latest monthly bulletin.

    According to the agency, June “was 1.50°C above the estimated June average for 1850-1900, the designated preindustrial reference period, making it the 12th consecutive month to reach or break the 1.5°C threshold.”

    “European temperatures were most above average over southeast regions and Turkey, but near or below average over western Europe, Iceland, and northwestern Russia,” C3S noted. “Outside Europe, temperatures were most above average over eastern Canada, the western United States and Mexico, Brazil, northern Siberia, the Middle East, northern Africa, and western Antarctica.”

    “Temperatures were below average over the eastern equatorial Pacific, indicating a developing La Niña, but air temperatures over the ocean remained at an unusually high level over many regions,” the agency added.

    C3S Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement Monday that “even if this specific streak of extremes ends at some point, we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm.”

    “This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans,” he stressed.

    In an interview with The Associated Press published Monday, C3S climate scientist Nicolas Julien called the new data “a stark warning that we are getting closer to this very important limit set by the Paris agreement.”

    “The global temperature continues to increase,” he added. “It has at a rapid pace.”

    Zeke Hausfather, a researcher at the California-based nonprofit Berkeley Earth, told Reuters, “I now estimate that there is an approximately 95% chance that 2024 beats 2023 to be the warmest year since global surface temperature records began in the mid-1800s.”

    As Reuters reported Monday:

    The changed climate has already unleashed disastrous consequences around the world in 2024. More than 1,000 people died in fierce heat during the Hajj pilgrimage last month. Heat deaths were recorded in New Dehli, which endured an unprecedentedly long heatwave, and amongst tourists in Greece.

    “This is not good news at all,” Aditi Mukherji, who co-authored the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, told The Guardian.

    “We know that extreme events increase with every increment of global warming,” she added, “and at 1.5°C, we witnessed some of the hottest extremes this year.”

    The Guardian surveyed hundreds of IPCC authors earlier this year. Three-quarters of them said they expect Earth to heat by at least 2.5°C by the end of this century. Half of the surveyed scientists expect temperatures to rise above 3°C by 2100.

    “It is a crisis,” said Mukherji, and one that has a clear solution, given that burning fossil fuels is the leading cause of global heating.

    Antonia Juhasz, a senior researcher on fossil fuels at Human Rights Watch, told Nation of Change that “as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, heatwaves are becoming more common, and intense heatwaves are more frequent.”

    “We can break the cycle, we can make oil companies stop burning fossil fuels,” she added.

    Reacting to the latest C3S data, Amnesty International climate adviser Ann Harrison said on social media that “this alarming record underlines the need to urgently phase out fossil fuels, and to hugely increase climate finance.”

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

  • Labour’s biggest corporate donor Ecotricity accused of ‘greenwashing’

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    Original article by Martin Williams republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

    Ecotricity’s founder, Dale Vince.  Bloomberg / Contributor

    Exclusive: Energy firm making ‘misleading’ claims about ‘neutralising’ gas with carbon credits

    The Labour Party’s biggest corporate donor has been accused of “greenwashing” after an investigation by openDemocracy.

    Ecotricity Ltd, which has given almost £3.4m to Labour since Keir Starmer became leader in 2020, claims to be “Britain’s greenest energy supplier”.

    Yet 99% of the gas it supplies comes from fossil fuels. The company claims this gas is “carbon-neutralised” because it invests in “carbon reduction programmes to cancel out the carbon burned”.

    But openDemocracy has learned that Ecotricity has no active carbon credits – despite listing four environmental projects on its website that it says it supports.

    When questioned about the company’s claims that “carbon emissions from our fossil fuel gas are offset by investing in carbon reduction schemes”, a spokesperson admitted that some of the schemes it previously supported had not done “as promised” – and said that information on its website would be “refreshed”.

    But experts warned that even if the company held active carbon credits, its claims that these “neutralise” its fossil fuel gas would still be misleading.

    “It is highly misleading for a company to claim that its product – or itself – is carbon- or climate-neutral,” said Lindsay Otis Nilles from Carbon Market Watch. “These false claims are based on heavily flawed scientific principles and lead to consumer confusion.”

