The farce of western science: Reflections from the manipulation the ‘de-extinction’ narrative in the case of the dire wolf
Lucas Leiroz
April 12, 2025
In the liberal West, all aspects of human activity are driven by farces, propaganda, and the pursuit of profit.
Western science, heavily influenced by capitalist interests, has become more of a marketing tool than a genuine quest for knowledge or material progress. Recently, we witnessed a blatant example of this phenomenon with the claim that an American biotechnology company, Colossal Biosciences, had successfully “brought back” an extinct species—the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus), a predator that once ruled the Americas during the Pleistocene era.
The idea of resurrecting an extinct species, particularly one that vanished thousands of years ago, may seem fascinating at first glance. However, anyone with a basic understanding of biology knows that reviving a species that has been gone for so long is not only extremely risky but could also lead to unforeseen and even catastrophic consequences for the environment. Nevertheless, the allure of reintroducing one of Earth’s greatest old predators, which hunted mammoths and giant sloths, is undeniably appealing—especially when packaged as a great “scientific innovation.”
The truth behind this claim, however, is far less impressive than the narrative being sold to the public. What Colossal Biosciences actually did was a process known as genetic editing, not “de-extinction.” The company’s scientists took DNA from preserved dire wolf fossils and used this material to genetically alter gray wolf (Canis lupus) embryos. The result was gray wolf pups with physical characteristics resembling the dire wolf, but in reality, they are simply genetically modified gray wolves.
Biologically speaking, what we are seeing is not the resurrection of an extinct species, but rather the creation of mutant versions of an existing species. While both the dire wolf and the gray wolf belong to the canine family, they belong to different genera—Canis and Aenocyon, respectively—making it impossible to claim that we are witnessing a true recreation of the dire wolf. This example is similar to earlier attempts to genetically modify mice with mammoth DNA, creating rodents with fur similar to that of the prehistoric giant—yet, they remain mice, not “de-extinct mammoths.”
A true “de-extinction” would only be possible in two specific scenarios: one through cloning, where the extinct species’ DNA is entirely replicated in a new organism; the other through the creation of a highly genetically edited “hybrid” species that is a direct descendant of the extinct species. Neither of these scenarios applies to Colossal’s experiment, which simply made superficial genetic modifications to a living species that does not descend from the dire wolf.
Moreover, resurrecting extinct species could be a major mistake. The ecology and ecosystems that existed when these species lived have already changed irreversibly, as Earth has moved beyond those geological stages. Reintroducing a creature that once dominated a completely different environment could cause significant imbalances, endangering the species that currently inhabit the Earth. Nature plays a crucial role in regulating and eliminating certain species, and attempting to reverse this process could lead to unpredictable consequences.
A more sensible approach would be to focus genetic engineering efforts on species that were recently driven to extinction by human activity, and whose reintroduction could offer real environmental benefits. However, recovering these species wouldn’t have the same media appeal as “resurrecting” prehistoric creatures. The truth is that Colossal Biosciences’ “de-extinction” experiments, while scientifically interesting, are nothing more than a marketing ploy, capitalizing on the popular fascination with prehistory and megafauna.
The company is taking advantage of the public’s lack of scientific knowledge, which often leads them to unquestioningly accept extraordinary claims made by “scientific” journalism. What could be considered a simple genetic engineering project is being promoted as the first successful case of “de-extinction,” which is certainly driving financial profits and increasing the company’s stock value.
This Western manipulation of narrative, however, is not limited to biotechnology. The same tactics of propaganda and marketing are used in various sectors, including the military, the economy, and even politics. The West, with its liberal capitalist mentality, continually resorts to sensationalism and the distortion of facts to generate profit and consolidate power.
In the West, everything is based on lies and propaganda. The pursuit of profit and power overshadows critical debate and reflection, shaping narratives to serve the interests of a few, while deceiving the masses with promises of progress and development. This is how Western elites mislead public opinion—whether by portraying simple genetic manipulation as “de-extinction” or presenting the outdated liberal democracy as the final stage of political evolution.
Agreed, this is bullshit. While I doubt the the danger in this case is anything it is misdirection of the public when thousands of currently extant species are threatened by extinction due to human activity. The resources might be better expended.
*****
Trump declares all state environmental laws to be null and void
Originally published: Diane Ravitch Blog on April 10, 2025 by Diane Ravitch (more by Diane Ravitch Blog) (Posted Apr 11, 2025)
Trump signed an executive order declaring all state laws that address climate change to be null and void. He claims that efforts to protect the environment are a hindrance to energy production. So ignoring climate change is important to national security because we need oil and gas more than we need clean air and water.
Remember when Trump said he was eliminating the Departnent of Education because states should manage their own schools and the federal government should get out of the way? Why can’t states make decisions about clean air, clean water, and auto efficiency?
Pulling the Rug Out from Under China’s Clean Tech Strategy
Posted on April 14, 2025 by Conor Gallagher
The U.S. intelligence community published its 2025 annual threat assessment on March 25. For the first time in more than a decade climate change didn’t make the cut. That’s not entirely surprising considering the Trump Administration’s ideological leanings, yet one could argue it is being prioritized in other ways — and rather than mitigation, it is acceleration that is the focus.
Geopolitics have almost always trumped any concern over climate change, but the economic war against China drives that point home with an exclamation point. That’s because Beijing went all in on clean energy technology in recent years — to the point China now has the capacity to lead a global energy transformation — only for the US, EU, and others to essentially say they don’t want it.
They are instead turning to a combination of de-risking and going dirty in what amounts to coordinated rug pull from underneath Beijing’s strategy to lead the world in clean energy technology.
The Washington-instigated trade war might end up harming the US the most (if Trump stays the course, which is never certain), will inflict damage on China too, and it will also inflict major damage on the effort to at least slow global CO2 emissions.
In a way it is reminiscent of what’s long been US strategy: when in doubt, set things ablaze and sit back in the safety of the North American island and watch people tear each other apart.
This time, however, Washington is weaponizing the global economy and climate. The effects will be global and, in the case of climate damage, long-lasting. Essentially the US is embracing climate change as the ultimate destabilizer — as long as it means weakening China.
I’ll look here at China’s clean tech strategy and how the economic war calls it into question. A Wednesday post will focus more on clean energy effects in the “Global South” and the “West.”
China’s “Overcapacity”
According to CarbonBrief, in 2023, 39 percent of all Chinese investment was in clean-energy manufacturing, and a gargantuan 40 percent of China’s GDP growth came from clean-energy sectors. That means the industry is now front and center to China’s wider economic and industrial development strategy.
Beijing enacted a wave of initiatives in recent years to drive local deployment of clean tech while simultaneously restricting foreign competition in the Chinese market. Like other industries, Chinese clean-energy manufacturers quickly became national players and then global players.
Now, all this clean tech comes with all the usual caveats about it not being a fix to what’s coming. It is, after all, a capitalist economic competitiveness strategy, which includes other items like building energy intensive, environmentally destructive data centers and leading the world in attempts to drive human labor extinct through automation. Even in China with all this capacity it’s not all good news as far as emissions are concerned. According to the Transnational Institute:
This does not mean, however, that clean energy has displaced fossil fuels in China’s energy mix. While fossil fuels now make up less than half of the country’s installed generation capacity, compared to two-thirds a decade ago, in absolute terms the use of fossil fuels – coal, most importantly – has continued to rise, albeit at a slower rate. China’s energy shift is defined more by expansion than transition.
But it’s hard to conclude that China’s investments aren’t better than nothing:
Western leaders say that China is behaving poorly by subsidizing its clean tech industry and is undercutting Western competitors. It’s an argument overflowing with hypocrisy. Again from the Transnational Institute:
First, western elites had no problem with cheap Chinese imports when the products were low-down the value chain, and thus no threat to their corporations, which in any case have directly benefited from cheap Chinese labour for decades. Only now that high-value Chinese technology threatens to dominate western competitors is their concern about ‘dumping’. Second, all governments accept that climate change requires at least some degree of state intervention to hasten the advance of zero-carbon technologies. Given the urgency of climate action, concerns about ‘overcapacity’ should be seen as a red-herring. Finally, as we will discuss further below, the EU and especially the US have also rolled-out subsidies for the development of their own green tech firms, just like China, and have sought to protect their market leaders in many industry sectors, in the US case most famously in semiconductors. In reality, the tariffs on Chinese green tech have little to do with fairness and a lot to do with geopolitical competition: western politicians and CEOs know that their companies cannot compete with cheaper and higher-quality Chinese clean-energy goods.
Even Larry Summers apparently gets it:
I'm normally not a big fan, but this is an absolutely brilliant answer by Larry Summers to the oft-repeated argument that China is somehow "cheating" in trade.
In fact it's probably the best answer I've ever heard on this.
It goes back to the point I was making
(Video at link.)
Meanwhile, Team Trump opts for fossil fuels and tariffs while the previous American administration went with tariffs on Chinese clean tech and the fantasy that the US could lead a global green transition.
Last August, Brian Deese – Director of the White House National Economic Council from 2021 to 2023 – called last year for a Clean Energy Marshall Plan in the pages of Foreign Affairs. Despite China’s enormous lead and tangible progress, Deese (and other Biden officals) were pushing the line that the US should be the one playing China’s role if anyone plays it. It was astonishing hubris, even by US standards. From Adam Tooze:
[Deese’s] truly bamboozling proposition is that what the world really needs is American clean energy technology! The obvious question is simply, what American clean energy technology?
…As Deese gamely observers: “The good news is that most of the technologies necessary, from solar power to battery storage to wind turbines, are already commercially scalable.” Yup! this is true. But the problem from Washington’s point of view is that it is not the US that is leading that commercialization. But China. On a huge scale. Against US resistance.
What are the technologies that Deese sees his Clean Energy Marshall Plan promoting? They are a strange list: geothermal, hydrogen, carbon capture, nuclear. At this point the verbal slight of hand becomes evident. What Deese is promoting is indeed a “Clean Energy” Marshall Plan, not a Green energy Plan.
Though some of Deese’s preferred technologies may matter in the long-term, none of them is widely expected to play an important part in the energy transition in the near term. And the fact that the US is a serious player in hydrogen, geothermal and carbon capture is not by accident. What they all have in common is that they are the favored “clean technologies” of US fossil fuel industries and widely regarded with suspicion with those interested in a comprehensive green energy shift.
The minor differences between the Biden and Trump plans highlight much. As usual the Democrat’s plan is a dressed up horrid roadmap but while the Trump version rips away the niceties. Boiled down, they are both visions for a future that include a climate ravaged planet with America still reigning supreme. And so here we are with Trump doubling down on “drill, baby, drill” and building upon Biden’s tariffs on the Chinese clean tech industry.
The hope — as 350.org points out — is that the US manages only to hurt itself and not derail global minimal efforts at emissions reduction. From The Guardian:
Analysis by the climate campaign group 350.org has found that despite rising costs and falling green investment in the US, Trump’s trade war will not affect the energy transition and renewables trade globally.
It said the US was already “merely a footnote, not a global player” in the race to end the use of fossil fuels. Only 4% of China’s clean tech exports go to the US, it said, in a trade sector where sales volume grew by about 30% last year.
But that also assumes the US stops with tariffs and other parts of the world don’t go — or aren’t dragged — along. The EU is already mid-stream on its “de-risk” from China, but is pausing to reassess. (While it has always made sense for the EU to build out Eurasian ties, don’t hold your breath.) And the “Global South” faces its own inflection point, as well as a debt crisis. The trade war also comes at a time when China is relinquishing its position as the largest driver of global oil demand — and at a faster pace than previously expected in part due to Beijing’s focus on high and clean tech as growth drivers.
Gulf countries are now shifting their focus to the Indian market, which is expected to become the largest driver of global oil demand by 2033.
Geopolitically, one can make of that what they want, but other pressures on the global oil market are likely to have repercussions on the economies of the Gulf states, leading to obvious choices in the oil states’ budgets. According to Emirates Policy Center, the first items on the chopping block will be “economic and social development projects…including green energy initiatives.”
So let’s say the “West” is willing to endure circles of hell pain, which will likely shatter their economies and societies, in a drawn out “de-risk” from China. Or they just attempt to limit their economic war to clean tech industry. They still represent almost 30% of global trade in goods and services and 43% of global GDP. Throw Japan, South Korea, and others like India, which might stay partially on board, and Beijing could have issues with simply redirecting its economic strategy, according to Xue Gong writes at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
…while China seeks to leverage the Global South to counter tensions with the Global North, it still relies on high-quality foreign direct investments (FDI) from the West to support its economic transition. Despite expanding trade and investments with the Global South, China’s dependence on Western markets remains strong.
And here’s Reuters:
China has no great options, though. It will court other markets in Asia, Europe and the rest of the world, but this may not be much of an escape valve. Other countries have much smaller markets than the U.S., and local economies are also taking a hit from the tariffs. Many are also wary of allowing more cheap Chinese products in.
Domestically, a currency devaluation would be the simplest way to cushion the tariffs’ impact but that could trigger capital outflows, while also alienating trade partners China may try to court. China has so far allowed very limited yuan depreciation.
More subsidies, export tax rebates or other forms of stimulus could be on the cards, but this also risks exacerbating industrial overcapacity and fuelling more deflationary pressures. Analysts have advocated for years for policies that would boost domestic demand.
But despite Beijing’s declarations, little has been done to meaningfully increase household consumption, given that the bold policy shifts that would be required could prove disruptive to the manufacturing sector in the short term.
Hitting back with its own tariffs and export controls may not be very effective, given China ships to the U.S. about three times as much in goods than around $160 billion it imports. But it may be the only option if Beijing believes it has a higher pain threshold than Washington has.
China’s big bet to combat efforts to isolate it was to invest everywhere. Kyle Chan has a lot at High Capacity on the incredible amount of work China has done to secure access to markets:
Chinese companies are racing to build factories around the world and forge new global supply chains, driven by a desire to circumvent tariffs and secure access to markets. Chinese companies have been building manufacturing plants directly in large target markets, such as the EU and Brazil. And they’ve been building plants in “connector countries” like Mexico and Vietnam that provide access to developed markets through trade agreements. Morocco, for example, has emerged as a surprisingly popular destination for Chinese investment tied to EV and battery manufacturing due to its trade agreements with both the US and the EU.
Just take a look at the map:
How do you derisk/decouple/whatever from that?
One argument in Foreign Affairs is that the US needs a “new strategy of allied scale to offset Beijing’s enduring advantages.” Here’s what that entails:
During the Cold War, the United States and its allies outclassed the Soviet Union. Today, a slightly expanded configuration would handily outclass China. Together, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the United States, and the European Union have a combined economy of $60 trillion to China’s $18 trillion, an amount more than three times as large as China’s at market exchange rates and still more than twice as large adjusting for purchasing power. It would account for roughly half of all global manufacturing (to China’s roughly one-third) and for far more active patents and top-cited journal articles than China does. It would account for $1.5 trillion in annual defense spending, roughly twice China’s. And it would displace China as the top trading partner of almost all states. (China is today the top trading partner of 120 states.)
Essentially another isolation effort similar to the failed one against Russia but with a lot more heavy lifting and the hope that everything goes right and/or Beijing doesn’t retaliate too much. Even if the US and EU are successful in damaging China’s clean tech industry, it’s hard to see derisking from China’s overwhelming advantage in necessity items without burning everything down with the belief you can reemerge on top. If you give the US administration any benefit of the doubt and conclude they aren’t complete morons, the charitable view is that they’re callous, reckless and willing to force a game of Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun.
For Climate and Livelihoods, Africa Bets Big on Solar Mini-Grids
Posted on April 14, 2025 by Yves Smith
Yves here. The debugging and proliferation of mini-grids has important implications, and not just for preppers or those unduly exposed to creaky electrical grids. Recall that we pointed out that Toyota foresees a not-very-high limit to electric vehicle uptake due to the distribution of electric supply:
Toyota Motor Corp chairman Akio Toyoda believes the market share of battery electric vehicles will reach 30% at most, with the rest taken up by hybrids, hydrogen fuel cell and fuel-burning cars.
With a billion people in the world living without electricity, limiting their choices and ability to travel by making expensive cars isn’t the answer, the grandson of the company’s founder said during a recent business event this month, according to remarks published on a company media platform on Tuesday.
Admittedly, these mini-grids don’t solve the problem of the distribution of chargers, but they are a necessary if not sufficient big step in the direction of facilitating EV use.
By Victoria Uwemedimo and Katarina Zimmer of Knowable Magazine. Originally published at Knowable Magazine a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all; cross posted from Yale Climate Connections
(Image credit: RMI)
To the people of Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba in Nigeria’s deep south, sundown would mean children doing their homework by the glow of kerosene lamps, and the faint thrum of generators emanating from homes that could afford to run them. Like many rural communities, these two villages of fishermen and farmers in the community of Mbiabet, tucked away in clearings within a dense palm forest, had never been connected to the country’s national electricity grid.Most of the residents had never heard of solar power either. When, in 2021, a renewable-energy company proposed installing a solar “mini-grid” in their community, the villagers scoffed at the idea of the sun powering their homes. “We didn’t imagine that something [like this] can exist,” says Solomon Andrew Obot, a resident in his early 30s.
The small installation of solar panels, batteries and transmission lines proposed by the company Prado Power would service 180 households in Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba, giving them significantly more reliable electricity for a fraction of the cost of diesel generators. Village leaders agreed to the installation, though many residents remained skeptical. But when the panels were set up in 2022, lights blinked on in the brightly painted two-room homes and tan mud huts dotted sparsely through the community. At a village meeting in September, locals erupted into laughter as they recalled walking from house to house, turning on lights and plugging in phone chargers. “I [was] shocked,” Andrew Obot says.
Like many African nations, Nigeria has lagged behind Global North countries in shifting away from planet-warming fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. Solar power contributes just around 3 percent of the total electricity generated in Africa — though it is the world’s sunniest continent — compared to nearly 12 percent in Germany and 6 percent in the United States.
At the same time, in many African countries, solar power now stands to offer much more than environmental benefits. About 600 million Africans lack reliable access to electricity; in Nigeria specifically, almost half of the 230 million people have no access to electricity grids. Today, solar has become cheap and versatile enough to help bring affordable, reliable power to millions — creating a win-win for lives and livelihoods as well as the climate.
That’s why Nigeria is placing its bets on solar mini-grids — small installations that produce up to 10 megawatts of electricity, enough to power over 1,700 American homes — that can be set up anywhere. Crucially, the country has pioneered mini-grid development through smart policies to attract investment, setting an example for other African nations.
Nearly 120 mini-grids are now installed, powering roughly 50,000 households and reaching about 250,000 people. “Nigeria is actually like a poster child for mini-grid development across Africa,” says energy expert Rolake Akinkugbe-Filani, managing director of EnergyInc Advisors, an energy infrastructure consulting firm.
Though it will take more work — and funding — to expand mini-grids across the continent, Nigeria’s experience demonstrates that they could play a key role in weaning African communities off fossil-fuel-based power. But the people who live there are more concerned with another, immediate benefit: improving livelihoods. Affordable, reliable power from Mbiabet’s mini-grid has already supercharged local businesses, as it has in many places where nonprofits like Clean Technology Hub have supported mini-grid development, says Ifeoma Malo, the organization’s founder. “We’ve seen how that has completely transformed those communities.”
The African Energy Transition Takes Shape
Together, Africa’s countries account for less than 5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, and many experts, like Malo, take issue with the idea that they need to rapidly phase out fossil fuels; that task should be more urgent for the United States, China, India, the European countries and Russia, which create the bulk of emissions. Nevertheless, many African countries have set ambitious phase-out goals. Some have already turned to locally abundant renewable energy sources, like geothermal power from the Earth’s crust, which supplies nearly half of the electricity produced in Kenya, and hydropower, which creates more than 80 percent of the electricity in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda.
But hydropower and geothermal work only where those resources naturally exist. And development of more geographically versatile power sources, like solar and wind, has progressed more slowly in Africa. Though solar is cheaper than fossil-fuel-derived electricity in the long term, upfront construction costs are often higher than they are for building new fossil-fuel power plants.
Thanks to its sunny, equatorial position, the African continent has an immense potential for solar power, shown here in kilowatt-hours. However, solar power contributes less than 3 percent of the electricity generated in Africa. (Image license: CC BY-SA 4.0)
Getting loans to finance big-ticket energy projects is especially hard in Africa, too. Compared to Europe or the United States, interest rates for loans can be two to three times higher due to perceived risks — for instance, that cash-strapped utility companies, already struggling to collect bills from customers, won’t be able to pay back the loans. Rapid political shifts and currency fluctuations add to the uncertainty. To boot, some Western African nations such as Nigeria charge high tariffs on importing technologies such as solar panels. “There are challenges that are definitely hindering the pace at which renewable energy development could be scaling in the region,” says renewable energy expert Tim Reber of the Colorado-based US National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Some African countries are beginning to overcome these barriers and spur renewable energy development, notes Bruno Merven, an expert in energy systems modeling at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, coauthor of a look at renewable energy development in the Annual Review of Resource Economics. Super-sunny Morocco, for example, has phased out subsidies for gasoline and industrial fuel. South Africa is agreeing to buy power from new, renewable infrastructure that is replacing many coal plants that are now being retired.
Nigeria, where only about a quarter of the national grid generates electricity and where many turn to generators for power, is leaning on mini-grids — since expanding the national grid to its remote communities, scattered across an area 1.3 times the size of Texas, would cost a prohibitive amount in the tens of billions of dollars. Many other countries are in the same boat. “The only way by which we can help to electrify the entire continent is to invest heavily in renewable energy mini-grids,” says Stephen Kansuk, the United Nations Development Program’s regional technical advisor for Africa on climate change mitigation and energy issues.
Experts praise the steps Nigeria has taken to spur such development. In 2016, the country’s Electricity Regulatory Commission provided legal guidelines on how developers, electricity distribution companies, regulators, and communities can work together to develop the small grids. This was accompanied by a program through which organizations like the World Bank, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, Bezos Earth Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation could contribute funds, making mini-grid investments less financially risky for developers.
Solar power was also made more attractive by a recent decision by Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to remove a long-standing government subsidy on petroleum products. Fossil-fuel costs have been soaring since, for vehicles as well as the generators that many communities rely on. Nigeria has historically been Africa’s largest crude oil producer, but fuel is now largely unaffordable for the average Nigerian, including those living in rural areas, who often live on less than $2 a day. In the crude-oil-rich state of Akwa Ibom, where the Mbiabet villages are located, gasoline was 1,500 naira per liter (around $1) at the time of publishing. “Now that subsidies have come off petrol,” says Akinkugbe-Filani, “we’re seeing a lot more people transition to alternative sources of energy.”
Mini-Grids Take Off
To plan a mini-grid in Nigeria, developers often work with government agencies that have mapped out ideal sites: sunny places where there are no plans to extend the national grid, ensuring that there’s a real power need.
More than 500 million Africans lack access to electricity, and where there is electricity, much of it comes from fossil fuels. Countries are taking different approaches to bring more renewable energy into the mix. Nigeria is focusing on mini-grids, which are especially useful in areas that lack national electricity grids. Morocco and South Africa are building large-scale solar power installations, while Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are making use of local renewable energy sources like geothermal and hydropower, respectively.
The next step is getting communities on board, which can take months. Malo recalls a remote Indigenous village in the hills of Adamawa state in Nigeria’s northeast, where locals have preserved their way of life for hundreds of years and are wary of outsiders. Her team had almost given up trying to liaise with reluctant male community leaders and decided to try reaching out to the women. The women, it turned out, were fascinated by the technology and how it could help them, especially at night — to fetch water from streams, to use the bathroom, and to keep their children safe from snakes. “We find that if we convince them, they’re able to go and convince their husbands,” Malo says.
The Mbiabet community took less convincing. Residents were drawn to the promise of cheap, reliable electricity and its potential to boost local businesses.
Like many other mini-grids, the one in Mbiabet benefited from a small grant, this one from the Rocky Mountain Institute, a U.S.-based nonprofit focused on renewable energy adoption. The funds allowed residents to retain 20 percent ownership of the mini-grid and reduced upfront costs for Prado Power, which built the panels with the help of local laborers.
On a day in late September, it’s a sunny afternoon, though downpours from the days before have made their imprint on the ground. There are no paved roads and today, the dirt road leading through the tropical forest into the cluster of villages is unnavigable by car. At one point, we build an impromptu bridge of grass and vegetation across a sludgy impasse; the last stretch of the journey is made on foot. It would be costly and labor-intensive to extend the national grid here.
Palm trees give way to tin roofs propped up by wooden poles, and Andrew Obot is waiting at the meeting point. He was Mbiabet’s vice youth president when Prado Power first contacted the community; now he’s the site manager. He steers his okada — a local motorbike — up the bumpy red dirt road to go see the solar panels.
Along the way, we see transmission lines threading through thick foliage. “That’s the solar power,” shouts Andrew Obot over the drone of the okada engine. All the lines were built by Prado Power to supply households in the two villages.
We enter a grassy clearing where three rows of solar panels sit behind wire gates. Collectively, the 39 panels have a capacity of over 20 kilowatts — enough to power just one large, energy-intensive American household but more than enough for the lightbulbs, cooker plates, and fans in the 180 households in Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba.
Whereas before, electricity was more conservatively used, now it is everywhere. An Afrobeats tune blares from a small barbershop on the main road winding through Mbiabet Esieyere. Inside, surrounded by walls plastered with shiny posters of trending hairstyles — including a headshot of popular musician Davido with the tagline “BBC — Big Boyz Cutz” — two young girls sit on a bench near a humming fan, waiting for their heads to be shaved.
The salon owner, Christian Aniefiok Asuquo, started his business two years ago when he was 16, just before the panels were installed. Back then, his appliances were powered by a diesel generator, which he would fill with 2,000 naira worth (around $1.20) of fuel daily. This would last around an hour. Now, he spends just 2,000 naira a month on electricity. “I feel so good,” he says, and his customers, too, are happy. He used to charge 500 naira ($0.30) per haircut, but now charges 300 naira ($0.18) and still makes a profit. He has more customers these days.
For many Mbiabet residents, “it’s an overall boost in their economic development,” says Suleiman Babamanu, the Rocky Mountain Institute’s program director in Nigeria. Also helping to encourage residents to take full advantage of their newly available power is the installation of an “agro-processing hub,” equipped with crop-processing machines and a community freezer to store products like fish. Provided by the company Farm Warehouse in partnership with Prado Power, the hub is leased out to locals. It includes a grinder and fryer to process cassava — the community’s primary crop — into garri, a local food staple, which many of the village women sell to neighboring communities and at local markets.
The women are charged around 200 naira ($0.12) to process a small basin of garri from beginning to end. Sarah Eyakndue Monday, a 24-year-old cassava farmer, used to spend three to four hours processing cassava each day; it now takes her less than an hour. “It’s very easy,” she says with a laugh. She produces enough garri during that time to earn up to 50,000 naira ($30.25) a week — almost five times what she was earning before.
Prado Power also installed a battery system to save some power for nighttime (there’s a backup diesel generator should batteries become depleted during multiple overcast days). That has proved especially valuable to women in Mbiabet Esieyere and Mbiabet Udouba, who now feel safer. “Everywhere is … brighter than before,” says Eyakndue Monday.
Other African communities have experienced similar benefits, according to Renewvia Energy, a U.S.-based solar company. In a recent company-funded survey, 2,658 Nigerian and Kenyan households and business owners were interviewed before and after they got access to Renewvia’s mini-grids. Remarkably, the median income of Kenyan households had quadrupled. Instead of spending hours each day walking kilometers to collect drinking water, many communities were able to install electricity-powered wells or pumps, along with water purifiers.
“With all of that extra time, women in the community were able to either start their own businesses or just participate in businesses that already exist,” says Renewvia engineer Nicholas Selby, “and, with that, gain some income for themselves.”
Navigating Mini-Grid Challenges
Solar systems require regular maintenance — replacing retired batteries, cleaning, and repairing and addressing technical glitches over the 20- to 25-year lifetime of a panel. Unless plans for care are built into a project, they risk failure. In some parts of India, for example, thousands of mini-grids installed by the government in recent decades have fallen into disrepair, according to a report provided to the Washington Post. Typically, state agencies have little long-term incentive to maintain solar infrastructure, Kansuk says.
Kansuk says this is less likely in situations where private companies that make money off the grids help to fund them, encouraging them to install high-quality devices and maintain them. It also helps to train locals with engineering skills so they can maintain the panels themselves — companies like Renewvia have done this at their sites. Although Prado Power hasn’t been able to provide such training to locals in Mbiabet or their other sites, they recruit locals like Andrew Obot to work as security guards, site managers, and construction workers.
Over the longer term, demographic shifts may also leave some mini-grids in isolated areas abandoned — as in northern Nigeria, for instance, where banditry and kidnapping are forcing rural populations toward more urban settings. “That’s become a huge issue,” Malo says. Partly for this reason, some developers are focusing on building mini-grids in regions that are less prone to violence and have higher economic activity — often constructing interconnected mini-grids that supply multiple communities.
Only 28% of U.S. residents regularly hear about climate change in the media, but 77% want that news. We can change that, and our only limitation is the size of our budget. Unlike some outlets, we don’t have fossil-fuel backers. And we’re not funded directly by Yale University. Will you chip in to put more climate news in front of Americans in 2025?
Eventually, those close enough to the national grid will likely be connected to the larger system, says Chibuikem Agbaegbu, a Nigeria-based climate and energy expert of the Africa Policy Research Institute. They can send their excess solar-sourced electricity into the main grid, thus making a region’s overall energy system greener and more reliable.
The biggest challenge for mini-grids, however, is cost. Although they tend to offer cheaper, more reliable electricity compared to fossil-fuel-powered generators, it is still quite expensive for many people — and often much more costly than power from national grids, which is frequently subsidized by African governments. Costs can be even higher when communities sprawl across large areas that are expensive to connect.
Mini-grid companies have to charge relatively high rates in order to break even, and many communities may not be buying enough power to make a mini-grid worthwhile for the developers — for instance, Kansuk says, if residents want electricity only for lighting and to run small household appliances.
Kansuk adds that this is why developers like Prado Power still rely on grants or other funding sources to subsidize construction costs so they can charge locals affordable prices for electricity. Another solution, as evidenced in Mbiabet, is to introduce industrial machinery and equipment in tandem with mini-grids to increase local incomes so that people can afford the electricity tariffs.
“For you to be able to really transform lives in rural communities, you need to be able to improve the business viability — both for the mini-grid and for the community,” says Babamanu. The Rocky Mountain Institute is part of an initiative that identifies suitable electrical products, from cold storage to rice mills to electric vehicle chargers, and supports their installation in communities with the mini-grids.
