Tag Archives: Climate Change

‘Monumental Victory for the Ocean’: Norway Halts Plans for Deep-Sea Mining

One campaigner called it “a testament to the power of principled, courageous political action, and… a moment to celebrate for environmental advocates, ocean ecosystems, and future generations alike.”

By Olivia Rosane. Published 12-2-2024 by Common Dreams

*Kirsti Bergstø, leader of the Socialist Left Party, speaks at a protest against deep-sea mining outside Norwegian Parliament. Photo: Greenpeace*

Environmental organizations cheered as Norway’s controversial plans to move forward with deep-sea mining in the vulnerable Arctic Ocean were iced on Sunday.

The pause was won in Norway’s parliament by the small Socialist Left (SV) Party in exchange for its support in passing the government’s 2025 budget.

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Native Americans Hold National Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving

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“‘Thanksgiving’ is a white-washed holiday designed to conceal its true origins of violence, genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation,” said the Indigenous Environmental Network.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-28-2024 by Common Dreams

*Photo: United American Indians of New England/Facebook*

In contrast with Thanksgiving celebrations across the United States on Thursday, Native Americans held a National Day of Mourning, promoted accurate history, and championed Indigenous voices and struggles.

Despite rainy conditions, the United American Indians of New England held its 55th annual National Day of Mourning at Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Kisha James, who is an enrolled member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and also Oglala Lakota, shared how her grandfather founded the event in 1970 and pledged to continue to “tear down the Thanksgiving mythology.”

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COP29 puts world on course for more extreme weather – and more deaths

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Summit proves change won’t come until floods and wildfires are killing tens of thousands in rich Global North cities

By Paul Rogers. Published 11-25-2024 by openDemocracy

While COP29 in Baku narrowly avoided collapsing, its results were bitterly disappointing for delegations from across the Global South, who ended up with barely a quarter of the annual $1.3trn of support they were seeking by 2035 to respond to climate breakdown.

Quite apart from other factors, more than 1,500 pro-carbon lobbyists worked hard to limit progress and ensure that burning oil, gas and coal at profit continues for as long as possible whatever the global consequences. After all, the world’s fossil fuel industries rake in around a trillion dollars in profits a year.

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Ahead of Plastics Treaty Talks, Millions Demand Production Cuts

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“This plastic crisis is rooted in the overproduction of single-use plastics, building for us and future generations a very toxic legacy,” said one Indonesian youth activist.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-24-2024 by Common Dreams

Ahead of the fifth and final round of negotiations for a global plastics treaty in Busan, South Korea, people took to the streets to demand meaningful action from world leaders. Photo: #BreakFreeFromPlastic/X

With the fifth and final round of global plastics treaty negotiations set to begin Monday in Busan, South Korea, an estimated 1,500 people took to the city’s streets and nearly 3 million more signed a petition calling for a legally binding pact “to drastically reduce production and use, and protect human health and the environment.”

The Saturday march at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center was led by the global Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) movement and local allies from the Uproot Plastics Coalition. They want the treaty to include targets to slash production.

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The Fight Against Fascism Starts on Campus

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Colleges are ahead of the curve when it comes to surveillance creep, and the ivory panopticon will only get worse as surveillance technologies get more advanced.

By Glencora Borradaile Published 11-17-2024 by Common Dreams

Multiple people were arrested during a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University. Screenshot:
FREEDOMNEWS TV/YouTube

With the significant red shift this election, led by a man who is described by many as a fascist, resisting and reversing fascist creep is more important now than ever. Even at our supposedly most liberal institutions, we have seen increasingly unreasonable overreactions to dissent dictated not through democratic means, but through authoritarian decree.

Take, for example, the University of Pennsylvania. Early in the morning on October 18, a dozen armed university police stormed an off-campus student house to issue a warrant related to the throwing of red paint on a campus statue on September 12 as part of pro-Palestinian protests—red paint that was pressure-washed off within hours. Would UPenn faculty agree that an armed raid is an appropriate response to their own students who are angry and feeling helpless against the injustice of tens of thousands killed in Gaza? Where is shared and democratic governance when it comes to protest response on campus?

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Thousands March in London to Demand End of Fossil Fuels and Gaza Genocide

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“We won’t stop until political leaders divest from war and destruction—and invest in a just, ecological, and equitable transition,” said one campaigner.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 11-16-2024 by Common Dreams

*Activists march in London to demand an end to fossil fuels and militarism on November 16, 2024. Photo: Denise Baker*

Thousands of climate justice advocates took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand the U.K. government “end its reliance on fossil fuels, commit to paying climate reparations, and end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza.”

