Tag Archives: greenhouse gases

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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‘Baby Steps’ Will Not Avert Climate Catastrophe, UN Warns

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The United Nations assessment coincided with the release of “the world’s most comprehensive roadmap of how to close the global gap in climate action across sectors.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-14-2023 by Common Dreams

A resident holds a sign asking passing drivers to slow down to reduce wakes that exacerbate flooding in a suburb of Houston, Texas, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo by Glenn Fawcett)

“The world is failing to get a grip on the climate crisis.”

That’s how United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres began his Tuesday remarks about a new U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) report on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), or countries’ plans to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, including its 1.5°C temperature target.

The UNFCCC analysis “provides yet more evidence that the world remains massively off track to limiting global warming to 1.5°C and avoiding the worst of climate catastrophe,” said Guterres. “As the report shows, global ambition stagnated over the past year and national climate plans are strikingly misaligned with the science.”

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Climate Groups Plan to Appeal as Judge Upholds Biden Approval of Willow Drilling Project

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“Beyond the illegality of Willow’s approval, Interior’s decision to greenlight the project in the first place moved us in the opposite direction of our national climate goals in the face of the worsening climate crisis.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 11-10-2023 by Common Dreams

This map from the Bureau of Land Management shows the site of the Willow development on the North Slope of Alaska. Willow’s drill sites are marked by squares. (Bureau of Land Management image)

A federal judge in Anchorage ruled Thursday that ConocoPhillips’ $8 billion oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope can proceed, rejecting a pair of lawsuits arguing that the Biden administration failed to adequately consider the initiative’s impact on the climate, local communities, and wildlife before approving it earlier this year.

Willow is the largest proposed oil and gas drilling project on public lands in U.S. history, and it comes at a time when scientists are warning that any new fossil fuel extraction is incompatible with preventing catastrophic planetary warming.

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Study Warns Even With Emissions Cuts, West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt ‘Unavoidable’

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“It looks like we’ve lost control of melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” said one author. “The bright side is that by recognizing this situation in advance, the world will have more time to adapt to the sea-level rise that’s coming.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 10-23-2023 by Common Dreams

A view from the ship of the edge of the Ronne Ice Shelf, the world’s second largest ice shelf located in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. Photo: Ricarda Winkelmann/CC

Even if humanity dramatically reduces planet-heating pollution from fossil fuels, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet faces an “unavoidable” increase in melting for the rest of this century, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is the continent’s largest contributor to rising seas and contains enough ice to increase the global mean sea level by over 17 feet, the study explains. Enhanced melting of ice shelves, “the floating extensions of the ice sheet, has reduced their buttressing and caused upstream glaciers to accelerate their flow” toward the Southern Ocean. Ice shelf melting could “cause irreversible retreat” of the glaciers.

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Nearly Half of Flowering Plant Species Face Threat of Extinction

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“Effectively managing the plants and fungi that form the building blocks of our habitable planet is key to halting wider biodiversity loss and restoring Earth’s ecosystems to full function,” says a scientific report.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 10-11-2023 by Common Dreams

Global scientists warn that 45% of known flowering plant species could be threatened with extinction. Photo: Diana Robinson/flickr/CC

Global scientists warned Tuesday that 45% of known flowering plant species could be at risk of disappearing, underscoring the need for urgent international action to tackle the planet’s sixth mass extinction—the first driven by human activity.

That figure is among the key findings from State of the World’s Plants and Fungi, the fifth annual report from the U.K.’s Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew about such species amid the intertwined biodiversity crisis and climate emergency.

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Shell Employees Urged to Revolt as Oil Giant Faces Internal Backlash for Ditching Renewables

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“Shell bosses sacrifice our safety for short-term profits, even their employees see it,” said one campaigner. “No point waiting for them to grow a conscience.”

By Julia Conley. Published 9-29-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: rawpixel

Anti-fossil fuel campaigners on Friday urged employees of oil and gas giant Shell to speak out as loudly as possible about their objections to the company’s pivot away from renewable energy, after thousands of workers expressed support for an angry open letter penned by two of their colleagues.

On the company’s private platform, a letter published by Lisette de Heiden and Wouter Drinkwaard of Shell’s low-carbon division garnered 1,000 “likes” and 80,000 views earlier this month and was reported on by Reuters Wednesday.

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