Spreading Mini-Grids Across the Continent
Energy experts believe that these kinds of solutions will be key for expanding mini-grids across Africa. Around 60 million people in the continent gained access to electricity through mini-grids between 2009 and 2019, in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, and Senegal, and the United Nations Development Program is working with a total of 21 African countries, Kansuk says, including Mali, Niger, and Somalia, to incentivize private companies to develop mini-grids there.
But it takes more than robust policies to help mini-grids thrive. Malo says it would help if Western African countries removed import tariffs for solar panels, as many governments in Eastern Africa have done. And though Agbaegbu estimates that Nigeria has seen over $900 million in solar investments since 2018 — and the nation recently announced $750 million more through a multinationally funded program that aims to provide over 17.5 million Nigerians with electricity access — it needs more. “If you look at what is required versus what is available,” says Agbaegbu, “you find that there’s still a significant gap.”
Many in the field argue that such money should come from more industrialized, carbon-emitting countries to help pay for energy development in Global South countries in ways that don’t add to the climate problem; some also argue for funds to compensate for damages caused by climate impacts, which hit these countries hardest. At the 2024 COP29 climate change conference, wealthy nations set a target of $300 billion in annual funding for climate initiatives in other countries by 2035 — three times more than what they had previously pledged. But African countries alone need an estimated 200 billion per year by 2030 to meet their energy goals, according to the International Energy Agency.
Meanwhile, Malo adds, it’s important that local banks in countries like Nigeria also invest in mini-grid development, to lessen dependence on foreign financing. That’s especially the case in light of current freezes in USAID funding, she says, which has resulted in a loss of money for solar projects in Nigeria and other nations.
With enough support, Reber says, mini-grids — along with rooftop and larger solar projects — could make a sizable contribution to lowering carbon emissions in Africa. Those who already have the mini-grids seem convinced they’re on the path toward a better, economically richer future, and Babamanu knows of communities that have written letters to policymakers to express their interest.
Eyakndue Monday, the cassava farmer from Mbiabet, doesn’t keep her community’s news a secret. Those she has told now come to her village to charge their phones and watch television. “I told a lot of my friends that our village is … better because of the light,” she says. “They were just happy.”
Climate science isn't giving your kid anxiety
Trump's newest argument for defunding climate science is that it's giving kids anxiety. But that's not really why kids are upset.
Emily Atkin
Apr 16, 2025
The Trump administration has a new argument for cutting climate change research and education funding: They’re just trying to protect kids from emotional harm.
It’s an argument I never expected to hear from Trump, who has historically been happy to gut climate research without giving any reason at all. (He’s also not exactly known for being sensitive to people’s feelings). But last week, the administration said it would stop funding a $4 million climate research and education effort at Princeton University, because it was increasing “climate anxiety” among children.
Specifically, the Trump administration announced funding cuts for the Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System (CIMES), which focuses on improving computer models that show precisely how the climate is changing. In a statement, the administration said:
This cooperative agreement promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as “climate anxiety,” which has increased significantly among America’s youth. Its focus on alarming climate scenarios fosters fear rather than rational, balanced discussion.
If I were a busy parent who didn’t know a ton about climate science, this might sound reasonable to me. I wouldn’t want my taxes funding the creation of implausible doomsday scenarios that might unnecessarily send my kids into a unending pit of despair.
But because I’m a childless cat lady whose literal only job is to fact-check politicians about climate change, I want to assure concerned parents of two things:
Princeton’s climate research is neither exaggerated nor implausible. The Trump administration has presented no actual evidence that Princeton’s models are flawed. None exists as far as I can tell. But it’s a good reminder: Just because something is scary doesn’t mean it’s exaggerated or implausible.
Even if Princeton’s research were exaggerated and implausible, it wouldn’t be causing mental health problems in children. Because the mere existence of scary climate scenarios is not what’s causing chronic climate-related emotional distress in young people. People in power not doing anything about climate change is what’s causing that distress.
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In reporting this story, I read as many peer-reviewed papers on climate anxiety and mental distress as I could find. I also spoke to the lead author of the most-cited peer-reviewed survey of climate anxiety in kids and young people, psychotherapist and University of Bath researcher Caroline Hickman.
Here’s what I found: The Trump administration is correct that climate anxiety has increased significantly in youth—not just in America, but around the world. A groundbreaking global survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25 published in The Lancet in 2021 found that nearly nearly half reported feeling distressed or anxious about climate change in a way that was affecting their daily lives and functioning. And just two months ago, another survey was released of 639 children aged 6 to 12, which found that 78 percent were worried about climate change.
But contrary to what the Trump administration claims, climate anxiety isn’t caused by scientists working to understand and communicate the problem. It’s caused by government inaction on climate change, which has made kids feel like nothing will ever be done to stop it. “They’ve cherry-picked from the research to say that children are anxious,” Hickman said. “Yes, they’re anxious. But they’re ignoring the cause of that anxiety, which is the failure of governments to act.”
According to Hickman’s survey in The Lancet, 58 percent of children and young people surveyed about their climate anxiety said governments were “betraying me and/or future generations.” Sixty-four percent said they were anxious because governments were not doing enough to avoid a climate catastrophe.
It should be noted that psychologists don’t even technically characterize climate anxiety as a mental disorder, because it’s a totally understandable and proportional reaction to climate inaction. “Climate anxiety and distress is a healthy response to what’s going on in the world,” Hickman said. Some researchers have even described climate anxiety as an adaptive behavior—or put another way, a biologically helpful coping mechanism—because people who have it tend to soothe it by engaging in activism, or another form of collective action to drive change.
Still, psychologists increasingly argue that some forms of climate anxiety should be treated as a mental health problem, because it can represent a profound source of suffering for some people. So how should it be treated? The most effective way to would be for governments worldwide to implement effective climate policies, Hickman said. ”If we were taking action on climate change, it would remove the anxiety.”
In absence of government action, however, scientists are still trying to figure out the best way to tackle the problem. A systemic review of intervention strategies published in 2021 said randomized control trials still needed to be conducted to figure out which strategy is the most helpful.
However, researchers are pretty confident about what doesn’t work to treat anxiety about catastrophic climate change: pretending catastrophic climate change doesn’t exist. “If you look at any research in mental health with regard to children, the only thing you don’t do is stop talking about the thing that’s frightening children,” Hickman said. “It’s the worst possible thing you could do.”
And yet, the Trump administration is hell-bent on doing the worst thing one could possibly do for children’s mental health when it comes to climate change: Absolutely nothing about climate change. That’s evident not just from the cuts to Princeton, but to climate science and climate action across federal and state government. In addition, Republican-led states are passing more and more laws criminalizing peaceful protest, limiting young people’s ability to engage in the one thing that’s actually been shown to ease some of their emotional distress.
Indeed, when it comes to children, the true intent of Trump’s climate policies is clear. He’s not trying to prevent kids from becoming climate-anxious. He’s trying to prevent kids from becoming climate activists. After all, one of the biggest threats to the fossil fuel industry’s future is litigation against fossil fuel companies—and the majority of successful cases have been led by children and young people, who are arguing that polluters are violating their human rights and jeopardizing their futures. It’s in this way that youth-led activism may represent one of the greatest threats to future fossil fuel industry profits.
That Trump would prioritize fossil fuel industry profits over preserving a livable planet is no surprise. But what’s so notable and so dangerous about this latest iteration is the argument he’s now using to do it. Under the guise of protecting children, Trump is proposing doing the worst possible thing for children’s future physical and mental health. The disinformation potential is off the charts. Democrats, activists, and journalists alike must work quickly to get in front of it.
AI Energy Demand Can Keep Fossil Fuels Alive, Tech Backers Promise World’s Two Biggest Oil Producers
Posted on April 23, 2025 by Conor Gallagher
Conor here: As the following piece from DeSmog notes, the AI champions assure us that eventually “AI will develop solutions to deal with climate change.” Bloomberg ran a whole piece last week pushing this narrative with sunny self-licking ice cream cones like AI “can also help communities better prepare for climate-induced risks, for instance, by combing through troves of images captured by cameras in fire-prone areas to spot wildfire outbreaks before they become obvious to the human eye.”
By Sharon Kelly and Bailey Chambers. Kelly is an attorney and investigative reporter based in Pennsylvania. She was previously a senior correspondent covering energy and antitrust at The Capitol Forum and, prior to that, she reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Earth Island Journal. Originally published at DeSmog.
Just before the November 2024 election, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its flagship annual report on global energy markets – and the agency’s forecast suggested a new era was dawning.
Over 150 years of growth in demand for fossil fuels has nearly reached its end, the IEA’s forecasts showed for a second year in a row. Fossil fuel demand will peak by the end of this decade, the organization affirmed, concluding that clean energy like wind, solar, and storage look increasingly capable of driving fossil fuels out of global energy markets – and soon.
That would be relatively positive news for the climate – but for fossil fuel producers, that message posed a major threat, given that even the prospect of stagnating demand on the horizon could chill investment.
But in recent months, artificial intelligence (AI) proponents have begun talking up the idea that AI and data centers can drive a surge in fossil fuel demand, prolonging the fossil fuel era – big tech’s earlier climate pledges notwithstanding.
After successfully convincing Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer, to relax regulations and support AI development, tech industry advocates are now bringing that same promise of endless fossil fuel demand to the world’s largest oil producing country, the U.S.
“We need energy in all forms,” Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, now chair of the pro-AI think tank, Special Competitive Studies Project, told a Congressional hearing on April 9. “Renewable, nonrenewable, whatever.”
Schmidt, whose organization published a roadmap on AI for the Trump administration, was testifying before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Schmidt has a history of shaping U.S. laws on AI, previously serving as chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which under his watch wrote legislative proposals that later became law. The committee’s hearing on AI was inspired, according to its chair, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), by Schmidt’s recent work.
“If you think about it, it’s going to take enormous energy to beat China to AI,” Guthrie said as the hearing kicked off, emphasizing his desire to make AI rules that would endure beyond the next two to four years. “Dr. Schmidt, you said all energy resources are needed,” he said, “and then AI will develop solutions to deal with climate change.”
Climate experts have warned that it’s not that simple. AI is at best a double-edged sword for the climate — in part because the technology requires so much energy.
Just the day before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s hearing, Trump signed a raft of executive orders promoting coal, the latest in a volley of executive orders and administrative moves to deregulate and subsidize fossil fuels, citing AI demand expectations.
Schmidt has carried the same promise to top Saudis – drawing a similar positive response.
Saudi Arabia’s climate plan – which earns a failing grade from climate watchdogs – involves the use of carbon offsets and net-zero math, including the country’s Voluntary Carbon Market, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the nation’s sovereign wealth fund.
Before Trump took office, the U.S. earned slightly better marks than the Saudis – meaning that the more the U.S. follows the path forged by Saudi Arabia, under the influence of AI advocates, the worse the climate impacts can be expected to be for the entire world.
‘We’ll Take Everything You’ve Got.’
Earlier this year, President Trump appeared in person to give a presidential address launching the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Priority conference in Miami, which was attended by roughly 10,000 representatives from companies and organizations around the world.
On the conference’s final day, Schmidt held a “special conversation” with Saudi Arabia’s Yasir Al-Rumayyan, chairman of Saudi Aramco’s board of directors, the governor of PIF, and chair of the FII.
“We are very well positioned to be a major modern champion when it comes to AI, for the following reasons,” Al-Rumayyan told Schmidt during the panel.
“One, we have the political will. With that comes all easing the regulations,” Al-Ramayyan said.
Two, he said Saudi Arabia has the funds to be invested; and three the nation has people, “Saudis and otherwise.”
“Four, which is the most important — and I remember when we started talking about AI, everyone was looking at the AI stack and they were forgetting the most important element — which is energy,” the businessman continued. “And energy we have so much of.”
“We can use it all,” Schmidt responded. “AI people, we’ll take everything you’ve got.”
The friendliness between AI boosters like Schmidt and Saudi officials comes despite a host of concerns outside experts raised during the conference over the Saudi PIF’s record on human rights.
“Our warning is: This fund is directly associated with human rights abuses and is facilitating human rights abuses,” Nicole Widdersheim, deputy Washington director of Human Rights Watch, told reporters outside the conference, citing the 2018 murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi government has denied U.S. allegations that crown prince Mohammad bin Salman approved Khashoggi’s killing.
Widdersheim also pointed to human rights issues faced by foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. “The fund has led the massive investment of these huge mega economic projects domestically inside Saudi Arabia,” she noted, like Saudi Arabia’s Neom project. “These investments have attracted and recruited immigrant workers from all over the world who paid exorbitant fees to come there and work, and who work under extreme heat exhaustion and unsafe conditions,” she said. “Many have died. They are not earning their salaries when they’re working there and then when they die, their families are not even compensated.”
Voluntary Carbon Market: Same Oil Tricks
Many big tech companies have historically balked at building out new fossil fuel infrastructure, given the growing climate impacts.
At the conference, Al-Rumayyan himself hastened to point out that the energy Saudi Arabia produces isn’t all oil and gas.
“And the good thing, it’s not fossil fuel-based energy only,” he told Schmidt. “It’s renewable. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is really big. And it works very well with solar energy. Wind is also there. We have some spots — one of the best spots for wind turbines.”
PIF also owns 80 percent of the Saudi company, Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM).
“One of the things we think of Saudi Arabia as is a petrol state,” Riham ElGizy, the CEO of VCM, said during a side panel at the FII Priority conference. “But we forget Saudi Arabia is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change.”
“The impact of desertification has extended heat waves,” she said. “That’s why you find a lot of companies aware of climate change. They are taking action and they want to participate.”
Carbon markets like VCM operate by offering buyers the chance to offset their emissions by buying “credits” for greenhouse gas reductions elsewhere.
VCM is a path for developing nations, regardless of credit score or high interest rates, to add liquidity to their financial portfolios as 60 percent of climate finance is borrowed. Through gaining points in the market from meeting climate pledges, global shifts in energy use and types of energy are expected to follow. However, with kickbacks from pledges followed through, the use of fossil fuels can sustain without negatively disturbing a country’s carbon score.
But experts say the industry’s been plagued by questionable math and a lack of transparency.
“There has been a lot of integrity issues coming out,” ElGizy acknowledged at the conference. “Navigating around that, we needed to double down in scrutiny. We have no room for mistakes in this.”
In November, VCM auctioned off carbon credits it said were created from a range of projects, including efforts to capture methane from landfills “from across the Global South,” an Ethiopian forest restoration project, and an unnamed U.S. company that VCM says is “aiming to capture, inject and embed carbon dioxide into fresh concrete.”
Saudi plastics makers, petroleum refiners, energy traders and others were among the buyers, according to VCM.
‘Insufficient’ Climate Policies
Its first three auctions included enough carbon credits to cover the emissions produced by six million cars in one year, the company says – which, using U.S. federal estimates for vehicle emissions, would imply VCM has auctioned off credits offsetting nearly 10 million tons of carbon dioxide per year since it launched in 2022.
That 10 million tons, however, represents a vanishingly small fraction of the carbon produced each year by Saudi oil. Roughly 3.3 billion barrels of crude flowed out of Saudi Arabia in 2024 – enough oil to spew about 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere last year, based on federal greenhouse gas equivalencies.
Climate Action Tracker, a scientific project that compares countries’ climate policies against Paris Agreement standards, rates Saudi Arabia’s climate policies as “critically insufficient,” which means the country’s climate policies “reflect minimal to no action and are not at all consistent with the 1.5°C temperature limit.”
“Saudi Arabia has not implemented any policies that would substantially bring down its greenhouse gas emissions and reduce its reliance on fossil fuels,” the group says. “Previously announced plans to cut emissions through expanding renewable energy are failing to materialise. Despite its ‘Vision 2030’ diversification plan, initiated nearly a decade ago, the Saudi economy remains highly dependent on the production, use and export of hydrocarbons.”
And in fact, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, said at the PIF conference that it has “stayed the course” throughout the energy transition — the implication being the company has little intention to shift away from fossil fuels.
Fahad Al-Dhubaib, an Aramco senior vice president, emphasized the national oil company’s carbon capture and hydrogen plans, plus the company’s “carbon intensity” (an often-critiqued measure of how much pollution is generated from its own operations, shifting the focus away from the climate-altering pollution that comes from burning that oil).
But the company’s first objective, Al-Dhubaib said, is “How do we meet the increasing energy demand?”
Artificial Demand
The AI industry, of course, has been on a meteoric rise since ChatGPT was first released to the public in 2022.
“In the past few years, AI has gone from an academic pursuit to an industry with trillions of dollars of market capitalisation and venture capital at stake,” the IEA wrote in a report released April 10.
But as a share of global energy demand, AI remains still just a tiny sliver, the IEA noted, reflecting about 1.5 percent of world electrical consumption in 2024.
AI is expected to continue to expand faster than other sectors – but the IEA predicts the lion’s share of that demand can be met with renewable energy, which the agency noted enjoys a number of advantages over fossil fuels, including faster deployment, lower costs, and smaller climate impacts.
By 2035, the agency projects renewables’ electrical generation will grow by over 450 terawatt hours to meet data center demand – compared to 175 terawatt hours for natural gas.
There could be climate advantages from an AI boom, the IEA noted.
“Energy innovation challenges are characterised by the kinds of problems AI is good at solving,” it wrote. “For example, only 0.01% of next-generation solar PV materials have been experimentally produced, leaving a huge set of possible materials still to be explored. AI could allow scientists to dramatically accelerate the process of finding and testing promising materials, battery chemistries and carbon capture molecules.”
That said, it’s not clear that the biggest barriers for a renewable energy buildout at this point are technological, given the advantages the IEA noted that wind, solar, and storage already enjoy over natural gas.
In fact, as the nation’s power grid expands, public policy could play an even bigger role, potentially overshadowing advantages that renewables might have over fossil fuels.
“House Republicans are poised to vote on a budget resolution that would set the stage to repeal the energy tax credits incentivizing well over 90 percent of the electricity generation poised to come onto the grid,” Frank Pallone, ranking member of the Energy and Commerce committee noted at the committee’s April 9 Congressional hearing, referring to tax credits for renewable energy.
It’s also far from clear that the tech industry will prove to be as hungry for fossil fuel power as some predict. First, advances in AI technology could drive energy consumption down. Concerns are emerging that the technology may not fully live up to the hype, at least from investors’ standpoints, with Alibaba Group chairman Joe Tsai telling a Hong Kong investment summit in March that data construction may have already reached “the beginning of some kind of bubble.” Plus, the Trump tariffs have injected extraordinary levels of uncertainty into global markets, leaving some experts wondering if the upheaval could derail an AI boom.
When it comes to domestic AI policy, U.S. Republicans have signaled their intent to look beyond European institutions as they think about energy policy and AI demand. “I believe you said in your presentation, Europe has chosen not to grow,” Rep. Guthrie said to Schmidt at the April 9 hearing, “so we can’t look there as an example.”
And indeed, it seems, the path on AI and fossil fuels that the Trump administration is taking the U.S. down just might look strikingly similar to the one forged by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
'AI' will be proven to be a clumsy and vulgar scam for the energy capitalists when real artificial intelligence is developed. As things stand it's extravagance should be restricted to legitimate science and not profit chasing.
******
World’s Coral Reefs Under Largest Bleaching Event: NOAA
X/ @chicagotribune
April 24, 2025 Hour: 9:02 am
Bleaching occurs when rising ocean temperatures expel the algae living within coral tissues.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a report showing that the world’s coral reefs are experiencing the fourth and largest global bleaching event in recorded history.
Between January 2023 and April 2025, bleaching-level heat stress has impacted 83.7 percent of the world’s coral reef area, with affected reefs spanning at least 83 countries and territories.
The current bleaching event “the biggest to date,” NOAA said, pointing out that the previous record was set during the third bleaching period, which lasted from 2014 to 2017, when 68.2 percent of the world’s reefs were affected.
Bleaching occurs when rising ocean temperatures expel the algae living within coral tissues. However, corals have the potential to recover if the environmental stress is reduced. The first and second global coral bleaching events occurred in 1998 and 2010, respectively.
Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor but support about 25% of all marine life. When stressed by temperature change, corals expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, causing coral bleaching that can kill the colony if stress is not mitigated. #HostilePlanet pic.twitter.com/ruLQLkxQGX
— National Geographic TV (@NatGeoTV) April 8, 2019
“We may never see the heat stress that causes bleaching dropping below the threshold that triggers a global event,” said Mark Eakin, corresponding secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired chief of the NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program, as recalled by the Associated Press.
“We’re looking at something that’s completely changing the face of our planet and the ability of our oceans to sustain lives and livelihoods,” he warned.
Currently, “efforts are underway to conserve and restore coral. One Dutch lab has worked with coral fragments, including some taken from off the coast of the Seychelles, to propagate them in a zoo so that they might be used someday to repopulate wild coral reefs if needed. Other projects, including one off Florida, have worked to rescue corals endangered by high heat and nurse them back to health before returning them to the ocean, the Associated Press reported.
The Dangerous Illusion of Climate Resilience
Posted on April 24, 2025 by Conor Gallagher
Conor here: The following piece highlights how adaptation and technological solutions to the climate crisis are snake oil and argues instead for degrowth. If it weren’t for the Trump tariffs hitting the poorest the hardest, it might be worth cheering them on as it would lead to degrowth—at least for a time. Alas, he is already starting to back down, and there isn’t any momentum behind any other degrowth policies. So what’s to be done?
By Peter Sutoris, an environmental anthropologist and lecturer (assistant professor) in climate and development at the University of Leeds’ Sustainability Research Institute. He is the author of the books “Visions of Development” and “Educating for the Anthropocene,” and coauthor of the forthcoming “Reimagining Development” (Oxford University Press, 2025). Originally published at Undark.
Throughout the past few decades, discussions about how to address climate change have become dominated by two broad categories of response: adaptation, or adjusting to the realities of a warmer, more volatile planet; and mitigation, or reducing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent further warming. Mitigation was once the preferred approach, emphasizing the moral responsibility of humanity to prevent environmental catastrophe, but in recent years, adaptation has taken center stage as a seemingly pragmatic alternative.
The shift toward adaptation was not accidental. Rather, it reflects a deeper unwillingness within wealthy nations to disrupt entrenched economic systems built on fossil fuels and consumerism. Influenced by misinformation, political inertia, and vested interests, global leaders gradually reframed climate change as something to be managed rather than prevented. This logic suggested we could build higher flood defenses, breed drought-resistant crops, or relocate populations from increasingly uninhabitable regions — effectively normalizing the idea of retreat as acceptable policy.
But this supposed pragmatism has always rested on troubling assumptions. It was easier to advocate adaptation when its most severe consequences occurred far from the political and economic power centers of the Global North. For decades, communities in countries like Bangladesh, Mozambique, and the Marshall Islands were treated as unfortunate but acceptable losses, collateral damage of a changing climate that richer nations felt was too costly to seriously address.
This selective concern is not without precedent: History offers powerful analogies for how distant suffering is rationalized when it threatens the comfort of the powerful. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously described Czechoslovakia as “a far away country between people of whom we know nothing,” rationalizing appeasement with the Nazi regime that led to catastrophic consequences. Today, the Global South is often similarly abstracted in the climate discourse, relegated to the periphery of global consciousness despite bearing the brunt of climate-driven devastation.
The Marshall Islands exemplify this harsh reality. Parts of the country are already disappearing beneath rising seas, forcing residents to confront the possibility of permanent displacement. Here, adaptation does not mean improving infrastructure or changing agricultural practices — it means the loss of an ancestral homeland. This stark reality, however, has rarely moved richer nations to reconsider their approach.
Yet climate disasters increasingly refuse to respect national boundaries or socioeconomic privilege. Floods in Germany and Belgium in 2021, severe droughts across central and southern Europe, and the unprecedented 2022 heatwave in the U.K. underscore the vulnerability of even wealthy societies. In the United States, cities like Miami and New Orleans grapple with the real possibility of becoming partially abandoned due to rising sea levels, while persistent wildfires in California have turned annual evacuations into a grim routine.
These impacts in wealthier nations reveal a fundamental hypocrisy. If richer countries adhered to the same logic they’ve advocated globally, they’d now openly accept retreat from their own lands. Yet this conversation remains taboo among wealthy elites. Instead, adaptation has become a tool to manage and postpone politically uncomfortable realities rather than confront the deeper roots of environmental breakdown.
Moreover, recent research highlights the profound long-term health consequences of adaptation-based responses. One extensive study examining data from 300 million hospitalizations across eight countries found significantly elevated hospitalizations related to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, and other ailments lasting months after major flooding events. Such evidence underscores that adaptation alone fails to address the cascading human health crises that climate change triggers.
Economically, relying solely on adaptation perpetuates existing inequalities by disproportionately placing the burden of climate impacts on poorer communities and countries. Wealthy nations can often afford infrastructure upgrades, insurance schemes, and temporary economic supports to cushion the impacts of climate disruption, but these options are rarely available to poorer regions, which have historically contributed least to the climate crisis yet suffer the most severe consequences. This dynamic exacerbates global inequality and instability, underscoring the ethical necessity of addressing the roots of climate injustice rather than merely managing its symptoms.
When mitigation enters the conversation about solutions to the climate crisis, it is often conflated with technological solutions like renewable energy and carbon capture. While these can help, they also often replicate the extractive, destructive mindset underpinning the climate crisis. Large-scale solar and wind projects, for example, have led to the displacement of Indigenous communities in regions such as Oaxaca, Mexico, where land was appropriated for energy development without proper consultation or consent. Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of lithium mining — crucial for electric vehicle batteries — has strained water resources in areas like Chile’s Atacama Desert, threatening fragile ecosystems and the livelihoods of local populations. These cases are reminders that the transition to a low-carbon economy, if pursued uncritically, can perpetuate environmental degradation and deepen social injustice.
History illustrates clearly that technological interventions alone cannot resolve social and political challenges. Just as nuclear weapons did not abolish the underlying tensions that drive conflict, adaptation and “green” technologies alone cannot rectify the exploitative relationship between industrial civilization and the natural world.
If we genuinely care about a livable future, we must confront uncomfortable truths rather than retreat into illusions of adaptation. It requires fundamentally reassessing our economic and social systems, moving beyond mere crisis management toward genuine environmental and social justice through approaches like degrowth. Mitigation, grounded in ethical responsibility and collective action, must reclaim its place at the center of the climate conversation. Otherwise, adaptation will become little more than a euphemism for abandonment — not just of vulnerable communities, but of our collective humanity.
Jfc, there's that 'Degrowth' again...Do these people not understand that there will never be 'degrowth' while capitalism rules(unless it is selectively targeted on the poor). That telling the world's poor majority that their lives cannot be materially improved because the 'Golden Billion' had a party? We may well need degrowth, the top 10% of the West surely do, but until socialism is adopted worldwide, justice and equality are extant, it will be rejected by the Global South.
"What is to be done?" Well duh...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Absurd (scary) CO2 emissions
Originally published: Dissident Voice on May 4, 2025 by Robert Hunziker (more by Dissident Voice) | (Posted May 07, 2025)
In a major blow to the Paris ’15 climate agreement, last year witnessed one more nail in the coffin of the celebrated agreement to slow down CO2 emissions by 2030, as CO2, for the first time in modern history, enters the scientifically established danger zone. This agreement was/is meant to curtail global warming and hopefully save major ecosystems from collapse. But now, with too much noncompliance by countries and rapidly ascending CO2 emissions, Paris ’15 is at rest in a coffin awaiting an un-ceremonial burial. Nobody wants to attend.
CO2 emissions went bonkers in 2024, up 3.75 ppm, a new all-time-record, smashing all prior years and looking very ominous with trouble likely ahead as global warming kicks into higher gear, raising the question of whether property/casualty insurance companies will survive the onslaught: (1) raging wildfires (2) atmospheric river cloudbursts (3) widespread flooding (4) skies blackened by tornados (5) scorching droughts (6) category 5+ hurricanes, all of which follow in the footsteps of excessive greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
It should be noted that the property/casualty insurance industry was already on the ropes with CO2 emissions lower. They’ve publicly admitted it! The following is a must-read article written by a key player in the worldwide insurance industry; frankly, a must-read for anybody concerned about the future: “Climate, Risk, Insurance: The Future of Capitalism,” March 25, 2025.
Within only a couple weeks of that standalone earth-shattering article that lays out the climate change-global warming disaster scenario from a senior member of the property/casualty insurance industry, Arctic News published a startling notice on April 14, 2025, “Record High Increase in Carbon Dioxide,” CO2, the primary target of the now-infamous Paris 2015 climate agreement. Oops! All Paris ’15 bets are off, as CO2 increased by a thundering record-shattering 3.75 ppm, a rocket ship blastoff by historic standards, and the future likely higher yet:
1960 +0.96 ppm
1970 +1.13 ppm
2000 +1.24 ppm
2024 +3.75 ppm
And that’s before the Trump administration turned the oil and gas spigot wide open along with a big push for coal as well as an ultra-ultra-massive rollback of environmental regulations, meaning the fossil fuel and chemical industries are deeply indebted to the administration for removing costly regulations that forced them to adhere to a clean environment!
Additionally, according to a recent article in Science: “Trump Administration Fires Staff for Flagship U.S. Climate Assessment” (subtitle: Move Could Open Door to Using High-Profile Report to Attack Science), April 9, 2025. This is obviously devious to an extreme, possibly altering climate reports. But unfortunately the truth remains, as the insurance industry continues to raise rates and/or drop coverage because the reality of harmful climate change takes precedence over doctored reports.
The 430 ppm CO2 Danger Zone
Reality is inescapable: Of all the greenhouse gases, CO2 alone is responsible for 2/3rds of the warming effect by greenhouse gases. This is 100% a proven fact that was discovered by Exxon’s scientists years ago (“Exxon Scientists Predicted Global Warming with ‘Shocking Skill’,” Harvard Gazette, Jan. 12, 2023).
Effective January 2025, CO2 registered 426.03 ppm versus 422.25 ppm in 2024. By way of comparison, in 1960 CO2 in the atmosphere was 316.00 ppm. And until advent of the industrial revolution mid 18th century, CO2 levels were below 300 ppm for ages.
According to an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report: “In 2016, a worldwide body of climate scientists said that a CO2 level of 430 ppm would push the world past its target for avoiding dangerous climate change.” (MIT Climate Portal)
Acceleration of CO2 is getting to be downright spooky +200%-t0-300% since the start of the new century. It’s never increased at such a rapid pace throughout recorded history. According to current readings by Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, CO2 exceeded 430 ppm for six days in a row in April 2025 and hit 430.51 on April 21. And the new year is still young. Clearly, CO2 emissions are out of control running roughshod over any pretense of climate change mitigation efforts by parties to the Paris ‘15 climate agreement (RIP?).