Organizers said more than 60 groups—including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Amnesty International U.K., Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want, and Just Stop Oil—took part in the March for Global Climate Justice. The demonstration took place amid yet another shambolic United Nations Climate Change Conference and as Israeli forces continue a war on Gaza that U.N. experts this week called “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”

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Trump’s Project 2025 is already underway in Argentina, and it’s terrifying

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If you can bear to see how Trump would implement Project 2025, look to Argentina – a lab for the global far right

By Diana Cariboni. Published 11-7-2024 by openDemocracy

*Argentine president Javier Milei. Photo: Mídia NINJA/CC*

As the world absorbs the shockwave of Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential election, the playbook for his second term, designed by a handful of right-wing extremists, is already underway in Argentina.

Project 2025 is set out in a nearly 900-page ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise’, produced by the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing US think tank, as a ready reckoner for the incoming Trump administration. It details authoritarian tactics that exist in various parts of the world, from attacking public education to dismantling policies to tackle climate change to restricting the rights of women, LGBTIQ+ people, migrants, workers and Black people. But if there is one country already trying some of Project 2025’s most extreme policies to weaken the state and render the enjoyment of rights obsolete, it is Argentina.

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2024 ‘Virtually Certain’ to Be Hottest Year on Record: EU Climate Agency

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A new report contained “the bleakest news possible, especially with a climate denier U.S. president in office for the next four years,” said one climate scientist.

By Julia Conley. Published 11-7-2024 by Common Dreams

*© Friedrich Haag / Wikimedia Commons / “Visitors at the 2024 Easter fire in Rottorf, 2024 03 30” / CC BY-SA 4.0*

A day after U.S. voters elected climate-denying Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race, soon ushering in an administration that is sure to expand fossil fuel drilling, the European Union’s Earth observation agency announced that 2024 is “virtually certain” to be the hottest year on record and to hit a worrying temperature milestone.

The year is expected to be the first on record in which the temperature is more than 1.5°C hotter than before the Industrial Revolution, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS). The Paris climate agreement of 2015 urged countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C by the end of the century.

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‘We’re Playing With Fire’: World on Track for ‘Catastrophic’ 3.1°C of Warming

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“Closing the emissions gap means closing the ambition gap, the implementation gap, and the finance gap,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “Starting at COP29.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 10-24-2024 by Common Dreams

*Carbon emissions and haze are seen near factories and a power plant. (Photo: Pixabay/Creative Commons)*

The world’s nations must commit to dramatically slashing greenhouse gas emissions in the near future or risk a “catastrophic” rise in global average temperatures, a key United Nations climate report published Thursday warned.

“It is still technically possible to meet the 1.5°C goal” set out in the Paris agreement, “but only with a G20-led massive global mobilization to cut all greenhouse gas emissions, starting today,” the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) said in a summary of its annual Emissions Gap Report.

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COP29 Host Deal Revealed Amid Azerbaijan’s ‘Vicious Crackdown’ on Critics

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“In the months leading up to COP29, Azerbaijani authorities have arrested dozens of prominent activists and media figures on baseless, serious criminal charges,” notes a new report.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 10-10-2024 by Common Dreams

Mukhtar Babayev, Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Republic of Azerbaijan speaking during the Session: Reinvigorating Regional Growth at the King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Centre during the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa, Jordan 2019. Photo: World Economic Forum/flickr/CC

Human Rights Watch on Thursday revealed the host country agreement between the United Nations and Azerbaijan for next month’s climate summit, on the heels of an HRW report exposing “the government’s concerted efforts to decimate civil society and silence its critics.”

COP29 is scheduled for November 11-22 in Baku. Although the agreement was signed in August by U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Simon Stiell and Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources, it was not made public until the U.S.-based human rights group obtained a copy.

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Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: Climate Change

2024 ‘Virtually Certain’ to Be Hottest Year on Record: EU Climate Agency

A new report contained “the bleakest news possible, especially with a climate denier U.S. president in office for the next four years,” said one climate scientist.

‘We’re Playing With Fire’: World on Track for ‘Catastrophic’ 3.1°C of Warming

“Closing the emissions gap means closing the ambition gap, the implementation gap, and the finance gap,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “Starting at COP29.”