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Trump’s ‘climate’ purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it
by Oliver Milman 26/3/25 The Guardian
When Donald Trump won November’s election, a small team working on a key new US government tool charting impacts of the climate crisis scrambled into action. They hastily renamed the resource to remove the word “climate” and quietly released it without fanfare in December, before Trump’s return to the White House.
Trump’s EPA aims to cut pollution rules projected to save nearly 200,000 lives: ‘People will be hurt’
by Oliver Milman 19/3/25 The Guardian
A push by Donald Trump’s administration to repeal a barrage of clean air and water regulations may deal a severe blow to US public health, with a Guardian analysis finding that the targeted rules were set to save the lives of nearly 200,000 people in the years ahead.
‘Backsliding’: most countries to miss vital climate deadline as Cop30 nears
by Fiona Harvey 8/2/25 The Guardian
Developing countries urge biggest polluters to act as Trump’s return to the White House heightens geopolitical turmoil
Climate change target of 2C is ‘dead’, says renowned climate scientist
by Damian Carrington 4/2/25 The Guardian
The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is “dead”.
Cop28 president says his firm will keep investing in oil
by Fiona Harvey 15/12/23 The Guardian
The president of the Cop28 climate summit will continue with his oil company’s record investment in oil and gas production, despite coordinating a global deal to “transition away” from fossil fuels
‘Double agents’: fossil-fuel lobbyists work for US groups trying to fight climate crisis
by Oliver Milman 5/7/23 The Guardian
More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal.
‘Double agents’: fossil-fuel lobbyists work for US groups trying to fight climate crisis
by Oliver Milman 5/7/23 The Guardian
More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal.
“Kochland” Examines the Koch Brothers’ Early, Crucial Role in Climate-Change Denial
“Kochland” is important, Davies said, because it makes it clear that “you’d have a carbon tax, or something better, today, if not for the Kochs. They stopped anything from happening back when there was still time.” The book also documents how, in 2010, the company’s lobbyists spent gobs of cash and swarmed Congress as part of a multi-pronged effort to kill the first, and so far the last, serious effort to place a price on carbon pollution—the proposed “cap and trade” bill. Magnifying the Kochs’ power was their network of allied donors, anonymously funded shell groups, think tanks, academic centers, and nonprofit advocacy groups, which Koch insiders referred to as their “echo chamber.” Leonard also reports that the centrist think tank Third Way quietly worked with the Kochs to push back against efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which could have affected their business importing oil from Canada. Frequently, and by design, the Koch brothers’ involvement was all but invisible
Others have chronicled the cap-and-trade fight well, but Leonard penetrates the inner sanctum of the Kochs’ lobbying machine, showing that, from the start, even when other parts of the company could have benefitted from an embrace of alternative energy, Koch Industries regarded any compromise that might reduce fossil-fuel consumption as unacceptable. Protecting its fossil-fuel profits was, and remains, the company’s top political priority. Leonard shows that the Kochs, to achieve this end, worked to hijack the Tea Party movement and, eventually, the Republican Party itself.
Scientists who worked for Koch Industries adopted the company line; Leonard quotes a former company scientist, who embraced the conspiracy theory that élites invented a global-warming “hoax” as a way to unite Americans against a common enemy after the Cold War. Leonard also quotes Philip Ellender, Koch Industries’ top lobbyist, as claiming, in 2014, that the Earth had gotten cooler in the previous eighteen years. In fact, according to nasa, eighteen of the nineteen hottest years on record have occurred in the past two decades. Yet the Koch machine bought its way into Congress and turned climate-change denial into an unchallengeable Republican talking point. Meanwhile, after the cap-and-trade bill died, the planet continued heating, and the Kochs’ net worth doubled.
Koch Bros funded Conference 1991
Cato Institute Brochure 6/05/1991
One of the earliest samples of climate denialism. Probably the turning point of the Republican Party's adoption of climate denialism and the Koch Bros' libertarian agenda.
Fossil fuel production on track for double the safe climate limit
<embed>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/20/fossil-fuel-production-on-track-for-double-the-safe-climate-limit</embed>
The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas as can be burned in 2030 while restricting rise in the global temperature to 1.5C, analysis shows.
The report is the first to compare countries’ stated plans for fossil fuel extraction with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which is to keep global heating well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5C. It exposes a huge gap, with fossil fuel production in 2030 heading for 50% more than is consistent with 2C, and 120% more than that for 1.5C.
The report was produced by the UN Environment Programme and a coalition of research organisations. It complements an earlier UN analysis showing the current Paris agreement pledges to cut emissions would still lead to a catastrophic 3-4C rise.
Yes, the Climate Crisis May Wipe out Six Billion People
<embed>https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/09/18/Climate-Crisis-Wipe-Out/</embed>
One thing the climate crisis underscores is that Homo sapiens are not primarily a rational species. When forced to make important decisions, particularly decisions affecting our economic security or socio-political status, primitive instinct and raw emotion tend to take the upper hand. This is not a good thing if the fate of society is at stake. Take “hope” for example. For good evolutionary reasons, humans naturally tend to be hopeful in times of stress. So gently comforting is this word, that some even endow their daughters with its name. But hope can be enervating, flat out debilitating, when it merges with mere wishful thinking — when we hope, for example, that technology alone can save us from climate change.
Laissez-faire: the Environmental Version
<embed>https://ecooptimism.com/?p=1200</embed>
The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, caught my eye: “Laissez-faire takes on a new meaning — it is the ecosystem, not the economy that must be “left alone” to manage itself and evolve by its own rules.”