Moreover, the U.S., one of the world’s major influencers of economic behavior and climate change, is pushing in the wrong direction, encouraging more CO2 emissions via increased production of oil and gas and coal while falsely claiming “climate change is a hoax.” This is an extreme position, bold-faced lie, not supported by facts, making Emperor Nero look like a lightweight. It’s the whole planet, stupid, not just Rome!
Meanwhile, a casual Google search of four words: “climate change and insurance” reveals the startling truth, bringing up page after page after page filled with titles such as: “Climate Change is Driving an Insurance Crisis.” Business gets it: “Property Values to Crater up to 60% Due to Climate Change,” Business Insider, August 9, 2024. Yes, the word “crisis” fills the pages. It’s a crisis! Crises end badly, but we’ve only just begun.
According to the Arctic News’ article, it’s about to get much, much worse. But what’s worse than a crisis? A worsening crisis seems to be on the docket. As clearly stated, “Not only are concentrations of CO2 very high, but additionally, there has been an increase in total solar irradiance.” This is therefore the ole one-two punch to the gut as increased solar irradiance means more solar energy reaches the surface absorbed, ipso facto, increasing global temperatures as excessive levels of CO2 blanket and trap heat. This is a fatal formula for life on Earth, just ask sister planet Venus, 95% CO2 atmosphere, surface temperature 870°F, which melts lead.
It should be noted that Arctic News has a reputation for taking the more extreme view of where climate change is headed, but it should also be noted that it” footnotes a lot of peer-reviewed climate science,” albeit taken to an extreme conclusion, which happens to be the prospect of an oncoming “extinction event” with climate change a wild stallion that can’t be tamed.
It’s difficult to ignore heightened concern of the property/casualty insurance industry alongside Arctic News both publicly exposing a rapidly descending climate system that’s literally changing the landscape of property ownership, starting with coastal properties and working inland, as homeowners find insurance premiums, if available where they reside, squeezing throats, stated as such in the following quote from the insurance industry article included herein: “The insurance industry has historically managed these risks. But we are fast approaching temperature levels 1.5°C, 2°C, 3°C where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks. The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable. (See: “State Farm and Allstate exiting California’s home insurance market due to wildfire risk,” 2023).
Already, the climate crisis that started on the West Coast is spreading fast: “The Home Insurance Crisis Hits the U.S. Heartland,” Business Insider, April 6, 2025.
It was only a couple of months ago when James Hansen (Columbia—Earth Institute) said 2C is dead: “Climate Change Target of 2C is ‘Dead’ says Renowned Climate Scientist,” Guardian, Feb. 4, 2025. If medals are ever awarded for correct calls, James Hansen, Ph.D. gets the gold medal for the following: “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,” New York Times, June 24, 1988. He nailed it!
The insurance article insinuation of “entire regions becoming uninsurable,” standing alone, should be enough motivation to turn the screws of climate change mitigation efforts to whatever level necessary at whatever costs! Who cares how much a Worldwide Marshall Plan to ‘hopefully’ control radical climate change costs? The alternative is unspeakable, and there’s little time to waste.
Now that the insurance industry is feeling the wrath of numerous climate change warnings issued by Arctic News over many years, it may be a good idea to at least consider what the extreme publication has to say.
Here’s the Arctic News’ summation of climate change:
Climate Emergency Declaration
The situation is dire and the precautionary principle calls for rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the situation, as described in this 2022 post, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as discussed at this group.
Climate Emergency in bold red letters is how Arctic News sees the current situation.
As for the property/casualty insurance industry: “There is only one path forward: Prevent any further increase in atmospheric energy levels. That means keeping emissions out of the atmosphere.” So far, this solution is not even close to working as CO2 emissions are currently cranking up faster than ever before, knocking on the door of the 430 ppm danger zone, which is starting to look like a cake walk.
April 20th marked the fifteenth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest oil spill in U.S. history, which killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. For those who rely on fishing and related industries off the Gulf Coast, as well as for those who were involved in the recovery and cleanup efforts, real relief is still yet to come. The AP reports that “all but a handful of roughly 4,800 lawsuits seeking compensation for health problems linked to the spill have been dismissed and only one has been settled,” noting that in 2012 BP paid $67 million—about $1,300 each for nearly 80% of those seeking compensation. BP has since been forced to pay billions of dollars in fines.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration plans to extend fossil fuel drilling and fracking even more than the Biden administration did. The nearly $1-trillion Pentagon budget is also a hotbed of climate- and life-destroying wastes of money, as the U.S. prepares for great-power conflict with China.
This episode was recorded on Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22nd, and we get into the lasting legacy of the Deepwater Horizon spill and much more.
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Tensions Over Kashmir and a Warming Planet Have Placed the Indus Waters Treaty on Life Support
Posted on April 28, 2025 by Conor Gallagher
Conor here: The following discusses how climate change is making the thorny Kashmir issue worse.
By Fazlul Haq, a research scientist at The Ohio State University with a focus on the human-environment interactions in mountain regions, particularly the Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalayan areas. His current work spans glacial changes, hydro-climatic, and socio-environmental dynamics, with a specific interest in the Indus Basin water conflict between India and Pakistan. Originally published at The Conversation.
In 1995, World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin warned that whereas the conflicts of the previous 100 years had been over oil, “the wars of the next century will be fought over water.”
Thirty years on, that prediction is being tested in one of the world’s most volatile regions: Kashmir.
On April 24, 2025, the government of India announced that it would downgrade diplomatic ties with its neighbor Pakistan over an attack by militants in Kashmir that killed 26 tourists. As part of that cooling of relations, India said it would immediately suspend the Indus Waters Treaty – a decades-old agreement that allowed both countries to share water use from the rivers that flow from India into Pakistan. Pakistan has promised reciprocal moves and warned that any disruption to its water supply would be considered “an act of war.”
The current flareup escalated quickly, but has a long history. At the Indus Basin Water Project at the Ohio State University, we are engaged in a multiyear project investigating the transboundary water dispute between Pakistan and India.
I am currently in Pakistan conducting fieldwork in Kashmir and across the Indus Basin. Geopolitical tensions in the region, which have been worsened by the recent attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, do pose a major threat to the water treaty. So too does another factor that is helping escalate the tensions: climate change.
A Fair Solution to Water Disputes
The Indus River has supported life for thousands of years since the Harappan civilization, which flourished around 2600 to 1900 B.C.E. in what is now Pakistan and northwest India.
After the partition of India in 1947, control of the Indus River system became a major source of tension between the two nations that emerged from partition: India and Pakistan. Disputes arose almost immediately, particularly when India temporarily halted water flow to Pakistan in 1948, prompting fears over agricultural collapse. These early confrontations led to years of negotiations, culminating in the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960.
Fazlul Haq/Bryan Mark/Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center/Ohio State University, CC BY
Brokered by the World Bank, the Indus Waters Treaty has long been hailed as one of the most successful transboundary water agreements.
It divided the Indus Basin between the two countries, giving India control over the eastern rivers – Ravi, Beas and Sutlej – and Pakistan control over the western rivers: Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
At the time, this was seen as a fair solution. But the treaty was designed for a very different world. Back then, India and Pakistan were newly independent countries working to establish themselves amid a world divided by the Cold War.
When it was signed, Pakistan’s population was 46 million, and India’s was 436 million. Today, those numbers have surged to over 240 million and 1.4 billion, respectively.
Today, more than 300 million people rely on the Indus River Basin for their survival.
This has put increased pressure on the precious source of water that sits between the two nuclear rivals. The effects of global warming, and the continued fighting over the disputed region of Kashmir, has only added to those tensions.
Impact of Melting Glaciers
Many of the problems of today are down to what wasn’t included in the treaty, rather than what was.
At the time of signing, there was a lack of comprehensive studies on glacier mass balance. The assumption was that the Himalayan glaciers, which feed the Indus River system, were relatively stable.
This lack of detailed measurements meant that future changes due to climate variability and glacial melt were not factored into the treaty’s design, nor were factors such as groundwater depletion, water pollution from pesticides, fertilizer use and industrial waste. Similarly, the potential for large-scale hydraulic development of the region through dams, reservoirs, canals and hydroelectricity were largely ignored in the treaty.
Reflecting contemporary assumptions about the stability of glaciers, the negotiators assumed that hydrological patterns would remain persistent with the historic flows.
Instead, the glaciers feeding the Indus Basin began to melt. In fact, they are now melting at record rates.
The World Meteorological Organization reported that 2023 was globally the driest year in over three decades, with below-normal river flows disrupting agriculture and ecosystems. Global glaciers also saw their largest mass loss in 50 years, releasing over 600 gigatons of water into rivers and oceans.
The Himalayan glaciers, which supply 60-70% of the Indus River’s summer flow, are shrinking rapidly. A 2019 study estimates they are losing 8 billion tons of ice annually.
And a study by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development found that Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalayan glaciers melted 65% faster in 2011–2020 compared with the previous decade.
The rate of glacier melt poses a significant challenge to the treaty’s long-term effectiveness to ensure essential water for all the people who rely on the Indus River Basin. While it may temporarily increase river flow, it threatens the long-term availability of water.
Indeed, if this trend continues, water shortages will intensify, particularly for Pakistan, which depends heavily on the Indus during dry seasons.
Another failing of the Indus Waters Treaty is that it only addresses surface water distribution and does not include provisions for managing groundwater extraction, which has become a significant issue in both India and Pakistan.
In the Punjab region – often referred to as the breadbasket of both nations – heavy reliance on groundwater is leading to overexploitation and depletion.
Groundwater now contributes a large portion – about 48% – of water withdrawals in the Indus Basin, particularly during dry seasons. Yet there is no transboundary framework to oversee the shared management of this resource as reported by the World Bank.
A Disputed Region
It wasn’t just climate change and groundwater that were ignored by the drafters of the Indus Waters Treaty. Indian and Pakistan negotiators also neglected the issue and status of Kashmir.
Kashmir has been at the heart of India-Pakistan tensions since Partition in 1947. At the time of independence, the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was given the option to accede to either India or Pakistan. Though the region had a Muslim majority, the Hindu ruler chose to accede to India, triggering the first India-Pakistan war.
This led to a U.N.-mediated ceasefire in 1949 and the creation of the Line of Control, effectively dividing the territory between Indian-administered and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Since then, Kashmir has remained a disputed territory, claimed in full by both countries and serving as the flashpoint for two additional wars in 1965 and 1999, and numerous skirmishes.
Despite being the primary source of water for the basin, Kashmiris have had no role in negotiations or decision-making under the treaty.
The region’s agricultural and hydropower potential has been limited due to restrictions on the use of its water resources, with only 19.8% of hydropower potential utilized. This means that Kashmiris on both sides — despite living in a water-rich region — have been unable to fully benefit from the resources flowing through their land, as water infrastructure has primarily served downstream users and broader national interests rather than local development.
Some scholars argue that the treaty intentionally facilitated hydraulic development in Jammu and Kashmir, but not necessarily in ways that served local interests.
India’s hydropower projects in Kashmir — such as the Baglihar and Kishanganga dams — have been a major point of contention. Pakistan has repeatedly raised concerns that these projects could alter water flows, particularly during crucial agricultural seasons.
However, the Indus Waters Treaty does not provide explicit mechanisms for resolving such regional disputes, leaving Kashmir’s hydrological and political concerns unaddressed.
Tensions over hydropower projects in Kashmir were bringing India and Pakistan toward diplomatic deadlock long before the recent attack.
The Kishanganga and Ratle dam disputes, now under arbitration in The Hague, exposed the treaty’s growing inability to manage transboundary water conflicts.
Then in September 2024, India formally called for a review of the Indus Waters Treaty, citing demographic shifts, energy needs and security concerns over Kashmir.
The treaty now exists in a state of limbo. While it technically remains in force, India’s formal notice for review has introduced uncertainty, halting key cooperative mechanisms and casting doubt on the treaty’s long-term durability.
An Equitable and Sustainable Treaty?
Moving forward, I argue, any reform or renegotiation of the Indus Waters Treaty will, if it is to have lasting success, need to acknowledge the hydrological significance of Kashmir while engaging voices from across the region.
Excluding Kashmir from future discussions – and neither India nor Pakistan has formally proposed including Kashmiri stakeholders – would only reinforce a long-standing pattern of marginalization, where decisions about its resources are made without considering the needs of its people.
As debates on “climate-proofing” the treaty continue, ensuring Kashmiri perspectives are included will be critical for building a more equitable and sustainable transboundary water framework.
Nicholas Breyfogle, Madhumita Dutta, Alexander Thompson, and Bryan G. Mark at the Indus Basin Water Project at the Ohio State University contributed to this article.
Top countries relying on nuclear and wind power for their electricity
Strategic Infographics
May 7, 2025
This infographic shows the countries reliant on nuclear and wind power for more than 40% of their electricity generation. Interestingly, all of them are located in Europe
Kenya expert warns of ecological disaster due to insect trafficking
Photo: India Express
May 8, 2025 Hour: 8:28 am
The case of the Belgian teenagers caught trafficking ants in Kenya has drawn attention to the illegal trade of lesser-known wildlife species. The two 19-year-olds, Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house in Nakuru County. They were charged on April 15 and given the choice of paying a $7,700 fine or serving 12 months in prison.
Authorities say the ants were destined for European and Asian markets, highlighting a growing trend in wildlife trafficking. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) noted that the species included Messor cephalotes, a large red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.
In a separate but related case, two other men—Vietnamese national Duh Hung Nguyen and Kenyan citizen Dennis Ng’ang’a—were also fined $7,700 each after being caught with 400 ants. The court described their actions as part of an elaborate scheme.
Entomologist Shadrack Muya emphasized the ecological importance of ants, warning that their removal from their natural habitat could disrupt ecosystems and lead to potential ecological disasters.
This case underscores the broader issue of biopiracy, where lesser-known species are exploited for commercial gain. What are your thoughts on this emerging trend?
Vietnam’s Environment a Warning for Gaza & Ukraine
May 7, 2025
Pamela McElwee describes the degraded ecosystems and dioxin-contaminated soils and waters that persist, 50 years later, after the U.S. ecocidal assault on Vietnam’s jungles and marshes.
A U.S. “Ranch Hand” aircraft spraying defoliant next to a road in South Vietnam in 1962. (USAF /Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)
By Pamela McElwee
The Conversation
When the Vietnam War finally ended on April 30, 1975, it left behind a landscape scarred with environmental damage. Vast stretches of coastal mangroves, once housing rich stocks of fish and birds, lay in ruins. Forests that had boasted hundreds of species were reduced to dried-out fragments, overgrown with invasive grasses.
The term “ecocide” had been coined in the late 1960s to describe the U.S. military’s use of herbicides like Agent Orange and incendiary weapons like napalm to battle guerrilla forces that used jungles and marshes for cover.
Fifty years later, Vietnam’s degraded ecosystems and dioxin-contaminated soils and waters still reflect the long-term ecological consequences of the war. Efforts to restore these damaged landscapes and even to assess the long-term harm have been limited.
As an environmental scientist and anthropologist who has worked in Vietnam since the 1990s, I find the neglect and slow recovery efforts deeply troubling. Although the war spurred new international treaties aimed at protecting the environment during wartime, these efforts failed to compel post-war restoration for Vietnam. Current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East show these laws and treaties still aren’t effective.
Agent Orange & Daisy Cutters
The U.S. first sent ground troops to Vietnam in March 1965 to support South Vietnam against revolutionary forces and North Vietnamese troops, but the war had been going on for years before then. To fight an elusive enemy operating clandestinely at night and from hideouts deep in swamps and jungles, the U.S. military turned to environmental modification technologies.
The most well-known of these was Operation Ranch Hand, which sprayed at least 19 million gallons (75 million liters) of herbicides over approximately 6.4 million acres (2.6 million hectares), of South Vietnam. The chemicals fell on forests, and also on rivers, rice paddies and villages, exposing civilians and troops. More than half of that spraying involved the dioxin-contaminated defoliant Agent Orange.
Herbicides were used to strip the leaf cover from forests, increase visibility along transportation routes and destroy crops suspected of supplying guerrilla forces.
A photo at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City shows the Can Gio mangrove forest after it was destroyed by herbicides, bombs and plows. (Gary Todd/Flickr/Public Domain)
As news of the damage from these tactics made it back to the U.S., scientists raised concerns about the campaign’s environmental impacts to President Lyndon Johnson, calling for a review of whether the U.S. was intentionally using chemical weapons. American military leaders’ position was that herbicides did not constitute chemical weapons under the Geneva Protocol, which the U.S. had yet to ratify.
Scientific organizations also initiated studies within Vietnam during the war, finding widespread destruction of mangroves, economic losses of rubber and timber plantations, and harm to lakes and waterways.
In 1969, evidence linked a chemical in Agent Orange, 2,4,5-T [Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid], to birth defects and stillbirths in mice because it contained TCDD, a particularly harmful dioxin. That led to a ban on domestic use and suspension of Agent Orange use by the military in April 1970, with the last mission flown in early 1971.
Incendiary weapons and the clearing of forests also ravaged rich ecosystems in Vietnam.
Map showing United States aerial herbicide spraying missions in Vietnam between 1965 and 1971. (U.S. Army /Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)
The U.S. Forest Service tested large-scale incineration of jungles by igniting barrels of fuel oil dropped from planes. Particularly feared by civilians was the use of napalm bombs, with more than 400,000 tons of the thickened petroleum used during the war. After these infernos, invasive grasses often took over in hardened, infertile soils.
Fires from napalm and other incendiary weapons cleared stretches of forest, in some cases scorching the soil so badly that nothing would regrow.
“Rome Plows,” massive bulldozers with an armor-fortified cutting blade, could clear 1,000 acres a day. Enormous concussive bombs, known as “daisy cutters,” flattened forests and set off shock waves killing everything within a 3,000-foot (900-meter) radius, down to earthworms in the soil.
The U.S. also engaged in weather modification through Project Popeye, a secret program from 1967 to 1972 that seeded clouds with silver iodide to prolong the monsoon season in an attempt to cut the flow of fighters and supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam.
Congress eventually passed a bipartisan resolution in 1973 urging an international treaty to prohibit the use of weather modification as a weapon of war. That treaty came into effect in 1978.
The U.S. military contended that all these tactics were operationally successful as a trade of trees for American lives.
Despite Congress’ concerns, there was little scrutiny of the environmental impacts of U.S. military operations and technologies. Research sites were hard to access, and there was no regular environmental monitoring.
Recovery Efforts Slow
April 29, 1975: U.S.Marine providing cover for helicopters landing at the Defense Attach Office compound in Saigon during the evacuation of American civilians and “at-risk” Vietnamese. (Dirck Halstead, Wikipedia Commons, Public domain)
After the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese troops on April 30, 1975, the U.S. imposed a trade and economic embargo on all of Vietnam, leaving the country both war-damaged and cash-strapped.
Vietnamese scientists told me they cobbled together small-scale studies. One found a dramatic drop in bird and mammal diversity in forests. In the A Luói valley of central Vietnam, 80 percent of forests subjected to herbicides had not recovered by the early 1980s. Biologists found only 24 bird and five mammal species in those areas, far below normal in unsprayed forests.
Only a handful of ecosystem restoration projects were attempted, hampered by shoestring budgets. The most notable began in 1978, when foresters began hand-replanting mangroves at the mouth of the Saigon River in Can Gio forest, an area that had been completely denuded.
Mangroves have been replanted in the Can Gio Biosphere Reserve near Ho Chi Minh City, but their restoration took decades. (Tho Nau/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)
In inland areas, widespread tree-planting programs in the late 1980s and 1990s finally took root, but they focused on planting exotic trees like acacia, which did not restore the original diversity of the natural forests.
Chemical Cleanup Still Underway
For years, the U.S. also denied responsibility for Agent Orange cleanup, despite the recognition of dioxin-associated illnesses among U.S. veterans and testing that revealed continuing dioxin exposure among potentially tens of thousands of Vietnamese.
The first remediation agreement between the two countries only occurred in 2006, after persistent advocacy by veterans, scientists and nongovernmental organizations led Congress to appropriate $3 million for the remediation of the Da Nang airport.
That project, completed in 2018, treated 150,000 cubic meters of dioxin-laden soil at an eventual cost of over $115 million, paid mostly by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. The cleanup required lakes to be drained and contaminated soil, which had seeped more than 9 feet (3 meters) deeper than expected, to be piled and heated to break down the dioxin molecules.
Another major hot spot is the heavily contaminated Biên Hoà airbase, where local residents continue to ingest high levels of dioxin through fish, chicken and ducks.
Remediation work at Bien Hoa Air Base in Vietnam, undated. (Richard Nyberg/USAID Vietnam/CC BY-NC 2.0)
Agent Orange barrels were stored at the base, which leaked large amounts of the toxin into soil and water, where it continues to accumulate in animal tissue as it moves up the food chain. Remediation began in 2019; however, further work is at risk with the Trump administration’s near elimination of USAID, leaving it unclear if there will be any American experts in Vietnam in charge of administering this complex project.
Laws to Prevent ‘Ecocide’ Are Complicated
While Agent Orange’s health effects have understandably drawn scrutiny, its long-term ecological consequences have not been well studied.
Current-day scientists have far more options than those 50 years ago, including satellite imagery, which is being used in Ukraine to identify fires, flooding and pollution. However, these tools cannot replace on-the-ground monitoring, which often is restricted or dangerous during wartime.
The legal situation is similarly complex.
In 1977, the Geneva Conventions governing conduct during wartime were revised to prohibit “widespread, long term, and severe damage to the natural environment.” A 1980 protocol restricted incendiary weapons. Yet oil fires set by Iraq during the Gulf War in 1991, and recent environmental damage in the Gaza Strip, Ukraine and Syria indicate the limits of relying on treaties when there are no strong mechanisms to ensure compliance.
An international campaign currently underway calls for an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to add ecocide as a fifth prosecutable crime alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression.
Some countries have adopted their own ecocide laws. Vietnam was the first to legally state in its penal code that “Ecocide, destroying the natural environment, whether committed in time of peace or war, constitutes a crime against humanity.” Yet the law has resulted in no prosecutions, despite several large pollution cases.
Both Russia and Ukraine also have ecocide laws, but these have not prevented harm or held anyone accountable for damage during the ongoing conflict.
The Vietnam War is a reminder that failure to address ecological consequences, both during war and after, will have long-term effects. What remains in short supply is the political will to ensure that these impacts are neither ignored nor repeated.The Conversation
China Was Responsible for 63% of New Clean Energy Capacity in 2024
Roger Boyd
May 14, 2025
Yes, you read that headline correctly, nearly two thirds of all incremental new clean energy capacity last year was installed in China. In the first quarter of 2025 the country generated 951 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity from clean energy, representing 39% of electricity generation (wind 13%, solar 10%, hydro 9%, nuclear 5%). That’s an increase of 19% year-over-year, with the share of electricity rising from 34% in Q1 2024.
Coal-fired electricity generation dropped 4%, with its share of generation falling from 63% to 58%. Gas-fired electricity generation fell 4%, to less than 3% of overall electricity generation. Even with China’s 5% GDP growth and electrification of transport that drives electricity usage growth, China’s clean energy is now expanding enough to more than offset the growth in electricity demand; resulting in a fall in the usage of fossil fuels. The difference in scale between the Chinese clean energy capacity and that of other nations/regions is startling, with China growing that capacity at a much faster rate:
China: 1,827,270 MW; y-o-y growth of 25.7%
Europe: 848,627 MW; y-o-y growth of 9.01%
US: 428,405 MW; y-o-y growth of 11.21%
India: 204,292 MW; y-o-y growth of 16.28%
New Chinese wind capacity grew by 18.07%, far ahead of India (7.66%), Europe (4.53%) and the US (3.47%). New Chinese solar capacity grew by 45.58%, ahead of India (33.66%), the US (27.49%) and Europe (21.02%). It’s important to remember that the Chinese growth is from a base twice the size of Europe’s and three and a half times the size of the US with respect to wind energy. For solar, China’s base is more than twice the size of Europe’s and four times that of the US.
It does look like China is planning to continue at this rate of growth in future years, while with the pro-fossil fuels Trump administration in power the US growth rate will most probably decelerate. The Chinese additions of new capacity are supplied from Chinese manufacturers, leading to an extremely rapid rate of growth in the Chinese wind, solar and nuclear industries. Together with the required provision of high voltage and smart grid capacity. Such rapid capacity growth drives both decreased costs and extremely high levels of technological development; far outstripping manufacturers in other nations. All aided of course by the colossal numbers of new Chinese STEM graduates each year.
If Chinese electricity generation continues to be decarbonized at a rate of 5% per year, then by the start of 2030 clean energy generation will represent 64% (39% plus 25%) of overall generation; with fossil fuels at only 36%. The sheer speed of this turnaround will be stunning, as China will become a model for the decarbonization of electricity generation. By 2035, with the implementation of cross-regional electricity lines, much greater implementation of electricity storage technologies, and residential solar and storage, China may be able to achieve a a near total usage of clean energy within its electricity generation sector. This will be heavily reliant upon the ability of cross regional flows, hydro-electricity, storage technologies, nuclear, and residential solar and storage (including EV battery capacity) to balance out regional fluctuations in wind and solar generation.
In 2024 electricity consumption accounted for 38% of China’s overall energy usage, and that will continue to climb as electricity displaces fossil fuels in transportation and other areas. China has a huge global lead in the electrification of public mass transit, light vehicles, and even heavy trucks. The country has been making strides in reducing the energy intensity of GDP, but that progress has stalled in the past few years; it only fell 2% between 2020 and 2023. The Party-state increased the goal for 2024 to 2.5% to help meet its target of a 13.5% reduction between 2021 and 2025.
As the need for action on climate change becomes more and more imperative, China will be the most well positioned country to gain from such actions. It will be the global low cost provider of clean energy, modern electricity grids, and electrified transport. Ironically, it could also become a major exporter of coal as its own consumption rapidly falls. In addition, its demand for imported oil would be significantly reduced. In contrast to the Western complaints of China building “over-capacity” it is in fact building the capacity that the nations of the world will desperately need to decarbonize their economies. Perhaps the greatest benefit may be China’s ability to help the industrializing nations to meet their growing energy needs from clean energy electricity and not from fossil fuels.
Postscript: By the end of March 2025, China’s installed capacity of wind and solar alone had grown to 1,482 GW. An amount greater than the installed capacity of fossil fuel electricity power generating units, although of course the fossil fuel generating units have a much higher level of capacity utilization. Still, that’s an addition of 72 GW in just 3 months - pointing to continued rapid growth in China’s wind and solar capacity this year. By the end of 2025, China is expected to have 1,720 GW of wind and solar capacity which will be a 22% increase over 2024; exceeding China’s official 2030 wind and solar capacity target.
Humans have observed less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor
May 8, 2025
New research shows why deep sea mining is a bad idea
In a groundbreaking study published in Science Advances, researchers from Ocean Discovery League reveal that only a minuscule fraction of the deep seafloor has been imaged. Despite covering 66% of Earth’s surface, the deep ocean remains largely unexplored. The study, “How Little We’ve Seen: A Visual Coverage Estimate of the Deep Seafloor,” is the first to document that, in decades of deep-sea exploration, humans have observed less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor. This total area is roughly the size of Rhode Island or one-tenth the size of Belgium.
The deep ocean, defined as being deeper than 200 meters, sustains diverse ecosystems and provides essential services, including oxygen production, climate regulation, and crucial pharmaceutical discoveries, and plays a critical role in maintaining the health of our planet. Yet, despite its importance, research into this immense ecosystem is severely limited, with visual surveys primarily focused on just a few regions and countries. Visual imaging is one of the most critical methods to study the deep seafloor and is one of the three key pillars of ocean exploration, alongside mapping and sampling.
“As we face accelerated threats to the deep ocean—from climate change to potential mining and resource exploitation—this limited exploration of such a vast region becomes a critical problem for both science and policy,” said Dr. Katy Croff Bell, lead author of the study. “We need a much better understanding of the deep ocean’s ecosystems and processes to make informed decisions about resource management and conservation.”
Using data from approximately 44,000 deep-sea dives with observations conducted since 1958, across the waters of 120 different countries, the study is the most comprehensive global estimate of deep-sea benthic observations to date and highlights the disparity in global exploration efforts. Given that not all dive records are public, the researchers assert that even if these estimates are off by a full order of magnitude, less than one-hundredth of 1% of the seafloor would have any visual records. In addition, almost 30% of documented visual observations were conducted before 1980 and often resulted in only black and white, low-resolution, still imagery.
Remarkably, a majority of the visual observations have occurred within 200 nautical miles of just three countries: the United States, Japan, and New Zealand. Due to the high cost of ocean exploration, a mere handful of nations dominate deep-sea exploration, with five countries—the United States, Japan, New Zealand, France, and Germany—responsible for 97% of all deep-sea submergence observations. This bias in geographic coverage and operator representation has led the oceanographic community to base much of its characterization of the deep ocean ecosystem on this incredibly small and unrepresentative sample.
The study also highlights the knowledge gap regarding seafloor habitats. Certain geomorphological features, such as canyons and ridges, have been the focus of significant research, while vast areas, including abyssal plains and seamounts, remain underexplored.
These findings underscore the urgent need for a more comprehensive and global effort to explore the deep ocean, ensuring that scientific research and conservation efforts accurately reflect the true extent of the seafloor. As noted in the study, if the scientific community were to make all assumptions about terrestrial ecosystems from observations of only 0.001% of that total area, they would be basing their assessments of all land-based life on Earth on an area roughly the size of Houston, Texas.
To address these challenges, the researchers call for expanding exploration efforts and utilizing emerging technologies to increase access to the deep ocean. With advancements in smaller, more affordable deep-sea tools, there is an opportunity to broaden the scientific community’s reach, including low- and middle-income nations in ocean exploration and research.
This study represents a crucial step in understanding the gaps in ocean exploration and the need for comprehensive global strategies to ensure the protection and sustainable management of the deep ocean. The authors hope these findings will encourage more scientific collaboration, leading to a deeper understanding of our planet’s most vital ecosystem.
Abundance vs. Degrowth in a Time of Climate Catastrophe
Posted on May 14, 2025 by Conor Gallagher
As the elusive quest for winning trade “deals” continues, Liberation Day has led to debates on US emissions reduction strategy and degrowth vs. abundance. As is often the case in America, the two parties are largely divided by matters of degree. One side is for neoliberalism and embrace of eugenics while the other wants to put a friendlier face on it. Meanwhile, those further to the left argue there’s a better way, but they’ve almost never appeared further from power. Let’s rewind a few weeks and review.