    The company has not broken any laws, but it will be illegal to claim that carbon offsets can “neutralise” fossil fuel products in the EU from 2026, as the bloc looks to crack down on greenwashing. An EU directive says these claims create a “false impression to consumers that the consumption of that product does not have an environmental impact”.

    Analysis by openDemocracy shows that some of the carbon offset projects that Ecotricity previously pumped money into have been linked to environmental concerns and human rights abuses.

    In some cases, records cast doubt on whether the company’s offsetting credits actually helped to reduce emissions at all – since the projects it invested in were already fully funded.

    For example, two years ago, Ecotricity purchased credits in the Soubré hydropower plant, the largest hydroelectric dam in Ivory Coast, which was completed in 2017.

    The project cost around £452m, 85% of which had already been secured by January 2017, with a loan from EXIM Bank of China. The remaining 15% was covered by the Ivory Coast government.

    The Soubré powerplant previously came under fire in a 2019 report that accused it of having an “irresponsible” approach to monitoring its potential environmental impact.

    The report, which was published by American environment and human rights organisation International Rivers, also included complaints by workers at the dam of instances of “discrimination and physical abuse” and “threats from the government” when they spoke out.

    Meanwhile, the project’s main contractor, Chinese firm Sinohydro – which is responsible for its engineering, procurement and construction – has faced allegations of fraud elsewhere.

    The company is currently excluded from projects financed by the European Investment Bank, following an investigation into “misconduct”. And in 2018, another investigation by the African Development Bank found that Sinohydro had “engaged in a fraudulent practice”.

    Ecotricity has also held carbon credits in another hydroelectric power plant in Indonesia, called Asahan 1. Reports from as far back as 2012 say the company behind it, PT Bajradaya Sentranusa, had already secured funding from a bank “to take over the entire existing project loans for the construction” when Ecotricity bought the credits.

    A spokesperson for Ecotricity said: “The information on the website about carbon reduction projects is being refreshed.”

    They added: “We used carbon credits to entirely offset our gas supply for the financial year 2024 which is now closed and our offsetting programme for the financial year 2025 is currently under review which is why we do not currently hold any credits. Any suggestion that we do not or will not offset our gas in the future is false and misleading.”

    “Offsetting is an annual accounting period practice and can take place at any point in that [financial year] – that is standard practice. Our offsetting programme for the financial year 2025 is currently under review. Any suggestion that we do not or will not offset our gas is wrong.”

    The spokesperson added that Ecotricity is looking at “more direct carbon capture methods”, adding: “Carbon offsetting has been a bridge. We have always been clear about that.”

    ‘Greenwashing’

    Ecotricity not only boasts about its own climate credentials, it also actively warns customers about “greenwashing” by rival energy suppliers.

    “A number of energy companies claim green credentials for themselves or for some of their tariffs,” it says, “but are their claims genuine?”

    But Ecotricity has itself now been accused of greenwashing. Responding to the company’s claims about carbon offsets, Nilles of Carbon Market Watch told openDemocracy: “It is a fallacy to think that purchasing carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market can magically ‘cancel out’ or ‘offset’ climate harm. Greenwashing practices like this must stop once and for all.”

    Ecotricity’s founder, Dale Vince, recently joined Labour’s campaign in Bristol. His involvement in the constituency is controversial because it is seen as one of the few seats the Green Party has a genuine chance of winning in this week’s general election. But Vince tweeted: “Labour has a green manifesto and can make it happen.”

    The self-styled “green industrialist” is the outright owner of Ecotricity’s parent company, Green Britain Group Limited. According to the latest accounts filed with Companies House, this firm made £38m profit in the year ending 30 April last year, after bringing in more than £550m turnover.

    Responding to openDemocracy, Vince repeated the claim that carbon credits were used to achieve “net neutrality”.

    He said: “Ecotricity bought carbon credits from the Asahan and Soubre schemes two years ago – we no longer do so. We’ve been reducing our carbon footprint annually for decades and only recently used carbon credits to achieve net neutrality, for our green gas while we built new gasmills.

    “It’s important to reduce as far as possible before using credits, but that world is full of uncertainty, risk and projects that don’t do as promised, which these two schemes appear to be an example of. We welcome the EU move to clamp down on all forms of greenwashing.”

    Vince accused openDemocracy of a “smear attack” with a “rather distorted presentation of facts”.

