Tag Archives: greenhouse gases

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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Study Warns of ‘Irreversible Impacts’ From Overshooting 1.5°C, Even Temporarily

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“Only by doing much more in this critical decade to bring emissions down and peak temperatures as low as possible, can we effectively limit damages.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 10-9-2024 by Common Dreams

One prediction of where rising sea levels will end up at Cottesloe Beach, Perth Western Australia.. Photo: go_greener_oz/flickr/CC

Just over a month away from the next United Nations climate summit, a study out Wednesday warns that heating the planet beyond a key temperature threshold of the Paris agreement—even temporarily—could cause “irreversible impacts.”

The 2015 agreement aims to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5ºC, relative to preindustrial levels.

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Supreme Court Issues Rare—Temporary—Wins for EPA With Methane, Mercury Rulings

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“The Supreme Court has sensibly rejected two efforts by industry to halt critical safeguards,” an advocate said.

By Edward Carver. Published 10-4-2024 by Common Dreams

Gas flare in La Porte TX. Photo: Roy Luck/flickr/CC

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected two industry-backed petitions to issue injunctions on new Biden administration rules for methane and mercury in a rare, if temporary, victory for the environment at the nation’s top court, which normally rules in favor of industry interests.

The two cases deal with rules issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—one to limit methane gas emitted by oil and gas companies, and the other to limit mercury emissions at coal-fired power plants.

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‘Major Power Milestone’: US Green Groups Cheer Wind, Solar Overtaking Coal

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“This historic milestone marks a significant win for clean energy advocates, for ratepayers, and for people and communities across the country,” said one climate leader.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 8-14-2024 by Common Dreams

Wind turbines in southern California Photo: Erik Wilde/Wikimedia Commons/CC

U.S. climate advocates this week are celebrating new federal data that show wind and solar have generated more power than coal during the first seven months of 2024 and are on track to do so for the entire calendar year.

“This is the kind of news we like to see!” Food & Water Watch said of the data on social media Tuesday. “Ensuring a livable climate for all depends on us making a swift and just transition to clean energy like wind and solar.”‘

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Global Tribunal Issues ‘Historic’ Ruling for Oceans and Small Island Nations

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“Protecting the global commons of the oceans and atmosphere is a matter of life and death,” said one expert who praised the decision.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 5-21-2024 by Common Dreams

Fighting against climate change in Tuvalu: reclaimed land, Photo: UNDP Climate/flickr/CC

An international tribunal on Tuesday delivered a decision that green groups and leaders of small island nations celebrated as a “groundbreaking victory for ocean and climate protection.”

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) announced in an advisory opinion that greenhouse gas emissions are marine pollution under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and parties to the treaty “have the specific obligation to adopt laws and regulations to prevent, reduce, and control” them.

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Trump to Big Oil Execs: Give Me $1 Billion and I’ll Help You Wreck the Planet

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“You won’t read a more important story today,” said one commentator. “Trump is willing to literally destroy the planet for $1 billion.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 5-9-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: Trump White House Archived/flickr

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a straightforward offer to some of the top fossil fuel executives in the United States during a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club last month, which marked the hottest April on record.

According to new reporting, Trump pledged to swiftly gut climate regulations put in place by the Biden administration if the oil and gas industry raises $1 billion for his 2024 presidential campaign.

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‘Omen of the Future’: Off-The-Charts Hot Oceans Scare Scientists

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After 2023 was the hottest year in human history, experts warn that 2024 “has strong potential to be another record-breaking year.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 2-27-2024 by Common Dreams

Coral bleaching. Photo: blamethepeople/flickr

While global policymakers continue to drag their feet on phasing out planet-heating fossil fuels, scientists around the world “are freaking out” about high ocean temperatures, as they told The New York Times in reporting published Tuesday.

A “super El Niño” has expectedly heated up the Pacific, but Times reporter David Gelles spoke with ocean experts from Miami to Cambridge to Sydney about record heat in the North Atlantic as well as conditions around the poles.

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‘Death Sentence’: Reports Call for End to Big Oil’s US Sacrifice Zones

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“People’s lives and the environment are being devastated at the hands of big business,” one human rights researcher said.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 1-25-2024 by Common Dreams

Cancer Alley. Photo: Gines A. Sanchez/flickr/CC

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both published reports on Thursday detailing how the fossil fuel industry has harmed the health and environment of communities in Texas and Louisiana, and how state and federal regulators have failed to protect them.

The Amnesty report, The Cost of Doing Business? The Petrochemical Industry’s Toxic Pollution in the USA, focused on the Houston Ship Channel, which has some of the worst air pollution measurements in the U.S. The HRW report, “We’re Dying Here”: The Fight for Life in a Louisiana Fossil Fuel Sacrifice Zone, looked at the state’s Cancer Alley, an 85-mile zone along the Mississippi that reportedly has the highest concentration of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants in the Western Hemisphere.

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200,000+ Urge DOE to ‘Do the Right Thing’ and Block LNG Buildout

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One project in particular, the CP2 export terminal, “would be the most harmful facility built in the United States,” one frontline activist said as campaigners delivered petition signatures.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 11-30-2023 by Common Dreams

Roishetta Ozane, founder and director of the Louisiana-based mutual aid organization Vessel Project, speaks as activists deliver 200,000 signatures opposing the LNG buildout to the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., on November 30, 2023. (Photo: Jamie Henn/X)

Climate and environmental justice campaigners on Thursday delivered more than 200,000 petition signatures calling on the Biden administration to reject the Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2, liquefied natural gas export facility as well as all other planned LNG infrastructure.

Environmental advocates and progressive lawmakers have been increasingly raising the alarm about CP2 and the broader expansion in LNG exports, pointing out that they put both the U.S. climate goals and frontline Gulf Coast communities at risk. CP2, for example, would emit 20 times as many greenhouse gases as the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.

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