At the height—or depths?— of Liberation Day(s) it looked like Trump was going to crash the global economy to the point that emissions could fall sharply. While he has taken a few steps back from the abyss for now, there’s no telling what tomorrow will bring. Here’s the AP:
Experts say a slowdown in international trade might have a brief and slight benefit in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which come in part from fuels like gas and oil that are used to move goods around the world via ships, planes and vehicles.
In this way Trump is like a pandemic personified:
The AP paints this a great price to pay because it would set back the “energy transition” since China leads in the production of “clean tech.” While there are caveats about the cleanliness of clean tech and whether wealthy lifestyles can continue as they are now if emissions are to come down, one must also note that a major hurdle in the US is that whatever planning is done in the US emanates from profit-seeking centers of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and there just ain’t as much of that profit right now in non-fossil fuel energy—nor are there incentives to do a whole lot else that needs to be done.
Nevertheless, the climate tailings of Trump’s Days of Liberation began to gain supporters from what might seem like unlikely quarters. A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye. It is penned from the bastion of American liberalism by Amy Chan, chief sustainability officer at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. In it she urges those who care about the climate to take solace in the fact that Trump’s “Liberation Day” policies could be a win for the environment. And there are others that have been making similar arguments.
While Chan doesn’t mention “degrowth” she presents three main arguments along those lines that all seem wildly out of touch with what’s actually occurring; let’s take them one by one.
First, the reordering of global trade is forcing companies to rethink supply chains. Many supply-chain leaders are outlining an emerging strategy called “manufacturing in region for region.” This means producing goods in North America for North American consumers, in Europe for Europeans, and so on. That’s good for stability and even better for the planet. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, transportation accounts for roughly 15% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Fewer transoceanic journeys mean less emissions.
But this isn’t really what the Trump administration is doing. If there’s any pattern to Liberation Day policies, it is economic warfare against China and extracting better deals for US oligarchs, such as pushing nations facing tariffs to approve Starlink permits for the world’s richest man. [1]
The administration is trying to relocate supply chains out of China while mega corporations like Apple are trying to relocate cheap labor to places like India. Vietnam’s imports from China and exports to the United States both reached a post-pandemic record in April. Hard to see how that’s a positive for the environment.
At the same time, the administration is defunding programs that aid American manufacturing. Hard to see how that helps lead to “manufacturing in region for region.” And policy-induced recessions can have their own goals like weakening labor power, which the Trump administration is clearly pursuing at home and abroad. Here’s Chan again:
Second, Mr. Trump’s recent move to end the de minimis tax exemption for low-value imports from China could curb America’s addiction to fast fashion and disposable goods supplied by retailers like Shein and Temu. This would result in fewer impulse buys and less landfill waste. Manufacturers may also respond by producing higher-quality, longer-lasting products. The effect won’t be limited to cheap goods. Higher prices on electronics, appliances and vehicles will encourage consumers to extend the life of what they already own. The greenest car isn’t a new electric vehicle; it’s the one you don’t replace.
Is there any evidence this is happening or will happen? As mentioned above, we’re largely seeing the shifting from China to low-cost manufacturers with the additional tariff pressure on these nations to keep costs low, which typically means crushing labor and leaning on the cheapest, dirtiest energy available.
What else does Chan have?
Third, the U.S. remains deeply dependent on China for critical minerals such as rare-earth elements. Rare earths are vital inputs for everything from smartphones and EVs to wind turbines and military systems. China accounts for more than two-thirds of global rare-earth production. The U.S. can mitigate this vulnerability by investing in domestic rare-earth recycling infrastructure.
Yes it can. And it is to a degree. In April, Trump issued an executive order that called for U.S. government support of critical mineral recycling efforts, including rare earth recovery. But where will those resources be allocated after recycling? Chan doesn’t say. Much of them will no doubt be funneled into US priority one: the Military Industrial Complex — the greatest greenhouse gas emitter the world has ever known. And by investing in militarization and economic sabotage towards China, Washington is forcing Beijing to divert money away from its clean tech industry towards its own militarization. As the Transnational Institute states, “A war between the US and China over Taiwan would trigger a global disaster on various fronts, one of which would be to set back decarbonisation everywhere by years, if not decades.”
Is any of this creating space for a better economic life for Americans? Or for more environmentally friendly infrastructure? Well, Trump is “unleashing” American fossil fuels, and just blew through billions racing aircraft carriers around the Red Sea, bombing civilians, and dropping fighter jets overboard.
A quick note on the idea of “degrowth,” courtesy of Malcolm Harris’ recent review of the book Abundance by the liberal duo of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson:
Influential economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s argument that entropy was the dominant factor for our world—increasing scarcity and environmental degradation were products of a fundamental law of physics, not human mistakes—helped inspire a “degrowth” line that came to dominate ecological economics in the West. All there seemed left to offer was less.
The counterargument is that it’s not necessarily less that’s needed, but less of certain items. Think less bombs and fighter jets, more—or any—high speed rail, solar panels, and regional self-sufficient production. And if you want to find an easy target for degrowth, the trillion-dollar defense budget should be the place to start. Instead we’re moving in the opposite direction:
All of this highlights the limits to arguments for Trump-style benefits for climate policy. The financial planners on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley prefer to invest in self-licking ice cream cones like the military-industrial complex rather than climate-friendly self-sufficiency or the most simple infrastructure that would reduce emissions and improve Americans’ quality of life.
Yet we now have the likes of Chan, who spent a decade leading environmental initiatives and investments at the World Bank and Apple, selling us on the benefits of Trump’s policies, which simultaneously is working to strengthen that capitalist class.
At the same time, the Trump-Vance project actually calls on Americans to sacrifice—a rarity in American politics— in the name of that project. That’s something widely acknowledged to be necessary to build more self-sufficient communities. As Adam Tooze writes:
The embarrassment for advocates of the Green New Deal and Bidenomics is that in pursuit of their visions of the future, Trump’s national economic strategists are far bolder in what they demand of the American public than their opponents in the Democratic party ever were. Trump’s trade policy is, in fact, what Green New Deal advocates never dared to be: A direct challenge to prevailing norms of American consumerism in the name of a better future.
But who is being asked to sacrifice? And who will bear the brunt of the pain? And what type of future is such sacrifice in the name of? This again highlights that there are some rather large blindspots in Chan’s championing of Trump’s “Liberation Day” climate byproducts.
It’s not just that the US war machine isn’t mentioned, but the issue of class is erased entirely.
There are already words that better describe the economic fallout from Team Trump’s Liberation Day policies, such as “recession” or potentially “depression.” And this one, like others previous, is going to hit poor countries and poor Americans the hardest.
While temporary degrowth might be a side effect, it’s being done in such a way to maximize pain to the most vulnerable:
Benjamin Kunkel
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Maybe a lost cause but I remain annoyed at descriptions of Trump’s bungling of world trade as “degrowth.” Degrowth even in the most minimal version entails welfare protections, expanded leisure, north-south rebalancing. This is the difference between crashing & parking your car
“Environmentalists shouldn’t waste time hoping for a different political landscape. This is a moment for pragmatism,” Chan assures us.
That pragmatism boils down to that if the Trump oligarchs want to detonate the global trading system and try to rewrite the rules to their benefit while inflicting untold pain on billions of people, well, it’s got some good stuff in there too. Maybe. Even if it’s just temporary. Inspiring stuff.
Worst of all, accepting this argument means more power accruing to the very capitalist forces preventing meaningful action on climate and any other meagre efforts at a less brutal societal arrangement. And by doing so lends credence to the idea that emissions reduction requires the poor to suffer, eugenics, and a reliance on our current economic system.
Democrats Embrace “Abundance”
There is another liberal argument making the rounds these days. It comes from the book Abundance, another attempt to find a way out of planetary crisis without addressing the issue of class. The book is leading to numerous reviews and much debate over alternatives to the current course of action: potential emissions reduction if the economy crashes coupled with a hollowing out of the state and seeing what Elon and company have in store for us.
Abundance, as its title suggests, makes a case for more via YIMBYISM.
It zeroes in on zoning laws and environmental regulations as the problems preventing abundance and argues that less will equal more—essentially DOGE-lite. Let the builders build.
While zoning and other red tape certainly doesn’t help increase housing supply, centering that as the impediment to solving the polycrisis is deranged. Isn’t there someone already promising that cutting regulations and workforces will save money, solve problems, and unleash American ingenuity? And just to mention one hole in Thompson and Klein’s retread theory, here’s Matt Stoller on the US homebuilder cartel rooted in control of land and financing:
In 2005, when D.R. Horton sold a record number of homes, it made $1.47 billion. In 2023, when it built roughly half as many, its profit was a little over three times as high, or $4.7 billion. And this dynamic isn’t because it focused on the high end, its overall market share was twice as high in 2023! …The story here, in other words, is consolidation.
And without more democratic control over the allocation of capital, what difference does it make if there’s “less red tape”? Abundance, rather than charting a new course, is really more of an argument for liberals to double down on neoliberalism, and it highlights the lack of any real Democrat opposition to Trump’s economic policies.
Here’s coauthor Derek Thompson explaining the role he sees Abundance playing within the Democratic Party, in an interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast:
So, what we’re trying to do is essentially say, here’s a way to channel the anger that people have at the establishment, but toward our own ends, right? We believe that we have answers on housing and energy and high-quality governance and science and technology, really good answers that are fiercely critical of the status quo in Democrat-led cities and Democrat-led states. We’re trying to be oppositional in a way that’s constructive rather than just destructive.
“Our” ends? And “constructive” and “destructive” for whom? In Klein and Thompson’s telling the dividing line is between parties and those who care about the climate and those who don’t. They don’t mention class, but their argument boils down to a defense of the plutocrats, and that will fit the Dems just fine. A bipartisan(!) group of lawmakers led by Rep. Josh Harder (D-Calif.) is now starting a roughly 30-member bloc that’s claiming inspiration from the “abundance movement.”
“This is a moment that has been building for a while,” Harder told Politico. “I think there’s been a lot of simmering interest in permitting reform and making sure that things are built faster, better, cheaper.”
Because everyone knows the best things are fast and cheap.
Is there another way that the fighting Dems are omitting? I think Malcolm Harris puts it best in his review of Abundance, describing the very simple way to tackle housing, as well as emissions reduction and a whole lot else:
The only way to guarantee real housing abundance is deep and concerted public support, by adding the necessary state capacity to build and maintain a home for everyone who needs one. Something analogous goes for health care and food—not to mention clean air and water, parks, schools, transportation, news reporting, universities, scientific research, museums, and worthwhile artistic production in general.
That path might be “destructive”—as Thompson says— for American oligarchs, but it would be constructive for the rest of us. That is the choice we are currently faced with. As NC commenter Henry Moon Pie put it recently:
…degrowth is coming regardless of what we do. Consider property insurance, for example. As disasters increase in spread and severity, more and more areas will become uninsurable. What will happen to real estate values on the Gulf Coast if another couple of hurricanes hit it this season? What about any property located in woods west of the Mississippi? For that matter, as fires rage again in the Tri-state area, any wooded area east of the Mississippi looks iffy.
We could act like a grown-up society and admit that we’ve trashed the environment with 50 years of McMansions and seeing the USA in our Chevrolets. We could acknowledge that we’ve changed the Earth; now the Earth is going to change us, our children, our grandchildren, our culture, our economy, our worldview. With that facing up to reality behind us, we could begin the hard work of “landing the plane” as Kate Raworth says in Doughnut Economics. We could eliminate economic activity that adversely affects the environment but is non-essential to human welfare (everything from the military to luxury goods) while upgrading public services to cushion the blows of climate and decreased economic activity on the struggling majority as Jason Hickel advocates.
This system of endless growth and consumerism is coming to an end. The question is what will replace it: an Elysium with a few living in luxury while the masses die young in an Earth venting its rage against humans; or a world where we share the hardships that we and our recent ancestors have brought upon ourselves as we learn to live more meaningful lives with less stuff.
Trump charts a course towards an elite Elysium, while the working class and most vulnerable Americans are going to get hammered. What little remains of the US social safety net is being set alight while the government shifts the financial burden of climate change onto individuals. Meanwhile Trump is using immigration policy and other tools to further decimate labor.
The wealthiest Americans, most responsible for climate change emissions, are not being asked to make the same sacrifices and will be able to ride out any tariff recession. While Trump might have asked Americans to go without thirty dolls, there’s a difference between that and shortages of more essential items, but we know who will lose out first while the wealthy horde supplies.
And what is all this sacrifice for? According to Trump, it’s to Make America Great Again, yet his idea of greatness increasingly resembles 1990s Russia-style shock therapy that allows the likes of Musk, Bezos, Altman, Thiel, and company to take over core government functions, self-enrichment, and a Golden Dome over a land of more exploitation and more eugenics.
Any “degrowth” arising from such policies is not a silver lining to celebrate, but rather marks the arrival of a societal tipping point to an accelerating descent into further depths of dystopia.
A lot of so-called environmentalists I engaged with 20 years ago at Democratic Underground would be happy that recession and depression would force 'de-growth' upon the masses, their perceived class interest not being much affected... until the unwashed realized the real source of their destitution and the tumbrils start rolling.
Let us be clear, it is not just the billionaires who are responsible for trashing the planet though they bear disproportionate responsibility given their miniscule numbers, it is the top ten percent. Which the so-called progressives won't touch, how could they do that to mom and dad?
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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Some thoughts on Nature and the German Peasants’ War
May 23, 2025
“The domain forest and other woods have been removed from our use, contrary to ancient tradition.”
Detail from 1525 edition of The Twelve Articles
by Martin Empson
Martin Empson is the author of The Time of the Harvest Has Come! Revolution, Reformation and the German Peasants’ War, published this year by Bookmarks Publications, marking the 500th anniversary of the rebellion.
One of the remarkable aspects to those studying the German Peasants’ War, the great revolutionary movement that swept central Germany in 1524 and 1525, is that the movement’s demands have been recorded in great detail. Most famously there are the demands collated in the “Twelve Articles,” written in the German town of Memmingen by delegates from the peasants’ armies in March 1525. Countless other such documents exist.
In their demands, the revolutionary peasants articulated their opposition to serfdom, exploitation and oppression. But because wealth in feudal society was based on land ownership, the peasants had to address another fundamental aspect of their exploitation – the relationship of society to the natural world. Some of this is reflected in demands about rents and access to land. But more explicitly the peasantry often raised demands that highlighted their relationship to nature, and how they thought they should use nature. Two of the Twelve Articles make this explicit:
“It has been the custom heretofore, that no poor man should be allowed to catch venison or wild fowl or fish in flowing water, which seems to us quite unseemly and unbrotherly as well as selfish and not agreeable to the word of God. In some places the authorities preserve the game to our great annoyance and loss, recklessly permitting the unreasoning animals to destroy to no purpose our crops which God suffers to grow for the use of man, and yet we must remain quiet.”
The Article continues:
“When God created man he gave him dominion over all the animals, over the birds of the air and over the fish in the water. Accordingly, it is our desire if a man holds possession of waters that he should prove from satisfactory documents that his right has been unwittingly acquired by purchase… but whosoever cannot produce such evidence should surrender his claim with good grace.”
The Fifth Articles develops this theme:
“We are aggrieved in the manner of wood-cutting, for the noble folk have appropriated all the woods to themselves alone…. It is our opinion in regard to wood which has fallen into the hands of a lord whether spiritual or temporal, that unless it was duly purchased it should revert again to the community. It should, moreover, be free to every member of the community to help himself to such fire-sood as he needs in his home.”
Again the question of private ownership of natural resources is not challenged wholesale, but rather its unjust ownership:
“If the forest, although unfairly appropriated in the first instance, was later duly sold let the matter be adjusted in a friendly spirit and according to the Scriptures.”
The Tenth Article opposes the enclosure (privatization) of land and resources:
“We are aggrieved by the appropriation by individuals of meadows and fields which at one time belonged to a community. These we will take again into our own hands.”
It wasn’t just in the Twelve Articles that these, and similar demands were made. In the sixty-two articles of the peasants of Stühlingen, an area where the revolt had first begun in the summer of 1524, the peasants raised a number of complaints specific to how they were allowed, or restricted, in their use of natural resources:
Article 14: “The domain forest and other woods have been removed from our use, contrary to ancient tradition.”
Article 16: “We have many freehold estates and meadows through which running water flows; this we have hitherto used as we required for milling or to water the meadows, as well as the waters which are common to all; but in recent years our lords have taken these waters from us and will not allow us to use them; instead they rent them out to fishermen who then do considerable damage to our holdings.”
Article 28: “We are prohibited from clearing and burning stubble and weeds on pastures and meadows in the spring, contrary to common custom.”
In their 42nd article, the Stühlingen peasantry complained that the lords could place fences to create game reserves on their land. But the peasantry could not clear these without punishment and the game destroys their crops.
Hundreds of similar examples can be found in dozens of other rebel documents. Land, water, natural resources, wild animals and fallen wood, had become a site for the class struggle as the landowning classes were enclosing, privatising and controlling nature in their interests. This process had been ongoing and often meant the destruction or dismantling of customary rights that the peasants had relied on for centuries.
This process is not unexpected. Similar events were taking place across Europe. It reflected changes in the feudal economy, which saw elements of feudal society increasingly seeing private enterprise as being a way of maximising their wealth. The beginnings of capitalism in this sense were sowing the seeds of a great revolt, because there was a contradiction between the economic interests of the feudal ruling classes and the way that peasants wanted to use nature for their communities.
In her recent account of the rebellion Lyndal Roper places the demands over use of nature at the heart of the revolt. She writes, “for the peasants, the land was a working environment, for the lord’s it was a locale of pleasure-and a resource to be exploited for profit.” She says the peasantry “wanted decisions to be made collectively and to manage natural resources in a way that would respect the environment, which God had created.” Later she says that “peasant grievances centred on ecology, creation itself.” Other economic changes were also having their impacts. As Roper notes, mining was polluting rivers. The demand for fuel for the growing number of small scale industrial processes was having an impact on forests.
This was a world where nature existed for the use of humans, who sat above, and separate from the flora and fauna below them. A good example of this thinking is given by Keith Thomas, who quotes a 17th century poem:
The pheasant, partridge and the lark
Flew to thy house, as to the Ark.
The willing ox of himself came
Home to the slaughter, with the lamb;
And every beast did thither bring
Himself to be an offering.
Thomas is specifically talking about Tudor and Stuart England, but his ideas are relevant for Germany in the 16th century. Theology taught that nature had been provided by God for the use of humanity. Every plant and animal had its particular role. In 1653, Henry More could write that animals only lived “till we shall have need to eat them.” As Thomas continues: “Contemporary theology thus provided the moral underpinnings for that ascendancy of man over nature which had by the early modern period become the accepted goal of human endeavour. The dominant religious tradition had no truck with that ‘veneration’ of nature which many Eastern religions still retained.”
The peasant struggle for control over nature and its resources has to be understood in this ideological context. Roper argues this was not “conservationist in the modern sense because it held that the environment was there for human beings to use.” But it could, she says, lead to an understanding that the environment had to be protected, for the good of the community, not individual profit.
On the other hand, the ruling class was moving in the other direction. Their approach to nature, as something to be utilised for profit, also fitted into the dominant ideological approach. It is the beginning of an understanding of nature that would see, as capitalist economic relations developed further and eventually overcame the old order, a situation where nature was merely part of the production process.
As Marx wrote in the Grundrisse, with the arrival of capitalism, “For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.”
That said, we should be careful not to entirely reject the peasants’ approach to nature. Their vision of a post-revolutionary landscape of democratic peasant rural communes, where the feudal lords’ power had been destroyed and village communities were in a position to manage their own relationship with nature in the interest of the collective is closer to a modern socialist vision of a post-capitalist society.
The problem was, as Friedrich Engels pointed out in his own account of the German Peasants’ War, that the economic basis for such a communal society did not yet exist. The peasants lacked the ability to defeat the feudal lords in the countryside and the towns were not yet centers of potential working class power. Nonetheless, by framing their desire to utilise the natural world, and its resources, in the interests of everyone, through the smashing of serfdom and the defeat of feudalism, the German peasants of 1525 remain inspirational.
The question today, just as it was for the peasants of 1525, was one of power. Who had the power to control nature’s resources and how could that power be taken from them for the benefit of humanity?
Later thinkers and activists like Karl Marx would fully develop a critique of capitalism’s relationship with nature, and the way that nature was embedded into the process of capital accumulation, they could build on the insights and revolutionary activity of figures like Michael Gaismair who dreamed, and fought, for a world where the land and labour could be organised so that the poorest could “be provided not only with food and drink, but with clothes and all necessities” and “the land will become healthier” through the rational management of marshes and bogs.
Or Thomas Münzter, who was incited to insurrection by “the assumption of our lords and princes that all creatures are their property. The fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the face of the Earth.”
Tianjin Qiaoyuan Park in Tianjin, one of the earliest sponge city projects in China. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Don’t believe the New Cold War lies, China is leading the world in climate solutions
Originally published: Liberation News on May 15, 2025 by Tina Landis (more by Liberation News) | (Posted May 22, 2025)
Tina Landis is the author of the book Climate Solutions Beyond Capitalism.
At the time of the 1949 revolution, China was largely an agrarian society with widespread poverty, famine and lack of infrastructure. Rapid development over several decades resulted in a significant rise in pollution in China.
The U.S. mainstream media never addresses the outsourcing of production to China and thus the outsourcing of pollution. Rarely are emissions accounted for based on where goods are produced versus where those goods are consumed, or population size of a country relative to emissions levels. If you take a snapshot of emissions today and ignore population and consumption of goods, China does have the highest carbon emissions with the U.S. coming in second. But China produces 30% of the world’s goods and accounts for 17.7% of global population, while the U.S. is the largest consumer of Chinese goods globally and accounts for 4.3% of global population.
When you look at per capita emissions of each country, as well as per capita consumption-based emissions, the U.S. is responsible for a much larger portion of global emissions than China.
U.S. emissions based on population size are nearly double per person than China’s, while its consumption-based emissions per person are around two and a half times higher. So every time the U.S. blames China for the climate crisis, we need to take the globalized system of goods production and consumption into account.
Emissions reductions and renewable energy expansion
Because China is led by the Communist Party with a centralized, planned economy, they have been able to shift focus to address the impacts of industrialization on air and water quality and ecological health.
Beginning in the 1990s, the Communist Party of China recognized the urgent need to align ecological sustainability with development goals. In 2003, then-Chinese President Hu Jintao pushed the concept of a “Scientific Outlook on Development” and “harmony between man and nature and the principle of all the people building and sharing a harmonious socialist society,” which was ratified in 2007 at the 17th Congress of the CPC. Since then, over 100 large-scale projects have been halted due to ecological impacts as a result of the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s environmental impact assessment process.
In 2012, under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, the CPC formally adopted the goal of building an ecological civilization into China’s constitution. Since becoming president in 2013, Xi Jinping has led the furthering of these efforts.
In 2014, China announced its “war on pollution” and by 2021 had reduced particulate matter pollution by 42%. Despite these massive reductions, China still has the 13th highest pollution levels by country globally, but such massive reductions in pollution in such a short time frame are unmatched under capitalism. Only through government control over industry and transportation can such air quality improvements occur.
To create enough power for its 1.4 billion people, China still relies on fossil fuels for around 60% of its energy production, while at the same time is leading the world in renewable energy. As of June 2024, combined wind and solar energy capacity surpassed coal for the first time. The goal of reaching 33% of energy capacity from renewables by 2025 was established through its 14th Five-Year Plan, and it is on track for solar capacity alone to surpass coal by 2026.
China also set the goal to peak emissions levels before 2030 and reach net zero by 2060, and based on their current trajectory, these goals will be achieved. In 2020, China surpassed their goal of adding 1,200 GW of wind and solar capacity by 2030, six years early. In 2024, their wind capacity increased by 18% with solar capacity jumping by 45.2%. Total power generation grew 14.6% in 2024 mainly from renewables.
Nuclear is part of China’s energy mix, which has many environmental and health impacts. They plan to integrate more small modular reactors into their energy system, which have a lower risk than large reactors. But SMRs still have the unresolved issue of radioactive waste and are a high risk to the workers tasked with dismantling these units at the end of their life. China also relies on large-scale hydropower, which has significant impacts on watershed and ecosystem health.
That said, China is leading the world in increasing solar and wind capacity, which has the least environmental impacts of any form of energy production. China, as well as all other countries, has the right to determine their own path to development free from imperialist domination and meddling. Our duty in the imperialist U.S. is to determine the path our country takes through organized struggle.
China also leads the world in electric vehicle production, accounting for around 60% of global sales. The Chinese company BYD leads globally in production of high-quality, low cost electric vehicles. Their electric car costs only $12,000, but the ever increasing tariffs imposed on China by the U.S.—which is essentially a tax on consumers—makes these cars unaffordable to purchase in the U.S.
The environmental impacts from the mining of rare earth elements currently used in the batteries need to be considered, which is why electrifying and expanding public transit and eliminating the need for individual car ownership is crucial to scale down those negative impacts. And China is doing just that. In 2020, China was responsible for 90% of the electric bus market globally and they continue to far surpass any other country in the production of electric buses and trucks. Replacing high-polluting diesel trucks and buses with zero-emission is not only a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but improves public health by eliminating exposure to the high level of carcinogens in diesel exhaust.
China also has the most extensive high speed rail system in the world, with around 30,000 miles of rail line currently operational, and plans to add another 7,000 miles by 2030.
These projects in clean energy and transportation can only happen due to large scale investment from the state. At the same time as these major infrastructure projects were being implemented, China also lifted 850 million of its people out of extreme poverty between 2013 and 2020 through nationwide efforts. This shows the capacity of socialism to take meaningful action based on what is needed by society and the planet, while capitalism lags far behind.
Ecological restoration on a mass scale
China is also undertaking large scale ecological restoration projects. In 1994, they began a 4 million acre project to restore depleted agricultural lands in the Loess Plateau in north-central China. The land had been degraded over thousands of years due to unsustainable livestock grazing and agricultural practices. In less than 10 years, biodiversity and ecosystem health was restored to a region equal in size to Belgium. The project resulted in 2.5 million people of the area being lifted out of poverty due to the revival of sustainable agriculture.
China has also undertaken massive afforestation projects like the Great Green Wall, which includes planting 88 million acres of drought-resistant trees and the installation of sand control mechanisms to stem desertification. Employing 600,000 workers, the Taklamakan Desert portion of the project was completed in 2022, while work along the Gobi Desert will be completed by 2050. The Taklamakan project also included the installation of one of the world’s largest solar farms that produces four GW of energy.
China has also addressed water pollution issues, such as the Erhai Lake restoration project in Yunnan Province. The 250 square kilometer lake had become severely polluted over several decades due to livestock grazing, fish farming, agricultural fertilizer and pesticide runoff and wastewater impacts from increased development and tourism. High levels of nutrients from these sources had caused blue-green algae blooms that robbed the waters of oxygen, causing a major decline in aquatic life. The high levels of pollution resulted in the lake’s water being unsuitable for human consumption or contact. Through centralized efforts led by the government, the economy of the area was reorganized to eliminate sources of pollution upstream and surrounding the lake, resulting in clear lake waters and a rebound in biodiversity. In 2022, the Erhai Lake restoration project won an “Excellent Project Execution and Delivery” award at the International Water Association event held in Denmark.
In alignment with the goals established in their constitution, China is creating over 300 eco-cities and converting 30 of their cities into sponge cities to address increasing flooding and drought that stem from climate change. Expansive parks and adjacent wetlands serve as recreation areas during drier months and act as flood control zones when heavy rains come. A healthy biosphere is a key climate stabilizer and China’s attempts to integrate urban infrastructure with the biosphere helps to mitigate climate change, increase biodiversity, build resilience to extreme weather, and improve air and water quality and the health of residents.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is expanding this model of development on an ecologically sustainable path to the broader Global South. Unlike development programs led by the U.S. and other imperialist countries, BRI programs are based on infrastructure development, trade alliances and sharing of technologies that uplift the populations of partner countries. These development projects are based on mutual benefit, unlike IMF and World Bank assistance that come with harsh austerity measures and leave countries in debt to the Global North.
For humanity to overcome the climate crisis, this type of internationalist perspective is key to building sustainable development on the basis of collaboration and partnerships that raise the living standards of Global South countries while also addressing ecological sustainability. These types of large scale projects inside and outside of China can only be achieved under a centralized, socialist planned economy. Here in the heart of empire, we need to see past the demonization campaigns that are meant to win our support for U.S. war with China, and instead learn from the ecologically sustainable development efforts that they are leading.
Rising Seas From Fossil Fuels Threaten Inland Migration ‘Never Witnessed in Modern Civilization’
Posted on May 21, 2025 by Yves Smith
Yves here. Even though Trump is making headway on his project to reduce living standards in the US to the level of the 1890s, one area where he is coming up short is on climate change. A general rise in temperature levels and more and more wild weather is defying his desire to return to the past.
Since the early 2000s, the Pentagon has been briefed on what even then were depicted as inevitable climate-changed induced mass migrations, which would be enormously destabilizing. So the story line that major population movements are inevitable is not news. However, citizens in high income countries have a weird way of thinking they are not much exposed.
This article gives a needed, if sobering, update, that surpassing the temperature rise target of 1.5°C would produce seriously bad outcomes, and even merely holding at the current 1.2°C increase level will produce enough in the way of sea level rises to generate large-scale migration and population displacement.
By Jessica Corbett, a staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
With governments “scaling back their already meager” actions to tackle climate breakdown, said one ecologist, “our present-day human culture is on a suicide course.”
Less than six months away from the next United Nations summit for parties to the Paris climate agreement, scientists on Tuesday released a study showing that even meeting the deal’s 1.5°C temperature target could lead to significant sea-level rise that drives seriously disruptive migration inland.
Governments that signed on to the 2015 treaty aim to take action to limit global temperature rise by 2100 to 1.5°C beyond preindustrial levels. Last year was not only the hottest in human history but also the first in which the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C. Multiple studies have warned of major impacts from even temporarily overshooting the target, bolstering demands for policymakers to dramatically rein in planet-heating fossil fuels.
The study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environmentwarns that 1.5°C “is too high” and even the current 1.2°C, “if sustained, is likely to generate several meters of sea-level rise over the coming centuries, causing extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and challenging the implementation of adaptation measures.”
“To avoid this requires a global mean temperature that is cooler than present and which we hypothesize to be closer to +1°C above preindustrial, possibly even lower, but further work is urgently required to more precisely determine a ‘safe limit’ for ice sheets,” the paper states, referring to Antarctica and Greenland’s continental glaciers.
Co-author Jonathan Bamber told journalists that “what we mean by safe limit is one which allows some level of adaptation, rather than catastrophic inland migration and forced migration, and the safe limit is roughly 1 centimeter a year of sea-level rise.”