    Prior to this response, openDemocracy had repeatedly asked Ecotricity to provide a complete and up-to-date list of its carbon credit portfolio, but it failed to do so.

    Last week, Vince told the Financial Times that he was not seeking support for his own energy projects from Labour. “I don’t want support for my projects,” he said, “I’m not interested, life’s too short to be chasing money.”

    The latest accounts filed by Green Britain Group Limited show it received £123m in “government grants” in the year ending April 2023. The financial support was designed to pay energy firms to cap prices for consumers.

    The previous year, the company received a £9.4m Covid “business interruption” loan to support large companies in the pandemic.

    However, Vince told openDemocracy: “Ecotricity hasn’t had any government subsidies.”

    Original article by Martin Williams republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

  • Reports on Heat Waves and Flooding Usually Neglect to Explain Why They’re Happening: Study

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    Original article by OLIVIA RIGGIO republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

    This month brought yet another record-breaking spate of flash floods and deadly heatwaves across the US. Yet, as a new study by Heated (6/27/24) reveals, despite ample reporting on these events, a majority of news outlets still did not link these events to their cause: climate change.

    Emily Atkin and Arielle Samuelson, writers for the climate-focused, Substack-based outlet, analyzed 133 digital breaking news articles from national, international and regional outlets reporting on this month’s extreme weather. Just 44% mentioned the climate crisis or global warming. Broken down by weather event: 52% of stories that covered heatwaves, and only 25% of stories that covered extreme rainfall, mentioned climate change.

    As Atkin and Samuelson write, by now we know that climate change is the main cause of both extreme heat and extreme flooding. And we know the biggest contributor of climate-disrupting greenhouse gasses: fossil fuels, which account for about 75% of global emissions annually.

    Still, the study’s authors found, only 11% of the articles they studied mentioned fossil fuels. Only one piece (BBC, 6/24/24) mentioned deforestation, which scientists say contributes about 20% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. None mentioned animal agriculture, which the FAO estimates contributes about 12% of global emissions.

    Stark omissions

    The omissions were laughably stark: A New York Post piece (6/21/24) ended with a New Yorker and former Marine who said he’d been in “way hotter conditions”—in Kuwait and Iraq. An AP article (6/4/24) quoted the “explanation” offered by a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management: “It does seem like Mother Nature is turning up the heat on us a little sooner than usual.”

    Heated recognized some outlets that consistently mentioned climate change in their breaking coverage of heat and floods this month. That list included NPR, Vox, Axios, BBC and Agence France-Presse (AFP).

    Then there were the outlets whose breaking coverage never mentioned it: ABC News, USA Today, The Hill, the New York Post and Fox Weather. When questioned, many of these outlets pointed the study’s authors to other climate coverage they had done, but this study’s focus on breaking news stories  was deliberate:

    Our analysis focused only on breaking stories because climate change is not a follow-up story; it is the story of the lethal and economically devastating extreme weather playing out across the country. To not mention climate change in a breaking news story about record heat in June 2024 is like not mentioning Covid-19 in a breaking news article about record hospitalizations in March 2020. It’s an abdication of journalistic responsibility to inform.

    Explaining isn’t hard

    A crucial takeaway for journalists and editors in this piece is that explaining the cause of these weather events isn’t hard. It’s often a matter of adding a sentence at most, Atkin and Samuelson write. They provide examples of stories that successfully made this connection, as with BBC (6/24/24):

    Scientists say extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of human-caused climate change, fueled by activities like burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.

    Or the Guardian (6/23/24):

    Heatwaves are becoming more severe and prolonged due to the global climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

    Notably, the Guardian piece was a reprint of an AP article that did not originally include that sentence; Heated confirmed that it was added by a Guardian editor.

    AP, however, was sometimes able to provide appropriate context, as in a June 21 piece:

    This month’s sizzling daytime temperatures were 35 times more likely and 2.5 degrees F hotter (1.4 degrees C) because of the warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas—in other words, human-caused climate change.

    More denial than acknowledgment

    During last summer’s apocalyptic orange haze on the East Coast, caused by record Canadian wildfires, I conducted a similar study (FAIR.org, 7/18/23) on US TV news’s coverage. Out of 115 segments, only 38% mentioned climate change’s role. Of those 115, 10 mentioned it in passing, 10 engaged in climate denial and 12 gave a brief explanation without alluding to the reality that climate change is human-caused. Only five segments acknowledged that climate change was human caused, and just seven fully fleshed out the fact that the  main cause of the climate crisis is fossil fuels.