“If you get to that, then it becomes extremely challenging for any kind of adaptation, and you’re going to see massive land migration on scales that we’ve never witnessed in modern civilization,” said the University of Bristol professor.
In terms of timing, study lead author Chris Stokes, from the United Kingdom’s Durham University, said in a statement that “rates of 1 centimeter per year are not out of the question within the lifetime of our young people.”
There are currently around 8.18 billion people on the planet. The study—funded by the United Kingdom’s Natural Environment Research Council—says that “continued mass loss from ice sheets poses an existential threat to the world’s coastal populations, with an estimated 1 billion people inhabiting land less than 10 meters above sea level and around 230 million living within 1 meter.”
“Without adaptation, conservative estimates suggest that 20 centimeters of [sea-level rise] by 2050 would lead to average global flood losses of $1 trillion or more per year for the world’s 136 largest coastal cities,” says the study, also co-authored by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Andrea Dutton and University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Rob DeConto in the United States.
DeConto said Tuesday that “it is important to stress that these accelerating changes in the ice sheets and their contributions to sea level should be considered permanent on multigenerational timescales.”
“Even if the Earth returns to its preindustrial temperature, it will still take hundreds to perhaps thousands of years for the ice sheets to recover,” the professor explained. “If too much ice is lost, parts of these ice sheets may not recover until the Earth enters the next ice age. In other words, land lost to sea-level rise from melting ice sheets will be lost for a very, very long time. That’s why it is so critical to limit warming in the first place.”
While the paper sparked some international alarm, Stokes highlighted what he called “a reason for hope,” which is that “we only have to go back to the early 1990s to find a time when the ice sheets looked far healthier.”
“Global temperatures were around 1°C above preindustrial back then, and carbon dioxide concentrations were 350 parts per million, which others have suggested is a much safer limit for planet Earth,” he said. “Carbon dioxide concentrations are currently around 424 parts per million and continue to increase.”
The new paper continues an intense stream of bleak studies on the worsening climate emergency, and specifically, looming sea-level rise. Another, published by the journal Nature in February, shows that glaciers have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000.
Despite scientists’ warnings, the government whose country is responsible for the largest share of historical planet-heating emissions, the United States, is actually working to boost the fossil fuel industry. Upon returning to office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump declared an “energy emergency” and ditched the Paris agreement.
Responding to the new study on social media, Scottish ecologist Alan Watson Featherstone called out both the U.S. and U.K. governments. He said that with many countries “scaling back their already meager and [totally] inadequate actions to address climate breakdown, our present-day human culture is on a suicide course.”
Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time
The analysis below by Lauri Myllyvirta, originally published on Carbon Brief, demonstrates that, “for the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth”. This indicates that China has almost certainly achieved its target of peaking emissions before 2030.
The article reports that China’s emissions were down 1.6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025, and notes that the country’s decline in fossil fuel usage resulted not from a slowdown in the economy or reduced energy demand, but from a rapid increase in the share of clean energy – solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric – in the power mix. “If this pattern is sustained, then it would herald a peak and sustained decline in China’s power-sector emissions.”
While noting that the possibility of a rebound in emissions later in the coming years cannot be ruled out should the government’s energy strategy significantly shift, Myllyvirta writes: “All of this suggests that there is potential for China’s emissions to continue to fall and for the country to achieve substantial absolute emissions reductions over the next five years”.
This progress is world-historic, because China’s emissions are reducing in spite of the fact that its overall energy demand continues to rise, and it continues to be a major industrial power. Thus its emissions reduction is the result not of de-industrialisation but of systematic investment and innovation in renewable energy. As such it is a model of sustainable development with important implications for other developing countries.
Lauri Myllyvirta is lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and senior fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute.
For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that China’s emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1% in the latest 12 months.
Electricity supply from new wind, solar and nuclear capacity was enough to cut coal-power output even as demand surged, whereas previous falls were due to weak growth.
The analysis, based on official figures and commercial data, shows that China’s CO2 emissions have now been stable, or falling, for more than a year.
However, they remain only 1% below the latest peak, implying that any short-term jump could cause China’s CO2 emissions to rise to a new record.
Other key findings include:
Growth in clean power generation has now overtaken the current and long-term average growth in electricity demand, pushing down fossil fuel use.
Power-sector emissions fell 2% year-on-year in the 12 months to March 2025.
If this pattern is sustained, then it would herald a peak and sustained decline in China’s power-sector emissions.
The trade “war” initiated by US president Donald Trump has prompted renewed efforts to shift China’s economy towards domestic consumption, rather than exports.
A new pricing policy for renewables has caused a rush to install before it takes effect.
There is a growing gap that would need to be bridged if China is to meet the 2030 emissions targets it pledged under the Paris Agreement.
If sustained, the drop in power-sector CO2 as a result of clean-energy growth could presage the sort of structural decline in emissions anticipated in previous analysis for Carbon Brief.
The trend of falling power-sector emissions is likely to continue in 2025.
However, the outlook beyond that depends strongly on the clean energy and emissions targets set in China’s next five-year plan, due to be published next year, as well as the economic policy response to the Trump administration’s hostile trade policy.
China’s emissions decline due to clean power
Over the past decade, China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement have risen by nearly a fifth, but there have been ups and downs along the way.
The shallow decline in 2015 and 2016 was due to a slump that followed a round of stimulus measures, while zero-Covid controls caused a sharper fall in 2022. Overall, however, emissions have continued to increase, pausing only during periods of economic stress.
More recently, there have been signs that China’s CO2 emissions could be close to reaching a peak and plateau, or even a period of structural decline.
The latest data, for the first quarter of 2025, shows that China’s CO2 emissions have now been stable or falling for more than a year, as shown in the figure below.
However, with emissions remaining just 1% below the recent peak, it remains possible that they could jump once again to a new record high.
Therefore, the future path of China’s CO2 emissions hangs in the balance, depending on trends within each sector of its economy, as well as China’s response to Trump’s tariffs.
These sectoral trends are explored further in the sections below, along with signals on what could be coming next from Chinese policymakers as they consider the country’s international climate pledge for 2035 and the five-year plan for 2026-2030.
Power-sector emissions fall while other sectors rebound
The reduction in China’s first-quarter CO2 emissions in 2025 was due to a 5.8% drop in the power sector. While power demand grew by 2.5% overall, there was a 4.7% drop in thermal power generation – mainly coal and gas.
Increases in solar, wind and nuclear power generation, driven by investments in new generating capacity, more than covered the growth in demand. The increase in hydropower, which is more related to seasonal variation, helped push down fossil power generation.
Power-sector emissions fell by more than total generation from fossil fuels, as the share of biomass and gas increased, while average coal power plant efficiency improved.
Specifically, the average amount of coal needed to generate each unit of electricity at coal-fired power plants fell by 0.9% year-on-year.
The first-quarter reduction in CO2 emissions from coal use in the power sector is shown at the bottom of the figure below, below CO2 changes in other sectors.
Outside of the power sector, emissions increased 3.5%, with the largest rises in the use of coal in the metals and chemicals industries.
The coal-to-chemicals industry is undergoing rapid expansion, driven by concerns about dependence on imported oil and gas. During the first quarter of 2025, it was also benefiting from more favourable economics due to lower coal prices and relatively high oil prices.
Crude steel production increased 0.6% year-on-year, metal products output by 6% and non-ferrous metals production by 2%. All of these increases were mainly due to a jump in March. Metals demand was boosted by the bump in exports ahead of the tariffs, but high output has continued well into April.
Real-estate construction “starts” fell by 24% and sales of new properties by 3%, indicating that the demand for cement, steel and glass from the construction sector continues to decline.
In contrast, economic output in vehicle and machinery production increased by 12% and 13%, respectively, signalling increased demand for metals.
Cement production fell by 1.4%, a slower rate of decrease than in previous years, likely due to an earlier start to weather-dependent construction activity thanks to warm weather.
Gas consumption increased by an estimated 6% in the power sector, due to a 14% increase in gas-fired power generation capacity, even as the average utilisation of the plants fell. However, gas consumption fell in other sectors, outweighing the increase for power.
Oil products consumption increased slightly, as shown by the bar at the top in the figure above. Warmer weather meant that weather-dependent construction and agricultural activity rose earlier in the year than usual.
However, structural factors, particularly vehicle electrification and the shift to liquified natural gas (LNG) in the freight sector, point to continued declines in oil demand.
Have China’s emissions peaked?
Following the 1.6% decline in the first quarter of 2025, China’s emissions have now been stable or falling for more than a year, starting from the beginning of March 2024.
However, emissions in the 12 months to the end of March 2025 were down only 1% from their recent peak, implying that any short-term jump could lead to a new record high.
After the sharp reduction in the first quarter, emissions from power generation are now down year-on-year for the most recent 12 months.
This has happened four times before over the past four decades – in 2009, 2012, 2015 and 2022. However, the current drop is the first time that the main driver is growth in clean power generation.
The falls in 2009 and 2012 were related to the global financial crisis and the Euro area crisis, while the drop in 2015 was driven by the construction and industrial sector slump that followed the 2008-12 stimulus program.
These economic shocks resulted in the sharp reduction in electricity demand shown in the figure below. The drop in 2022 was a combination of slow power demand growth due to strict “zero-Covid” measures and relatively strong clean-power additions.
Importantly, the growth in clean power generation in the first quarter of 2025 was not only larger than the rise in demand overall, it was also higher than the average increase in demand over the past 15 years, marked by the dashed line in the figure above.
Moreover, hydropower has been stable year-on-year in the past six months, implying that the clean-energy growth has been driven by increases in solar, wind and nuclear power capacity, not year-to-year variation in hydropower output.
Looking beyond electricity generation, all sectors registered a fall in emissions over the most recent four months from December 2024 to March 2025, except for coal-to-chemicals.
In order for China’s emissions overall to peak and then start declining, CO2 cuts in declining sectors will need to outweigh continued growth elsewhere.
For example, process emissions from cement production peaked in 2021 and have declined by 27% since then, as shown in the top left chart in the figure below.
Coal use outside the power and chemicals sectors peaked at the same time as cement, but has been rebounding since then and is now close to previous peak levels.
The China Coal Association expects coal use in the steel and building materials industries to fall, while coal consumption in the chemical industry is projected to continue growing.
Hopes of future growth in demand for coal are pinned on the chemical sector, described as a shift from using coal primarily as a fuel to a role as both a fuel and a raw material.
The association also believes that coal-fired power generation will resume growth – at least in the short term – but it recently revised down its projections for 2025 compared with the outlook at the end of 2024.
The tariff “war” may have affected expectations. One analysis suggests a 0.5 to 1 percentage point reduction in China’s GDP growth rate due to the tariffs could result in a similar reduction in demand for thermal coal – mainly used at power stations.
Oil product consumption has been declining since the post-Covid rebound ended in March 2024, falling 2% from its peak. The long-term trend is expected to be downwards, due to the electrification of transportation, despite rising demand for chemicals and aviation.
Gas use has been falling for a few months, but the trend is likely still increasing.
The table below lists the 12-month periods with the highest emissions for each sector, as well as the reduction since the latest peak in each case.
Sector Date of highest emissions Reduction since peak
Cement April 2021 -28.2%
Coal and gas: Power November 2024 -1.7%
Coal-to-chemicals March 2025 Still increasing
Coal: Other sectors April 2021 -3.0%
Gas: Other sectors December 2024 -0.8%
Oil products April 2024 -1.0%
Total CO2 February 2024 -0.8%
For all of the sectors other than cement production, it is too early to declare a definitive peak in emissions. Still, there are signs that other sectoral peaks could be past their peak, too.
Indeed, for oil products consumption and steel production, industry projections indicate that the future trend is likely to be falling.
For the power sector, clean-energy additions at or above current levels would likely lead to a structural peak, as clean-energy growth would more than cover electricity demand growth.
Together, these sectors cover more than 80% of China’s total emissions. If all of them enter a structural decline, then total emissions are very likely to do so too.
China pushes domestic demand in response to US tariffs
The economic and emissions outlook for this year and beyond will be affected by the Trump administration’s unprecedented trade tariffs – and China’s counter-measures.
The initial impact was a drop in emissions due to lower factory output in export-oriented coastal provinces and possible knock-on impacts on investment and consumer spending.
Conversely, the temporary easing of tariffs for 90 days will lead to a rush of orders from the US to make up for the short-lived slowdown in trade and to stockpile goods before the relief ends.
China’s reactions to the tariffs focused on counteracting the economic impacts with stimulus.
An anonymous comment piece in People’s Daily, the main Communist party affiliated newspaper, says the country should “strive to make consumption the main driving force and ballast stone of economic growth”, leveraging China’s large domestic market.
(The piece has the byline “People’s Daily commentator”, which implies that it is written by someone with authority.)
The article says that this will involve increasing consumer income, while easing financial and social burdens to boost purchasing power and willingness to consume.
While the temporary easing of tariffs will reduce the urgency of these measures, the US tariff rate on China, at 40%, remains much higher than it was before Trump’s presidency – and China’s leaders will likely want to prepare against the risk of renewed tariff hikes.
The focus will be creating domestic markets for the products China exports to the US. The long-held aim of rebalancing China’s economy towards consumption could finally become reality as a result. A successful rebalancing could mean less energy-intensive growth.
China’s response also includes redoubling its focus on “new quality productive forces”, a concept that emphasises new technology.
The concept includes the clean-energy industry, which has become such an important economic driver in China that it would be hard to leave out of stimulus plans.
A new list of low-carbon demonstration projects, published by the National Development and Reform Commission, provides a look at China’s priorities for clean-energy investment. Green hydrogen, energy storage, “virtual power plants” and industrial decarbonisation based on hydrogen are new growth areas.
In terms of the emissions implications of China’s response to Trump’s tariffs, the big question is whether stimulus focused at these favoured sectors – including the new low-carbon focus areas and other clean-energy industries – is deemed sufficient.
Some traditional recipients of stimulus spending, such as shipbuilding and public infrastructure, have already posted strong growth in the first quarter of this year as a result of stimulus measures announced in 2024.
New wind and solar pricing policy increases uncertainty
An additional source of uncertainty for China’s emissions comes in the form of its new electricity pricing policy for renewable energy, which enters into force in June.
The new policy removes price guarantees pegged to coal-power prices, with new wind and solar projects supposed to secure direct contracts with electricity buyers. This is likely to lead to lower prices being paid to new wind and solar projects.
However, it offers more favourable pricing – via “contracts for difference” – to the amount of new capacity needed to meet central government energy targets.
The immediate effect of the policy will likely be a rush of projects rushing to complete installation before the June deadline, so as to secure guaranteed prices.
This rush was already apparent in the latest data: 23 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 13GW of wind was added in March alone, up 80% and 110% from previous records for the month.
Furthermore, this year’s installations are likely to be very strong, even topping last year’s record, as a lot of centralised solar power and wind-power projects are racing to complete before the end of the 14th five-year plan period.
The China Wind Energy Association expects a new record of 105-115GW installed this year across onshore and offshore wind projects – up from the record-breaking 80GW last year – based on very active bidding last year. It also expects volumes to stay at that level even in 2026 and to then grow further towards 2030.
The China Electricity Council predicts an even larger wind-power capacity addition of 120GW in 2025. Another analyst projects a 20% drop in wind-power capacity additions in 2026, but after an even steeper increase in 2025 to 120-130GW of capacity added. So he also expects 2026 installations to be far above the current record year of 2024.
For solar, the China Photovoltaic Industry Association forecasts a drop in installations of 8-23% this year, from the staggering record of 278GW last year. Even the low end of this projection would see installations stay at 2023 levels in 2025 and then recover from there. The China Electricity Council’s projection for solar additions in 2025 matches the low end of the industry association’s forecast.
The figure below, based on these various projections, shows that additional electricity generation from new clean power capacity is expected to remain above last year’s record-breaking levels in both 2025 and 2026.
The projections shown in the figure above illustrate that the energy industry expects to be able to navigate the new renewable pricing policy and to maintain a high level of wind and solar additions over the next two years.
The policy has, however, created a lot more uncertainty. The stop-go cycle of a flood of installations in the first half of this year and then a slowdown in the second half – likely especially in the distributed solar segment – is likely to be a tough time for the industry.
The uncertainty relates above all to two things. First is the local implementation of the policy, as provincial governments have a lot of leeway here. Given the economic significance of clean energy for many provinces, they can be expected to seek to implement the policy in a way that minimises disruptions to the industry.
The other source of uncertainty is central government targets. The pricing policy ties the availability of more favorable pricing to central government energy targets, after clean-energy growth outpaced those targets by a wide margin in the past few years.
This emphasises the importance of the targets set for the next five year plan. The National Energy Administration (NEA) is targeting “more than 200GW” per year of clean-energy capacity added, which is far lower than the 360GW added last year.
The effect of the pricing policy also depends on market conditions, of course, with a risk of oversupply of coal-fired power due to the ongoing rapid addition of new coal-fired power plants.
China’s nuclear construction also keeps accelerating, with another 10GW of reactor projects approved in April, on top of 10GW approved in each of the previous two years. These projects will contribute to clean power supply towards 2030 as they are completed.
China faces widening gap to Paris pledge
The uncertainty around wind and solar expansion also has implications for China’s international climate pledges under the Paris Agreement.
After exceptionally slow progress in 2020-23, China is significantly off track for its 2030 commitment to reduce carbon intensity – the emissions per unit of economic output. It is almost certain to miss its 2025 target. Carbon intensity fell by 3.4% in 2024, falling short of the rate of improvement needed to meet the 2025 and 2030 targets.
The government work plan for 2025 did not set a carbon intensity target. It only included a target for reducing the intensity per unit of GDP for energy supply from fossil fuels by 3%, excluding use for raw materials.
This provides an indirect indication of the targeted improvement in carbon intensity. In 2024, carbon intensity fell by 3.4%, while fossil energy intensity fell by 3.8%. If the ratio is similar in 2025, then carbon intensity would need to fall by around 2.5% at a minimum, allowing CO2 emissions to increase by more than 2%, if the target for 5% GDP growth is also met.
The absence of a carbon intensity target and the lack of emphasis on reducing carbon intensity also signals that meeting the target is not seen as a priority at the moment.
The government work plan emphasised the “dual-carbon” goals of peaking CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.
However, these goals allow CO2 emissions to continue to increase until the end of the decade, implying the potential for a significant absolute emission increase from 2024 levels by 2030. The “dual-carbon” goals, even if met, therefore do not guarantee the delivery of China’s current key international climate commitment, the 2030 carbon-intensity target.
Even if emissions fell this year, improvements to carbon intensity would need to accelerate sharply in the next five years to meet China’s 2030 Paris commitment.
If China remains committed to its 2030 pledge, then this acceleration would need to be reflected in the targets set in the country’s next five-year plan.
Outlook for 2025 and beyond
The past 12 months mark a potentially significant turning point for China’s CO2 emissions, with clean-energy growth for the first time outpacing demand growth and displacing fossil fuel use in the power sector.
Record-breaking clean energy additions expected in 2025, despite new pricing policy uncertainties, suggest that the trend will continue this year.
The longer-term trajectory depends heavily on the targets set in the upcoming five-year plan and on the economic policy response to US tariffs and other economic headwinds.
In the short term, the US tariffs will dampen energy demand growth and emissions. Economic policy designed to offset the impacts of Trump’s tariffs will likely boost the clean-energy sector further and might lead to a shift towards domestic consumption as an economic driver, implying lower energy consumption growth relative to GDP.
On the other hand, previous rounds of economic stimulus in China have led to sharp increases in emissions. If China is to deliver stimulus that targets consumption and new technology, rather than emissions-intensive construction and heavy industry, then it will require a significant break with earlier patterns.
Whether power-sector emissions have peaked will be determined by a race between growth in clean energy supply and total power demand growth.
The new renewable electricity pricing policy, which ties the volume of “contracts for difference” given out to new solar and wind projects to national clean energy targets, further increases the importance of target-setting in China’s upcoming 2035 climate targets under the Paris Agreement and in the next 15th five-year plan, covering 2026-2030.
Sector-by-sector analysis suggests that, in addition to the power sector, emissions have likely also peaked in the building materials and steel sectors, as well as oil products consumption.
These sectors together represent over 80% of China’s fossil fuel-related CO2 emissions. However, there are uncertainties and potential for short-term rebound in all of these sectors.
The sector with remaining potential for substantial emissions growth is coal-to-chemicals. The drop in oil prices after US tariff announcements will undermine the profitability of this sector and likely lead to lower utilisation of plants, even as more capacity is added. China’s counter-tariffs on imports of petrochemical products from the US could have benefited the industry – but these have reportedly been waived.
All of this suggests that there is potential for China’s emissions to continue to fall and for the country to achieve substantial absolute emissions reductions over the next five years.
However, policy choices working in the opposite direction could just as easily see emissions increase further towards 2030.
About the data
Data for the analysis was compiled from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Energy Administration of China, China Electricity Council and China Customs official data releases, and from WIND Information, an industry data provider.
Wind and solar output, and thermal power breakdown by fuel, was calculated by multiplying power generating capacity at the end of each month by monthly utilisation, using data reported by China Electricity Council through Wind Financial Terminal.
Total generation from thermal power and generation from hydropower and nuclear power was taken from National Bureau of Statistics monthly releases.
Monthly utilisation data was not available for biomass, so the annual average of 52% for 2023 was applied. Power sector coal consumption was estimated based on power generation from coal and the average heat rate of coal-fired power plants during each month, to avoid the issue with official coal consumption numbers affecting recent data.
When data was available from multiple sources, different sources were cross-referenced and official sources used when possible, adjusting total consumption to match the consumption growth and changes in the energy mix reported by the National Bureau of Statistics.
CO2 emissions estimates are based on National Bureau of Statistics default calorific values of fuels and emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, for the year 2018. Cement CO2 emissions factor is based on annual estimates up to 2024.
For oil consumption, apparent consumption is calculated from refinery throughput, with net exports of oil products subtracted.
Rising Temperatures and the Rising Need for a Black Radical Lens in the Climate Change Discourse.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright 04 Jun 2025
National Black Radical Organizing Conference opening plenary entitled, "What Time is It?"
Liberal climate movements keep bargaining with capitalism, but the Black Radical Tradition knows survival requires its destruction. Environmentalism must adopt principles of abolition and anti-capitalism.
This past weekend, over 500 Black folk and their comrades descended upon Indianapolis, Indiana, for the Second National Black Radical Organizing Conference (NBROC). The goal, in part, of the Second NBROC, in the words of the conference’s organizers, was to “create a space to discuss, debate, train, assess, and create a collective way forward for Black/African/New Afrikan organizations and organizers who believe that our struggle is paramount to our survival.” On the question of the survival of Black/African people the world over, climate change (or as we refer to it, the racial capitalocene ) represents a profound and salient challenge formed and sustained by root causes -white “supremacy” ideology, colonization, and patriarchy (which is to say racial capitalism) - we as Black, African, and all oppressed people have been struggling against for multiple millenniums.
To this end, while the racial capitolocene was not showcased or focused on in depth during NBROC, the lessons that we can glean from the conference can certainly be applied to the larger climate change discussion. In fact, key takeaways from NBROC actually established the need for any approach to confront and dismantle the climate crisis to incorporate and be guided by the Black Radical Tradition (BRT) if there is to be any chance of efficacy. Hence, in the context of the climate crisis, just as in the context of all other systems of oppression, incorporation of the BRT represents a requisite intervention for the survival of Black, African, Indigenous, and all poor and working class people. For the purposes of this piece, the BRT, in the words of Cedric Robinson, is described as, “a revolutionary consciousness that proceeded from the whole historical experience of Black people,” and, furthermore, “a collection of cultural, intellectual, action-oriented labor aimed at disrupting social, political, economic, and cultural norms originating in anticolonial and antislavery efforts.”
NBROC stressed the need for understanding the moment that we’re in, which includes a necessary comprehension of the fact that the BRT is under attack and the methods utilized to wage this attack as part of the larger war on Black/African people. So, as NBROC asked, “What Time is It?”
In answering this question, our analysis must incorporate an understanding of the planetary, geopolitical, and human epoch, the racial capitalocene, that we currently find ourselves in. Moreover, our answer to this question, in the climate context, puts us in a better position to understand why the liberal, alabastrine, and euro-centric approach of mainstream western environmentalism in itself is not fit or equipped, philosophically, politically, or morally, to address the climate crisis at a requisite scale.
This much was revealed when Dr. Charisse Burden Stelly (aka Dr. CBS) proclaimed to attendees, “...we are disorganized and nothing brings this into sharper relief than our inability to stop a genocide.” From a climate perspective, Dr. CBS’s analysis can absolutely be applied to one of the most ignominious demonstrations of environmental racism and denial of human rights in the world, Cancer Alley in Louisiana. This is the sobriquet given to an 85-mile stretch of land, predominantly populated by Black people, due to the fact that the area’s residents have a 95% greater chance of developing cancer than the average United Statesian . And the reason for the high incidence of cancer, along with a slew of respiratory and developmental diseases, is the fossil fuel petrochemical industries and their toxic operations in concert with, as indicated by the group, Human Rights Watch , an unwillingness of lawmakers to protect residents of Cancer Alley.
Dr. CBS is absolutely correct when she notes how disorganized we are - and the mainstream environmental community may be the most shambolic entity in the world it purports to save. The U.S. climate community’s response to Cancer Alley is a perfect example in that it’s unacceptably similar to its response to the war crimes and genocide set upon the Palestinians by the zionist ethnostate of Israel - largely anodyne rhetoric bereft of an actual plan and set of initiatives to end the area’s documented human rights violations. And the failure to connect the denial of human rights and humanity of the Palestinian people to the denial of human rights and humanity of Black people who reside in Cancer Alley is rooted in the U.S. climate community’s lack of, and refusal to embrace, a Black Radical lens. The lack of a Black Radical lens is also demonstrated in mainstream environmentalism’s inability and aversion to decouple itself from two forces that play an outsized role in forming and exacerbating the climate crisis - capitalism and neoliberalism. As Max Ajl reminds us in his book A People’s Green New Deal , “Much of the liberal-left climate talk is based on administering rather than eliminating capitalism.”
Without a Black Radical lens, it will not possible for mainstream environmentalism to grasp and effectuate the organizing and political strategy necessary to confront and dismantle the climate crisis because those formations/organizations are flawed, liberal and capitalist to the core - they believe in unlimited growth and extraction necessary to preserve capital, even if it does result in externalities, sacrifices of human rights, and environmental racism - a toxic and co-opted form of utilitarianism that is reduced to cliche like, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
When knowledge of what needs to happen is met with an inertia that’s unwilling to exercise the necessary steps to make it happen, the conditions have been set for a revolutionary response - this irrefutable conclusion, in itself, vindicates the need for a BRT lens to inform, influence, and shape any discussion about the climate crisis as well as the collective initiatives necessary to confront and dismantle it. Robin D.G. Kelly, in discussing the BRT, adroitly espouses this idea, once writing, “the need to politicize the link between capitalism and racial domination is itself a response to how this link has been depoliticized and concealed by liberal and influential left theorists of capitalism.” Dr. Kelly could easily be describing a growing chorus of liberals, and even some leftists, who are calling for so-called Abundance theory that completely perambulates the myriad and incontrovertible ways that the climate crisis is also a crisis of racism and exploitation of poor and working class people and fails to connect environmental racism to fascism.
An understanding of the symbiotic relationship between racial capitalism and the climate crisis has yet to be demonstrated by the mainstream environmental community in the U.S. and globally. There are many reasons for this, chief among them is the fact that these liberal nonprofit organizations and institutions are not anti-capitalist in the slightest and believe that capitalism can be tweaked to be fairer, safer, and less racist. We saw this when far too many climate groups touted Biden and the Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) while also knowing that numerous elements of the bill would sacrifice Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor environmental justice communities.
The IRA is the antithesis of the BRT because it’s nothing more (or, we should say it was nothing more as the Republicans are poised to all but kill it as part of their “Big Beautiful Bill”) than greenwashed capitalism, hence why it had no problem sacrificing Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor people by opening federal lands and waters to more oil and gas drilling, deregulating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and allocating the vast majority of federal dollars through tax credits to so-called red states where their “right to work” laws result in cheaper and more exploited labor force. The Abundancers and the Green Keynesists', who champion the IRA, refusal to connect climate solutions to a final solution for capitalism, are demonstrated in their lack of understanding that a capitalist approach to expanding renewable energy can fuel capitalism as much as oil and gas already does. These forces also refuse to embark on a collective campaign to de-commodify energy and transform it into a framework that primarily serves the commons. The BRT understands that the commons are consistently destroyed by privatization and imprisonment - and this understanding illuminates another key variable missing from mainstream environmentalism’s climate change equation - an abolitionist framework.
While waxing full poetic during the “What Time Is It” panel at NBROC, writer and activist Derecka Purnell explained the need to apply an abolitionist lens to our organizing and political strategy because policing and militarism are key for capitalism to operate. This is a take one rarely, if ever, hears from the mainstream environmentalists, despite the rising repression of direct action and other forms of protests against polluters and toxic fossil fuel infrastructure like pipelines. For instance, activists and justice seekers in Georgia who took direct action against the planned Atlanta -based Cop City are now facing RICO and domestic terrorism charges and the murder of Indigenous Cop City protestor, Tortiguita , at the hands of the State both demonstrate that we’ve been living in a fascist state well before the second Trump presidency. With the exception of ephemeral attention and outrage, the mainstream environmental community has more recently acted like a U.S. Navy submarine in enemy waters and gone quiet on the issue of Cop Cities and the murder of Tortuguita as a method for suppressing climate liberation activism.
The BRT, on the other hand, makes the connection between domestic/international militarism, racial capitalism, and the climate crisis. For instance, as Dr. Kelley points out when discussing the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)’ A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice , “By calling for an end to the war on Black people - here and abroad - and the reinvestment of resources from the carceral and military state to education, health, and safety, creating a just democratically controlled economy, the Movement for Black Lives effectively presents a plan to transform the entire nation, save the planet, and ultimately end racial capitalism.” The BRT, like Kelly, understands, “the new abolitionists are not interested in making capitalism fairer, safer, and less racist. They know this is impossible. Rather, they want nothing less than to bring an end to racial capitalism." The Black Hive at M4BL’s Black Climate Mandate , which is informed by the BRT, showcases a better understanding of this conclusion than any version of the Green New Deal, save the Green Party’s.
However, the languorous approach to fascism, militarism, and racial capitalism exercised by mainstream environmentalism is why, as Dr. CBS explained at NBROC, liberals sound the alarm of fascism while also planning for the next election more than they are developing infrastructure and organizing for resiliency in the face of a climate crisis that will, in the next few months, deliver the most extreme heat, extreme storms, extreme drought, and extreme smoke from associated wildfires since last year and one that’s pushing us to an even earlier breach of the 1.5 degree global warming threshold than previously anticipated . This reductive approach and lack of proactive strategies yield a willful refusal to embrace the reality that the racial capitalocene is a manifestation of the larger global war on Black/African people that is sustained by western colonial governments and driven by the same white “supremacy” ideology that drives the climate crisis. The BRT understands what mainstream environmentalism does not - the climate crisis is not something that can be reformed into submission, it, like fascism, militarism, and racial capitalism, must be summarily abolished.
Moreover, without a Black Radical lens in the climate discourse, we will not link the climate crisis to an assault on human rights. National organizer Austin Cole made this clear as part of a discussion I had with him during NBROC, in which he noted, “the climate crisis must be about people-centered human rights and our ability to survive.” And if, as Audre Lorde, reminds us, “survival is a promise” then our survival as Black people/Africans also requires a collective promise to study, exercise, and promote the BRT as a requisite tool to confront and dismantle the climate crisis and, in the process, affirm our human rights and self determination while also keeping us alive.
Drones, Elephants and Imperialist Interests in Africa
Aby L. Sène 04 Jun 2025
Conservation in Africa has long been a smokescreen for imperial power. Veiled behind the cause of environmentalism and stopping poachers, western governments, intelligence agencies, and billionaire-funded NGOs expand their reach by deploying drones, private armies, and surveillance tech.
The bombastic and unfounded claims of “white genocide” by Donald Trump overshadowed other important discussion points raised during his meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in May 2025. During the news conference that amounted to a theatrical performance, white South African business mogul, JP Rupert, intervened to assuage the tension caused by Trump’s ambush. In doing so, he did not miss the opportunity to present himself as a savior of African wildlife whose noble quest to save species was obstructed by the ostensible incompetence of an African president. Rupert remarked :
“I actually got drones donated for the Peace Parks to stop elephant and lion poaching and his [President Ramaphosa] predecessor stopped the importation because he said the United States would spy on us...basically US spying, how ridiculous.”
Rupert’s statement about former South African president Jacob Zuma, resisting drone importation for anti-poaching efforts out of security concerns, should alert us to the insidiousness of Western and capitalist-led wildlife conservation strategies in Africa. Not least because the transboundary nature of protecting wildlife roaming across vast expanses of land that cover multiple countries provides an opportunity for state and non-state actors to expand their influence under little public scrutiny.
For many in the conservation field and critical of it, Rupert’s comment resonated for several reasons. On the surface, the chauvinist tone of the white settler capitalist reflected the deep-seated racist idea in mainstream conservation that Africans are incapable of protecting wildlife. Furthermore, it wasn’t lost on some of us that Rupert, the director of a powerful conservation NGO called Peace Parks Foundation, had used the White House news conference to convey the idea of using military and surveillance technology for wildlife conservation in Africa. It is common for U.S. and British conservationists to lobby their governments for military aid despite the well-documented violence of militarized conservation in the Global South. But most importantly, Zuma’s concerns that the importation of drones to fight poaching would be an overreach of the U.S. government into the security apparatus of South Africa, which Rupert attempted to discredit, were well-founded. The then president of South Africa was likely informed about wildlife conservation’s record of being integrated with gathering intelligence for states and imperialist interests, including in his own country.
In 1987, the British military led Operation Lock , a project of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), whose founding president was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands , which was primarily aimed at fighting rhino poaching in Southern African countries. The operation was carried out by a security firm, KAS, led by Sir David Stirling, founder of the British Special Air Services (SAS). It was headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, but extended its reach by infiltrating wildlife trade networks in neighboring states, including Namibia, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique. During the deployment of Operation Lock, Southern African government officials expressed major concerns that the anti-poaching agents were gathering wider intelligence to assist the apartheid regime in destabilizing the Front-Line states. Internal documents reveal that the head of operations, Tim Crooke, a former SAS officer, collaborated with South Africa’s superspy, Craig Williamson, who was running a covert operation against the African National Congress (ANC) for the apartheid regime. In 2015, the accusations were corroborated by John Hanks, the former director of Africa Programs for WWF-International, in his book Operation Lock and the War on Rhino Poaching . Operation Lock is just one of several examples that predate current interest in intelligence-led approaches to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. Researchers have called attention to the rapid and alarming convergence of wildlife conservation and the Western global security apparatus.
Wildlife conservation and intelligence gathering for imperialism
In her book, Security and Conservation: The Politics of the Illegal Wildlife Trade , Rosaleen Duffy, one of the most prominent researchers in militarized conservation, critically reflects on this convergence, drawing from Western-led operations to combat wildlife trafficking over the past 40 years. She examines the resurgence of transnational anti-poaching initiatives in recent years in the context of the US and NATO-led war on terrorism.
In the early 2010s, claims surfaced that poaching was a source of funding for terrorist organizations, most notably Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda and Lord’s Resistance Army. Those claims were challenged by researchers working on illegal wildlife trade networks, explaining that the link between poaching and terrorism was overblown. In 2017, a study by Tim Wittig reported that poaching and wildlife trafficking remained about fundamentally technical issues for national authorities rather than about issues of significance for international security. Despite our rudimentary understanding of how poaching is connected to terrorism, conservation NGOs have used this argument to gain the attention of the U.S State Department and the Department of Defense.
In November 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech highly praised by Western conservation NGOs, in which she elevated the illegal wildlife trade to an issue of national security. Francis Massé and Jared Margulies’s study on the geopolitical ecology of conservation elucidates how these claims have reshaped U.S. foreign assistance to biodiversity conservation. Between 2002 and the end of fiscal year 2018, the US Fisheries and Wildlife Services Division of International Affairs provided assistance to 4142 projects across 106 countries worth over $301 million. Africa received around 60 percent of that assistance. Starting in 2014, an increasing portion has been allocated annually ($ 45 million in 2014 to $91 million in 2017) specifically to intelligence-led operations and transnational law enforcement coordination aimed at tackling wildlife trafficking at the expense of other conservation priorities, such as improving livelihoods and ecological monitoring and restoration. Similar patterns can be observed for U.K. foreign conservation assistance.
Gathering and sharing data on wildlife trafficking, the geographical patterns of the trade, the individuals and groups involved, the transport routes, and entry and exit ports are central to Western intelligence-led approaches. Conservation NGOs, including WWF, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) , Wildlife Conservation Society , Zoological Society of London , continue to hire advisors trained in military or police intelligence, or partner with private intelligence companies staffed by former operatives from intelligence services such as Bureau of State Security in apartheid South Africa and MOSSAD intelligence agency of Israel.
In a moment of cataclysmic shifts in geopolitical dynamics when imperial powers spare no effort to maintain their hegemony, we would be mistaken to downplay the use of intelligence gathered in wildlife conservation by Western governments. It would be equally naïve to take JP Rupert’s eagerness to donate drones to Peace Parks for the protection of elephants and lions at face value. From the pedigree of a capitalist class, Rupert represents the generation that embeds themselves in the environmental movement to obscure new forms of capitalist accumulation.
Wildlife conservation and capitalist accumulation
JP Rupert chairs the board of directors of Peace Parks Foundation , a conservation agency managing Transboundary Conservation Areas (TCA) throughout Southern African countries. Founded by Prince Bernhard and the South African business mogul, Aaron Rupert, father of JP Rupert, Peace Parks manages a staggering 75.7 million hectares of land, all spanning across 11 Southern African countries. Another major player in the management of TCAs is African Parks, founded by Dutch Billionaire, Paul Fentener van Vlissingen and managed by a group of venture capitalists, acquired management rights over 20 million hectares of land across Southern, Central and West Africa.
Their strategy is presented as “a clear business approach to conserving Africa’s wildlife and remaining wild areas, securing vast landscapes and carrying out the necessary activities needed to protect the parks and their wildlife”. Both organizations have drawn sharp criticism over their fervent push to further militarize conservation areas, contracting with US and Israeli security and military technology companies to train rangers and secure weapons and surveillance technologies to protect its parks.
The convergence of wildlife conservation and the global military-industrial complex is supported by a capitalist class all too eager to protect wildlife as its prized property, while opening new markets to US, British and Israeli military technology companies. Wildlife has been an instrument to expand, deepen and militarize the control of land and resources by foreign capital. Peace Parks Foundation and African Parks are not the only actors in this arena. In fact, the ascendancy of finance capital and its near total capture of the African conservation sector is glaring solely by examining the highest seat of leadership in the largest conservation NGOs active in Africa, namely WWF, Conservation International and Wildlife Conservation Society.
There is legitimate cause for concern about the declining wildlife population. But saving elephants and other animals, under the aegis of Western states and capital, has been a veneer for entrenched imperialism in Africa. The western model of wildlife conservation has always been a structural force in imperialism. Since the dawn of European colonization of the world's peripheries and settler colonies, the enclosures of wildlife habitats as a ‘conservation’ practice have galvanized the massive dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Today, the militarization and privatization of wildlife enclosures covering different countries is a continuation of the colonial history of conservation.
Imperialist institutions impose technocratic and oppressive conservation strategies while biodiversity loss continues unabated. According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the primary driver of decline in wildlife populations is habitat loss due to agricultural development. In Africa , particularly, natural habitats are being transformed for commercial farming to produce commodities (i.e., biofuels and grains) for export to the global North. Therefore, saving elephants and lions in Africa requires a fundamental challenge to the global capitalist system.
Carbon capture company emits more than it captures
June 3, 2025
CCS illusion only delays the elimination of fossil fuels
Climeworks CO2 capture and storage plant in Iceland produces more emissions than it removes.
by Chris Lang
REDD-Monitor, June 2, 2025
Between April 2021 and October 2024, British physicist Michael de Podesta paid £40 per month to carbon capture company Climeworks. In return, the company promised to remove 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide each month. But in September 2024, de Podesta wrote that “when I checked the other day they had removed precisely no CO₂ from the atmosphere”.
De Podesta was paying £800 per ton of CO₂ removed. Climeworks had promised to remove the CO₂ within six years. By the time Climeworks actually removed any CO₂ from the atmosphere, some time in 2027, de Podesta would have handed over almost £3,000.
“Am I a gullible idiot?” de Podesta asked himself.
De Podesta wrote about his doubts on his blog and asked whether Climeworks is a scam. He was subsequently contacted by a journalist from the Icelandic newspaper, Heimildin.
On 15 May 20225, Bjartmar Oddur Þeyr Alexandersson and Valur Grettisson’s article about Climeworks was published by Heimildin under the headline, “Climework’s capture fails to cover its own emissions”.
The following day, de Podesta wrote, “I conclude that I am indeed a gullible idiot.”
Climeworks emits more than it captures
Climeworks started operations in Iceland in 2021. Company officials claim that the company’s machines can capture 12,000 tons per year. But since 2021, the company has only captured 1,058 tons of CO₂.
Climeworks annual emissions in 2023 were 1,700 tons of CO₂. Alexandersson and Grettisson write that, The emissions that occur due to Climeworks’ activities are therefore more than it captures. Since the company began capturing in Iceland, it has captured a maximum of one thousand tons of CO₂ in one year.
Heimildin’s journalists sent a series of questions to Climeworks. They asked why CO₂ capture is going so poorly that Climeworks cannot even offset its own emissions. They asked when people and corporations that have bought carbon credits from the company can expect to receive them.
Climeworks did not reply to the questions.
Target: 1% of all global emissions by 2025
Climeworks was founded in 2009 in Switzerland by Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher. In a 2017 interview with CarbonBrief, Gebald said, “The vision of our company is to capture 1% of global emissions by 2025.”
He added that this is “super ambitious” but that it is “something that is feasible”.
The company also hoped to reduce the cost of capturing one ton of CO₂ from the atmosphere to about US$100. The current price listed on Climeworks’ website is US$1,000 per ton of CO₂.
Orca and Mammoth
In September 2021, Climeworks opened its first plant, Orca, in Iceland. The company states that the plant “can capture up to 4,000 tons of CO₂ from the air annually”. Climeworks sells the captured CO₂ to a subsidiary of Reykjavík Energy called Carbfix, which dilutes the CO₂ with water and pumps it 1,000 metres underground where it mineralises into rock.
Carbfix planned to inject 40,000 tons of CO₂ into the ground every year. It hasn’t achieved anything like so much.
Orca has issued just 953 carbon credits, or CO₂ removal certificates (CORCs).
In May 2024, Climeworks started a new direct air capture and storage plant in Iceland. This one is called Mammoth and is designed to capture 36,000 tons of CO₂ per year.
But in its first 10 months of operation the plant only captured 105 tons of CO₂.
Climeworks sells carbon credits to individuals or companies. More than 21,000 “climate pioneers” have bought carbon credits from Climeworks, including Microsoft, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Shopify, British Airways, Lego, Swiss Air, PwC, and TikTok.
In October 2024, Morgan Stanley signed an agreement with Climeworks for 40,000 carbon credits. At Climeworks’ current rate of CO₂ removal, Morgan Stanley will be waiting several decades before it sees its carbon credits.
Part of the problem is that Climeworks does not only sell carbon credits based on tons of CO₂ that have been captured and stored underground. That would be bad enough, since the carbon credits are used to legitimise continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels.
Climateworks’ business model involves selling carbon credits for CO₂ that it hopes to capture in the future. One-third of all the carbon credits that Climeworks hopes that its Mammoth plant will capture over the next 25 years have already been sold.
The company uses the money raised to build more carbon removal plants. Which allows Climeworks to forward sell more carbon credits. It’s all a bit like a carbon Ponzi scheme.
Climeworks has orders for 380,000 carbon credits, of which it has actually delivered only 1,058.
Bloomberg journalist Akshat Rathi recently asked Jan Wurzbacher about these numbers. Wurzbacher replied,
“If we compare our order book with the deliveries, that is a very normal thing that there is a large order book compared to a smaller number of deliveries, because the whole business model of Climeworks goes along the ways that we are closing offtake contracts with our customers, which are then used to finance future plants and then captures CO₂ with those plants.”
In 2024, Climeworks started offering “carbon removal portfolios”. In addition to direct air capture, these include afforestation/reforestation, biochar, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and enhanced weathering.
Alexandersson and Grettisson write that the experts that Heimildin has spoken to believe that this step by the company is a sign that Climeworks’ capture projects are not delivering the results that were expected and that this method is now being used to try to produce carbon credits that the company has already sold, but is having difficulty delivering.”
Climeworks has raised or been promised US$800 million in funding. Climeworks is one of the companies involved in Project Cypress, a proposed US$600 million direct air capture hub in Louisiana, USA. When completed, it is supposed to remove 1 million tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere every year.
But with Donald Trump as US president, it’s likely that the Louisiana plant will be delayed or cancelled. On 14 May 2025, Climeworks announced that it was laying off 106 people, or about 22% of its staff.
Michael de Podesta, the British physicist who bought Climeworks’ carbon credits told Heimildin that the company has “all the hallmarks of a scam”:
“There are undoubtedly a lot of highly paid people traveling the world to sell their services to large corporations to remove carbon credits in the future. They are using a semi-magical technology that doesn’t work as well as expected (better known as Orca) but will work perfectly in a larger version (Mammoth). I am urged to convince my friends to join the project. The answers are scarce and full of PR chatter. Climeworks’ operations look like a scam and talk like one. But is it a scam? I don’t know. I think it could work, but the company’s answers are so opaque that it’s hard to say.”
Designed to delay the end of fossil fuels
Climeworks is selling carbon credits for carbon removals, the vast majority of which have not yet taken place. The three biggest buyers of direct air capture carbon credits are Microsoft, Airbus, and Amazon. All three of these Big Polluters are increasing their greenhouse gas emissions.
In the case of Microsoft and Amazon, the increase in pollution is because of the huge energy demand of the data centres needed for AI.
This is a double whammy for the climate. First, a massive increase in energy use for data centres means increased emissions. Second, a false solution based on buying carbon credits from a technology that consumes a huge amount of energy.
In 2023, Al Gore gave a TED talk in which he talked about direct air capture. He pointed out that it uses an “awful lot of energy”.
“CO₂ makes up 0.035% of the air. So we’re going to vacuum the other 99.96% to get that little bit out. Come on! Really? Come on.”
He referred to Climeworks by name and made fun of the company’s Orca machine in Iceland. “This is state of the art,” he said. “Looks pretty impressive doesn’t it?”
Gore pointed out that direct air capture is very useful for fossil fuel corporations.
In March 2023, Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, said the quiet part out loud:
“We believe that our direct capture technology is going to be the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time. This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years.”
Heimildin interviewed Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. In his 2023 book “No Miracles Needed,” Jacobson argued that we already have the technology that we need to address the climate crisis.
Jacobson told Heimildin that carbon capture and storage technology is designed to delay the end of fossil fuels:
“This technology perpetuates the business model of oil and gas companies. This is what this technology is designed to do. None of this is doing any good for the climate. On the contrary, this kind of technology is making things worse.”
Wastewater Plants Could Protect Against PFAS Pollution
Posted on May 26, 2025 by Conor Gallagher
Conor here: A common sense solution that the US is of course not only not pursuing, but moving further away from. And unfortunately this is another issue where RFK Jr. has been on the right track, but it seems the administration only values his worst ideas.
The following piece makes the argument that wastewater treatment plants have the authority to act but aren’t doing so. While the argument makes perfect sense from a public health viewpoint, there are of course economic roadblocks, such as the fear that requiring industrial customers to control PFAS pollution would cause them to move to a more “friendly” locale.
By Bonnie Angermeier, a senior legislative associate at the Southern Environmental Law Center specializing in federal PFAS, solar energy, and animal agriculture policy. Originally published at Undark.
A class of humanmade compounds — known as PFAS, or forever chemicals — are insidious and harmful, and local U.S. wastewater utilities are likely giving them a free ride into drinking water and food. Nationwide — in states such as Maine, Michigan, and Texas — sewage sludge from wastewater plants that is contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances is being unwittingly spread onto farmland, where the chemicals can infiltrate our food and water and devastate the livelihoods of farmers.
In many cases, wastewater plants are making these contamination issues worse. While industries that manufacture and use PFAS should bear the primary responsibility for restricting the discharge of these toxic compounds into our environment, wastewater plants have a dual role to play in reducing exposure. Amidst a presidential administration that announced plans last week to roll back and delay drinking water protections for PFAS, making use of existing laws to control PFAS pollution is crucial. A Clean Water Act authority known as the National Pretreatment Program allows wastewater plants to curb the spread of these chemicals. They’re just not using it.
Currently, conventional wastewater treatment processes do not remove PFAS. Instead, PFAS discharged by industries to wastewater plants pass through the plants and into waterways and sewage sludge, also known as biosolids. Biosolids can then be sold and applied to land as fertilizer, allowing PFAS contamination to migrate into soil, crops, livestock, groundwater, and surface water. Applying PFAS-laden sludge to farmland seriously threatens our food chain, to say nothing of how this practice jeopardizes farmers’ livelihoods when they are unable to sell contaminated crops and livestock.
But wastewater plants have a major opportunity to control the influx and spread of PFAS chemicals. Pretreatment authority allows the plants to require local industrial customers to remove PFAS before they send wastewater to the plant for additional treatment. If used widely, this would keep high levels of industrial PFAS contamination out of wastewater plants and, in turn, out of biosolids and waterways.
Curtailing biosolids contamination would not only reduce PFAS presence on farmland and in our food chain, it would also alleviate the burden on drinking water utilities (which are separate from wastewater plants) striving to provide clean water to their communities. As it stands, many wastewater plants are irresponsibly discharging the PFAS they receive from their industrial customers back into our drinking water sources. Even worse, treatment interactions can create higher levels of PFAS. Since most drinking water utilities lack the treatment methods to remove PFAS, these chemicals flow through our taps and into our glasses.
Wastewater plants are paid on the front end to accept industrial wastewater and on the back end for selling sludge, with some multistate utilities bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Total U.S. wastewater treatment revenue amounted to $65.3 billion in 2019. The very least these public utilities can do is use their pretreatment authority to prevent PFAS pollution from reaching our drinking water and food.
Fortunately, this authority has already been proven. Wastewater plants have used the pretreatment program for decades to address toxic substances such as lead, mercury, pesticides, and dioxins at minimal cost. Indeed, approximately 1,600 wastewater plants are actively using pretreatment authority to set local limits that prevent industrial pollutants from passing through and interfering with their systems. This approach is equitable and cost-effective: It appropriately puts the burden of removing toxic chemicals on the industries that profit from their manufacture and use, rather than on drinking water utilities and communities. It should be no different for PFAS.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agrees. In December 2022, EPA issued guidance to states that affirmed the authority of wastewater plants to use the pretreatment program to address PFAS pollution, albeit in the absence of federal pretreatment standards. In practice, pretreatment authority can significantly reduce PFAS contamination. For example, PFAS levels entering the Haw River from Burlington, North Carolina’s wastewater plant went from a peak of over 33,000 parts per trillion down to below 600 parts per trillion after implementing pretreatment. (The Southern Environmental Law Center, where I work as a senior legislative associate, negotiated a settlement agreement between the city and concerned citizens, though I was not involved.) Some wastewater plants in Michigan are also effectively using pretreatment to curb PFAS pollution — achieving up to 99 percent PFAS reductions in biosolids.
If pretreatment authority was used broadly, communities nationwide would reap near-term benefits from reduced PFAS exposure. So what’s the hold up?
Although wastewater plants are required to evaluate and establish local limits for pollutants like PFAS, many are recklessly choosing not to do so. Instead, they knowingly pass industrial pollution on, leaving communities to bear the health and financial burdens.
Some wastewater plants claim they need federal standards to act, but the Clean Water Act affirms they can set local pollution limits in the absence of such standards. Other plants are concerned that if they ask their industrial customers to control PFAS pollution, industries will pick up and move to another town, where they can pollute as they please. This is why it’s so important that wastewater plants hold all industrial polluters to the same standards. If communities are to be equally protected from PFAS exposure, then wastewater plants must employ their pretreatment authority across the board.
While the previous administration made momentous strides by establishing drinking water standards for six PFAS and designating two PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, it has taken decades to get to this point, and now these regulations are tied up in litigation. Codifying new federal policy and regulations is notoriously slow, and progress has been further delayed by the current administration’s decision to rescind drinking water protections. In the absence of adequate federal protections against PFAS exposure, pretreatment is key in keeping PFAS out of our drinking water and away from our farms and food.
As entities that pride themselves as public servants, wastewater plants have a responsibility to the communities they serve to reduce and control industrial PFAS contamination. The vast scope of PFAS contamination underscores the need to curb pollution wherever possible, prevent further spread, and reestablish responsibility for protecting public health. We cannot afford to wait for thousands of PFAS to be regulated individually, or to play whack-a-mole with each type of PFAS-polluting industry. The time is now to use pretreatment authority to hold polluters accountable.
Brazil’s MST Promotes Agrarian Reform Amidst Environmental Crisis During Nature Day
June 4, 2025
MST flag on a field next to books. Photo: MST.
Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) launched the third edition of Nature Day this Monday, an initiative that is part of its national plan “Plant Trees, Produce Healthy Food.” The goal is not only reforestation but also strengthening popular agrarian reform as an alternative to the current environmental crisis.
This was stated by Camilo Augusto, project coordinator, in an interview with local media. Since 2021, the MST has promoted this event across Brazil, carrying out activities that include planting, seed distribution and mobilizing around environmental preservation.
A prominent example is in Paraná state, where aerial sowing of juçara palm and araucaria pine seeds has become a nationally recognized tradition. Both are endangered species.
This year, according to Camilo Augusto, the MST hopes to release more than 15 tons of these seeds. “It’s a real feat. In a protected area, this could remove these species from the endangered species list,” Augusto stated, highlighting the initiative’s potential impact.
For the MST, Nature Day is also a fundamental tool for exposing those truly responsible for the climate emergency. “The important thing is to denounce those who deforest, burn and pollute the waters, and to present an alternative proposal that doesn’t rely solely on financial figures and data to solve the problem, as capital does,” Augusto explained.
The event includes technical seed monitoring with the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), measuring germination rates and planting effectiveness as environmental preservation strategies.
This initiative has support from traditional communities – including Indigenous peoples, riverside dwellers and quilombolas – and institutions like the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), Federal Police (PF), Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) and National Supply Company (CONAB).
Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) launched its third Nature Day, an event that not only seeks reforestation but also denounces those responsible for the environmental crisis and promotes popular agrarian reform as a transformative solution.
Please Ensure That the Planet Does Not Burn: The Twenty-Third Newsletter (2025)
The climate and environmental crisis we live in are driven by the predatory nature of capitalism. Can COP30 and other multilateral initiatives reverse the trend?
5 June 2025
Rebecca Lee Kunz (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), Coyote Skin – Dusty Paws, 2022.
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Reading documents from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) makes me morose. Everything looks terrible. This is largely due to the social processes set in motion by capitalism, including the harsh use of nature and the reliance on carbon-based fuels. For example:
One million of the estimated eight million species of plants and animals on the planet are threatened with extinction.
The main threat to a majority of species at risk of extinction is biodiversity loss caused by the capitalist agribusiness system of food production.
Agricultural production – currently accounting for more than 30% of the world’s habitable land surface – is responsible for 86% of projected losses in terrestrial biodiversity because of land conversion, pollution, and soil degradation.
These are three out of hundreds of points that could be made from as many scientific documents. It is important to emphasise the fact that environmental degradation has not been caused by humans in general, but by a certain system of organising society which we call capitalism.
Michael Armitage (Kenya), Dandora (Xala, Musicians), 2022.
The problem with the term Anthropocene (which began to be used first by scientists, then by social scientists) is that it implies that humans – as an undifferentiated whole – have created the ecological crisis we are facing. This subtly downplays the role of the capitalist system and its accompanying class and national divides. However, data shows that humanity is using the equivalent of about 1.7 Earths to sustain our current consumption levels. In other words, we are consuming natural resources 75% times faster than nature can regenerate them each year. Unless we find another habitable planet, there is no arithmetic way to solve the problem. This is not a matter of the climate alone, but also of the environmental stress we have placed on the Earth (such as through deforestation, overfishing, overuse of fresh water, and soil degradation).
If we break this undifferentiated concept of humanity down by country, clear divisions emerge. If everyone lived like an average person in the United States, then we would need five Earths. If everyone lived like an average person in the European Union, we would need three Earths. If everyone lived like an Indian, we would need 0.8 Earths. If everyone lived like a person from Yemen, we would need 0.3 Earths. An undifferentiated concept of humanity disguises the great differences across the world and suppresses the need of some peoples – such as in Yemen – to increase their consumption in order to have a dignified life.
The concept of the Anthropocene masks more than it reveals.
Roger Botembe (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Les Initiés, 2001.
In a few months, private jets will land in Belém, Brazil, for COP30. Situated at the estuary of the Amazon River, Belém is an ideal location for the thirtieth year of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Over the past quarter century, the Amazon region has suffered from terrible deforestation, with the Brazilian Amazon alone experiencing total forest loss of 264,000 square kilometres from 2000 to 2023 – equivalent to the combined area of New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s intensive programme of conservation has made considerable advances in reversing this trend, but it needs to go further. Holding COP30 in Belém will be a strong message not only to save the Amazon but to highlight the future of the planet and of humanity.
Our team in Brazil is currently working on a series of publications on the capitalist crisis of climate and the environment to be distributed at COP30. It is already clear from our analysis that there is no solution to be found in ‘green capitalism’; as Jason Hickel wrote in one of our Pan African newsletters, it is capitalism itself that is the problem we face. Below, please find some preliminary demands that go beyond the façade of green capitalism.
1. Climate and environmental discussions must be democratised. There is no room for closed-door meetings financed by corporations that have a vested interest in environmental and climate destruction. For instance, COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, was partly funded by oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Octopus Energy, the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and TotalEnergies as well as the US Chamber of Commerce and the World Economic Forum (itself partly funded by the US government). He who pays the piper calls the tune, an adage that is not meaningless when it comes to money and power. Such a UN conference must be funded by governments and transparent about the conversations taking place in all meetings.
2. The world’s governments must strengthen their own agreements and treaty obligations. It is important to note that due to the pressure from the US and EU, none of the major climate agreements adopted strong language for compensation, or what is known as ‘loss and damage’ (i.e., climate reparations). Contributions to the loss and damage fund are voluntary, as reflected by a number of processes and treaties from the 1992 UNFCCC to the 2013 Warsaw International Mechanism, 2015 Paris Agreement, 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact, and the 2022 Loss and Damage Fund agreement.
Denilson Baniwa (Brazil), Awá uyuká kisé, tá uyuká kurí aé kisé irü [quem com ferro fere, com ferro será ferido], 2018.
3. There must be a fair energy transition plan that is democratically shaped. Such a plan must include ending governments subsidies for private carbon-based fuel companies. Instead those funds must be used to promote a new energy matrix and protect communities from the adverse impact of the climate and environmental catastrophe.
4. The global economy must be reshaped through agrarian reform. Such a reform must emphasise a science-based and democratic form of agriculture that protects the soil, water, and air. Governments must carry out studies to assess what it means to restructure agriculture in order to address the climate and environmental catastrophe. We need new forms of agroclimatic mapping and data to help us understand how to harness local communities’ knowledge to protect the natural ecosystem while finding ways to sustainably use natural resources for the benefit of all. Such a mapping exercise will help us better understand how to combat deforestation and promote reforestation, how to properly harness water resources for our own consumption and energy, and how to regulate mining activities to draw resources from the earth without causing catastrophic social and environmental destruction. Can we, for instance, pledge to reach net-zero deforestation by 2027?
Sebastião Salgado (Brazil), Valley of Javari Indigenous Territory, State of Amazonas, Brazil, 1998.
The photograph above is by our friend Sebastião Salgado (1944–2025), who died on 23 May. Salgado portrayed the working class and peasantry with dignity and without romanticising their exploitation. He was always in solidarity with their struggles and organisations. After the 1996 Eldorado do Carajás Massacre, which killed nineteen activists connected to the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) in South Pará, Salgado, alongside the singer Chico Buarque and the writer José Saramago, created a book called Terra (Land), the proceeds of which went to the MST. This, alongside Salgado’s donation of some of his photographs, helped the MST build its Florestan Fernandes National School.
Salgado greatly enjoyed the work of Tricontinental and would occasionally send a note of appreciation for the materials we produce. We bow our heads in respect for his great contributions to humanity.
In 1843, a man named Julio Cezar Ribeiro de Souza was born in Belém, on the other side of the Amazon from the Vale do Javari that Salgado photographed. Souza loved to watch birds fly, and it was this close observation of nature that provided him with the inspiration to invent the steerable hot air balloon, mimicking birds’ aeronautics. Perhaps we need to cultivate this ethos: nature does not need to be conquered; it must be learned from and lived through.