    When there are more segments denying climate change than acknowledging fossil fuels’ role in it, you know there’s a problem.

    This year, I noticed coverage of worldwide coral bleaching that did make the appropriate connections (FAIR.org, 5/17/24). As Atkin and Samuelson emphasized, the difference between careless and responsible reporting on this issue is often just a few words.

    Original article by OLIVIA RIGGIO republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

  • Climate protest trial turns to chaos as defendants defy court rules

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    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/04/climate-protest-trial-chaos-defendants-defy-court-rules

    Roger Hallam, on trial for conspiring to block traffic on the M25 in 2022, said he wanted to ‘speak the whole truth’. Photograph: Ollie Millington/Getty

    Accused speak out of turn about climate threat and challenge judge who orders jury to leave

    There was chaos in the courtroom at a climate protest trial when two defendants stood and made statements defying the authority of the court.

    At separate points during the trial on Thursday, Roger Hallam and Daniel Shaw, charged along with three others with conspiring to block traffic on the M25 in 2022, stood up in front of the jury and spoke out of turn.

    Hallam, whose evidence was discontinued on Wednesday, stood up just as court got under way on Thursday and said: “I wish to communicate to the jury and the court that I was forcibly removed from the court yesterday for refusing to break my oath and speak the whole truth.”

    Later on, while Louise Lancaster, a co-defendant, was in the witness box, Shaw, whose evidence was also discontinued on Wednesday, stood up from his place in the court and directly challenged the judge.

    He said: “Climate change represents an existential threat to humanity. The court agrees with that. Why are you not trying the people causing this crisis?”

    Each time the defendants continued speaking as the judge, Christopher Hehir, ordered the jury to leave the court.

    Lancaster refused to submit to cross-examination by the prosecution, as Shaw and Hallam had done the previous day, prompting Hehir to discontinue her evidence.

    Hehir told jurors: “Members of the jury, in your absence I had a discussion in open court with Miss Lancaster. In frank and straightforward terms she has told me she is not prepared to submit to cross-examination. In those circumstances her evidence is at an end.”

    …

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/04/climate-protest-trial-chaos-defendants-defy-court-rules

  • UN Special Rapporteur Attends Trial of Just Stop Oil Supporters at Southwark Crown Court

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    UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention and former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Michel Forst is attending the ongoing trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court today. He is attending as an observer because of his serious concerns.

    The special rapporteur’s office released a statement on 24th June detailing his views regarding the criminal prosecution of Daniel Shaw in this trial. The statement can be read here.

    The Aarhus Convention, to which the UK is a signatory, aims to promote environmental democracy by ensuring public access to information, participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters. The Special Rapporteur monitors the implementation of the convention’s provisions by its parties, ensuring compliance with obligations related to access to justice. Additionally, the Special Rapporteur investigates complaints from individuals or groups alleging violations of their rights under the Aarhus Convention, assesses specific cases, and makes recommendations to ensure compliance.

    Daniel Shaw, Cressie Gethin, Lucia De-Abreu-Whittaker, Louise Lancaster and Roger Hallam are currently on trial at Southwark Crown Court, charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in connection with the M25 gantry actions in November 2022. They were arrested either pre-emptively in police raids at their homes after attending a Zoom call in which a Sun journalist was present, or arrested travelling near the M25 respectively. The Sun alleged it had ‘infiltrated’ the meeting and boasted of tipping off the police and enabling National Highways to secure a public injunction. 

    Some of these five were imprisoned for up to 113 days without trial. They were released subject to stringent conditions including a 10 pm to 7 am house curfew, not to be within a one-mile radius of the M25, no contact with other defendants and not to participate in any climate change demonstration. 

    In another trial involving Just Stop Oil supporters, which was the first under the new Public Order Act 2023 for a Section 7 offence, Judge Hehir who is overseeing the current proceedings barred all legal defences from the defendants and prohibited any mention of the climate crisis to the jury. This trial concluded with a conviction, and Judge Hehir is expected to sentence the defendants at a future date.