1.5 is dead: How hot will the Earth get?
June 5, 2025
It may be ‘technically possible,’ to keep global heating below 1.5 degrees, but it isn’t going to happen..
by Ian Angus
2024 was the warmest year since records began being kept 175 years ago. According to the World Meteorological Organization’s latest State of the Global Climate report:
Each of the past ten years set a new global temperature record.
Each of the past eight years set a new record for ocean heat content.
The 18 lowest Arctic sea-ice extents on record were all in the past 18 years.
The three lowest Antarctic ice extents were in the past three years.
The largest three-year loss of glacier mass on record occurred in the past three years.
The rate of sea level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began.[1]
There is no room for doubt: Earth is getting hotter. The question now is how hot will it get?
In 2015, at the United Nations climate conference (COP21) in Paris, 196 countries promised to “significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change” by “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”[2]
A May 2024 survey asked 380 leading climate scientists whether the 1.5°C goal will be achieved. Only 6% said yes. 77% believe that global temperatures will rise more than 2.5°C by 2100, and 42% think the increase will be over 3°C.[3]
Future Earth, the international agency that coordinates global change research, warns that “overshooting 1.5°C is fast becoming inevitable.”
“Decades of insufficient action for mitigating GHG emissions have set the world on the current trajectory to overshoot the internationally agreed target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, enshrined in the Paris Agreement. National mitigation commitments are inadequate to even stay well below 2°C of global warming, creating unacceptable risks for human societies and ecosystems, with vast yet unequally distributed costs. This is a dangerous gamble that could lead to irreversible impacts for life on Earth, including devastating loss of biodiversity and a rising risk of triggering climate tipping points.”[4]
Under the Paris Agreement, each country decides its own targets, called National Determined Contributions. According to the UN, there is a “massive gap” between the treaty’s objectives and the policies actually adopted by the largest polluters.
“Collectively the NDC targets of the G20 are far from the average global percentage reductions required to align with 2°C and 1.5°C scenarios….
“A continuation of the mitigation effort implied by current policies is estimated to limit global warming to a maximum of 3.1°C (range: 1.9–3.8) over the course of the century.”[5]
This isn’t just a matter for future concern. 2024 was the hottest year since preindustrial times, and the first full year in which the average temperature passed the 1.5°C target. Actually exceeding the Paris goal requires at least a decade, but 2024 is almost certainly an indicator of what is to come, especially if, as noted climate scientist James Hansen argues, global warming is speeding up.
“Therefore, we expect that global temperature will not fall much below +1.5°C level, instead oscillating near or above that level for the next few years, which will help confirm our interpretation of the sudden global warming. High sea surface temperatures and increasing ocean hotspots will continue, with harmful effects on coral reefs and other ocean life. The largest practical effect on humans today is increase of the frequency and severity of climate extremes. More powerful tropical storms, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, and thus more extreme floods, are driven by high sea surface temperature and a warmer atmosphere that holds more water vapor. Higher global temperature also increases the intensity of heat waves and—at the times and places of dry weather—high temperature increases drought intensity, including ‘flash droughts’ that develop rapidly, even in regions with adequate average rainfall.” [6]
It has become common in scientific reports to assert that it’s still “technically possible” to meet the Paris objectives. That’s just barely true, but unlikely. The United Nations Environment Program Emissions Gap Report tells us just what needs to be done:
“Specifically, if action in line with 2°C or 1.5°C pathways were to start in 2024, then global emissions would need to be reduced by an average of 4 and 7.5 per cent every year until 2035, respectively. If enhanced action … is delayed until 2030, then the required annual emission reductions rise to an average of 8 per cent and 15 per cent to limit warming to 2°C or 1.5°C, respectively.”[7]
No matter what you think of those numbers, the fact is that none of that is going to happen. Greenhouse gas emissions are going up, not down, and not one G20 government has shown any willingness to even slow down the increase, let alone go into reverse. The United States has withdrawn from the UN climate process, and Trump has cancelled climate change programs. If other big emitters don’t take up the slack, or just fail to carry through on their Paris Agreement commitments, 3°C will be passed, probably sooner then the climate models project.
Andreas Malm and Wim Carton sum up where things stand today:
“Promises were, after all, just that, and most were not backed up by measures that could take them out of the realm of ‘blah blah blah’, to use Greta Thunberg’s phrase. When in 2023, eight years after Paris, one scratched away at the net zero façade and summated all the actual efforts—not promises —in place across the globe, the sobering result was that the world was on track for 2.7°C; or, rounding the number, 3°C, meaning a warming twice as large as that which the global South had insisted on to stay alive. And we know that the warming does not produce a linear rise in damages: 3°C would be something far worse than just a doubling of the impacts at 1.5°C. But deep into the Paris era, this is where the world was heading.”[8]
NOTES
[1] World Meteorological Organization, “WMO report documents spiralling weather and climate impacts,” (Press Release, March 18, 2025.
[3] Damian Carrington, “World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target,” The Guardian, May 8, 2024.
[4] Future Earth, The Earth League, WCRP. 10 New Insights in Climate Science 2023/2024, (Stockholm, 2023)
[5] United Nations Environment Programme, Emissions Gap Report 2024, (Nairobi, April 2025), xii, xvii.
[6] James E. Hansen, et al., “Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, February 2025.
[7] UNEP, Emissions Gap Report 2024, (Nairobi, April 2025), xv.
[8] Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, (Verso, 2024), 69.
Visions of Canada Burning / Photo: Duncan Rawlinson / CC BY-NC 2.0
Capitalism is burning the world: Canada’s wildfire season
By John Clarke (Posted Jun 07, 2025)
Originally published: Counterfire on June 5, 2025 (more by Counterfire) |
Though we are still well short of the official start of summer, large parts of Canada are already being impacted by devastating wildfires. On 2 June, the CBCreported that 17,000 people in eleven communities were subject to mandatory evacuation orders in the province of Manitoba alone.
George Fontaine, the mayor of Flin Flon, stated that ‘I’ve been expecting to hear catastrophic news, and so the fact that I’ve not heard that has really made me feel a whole lot better. But we’re still in the same situation. It’s a time bomb.’ None of the town’s structures had been burned at the time of the report but the entire population of 5,000 had been evacuated.
Out of control
The fire threatening Flin Flon covered an area of 40,000 hectares and was ‘still listed by the province as out of control.’ A 200-person fire crew was attempting to save the town, using ‘two heavy helitankers that can carry massive bags of water, three smaller helicopter buckets, three water bombers and 19 pumper trucks.’ Fontaine grimly noted that, ‘We have everything that can be thrown at it that’s available. Provincially, they are stretched so thin.’
The pressure on available fire-fighting capacity flowed from a situation where ‘there were 25 active wildfires in Manitoba. There has been a total of 106 already this season, far above the province’s 20-year annual average of 84 at this time of year.’
In neighbouring Saskatchewan, early wildfires are also happening on an intensified scale. ‘As of 30 May, there have been 207 wildfires this year, which is 40 more than last year at the same time, [including] the 300,000-hectare Shoe Fire in northern Saskatchewan.’
Colin Laroque, head of soil science and professor at the University of Saskatchewan, noted the highly combustible condition of the province’s forests. ‘Saskatchewan’s forest and grasses were mainly brown from the dry weather and made great fuel for grass fires,’ he pointed out. Moreover, ‘In Northern Canada … we’re experiencing more than three times what the global average is in terms of temperature change.’
Less extensive but still very significant fires are burning in northern Ontario, with some of them out of control and parts of Alberta are also being impacted. In Northern British Columbia, one fire caused evacuation orders to be issued after it quadrupled in size.
The vast quantities of smoke given off by the fires are already having an impact on major urban populations. ABC News has reported that, as of 2 June, ‘there (were) 181 active wildfires burning in Canada, with 92 of these considered to be ‘out of control’. In this situation, ‘the smoke is bringing potentially dangerous air quality conditions to parts of the northern United States.’
The evidence that wildfire seasons in Canada are becoming more destructive and that this is attributable to climate change can no longer be seriously disputed. A fact sheet issued by the Canadian Climate Institute notes that accelerating ‘climate change, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, makes wildfires bigger, hotter, and more frequent. With Canada warming twice as fast as the global average, and home to more than a quarter of the world’s boreal forests, the country is experiencing this consequence of global heating firsthand.’
The sheet shows that wildfire ‘activity is increasingly frequent across Canada’ and that fire ‘season is starting earlier, is lasting longer, and is harder to contain.’ Moreover, elevated ‘wildfire risk means that, whatever the cause, fires catch, spread, and get out of control much more easily.’
Clearly, Canada’s wildfires are becoming ever more destructive and toxic but they are only one dreadful element of an intensifying climate disaster that threatens life on this planet. Yet, even the most catastrophic climate impacts and the starkest evidence of the need to curb carbon emissions aren’t leading to effective climate action by those in political power. Indeed, as I pointed out in an earlier column for Counterfire, the coming to power of the second Trump administration has led a reduced reliance on forms of ‘greenwashing’ deception and a return to obdurate climate denialism.
Destructive projects
As Canada’s forests burn, governments at the provincial and federal level are preoccupied with dealing with the crisis that Trump’s trade war has unleashed. The focus is on boosting ‘competitiveness’ and diversifying trade, in order to withstand the shocks generated by the US turn to protectionism. In this regard, a huge emphasis is being placed on developing the extractive industries and increasing oil and gas exports, regardless of the climate and other environmental impacts.
Ontario’s Conservative government is in the process of passing Bill 5 into law. This is a direct response to Trump’s tariffs and it features the establishment of ‘special economic zones’, where, as Amnesty International has explained, ‘critical provincial laws, including those protecting endangered species, clean water, and consultation with Indigenous Nations, may be suspended to fast-track development.’
The federal Liberal government of Mark Carney, casting its ‘progressive’ credentials to the winds, is taking very much the same approach as the Ontario Conservatives. On 1 June, as CTV News explains, Carney ‘sat down with oil and gas executives in Calgary Sunday to discuss partnerships and to get their input for his plans to make Canada an energy superpower.’ He ‘held a closed-door roundtable with more than two dozen members of the energy sector.’
As Toronto Today reports, Carney told media while he was in Calgary that he favours ‘a shift in “mindset” to get major projects off the ground quicker by bringing in a “single window” of approval.’ He stated that at ‘the moment, when we’re thinking about new projects, too often the immediate question is “Why?” Instead, we need to ask ourselves “How, how do we get it done?”.’
As he set out his plan to promote environmentally destructive projects on a massive scale, Carney pathetically pledged to ‘focus on making it as clean as possible’. He also held a meeting the next day with the provincial premiers in Saskatoon to promote his energy superpower theme and to incorporate their destructive plans into his agenda.
‘We need to move on these nation-building projects. So, projects that bring Canada together, projects that diversify our economy, projects that help us export to new markets and really move this economy forward,’ Carney stated before meeting with his provincial counterparts.
In 2014, when he was governor of the Bank of England, Carney told a gathering of the Bank of International Settlements that the brand of ‘inclusive capitalism’ that he advocated ‘is fundamentally about delivering a basic social contract comprised of relative equality of outcomes; equality of opportunity; and fairness across generations.’ He also asserted that ‘unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.’
In 2021, in his role as UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, Carney made similar assertions on how enlightened self-interest should lead capitalists to take effective action to deal with the climate crisis. He claimed that major companies were accepting the need to transition to renewable energy and eliminate carbon emissions, grandly proclaiming that this ‘is a market that is really being driven by corporate ambition and commitment to net zero.’
The hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of Carney’s greener inclusive capitalism are now fully exposed. As Canada’s prime minister, he presides over a trade crisis that threatens the vital interests of the country’s major companies. In his efforts to deal with that crisis, he is more than ready to make common cause with climate-denying right-wing politicians so as to fast-track oil and gas projects that will worsen global heating with appalling results.
Canada’s 2025 wildfire season, though it is only just getting underway, is already another step towards climate disaster. Ironically and tragically, the fires burn out of control as the political decision makers conspire to make the situation even more catastrophic. No solutions will come from Mark Carney and his accomplices. Only massive and powerful action by a united movement for climate justice can make a difference in this situation and the present Canadian wildfires drive this home with a terrible emphasis.
Amazon Deforestation Soars 92% as Brazil Prepares to Host COP30
With just five months until COP30 in Belém, Amazon deforestation has surged 92% year-on-year—960 km² lost by May 2025—undermining Brazil’s green leadership as wildfires and drought ravage its forests.
960 km² lost by May 2025—51% from wildfires—raises urgent questions just months before the “Amazon Summit” Photo: @XHespanol
June 7, 2025 Hour: 3:33 am
Five months out from COP30 in Belém, data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE, May 2025) reveal that Amazon deforestation jumped 92% between May 2024 and May 2025. Fueled by wildfires and record-shattering droughts, this surge undercuts the climate-leader image Brazil hopes to showcase at the upcoming summit.
By May 2025, the world’s largest rainforest had lost 960 km² of forest cover—an area roughly the size of New York City—marking the second-highest May deforestation rate since 2016. The federal government attributes 51% of that loss to wildfires (up from just 1% in 2022) and the balance to unprecedented droughts driven by climate change. “This threatens to undo the progress we’ve made since 2023 and forces us to redouble our efforts”, warned Interim Environment Minister João Paulo Capobianco. “We urgently call on the international community to support the Forests Forever Fund, which compensates nations that safeguard their forests”.
A joint report by the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland found that 6.7 million ha of primary tropical forest vanished globally in 2024—80% more than in 2023—making Brazil the hardest-hit country by wildfires during its worst drought on record. “Tropical forest degradation is now a red-alert emergency”, said Elizabeth Goldman, co-director of Global Forest Watch.
For Indigenous communities, the devastation is existential. “The forest binds us together. If the Amazon dies, our cultures, our rivers and our very identity perish”, declared Colombian Amazon leader Fany Kuiru at the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization summit. Meanwhile, Indigenous environmental stewards report “extreme drought and heat that make fishing and fruit gathering impossible”—clear proof that the climate no longer forgives mistakes.
How can we host a “green summit” while the forest burns? Already, Bill 2159/2021—the so-called Devastation Bill—has moved to the Chamber of Deputies after clearing the Senate. “It poses the greatest threat to Brazil’s environment and public health”, warned Mauricio Guetta of the Socioenvironmental Institute. “By stripping out indirect-impact assessments, it paves the way for mass deforestation”, added Lucas Louback of activist network NOSSAS.
Sancionada lei que facilita combate a incêndios e reconstrução de infraestruturas destruídas por desastres climáticos https://t.co/ECQKiSLLxh pic.twitter.com/3P4w5N8dxU
— Senado Federal (@SenadoFederal) June 6, 2025
These legislative shifts clash head-on with Brazil’s Paris Agreement pledge of zero deforestation by 2030. President Lula da Silva has vowed to tighten emissions targets and expand protected areas, but INPE’s figures—and a surge in illegal mining and agribusiness invasions—cast serious doubt on those promises.
Between 2024 and 2025, Brazil’s enforcement agencies—Ibama and ICMBio—carried out nearly 19,000 operations in the Amazon, issued over 5,000 fines and embargoed 560,600 ha. Yet NGOs warn these actions pale beside the relentless advance of large-scale soy and cattle interests into Indigenous territories.
Local voices add nuance: Pará Governor Waldez Gomes emphasizes the economic stakes, noting that “Belém’s hotels, ports and small businesses are counting on a successful COP30 to boost sustainable tourism”. Meanwhile, sustainable rancher Ana Silva explains how agroforestry programs—like the Rainforest Alliance’s Amazon Restoration Initiative—can restore degraded land while supporting rural livelihoods.
Elsewhere, two other major biomes bucked the trend: the Cerrado—Brazil’s savanna hotspot—saw deforestation drop by 25.7%, and the Pantanal—the largest seasonal wetland on earth—recorded a 74% reduction. Still, the Amazon’s losses are nearly ten times those of the Cerrado, underscoring the urgent need to defend the planet’s largest green lung.
The Amazon stands at a tipping point: fire, chainsaws and drought threaten its very existence. COP30 must deliver real commitments—robust climate finance, enforceable legal safeguards and Indigenous land rights—to transform the “Amazon Summit” into a genuine beacon of hope. Otherwise, we risk watching the world’s greatest forest vanish under our watch.
The Astonishing Rate of Increase in Climate Radiative Forcing
Roger Boyd
Jun 12, 2025
As we sit in the new era of global average surface temperatures greater than 1.5 degrees centigrade above the late nineteenth century baseline, the rate of increase in radiative forcing is still accelerating. There are three main components to this:
Carbon Dioxide Radiative Forcing
Other Greenhouse Gas Radiative Forcing
Change In Earth’s Albedo
Carbon Dioxide Radiative Forcing
Humanity has yet to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions and therefore the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide keeps increasing at an increasing rate. Taking a 10-year average:
2011 to 2020: 2.37 ppm per year
2012 to 2021: 2.44 ppm per year
2013 to 2022: 2.43 ppm per year
2014 to 2023: 2.46 ppm per year
2015 to 2024: 2.63 ppm per year
In the period of 2001 to 2010 the rate was only 2.01 ppm per year, and from 1991 to 2000 only 1.474 ppm per year. The yearly increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are now nearly twice those of the 1990s.
Other Greenhouse Gas Radiative Forcing
On top of CO2, there are other major greenhouse gases with the two most important being methane (CH4) and Nitrous Oxide (N20), with also the CFCs, HCFCs and HFCs. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were used heavily in refrigeration until it was discovered that they were destroying the earth’s protective ozone layer and their usage greatly reduced under the Montreal Protocol. As they linger in the atmosphere they also have a positive radiative forcing effect. They were replaced with hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) which although they did not destroy the ozone layer as quickly had a much greater radiative forcing effect. They are now being phased out under the Montreal Protocol in favour of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that do not destroy ozone but are quite potent trappers of the sun’s energy (14,800 time stronger than C02 over 100 years) and they are also now being phased out under the Montreal Protocol.
In the first decade of this century, the rate of increase in atmospheric methane concentrations was significantly reduced. This helped to offset some of the rate of increase from increased CO2. But in the second decade of this century the rate of increase in atmospheric methane jumped and has remained at a much higher level to this day. There are multiple theories for this increase, which include possible natural feedbacks as temperatures increase.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calculates a CO2 equivalent amount for all of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and publishes this each year. This shows a much faster increase than for CO2 alone, with an increasing contribution from the non-CO2 gases.
2011 to 2020: 3.7 ppm per year
2012 to 2021: 3.8 ppm per year
2013 to 2022: 3.9 ppm per year
2014 to 2023: 3.9 ppm per year
That is an accelerating rate of increase of 39 ppm per decade; anthropogenic greenhouse gas driven climate change is accelerating even as we have passed the 1.5 degrees milestone. Air pollution, the cloud and haze cover produced by human industries serves to offset the effect of these increased emissions - as much GHG emission is also associated with the production of air pollution.
But with efforts to produce clear skies and to reduce particulate levels in the air that we breath, humanity has been diligently working to reduce that climate cooling air pollution; both over land and sea. This adds yet more to the accelerating increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Change In Earth’s Albedo
The greatest historical concern for changes to the Earth’s albedo (reflectivity) has been the loss of ice and snow in the Arctic, a natural feedback to increased temperatures. But more recently another issue has slowly taken precedence, the reduction in global industrial pollution that is creating clearer skies which are a boon for local health but remove much of the reflective cloud cover and haze from the sky. The result is increased warming in China, and over the oceans and seas.
Since the 2010s, when the inability to see the sun and intense particulate air pollution became a politicized issue the Chinese government has striven magnificently to clear the air above Chinese cities with great success. The result has been a transformation in so many cities from polluted skies to blue skies. But a side-effect has been that less of the sun’s radiation is now reflected back into space, and is instead absorbed by the land surface and the air. An extra anthropogenic positive radiative forcing.
In addition, the international community has passed binding rules that have greatly reduced the amount of sulphur in shipping fuel, greatly reducing the sulphur emissions that act to increase cloud cover. In the relatively pristine air over the great oceans such clouds make a significant difference in reflecting the sun’s energy back out to space. The new regulations have greatly reduced the emissions and therefore the resultant clouds, and a significant increase in radiative forcing over the seas and oceans has been observed in the areas of greatest shipping traffic (e.g. the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans). In May of this year, the countries that border the Mediterranean Sea imposed new regulations that reduced the acceptable level of sulphur in shipping fuel to even lower levels. An intensified rate of regional warming can be expected.
A great worry is that the UN IPCC and other bodies have significantly underestimated the cooling effects of anthropogenic air pollution, and therefore the warming effects of removing such pollution. James Hansen et. al. have produced a recent paper showing the extensive evidence for this. If Hansen and his colleagues are correct, we are are in for a period of accelerated climate change due not only to the acceleration in the rate of increase in atmospheric GHGs but also due to the removal of a significant chunk of anthropogenic air pollution. A pollution that was hiding the real level of climate warming potency of the GHGs. The 2 degree milestone may be much closer in time than assumed, and with it the feedback loops that will accelerate it further.
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As we are already seeing with the enormous fires in the Canadian boreal forest which are releasing huge amounts of CO2 into the air. In 2025 the forest fires are back after the record breaking 2023.
And of course at the start of 2025 there were the LA fires. The US West became massively developed during a number of decades that were unusually wet compared to the past 6,000 years. The regional climate has now switched back to more dry conditions at the same time as climate change is increasing global temperatures; a double whammy that greatly exacerbates the dry hot periods that feed fires. And those fires are now in areas that are heavily populated with lots of houses and other buildings, as well as trees and other flora to burn. Like the Pacific Palisades.
At the same time, the volume of the Arctic Sea Ice is on a trend line of ever decreasing amounts with the first ice free period in September probably occurring sometime in the mid-2030s. Less and less reflective ice means more and more dark sea that will suck in the sun’s energy. Another reduction in the earth’s albedo to speed up climate change. Once an ice free September arrives an ice free August will not be far behind, then June and July when the sun is high in the sky over the Arctic.
Wipneus at Arctic Sea Ice Form
And the policy responses? In Canada the new Liberal Prime Minister cancelled the carbon tax and touted Canada as a (fossil fuel) energy superpower. In the US, the climate change denying Trump is busy cutting every green energy program that he can find while pushing “drill baby, drill!”. At the same time, the European Union is reducing its own climate commitments while ramping up war spending. Each year of increased evidence of the dangers of catastrophic climate change seems to be met with increased levels of Western elite cognitive dissonance and denial. Even China is somewhat trapped, needing to drive economic growth to overcome the challenges of the West to its sovereignty while driving very rapid increases in low carbon energy. Its emissions have started to fall while it still grows it’s economy at 5% per year, but overall global emissions may simply stall at best.
The global average surface temperature for the first five months of 2025 was 1.51 degrees above the late nineteenth century baseline, and that was during an ENSO-neutral (i.e. not El Nino and not La Nina) climatic environment - that temperature is the new normal; more than 1.5 degrees centigrade above the late nineteenth century benchmark. By the early 2030s an El Nino may well push that average above 2 degrees centigrade with all the risks of catastrophic feedbacks that may entail.
A New Gold Rush Is Causing (Potentially) Irreversible Damage to the Amazon Rainforest, Study Warns
Posted on June 10, 2025 by Nick Corbishley
As the world is gripped by a new bout of gold fever that shows no sign of abating, the environmental costs are rising.
A few months ago, my wife and I had the fortune to catch the final day of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado’s Amazônia at Barcelona’s Maritime Museum. It was one of the best photo exhibitions I have ever seen. The exhibition — Salgado’s last before passing away from leukaemia just a few weeks later — impressed upon me more than anything I had read or seen before just how vast, complex and fragile the Amazon ecosystem is.
Amazônia featured more than 200 photographs taken by Salgado from land, water, and air over a seven-year period, portraying the forest and its mountains, rivers, waterfalls and lakes, as well as a handful of the hundreds of tribes living in the Brazilian part of Amazonia. Featuring the sounds of the forest, the thunder of water tumbling from high, and the songs of unknown birds, insects, and other exotic creatures, it was a multisensorial experience. As my wife said, it’s worth seeing just for the cloud-studded skies, or “flying rivers” as Salgado called them.
Sebastião Salgado. Amazônia. Poster 'Parana'. Libros TASCHEN
From an economist-turned-artist whose haunting black-and-white images exhaustively documented decades of conflict in the Global South, poverty and the rapaciousness of late-stage capitalism, the Amazônia exhibition had one main overarching goal: to safeguard the world’s largest rainforest for future generations.
“We have an obligation to maintain some of these great sanctuaries, and the Amazon is one of them, to guarantee in a certain way the survival of our species,” Salgado told a press conference in Mexico City in December.
“We are losing the Amazon. Eighteen percent of the Amazon has gone. (We) have destroyed it and we may never recover it again. These photographs represent 82% of the Amazon. And one also photographs the dead Amazon, the fires in the Amazon (…) Here we present the Amazon that we need to keep together.”
The Amazon is not just a natural wonder, it is a vast socio-cultural artifact. As the exhibition points out, the Brazilian part alone is currently home to more than 300 different tribes, speaking 300 different languages. A third of those groups have had no recorded contact with the outside world. As Salgado said, “It is the prehistory of humanity that lives within this forest. But (it) is losing [its habitat].”
Global Gold Rush
Sadly, the pressures driving deforestation are, if anything, intensifying. They include a global gold rush that is turbocharging the illegal mining of the precious yellow metal under the Amazon’s rich soil.
A new paper in Communications, Earth and Environment, titled “Landscape Controls on Water Availability Limit Revegetation After Artisanal Gold Mining in the Peruvian Amazon” warns that the increasing use of suction mining for gold is not just depleting the world’s largest rainforest but is making it much harder for the ecosystem to regenerate afterwards.
Suction mining is used, often by smaller-scale operations, to blast apart soil with high-pressure water cannons. The loosened sediment is then sent through sluices that sift out gold particles, while the lighter material, including nutrient-rich topsoil, is washed away. What is left standing at the end of this process are stagnant ponds — some as big as football fields — and towering sand piles up to 30 feet (10 metres) high.
Using drones, soil sensors, and underground imaging to understand how suction mining has reshaped lands in two affected areas of Peru’s Madre de Dios region, the research team found that unlike the excavating mining used in other parts of the Amazon, suction mining leaves little behind to support new growth. From the study’s abstract:
Deforestation from artisanal, small-scale gold mining is transforming large regions of the tropics, from lush rainforest to barren collections of tailings and ponds. Natural forest regeneration is slow due to dramatic soil changes, and existing reforestation strategies are failing. Here we combine remote sensing, electrical resistivity imaging, and measurements of soil properties to characterize post-mining areas in the Madre de Dios region, Peru. We find that the post-mining landscape has dramatically changed water infiltration dynamics, driving decreases in subsurface water availability and presenting a major barrier to revegetation…. Our results suggest that access to water should be prioritized when targeting reforestation sites, potentially requiring large-scale geomorphological reconfiguration. As gold mining is expected to expand, responsible practices and remediation strategies must account for the critical yet often overlooked role of water.
According to the study, small-scale gold mining destroyed more than 95,000 hectares — an area more than seven times the size of San Francisco — of rainforest in the Madre de Dios region between 1980 and 2017. Across the Amazon, gold mining now accounts for nearly 10% of deforestation.
This is still dwarfed by the damage caused by livestock farming, which accounts for around 80% of Amazonian deforestation. However, the new paper in Communications, Earth and Environment suggests the damage caused by suction mining will be much more difficult to reverse due to the resulting loss of the most nutrient-rich layers of the soil as well as the suction mining’s intensive use of water.
Using on-site sensers, the researchers found that the sand piles function like sieves, with rainwater draining through them up to 100 times faster than in undisturbed soil. As a result, the areas dry out almost five times faster after rain, leaving little moisture available for new roots. On exposed sand piles, surface temperatures could reach as high as 145 F (60 C).
Peru is a huge player in the illegal gold business, accumulating the largest amount of gold of unknown origin exported to the world market. But Illegal mining for gold is not just a Peruvian problem.
In April, Greenpeace released a report showing that 4,219 hectares of Brazilian rainforest had been destroyed by gold miners in four Indigenous territories — Yanomami, Munduruku and Kayapó and Sararé — in just two years. While the first three territories saw a marked decline in mining activities, this was more than compensated by a 93% increase in activity in Sararé.
Below are some of the photos Salgado captured of Serra Pelada, which in the early ’80s became the world’s largest open-pit mine. At its peak, the mine drew an estimated 80,000 “garimpeiros” (independent mineral prospectors) who migrated from across Brazil to join the gold rush.
The rampant gold mining in the Amazon is also causing widespread mercury poisoning, as Amazon Frontlines reported in January 2024:
Searching for gold in the Amazon is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, blindfolded. Most of this precious metal is finely spread through sediments and soils, like tiny specks that are almost impossible to see. To solve this problem of scarcity and invisibility, miners have found a “magnet for gold” that can be chemically bonded to gold dust, creating an amalgam. This magic lodestone – mercury – is also one of the most toxic substances on Earth, which is why it is strictly controlled by the Minamata convention that was ratified by Ecuador in 2016. Despite this, it is widely used throughout the Amazon. A scientific study in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon found that 90% of artisanal or small-scale miners used mercury.
Once the mercury has been fixed to gold, it burns (as mercury has a lower melting point than gold), releasing large amounts of this toxic substance into the air. Mercury is eventually deposited throughout the jungle, adding to the unknown amounts of mercury that are dumped or dumped directly into ecosystems, making “artisanal” and small-scale mining the largest source of pollution on Earth.
However, as long as there is high demand for gold, people will find ways to get it to market, even in the smallest amounts. A database created by journalists from Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil, as part of the special investigation “Golden Opacity: Mechanisms Used for Old Trafficking in Latin America’’, led by Convoca.pe, suggests that at least 5,941 tons of gold were exported from those countries between 2013 and 2023. Of this amount, the origin of over 3,000 tons is unknown. Most of it was apparently laundered through Peru.
The recent surge in the price of gold and the promise of lucrative returns has also drawn new entrants into the market, including drug traffickers, according to a Bloomberg report in January:
[In Brazil, w]ildcat miners, known as the garimpeiros, have existed for the better part of a century, deforesting the land and dirtying the waters. But now, a federal crackdown on environmental crimes and a gold rally that’s sent prices to record highs has driven the industry into further darkness.
Visits by Bloomberg News to mining sites, along with dozens of interviews with miners, experts, locals and officials, unveil a world that is becoming increasingly lethal as a decades-old industry comes under the influence of drug gangs.
“The criminal organizations that have been dedicated to drug trafficking for a long time have discovered a new market,” said Andre Luiz Porreca Ferreira Cunha, a federal prosecutor assigned to illegal mining investigations across the Amazon, including the Rodrigues case. “They are creating parallel states in the middle of the Amazon. It’s terrifying.
Across the globe, if you buy gold, there’s a growing chance that you’re bankrolling bad actors.
About 20% of the world’s bullion output comes from informal, small-scale mining. The producers are sometimes called “artisanal miners,” but it’s an industry that’s typically illegal, untaxed and often in violation of environmental and other regulations. In Brazil, the miners are a major factor in the destruction of the Amazon. And globally, the sector is the planet’s single biggest source of global mercury contamination, exceeding even coal-fired power plants, according to a study from the United Nations.
Gold – often dubbed the world’s oldest currency – has for millennia attracted underworld characters. But that has been supercharged by a historic rally, which gives illegal miners greater incentive to dig it up any way they can. Spot prices jumped 27% in 2024. The metal reached an all-time high of $2,790.10 an ounce in late October and has more than doubled since the end of 2018.
A Generalised Loss of Trust
Since then, gold has continued its surge in price, reaching a fresh all-time high of $3,500.05 per ounce on April 22. There are many reasons why the gold price has almost tripled since 2018, most of which have little to do with gold. Some were discussed in a 2022 article we cross-posted from The Saker.
One of the most important factors in gold’s bull market is a generalised breakdown in trust and confidence in the dollar-based system. In recent years, the US and the UK, the two main custodians of gold, have taken multiple actions that have eroded investors’ trust in their capacity as custodians. In 2019, the British government recognised Juan Guaidó as Venezuelan president, and supported his legal battle to seize roughly $2 billion of Venezuelan gold held in the Bank of England.
Although Guaidó was ultimately unable to get his hands on the gold due to legal appeals by Venezuela’s real government, the country’s gold still sits frozen in the Bank of England — more than a year after Venezuela’s leading opposition parties voted to oust Guaidó as “interim president.” The damage this has done to the City of London’s standing as a global financial centre is no doubt considerable, noted UK Declassified in 2023:
“[W]hatever happens next, this case sets a precedent which could have far-reaching consequences: the UK’s coup weapons now include asset stripping a foreign state, and transferring those assets to political actors engaged in regime change. This will surely serve as a warning to any state which plans to store its gold in the Bank of England.”
Even before the UK’s government and central bank decided to confiscate Venezuela’s gold, governments were already getting antsy about entrusting their gold deposits to the Bank of England or US Federal Reserve. The fact that Germany had to wait five long years to repatriate only a portion of its gold from the BoE and never got back any of the gold bars originally deposited was not exactly confidence inspiring.
Nor is the fact that the US’ gold holdings, allegedly the largest on the planet, which include the gold holdings of dozens of other countries held in custody by the US Federal Reserve, have not been subjected to a comprehensive audit since the 1950s. Just last week, four members of Congress, led by Thomas Massie, introduced a bill to initiate the first full assay, inventory, and audit of all United States gold holdings in decades.
Over the past decade or so, the countries (that we know of) that have repatriated their gold from the BoE and/or the US Fed, or at least plan to, include the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Türkiye, the Czech Republic, India, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
By using the dollar and the dollar-based financial system to punish countries it considers adversaries, from Russia to Venezuela, to Iran, the US has weakened its position financially and geopolitically. If the UK’s seizure of Venezuela’s gold was a warning, the collective West’s decision in February 2022 to freeze almost half of Russia’s $640 billion of gold and forex reserves in response to its invasion of Ukraine was a watershed moment.
A 2023 survey of 85 sovereign wealth funds and 57 central banks by the Invesco Global Sovereign Asset Management Study showed that a “substantial share” of central banks were concerned by the precedent that had been set. From Reuters:
Almost 60% of respondents said it had made gold more attractive, while 68% were keeping reserves at home compared to 50% in 2020.
One central bank, quoted anonymously, said: “We did have it (gold) held in London… but now we’ve transferred it back to own country to hold as a safe haven asset and to keep it safe.”
Rod Ringrow, Invesco’s head of official institutions, who oversaw the report, said that is a broadly-held view.
“‘If it’s my gold then I want it in my country’ (has) been the mantra we have seen in the last year or so,” he said.
Central banks are not just repatriating their gold, they are buying far more of it as a diversification strategy. This is partly due to the reclassification of gold from a Tier 3 to a Tier 1 asset in 2017 under the Basel III banking reforms, turning gold into a more effective backstop for debt, currencies and bank capital.
Since 2022, annual central bank purchases of gold have surpassed 1,000 metric tons, twice the annual average of the decade prior. This is a result not just of lack of trust in US and UK custodianship of gold but also growing uncertainty about US economic policy as a whole, particularly since Trump began his second term by waging trade war on the rest of the world and gutting US government programs.
As Yves herself wrote in early May, “the downside risk of Trump’s demolition project is far greater than anyone seems willing to admit”. Extreme case scenarios could include a double-digit contraction in GDP or even hyperinflation.
In recent decades, times of crisis have seen investors reflexively turn to the US Treasury Bond as the apex safe haven asset. After all, it was the only Tier 1 asset. But with US government debt accelerating at breakneck pace while US economic and foreign policy are creating unprecedented levels of economic uncertainty, USTs, like UK gilts in the run up to the near-crash of the UK bond market in 2022, are behaving more and more like emerging market assets while gold, now a Tier 1 asset, is once again becoming the key risk hedge.
Again, it is central banks that are leading the way. In the final quarter of 2024, when Trump won the election, central bank gold purchases accelerated 54% year-on-year to 333 tons, according to an estimate from the World Gold Council (WGC).
China, meanwhile, is encouraging both Chinese businesses and citizens to invest in gold. In March, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) issued Directive No. 2025-03, mandating insurance firms to allocate at least 1% of their assets — out of an estimated ¥32 trillion ($4.5+ trillion) — into physical gold, a move that could drive hundreds of billions of dollars more into gold markets.
This rising demand for gold is causing all sorts of problems for the US and the UK, as Michael Hudson explained in a recent interview on The Agenda. As the price of the yellow metal continues to rise and as more and more investors — not just central banks — take delivery of their gold holdings, it is becoming harder and harder for the US and the UK to suppress the price of gold by selling gold forward, leasing out their gold or selling gold short on the Comex exchange:
[The US has] leased so much gold that it’s reached the end of its ability to hold it down. And now, for the first time, we’re having a real market developing in gold. And all that’s gone hand in hand with the desire of a number of governments to say they want to de-dollarize. And from the idea of people that, well, maybe we need to diversify out of the dollar, now that the political and military situation[s] are changing. So all of that has led to increased speculation of gold.
That, in turn, will lead to more illegal mining in the Amazon rainforest. As the world is gripped by a new bout of gold fever that shows no sign of abating, largely because the main driving forces are external to gold itself and are structural in nature (e.g. rising economic uncertainty, de-dollarisation, loss of trust and faith in the US and the UK as custodians…), the environmental costs for one of the world’s most important ecosystems are rising.
Coral bleaching off Heron Island in Queensland in 2016. (Photo: The Ocean Agency/XL Catlin Seaview Survey/Richard Vevers)
‘Ticking time bomb’ of ocean acidification has already crossed planetary boundary, threatening marine ecosystems: Study
Originally published: EcoWatch on June 9, 2025 by Cristen Hemingway Jaynes (more by EcoWatch) | (Posted Jun 11, 2025)
On the first day of the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, the findings of a new study have revealed that ocean acidification (OA)–which damages ecosystems like coral reefs–is not only getting worse, but crossed its “planetary boundary” roughly five years ago.
The findings came as a surprise, as scientists in a report published last year said OA was “approaching a critical threshold,” but had not yet crossed the boundary.
The nine defined planetary boundaries in which Earth can operate safely include climate change, freshwater use and OA.
“OA is the term given to the long-term shift of marine carbonate chemistry resulting primarily from the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by the oceans, leading to an increase in ocean acidity and a decrease in carbonate ion (CO32−) concentration,” the authors of the study wrote.
OA can severely affect marine organisms through its direct impact on physiology, growth, survival and reproduction.
The researchers pointed out that ocean conditions vary widely across the world, with OA levels in tropical regions over two times as high as in polar regions.
“Looking across different areas of the world, the polar regions show the biggest changes in ocean acidification at the surface. Meanwhile, in deeper waters, the largest changes are happening in areas just outside the poles and in the upwelling regions along the west coast of North America and near the equator,” said lead author of the report Helen Findlay, a professor at the United Kingdom’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) and chair of the North-East Atlantic Ocean Acidification Hub, in a press release from PML.
The study, led by PML, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States and Oregon State University’s Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies (CIMERS), said OA’s threat to marine ecosystems globally is much more widespread than previously believed.
The research team used the most recent chemical and physical measurements of the upper ocean, along with studies of marine life and advanced computer models to conclude that by 2020, average ocean conditions globally were already very near–and in some regions had already surpassed–the OA “danger zone.”
“Most ocean life doesn’t just live at the surface—the waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals. Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought. This has huge implications for important underwater ecosystems like tropical and even deep-sea coral reefs that provide essential habitats and nursing refuge for many species, in addition to the impacts being felt on bottom-dwelling creatures like crabs, sea stars, and other shellfish such as mussels and oysters,” Findlay explained.
Professor Helen Findlay working in the laboratory to investigate the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on marine organisms and ecosystem functioning. Plymouth Marine Laboratory
The team discovered that roughly 60 percent of deeper ocean waters–down to approximately 656 feet–had crossed the planetary boundary for OA–compared with 40 percent at the surface. The increase in acidification has enormous implications for the survival rates of many sea creatures, particularly those who build their skeletons or shells from calcium carbonate.
Some subtropical and tropical coral reefs have already lost 43 percent of suitable habitats, while pteropods, a main food web species in the polar regions–also known as “sea butterflies”–have lost as much as 61 percent of their habitat. Additionally, 13 percent of the habitats of coastal shellfish species have been lost worldwide.
Based on the findings, the scientists recommended that a change be made to the previous safety limit of a 10 percent deviation from pre-industrial levels being harmful to ocean ecosystems, as the entire surface of the ocean had already exceeded the stricter limit by about the year 2000.
“Ocean acidification isn’t just an environmental crisis—it’s a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies. As our seas increase in acidity, we’re witnessing the loss of critical habitats that countless marine species depend on and this, in turn, has major societal and economic implications.” said Steve Widdicombe, a professor at PML who is co-chair of the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network, one of the focuses of the UN’s sustainable development goal of addressing and minimizing the effects of OA.
“From the coral reefs that support tourism to the shellfish industries that sustain coastal communities, we’re gambling with both biodiversity and billions in economic value every day that action is delayed,” Widdicombe added.
The authors of the study suggested conservation measures should be directed toward to species and regions that are most vulnerable to acidification. They also emphasized the importance of suitable management measures or protection of areas that are the least compromised by acidification to ensure their longevity.
The newly identified subsurface water impacts highlight a pressing need to safeguard mid-water habitats and their marine life. The researchers stressed the importance of improved approaches to addressing OA, as well as other ocean pressures, to better support stronger ecosystem resilience.
“This report makes it clear: we are running out of time and what we do—or fail to do—now is already determining our future,” said Jessie Turner, director of the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification, who was not part of the study, as The Guardian reported.
We are coming to terms with an existential threat while grappling with the difficult reality that much suitable habitat for key species has already been lost. It’s clear that governments can no longer afford to overlook acidification in mainstream policy agendas.
The study, “Ocean Acidification: Another Planetary Boundary Crossed,” was published in the journal Global Change Biology.
Global heating isn’t just getting worse. It is getting worse faster.
June 19, 2025
Surplus heat is accumulating in the Earth system at an accelerating rate
“Things aren’t just getting worse. They’re getting worse faster, We’re actively moving in the wrong direction in a critical period of time that we would need to meet our most ambitious climate goals. Some reports, there’s a silver lining. I don’t think there really is one in this one.”—study co-author Zeke Hausfather
At current emission levels, a 1.5°C global temperature increase will be unavoidable in a little more than three years, and 1.6°C or 1.7°C could be exceeded within nine years.
That’s a key finding of the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change report, released this week. Between 2015-2024 average global temperatures were 1.24°C higher than in pre-industrial times, with 1.22°C caused by human activities, meaning that, essentially, our best estimate is that all of the warming we have seen over the last decade has been human-induced.
The equivalent of around 53 billion tonnes of CO2 (Gt CO2e) has been released into the atmosphere each year over the last decade, primarily from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. In 2024, emissions from international aviation – the sector with the steepest drop in emissions during the pandemic – also returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Surplus heat, accumulating in the Earth system at an accelerating rate, is driving changes in every component of the climate system. The rate of global heating seen between 2012 and 2024 has about doubled from the levels seen in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to detrimental changes of vital components, including sea level rise, ocean warming, ice loss, and permafrost thawing.
The ocean is storing about 91% of this excess heat driven by greenhouse gas emissions, which leads to ocean warming. Warmer waters lead to rising sea levels and intensified weather extremes, and can have devastating impacts on marine ecosystems and the communities that rely on them. In 2024, the ocean reached record values globally.
Between 2019 and 2024, global mean sea level increased by around 26 mm, more than doubling the long-term rate of 1.8 mm per year seen since the turn of the twentieth century. Sea-level rise in response to climate change is relatively slow, so we have already locked in further increases in the coming years and decades.
Climate Adaptation and Inequality: Lessons from Cape Town’s Drought
Posted on June 12, 2025 by Yves Smith
Yves here. Even though this is a case study, Cape Town’s drought, which came perilously close to having municipal tap water run dry, illustrates what seems like to happen when climate stresses become acute. The short version is the rich took steps that helped themselves but not others, leaving the community in key ways less able to cope.
By Alexander Abajian, Cassandra Cole, Kelsey Jack, Kyle Meng, and Martine Visser Originally published at VoxEU
A growing number of urban areas around the world face water scarcity. Focusing on the prolonged drought that Cape Town experienced from 2015 to 2018, this column examines how adaptation shaped outcomes for the city’s residents and for its municipal water utility. While policy measures including higher prices and usage restrictions saved the city from running out of water, they reduced demand more among wealthy households who were able to substitute away from municipal water, undermining the utility’s ability to cross-subsidise lower-income households’ consumption. Post-drought tariff reforms led to a more efficient pricing scheme that maintained support for low-income households.
Climate change is no longer a distant threat – it is shaping economies across the world. As a result, responses to climate change are increasingly shifting towards adaptive measures to dampen its immediate impacts (Kala et al. 2023). An increased focus on adaptation raises two challenges for policymakers (Carleton et al. 2025). First, how can public adaptation policy be better designed to account for its effects on private actors’ own adaptation decisions? Second, given inequities in access to adaptation across people and communities, what are the implications of climate-driven shocks for inequality and how are these shaped by both existing and new policies?
A protracted water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa provides a striking example of both of these challenges. From 2015 to 2018, the city experienced a prolonged drought that brought the city perilously close to ‘Day Zero’ – the moment when municipal water supplies would fall below a critical level and residential water service would be cut off (Booysen et al. 2019). In a recent paper (Abajian et al. 2025), we examine how adaptation – both before and after the drought – shaped outcomes for Cape Town’s residents and for its municipal water utility. While policy was successful in reducing demand and Day Zero was avoided, we show this policy response to the drought also induced dramatic adaptation among wealthy households, including drilling groundwater wells and substituting away from municipal water. In addition to destabilising the financial viability of the utility, this reduction in demand from better-off households undermined the utility’s ability to cross-subsidise lower-income households’ consumption. The municipal government ultimately responded by reforming tariffs after the drought towards a more efficient pricing scheme that maintained support for low-income households.
The Day Zero experience is both an optimistic story about the efficacy of adaptation as well as a cautionary one about private responses to climate change and the public provision of climate-sensitive goods and services. Similar to the public provision of roads, schools, or electricity, the availability of private substitutes can have important impacts on financing and the distribution of costs across users. A growing number of urban areas face water scarcity, including Mexico City and Beijing (Werner et al. 2013), making these issues front and centre for climate adaptation policy.
Day Zero: The Drought in Cape Town
Cape Town is the second largest city in South Africa, and relies heavily on natural rainfall as a source of municipal water supply (City of Cape Town 2020). The city uses an increasing block tariff (IBT) pricing model for municipal water to cross-subsidise the consumption of low-income households. The IBT allows these consumers to pay subsidised rates while charging high consumers above marginal cost to cover the subsidies. However, as shown in Figure 1, a multi-year drought beginning around 2015 began to render existing consumption patterns unsustainable. During the drought (the shaded region in Figure 1), the city’s reservoirs were depleted to near the critical level associated with Day Zero (the horizontal dashed line at 13.5 percent). Starting in 2017, the municipality began to take unprecedented measures to reduce consumption, including steep price increases, usage restrictions, and public information campaigns.
Figure 1 Reservoir levels declined sharply during the drought, leading the city to take emergency measures
Dodging Day Zero
The policy measures – conservation campaigns, higher prices, and usage restrictions – ultimately saved the city from Day Zero. Aggregate residential usage declined by about 50% from pre-crisis levels (Booysen et al. 2019, Brühl and Visser 2021). However, these reductions were highly uneven across the household wealth distribution (proxied by property value in our paper). Wealthier households consumed twice as much water as lower-income households before the crisis (Cook et al. 2021) and saw the steepest declines (Figure 2).
Figure 2 Average municipal water use by household income decile (proxied by home value) before, during, and after the crisis
While this was in part a story of behaviour change (Booysen et al. 2018, Bruhl et al. 2020, Brick et al. 2023) resulting from conservation campaigns, public pressure and the price sensitivity of demand, we show that disparate access to private adaptation likely played a critical role. Many affluent households substituted towards private groundwater by drilling wells or boreholes. Figure 3 shows the number of drilling licenses over time; underreporting means that the actual number is likely to be much greater. The ability of wealthy households to substitute away from public water contributed to the steep decline in their consumption shown in Figure 2, and led to them actually consuming less publicly provided water than poor households at the peak of the crisis. Private adaptation had broad implications: it eroded the revenue base of the municipal utility and shifted supply costs onto those unable to afford private alternatives. The cost shift induced by private adaptation meant that the overall share of the cost of water supply borne by the lowest-income households was actually higher than the wealthiest households at the peak of the crisis.
Figure 3 Groundwater drilling applications surged among wealthier households during the crisis
Note: The figure shows the cumulative count of groundwater projects that were registered with the municipality and likely undercounts the actual number by a factor of ten.
At the same time, the city’s water tariff structure, previously reliant on high-volume users to cross-subsidise lower-income households, became unsustainable. To overcome the revenue shortage due to wealthy households’ substitution towards groundwater, the utility introduced a fixed charge component to the water tariff. Total (including both fixed and volumetric) charges increased by around 4% over pre-drought levels in the wake of the drought after fixed charges were added. Fixed charges were also targeted by connection size, meant to proxy for wealth, which offset some of the regressive cost shift caused by wealthier households’ substitution towards groundwater. To further address distributional concerns, low-income households also received a larger allocation of free water each month. Without these policy changes, the distribution of costs would have been highly regressive post-drought.
While policy changes induced by the shock ultimately moved the municipality onto a more efficient pricing regime, changes in consumption patterns across wealth deciles persisted up until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (when our analysis ends). Wealthier households that had invested in groundwater wells likely continued to rely on them, keeping their demand for municipal water lower than before the crises. This highlights a critical issue in climate adaptation: without carefully designed policies, private adaptation can have persistent effects that exacerbate inequality and threaten the financial viability of essential public services.
Utility Policy in the Face of Climate Change
Our study shows how several features of Cape Town’s experience may help guide utility policy in other climate-sensitive settings. First, the crisis demonstrated the vulnerability of volumetric pricing models to decreases in demand (Borenstein 2022), which will be necessary as scarcity increases. In Cape Town, this was addressed by introducing fixed charges to the tariff structure. While this is an encouraging sign of the potential for crises to induce policy innovation (van der Straten and van der Ploeg 2024), not all policy responses will be as well-informed as those in Cape Town. Second, Cape Town’s experience highlights the efficacy of targeted subsidies for vulnerable populations. During and after the crisis, Cape Town adjusted its water subsidies for low-income households, ensuring they received a free allocation that met requirements stipulated under existing law (Muller, 2008). These households still faced standard price schedules at consumption levels beyond the amount necessary for basic needs, encouraging conservation while ensuring equity.
Finally, by studying both the policy response to drought and household responses to policy, our analysis of Cape Town’s experience underscores the interplay between public and private adaptation. An increased dependence on private groundwater extraction raises broader concerns about the long-term sustainability of private use of aquifers, as groundwater levels near wealthier neighbourhoods dropped dramatically during the drought (Figure 4). At the same time, the resulting reduction in demand for public water affects utility revenue and creates pecuniary externalities across users. Similar patterns are unfolding with, for example, the adoption of private rooftop solar in response to rising electricity prices and decreased grid reliability (Brehm et al., 2025). Future climate adaptation policies should anticipate behavioural responses as well as how they may differ across income groups.
Figure 4 Groundwater levels fall during the drought near wealthier Cape Town neighbourhoods but not in other neighbourhoods
< Cape Town’s near-miss with Day Zero provides a cautionary tale for cities facing climate-induced public resource scarcity. While policy adaptation is necessary, it has the potential to deepen inequality or undermine public service provision unless managed carefully. The key takeaway for policymakers is clear: climate adaptation should balance concerns for equity and resilience. Otherwise, the burden of climate shocks will continue to fall disproportionately on those least able to bear them. See original post for references
Don’t believe the New Cold War lies, China is leading the world in climate solutions
In the following article for Liberation News, Tina Landis – author of the book Climate Solutions Beyond Capitalism – argues that recent trend of placing blame for the climate crisis on China is incorrect and ahistorical. While it’s true that China currently emits more carbon dioxide than any other countries, this statistic ignores critical context: China manufactures 30 percent of the world’s goods and houses nearly 18 percent of its population. On a per capita and consumption-based level, US emissions are significantly higher. Meanwhile, the US’s outsourcing of production – and thereby pollution – to China is rarely acknowledged.
China’s centrally planned socialist system has enabled rapid and large-scale action on environmental issues. Since the early 2000s, China has embedded ecological goals into its national development strategies. It has implemented stringent environmental impact assessments, halted major polluting projects, and dramatically improved air quality. By 2021, particulate pollution dropped by 42 percent. The country still uses fossil fuels but is aggressively expanding renewables: by mid-2024, wind and solar capacity surpassed coal, and China is on track to reach its ambitious renewable energy goals ahead of time.
China leads globally in electric vehicles and public transit electrification, producing 60 percent of the world’s electric vehicles and 90 percent of electric buses. It also has by far the world’s most extensive high-speed rail network. What’s more, these sustainable development projects have not resulted in poverty; indeed they have helped to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Massive ecological restoration efforts such as as taking place in the Loess Plateau, the vast afforestation projects, and the construction of sponge cities have all contributed to improving biodiversity and climate resilience. The Belt and Road Initiative exports this model of green development abroad.
Tina concludes that such extraordinary progress is only possible within a context of socialism, urging readers in the West to reject anti-China narratives and learn from China’s example.
These types of large scale projects inside and outside of China can only be achieved under a centralised, socialist planned economy. Here in the heart of empire, we need to see past the demonisation campaigns that are meant to win our support for U.S. war with China, and instead learn from the ecologically sustainable development efforts that they are leading.
At the time of the 1949 revolution, China was largely an agrarian society with widespread poverty, famine and lack of infrastructure. Rapid development over several decades resulted in a significant rise in pollution in China.
The U.S. mainstream media never addresses the outsourcing of production to China and thus the outsourcing of pollution. Rarely are emissions accounted for based on where goods are produced versus where those goods are consumed, or population size of a country relative to emissions levels. If you take a snapshot of emissions today and ignore population and consumption of goods, China does have the highest carbon emissions with the U.S. coming in second. But China produces 30% of the world’s goods and accounts for 17.7% of global population, while the U.S. is the largest consumer of Chinese goods globally and accounts for 4.3% of global population.
When you look at per capita emissions of each country, as well as per capita consumption-based emissions, the U.S. is responsible for a much larger portion of global emissions than China.
U.S. emissions based on population size are nearly double per person than China’s, while its consumption-based emissions per person are around two and a half times higher. So every time the U.S. blames China for the climate crisis, we need to take the globalized system of goods production and consumption into account.
Emissions reductions and renewable energy expansion
Because China is led by the Communist Party with a centralized, planned economy, they have been able to shift focus to address the impacts of industrialization on air and water quality and ecological health.
Beginning in the 1990s, the Communist Party of China recognized the urgent need to align ecological sustainability with development goals. In 2003, then-Chinese President Hu Jintao pushed the concept of a “Scientific Outlook on Development” and “harmony between man and nature and the principle of all the people building and sharing a harmonious socialist society,” which was ratified in 2007 at the 17th Congress of the CPC. Since then, over 100 large-scale projects have been halted due to ecological impacts as a result of the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s environmental impact assessment process.
In 2012, under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, the CPC formally adopted the goal of building an ecological civilization into China’s constitution. Since becoming president in 2013, Xi Jinping has led the furthering of these efforts.
In 2014, China announced its “war on pollution” and by 2021 had reduced particulate matter pollution by 42%. Despite these massive reductions, China still has the 13th highest pollution levels by country globally, but such massive reductions in pollution in such a short time frame are unmatched under capitalism. Only through government control over industry and transportation can such air quality improvements occur.
To create enough power for its 1.4 billion people, China still relies on fossil fuels for around 60% of its energy production, while at the same time is leading the world in renewable energy. As of June 2024, combined wind and solar energy capacity surpassed coal for the first time. The goal of reaching 33% of energy capacity from renewables by 2025 was established through its 14th Five-Year Plan, and it is on track for solar capacity alone to surpass coal by 2026.
China also set the goal to peak emissions levels before 2030 and reach net zero by 2060, and based on their current trajectory, these goals will be achieved. In 2020, China surpassed their goal of adding 1,200 GW of wind and solar capacity by 2030, six years early. In 2024, their wind capacity increased by 18% with solar capacity jumping by 45.2%. Total power generation grew 14.6% in 2024 mainly from renewables.
Nuclear is part of China’s energy mix, which has many environmental and health impacts. They plan to integrate more small modular reactors into their energy system, which have a lower risk than large reactors. But SMRs still have the unresolved issue of radioactive waste and are a high risk to the workers tasked with dismantling these units at the end of their life. China also relies on large-scale hydropower, which has significant impacts on watershed and ecosystem health.
That said, China is leading the world in increasing solar and wind capacity, which has the least environmental impacts of any form of energy production. China, as well as all other countries, has the right to determine their own path to development free from imperialist domination and meddling. Our duty in the imperialist U.S. is to determine the path our country takes through organized struggle.
China also leads the world in electric vehicle production, accounting for around 60% of global sales. The Chinese company BYD leads globally in production of high-quality, low cost electric vehicles. Their electric car costs only $12,000, but the ever increasing tariffs imposed on China by the U.S. – which is essentially a tax on consumers – makes these cars unaffordable to purchase in the U.S.
The environmental impacts from the mining of rare earth elements currently used in the batteries need to be considered, which is why electrifying and expanding public transit and eliminating the need for individual car ownership is crucial to scale down those negative impacts. And China is doing just that. In 2020, China was responsible for 90% of the electric bus market globally and they continue to far surpass any other country in the production of electric buses and trucks. Replacing high-polluting diesel trucks and buses with zero-emission is not only a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but improves public health by eliminating exposure to the high level of carcinogens in diesel exhaust.
China also has the most extensive high speed rail system in the world, with around 30,000 miles of rail line currently operational, and plans to add another 7,000 miles by 2030.
These projects in clean energy and transportation can only happen due to large scale investment from the state. At the same time as these major infrastructure projects were being implemented, China also lifted 850 million of its people out of extreme poverty between 2013 and 2020 through nationwide efforts. This shows the capacity of socialism to take meaningful action based on what is needed by society and the planet, while capitalism lags far behind.
Ecological restoration on a mass scale
China is also undertaking large scale ecological restoration projects. In 1994, they began a 4 million acre project to restore depleted agricultural lands in the Loess Plateau in north-central China. The land had been degraded over thousands of years due to unsustainable livestock grazing and agricultural practices. In less than 10 years, biodiversity and ecosystem health was restored to a region equal in size to Belgium. The project resulted in 2.5 million people of the area being lifted out of poverty due to the revival of sustainable agriculture.
China has also undertaken massive afforestation projects like the Great Green Wall, which includes planting 88 million acres of drought-resistant trees and the installation of sand control mechanisms to stem desertification. Employing 600,000 workers, the Taklamakan Desert portion of the project was completed in 2022, while work along the Gobi Desert will be completed by 2050. The Taklamakan project also included the installation of one of the world’s largest solar farms that produces four GW of energy.
China has also addressed water pollution issues, such as the Erhai Lake restoration project in Yunnan Province. The 250 square kilometer lake had become severely polluted over several decades due to livestock grazing, fish farming, agricultural fertilizer and pesticide runoff and wastewater impacts from increased development and tourism. High levels of nutrients from these sources had caused blue-green algae blooms that robbed the waters of oxygen, causing a major decline in aquatic life. The high levels of pollution resulted in the lake’s water being unsuitable for human consumption or contact. Through centralized efforts led by the government, the economy of the area was reorganized to eliminate sources of pollution upstream and surrounding the lake, resulting in clear lake waters and a rebound in biodiversity. In 2022, the Erhai Lake restoration project won an “Excellent Project Execution and Delivery” award at the International Water Association event held in Denmark.
In alignment with the goals established in their constitution, China is creating over 300 eco-cities and converting 30 of their cities into sponge cities to address increasing flooding and drought that stem from climate change. Expansive parks and adjacent wetlands serve as recreation areas during drier months and act as flood control zones when heavy rains come. A healthy biosphere is a key climate stabilizer and China’s attempts to integrate urban infrastructure with the biosphere helps to mitigate climate change, increase biodiversity, build resilience to extreme weather, and improve air and water quality and the health of residents.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is expanding this model of development on an ecologically sustainable path to the broader Global South. Unlike development programs led by the U.S. and other imperialist countries, BRI programs are based on infrastructure development, trade alliances and sharing of technologies that uplift the populations of partner countries. These development projects are based on mutual benefit, unlike IMF and World Bank assistance that come with harsh austerity measures and leave countries in debt to the Global North.
For humanity to overcome the climate crisis, this type of internationalist perspective is key to building sustainable development on the basis of collaboration and partnerships that raise the living standards of Global South countries while also addressing ecological sustainability. These types of large scale projects inside and outside of China can only be achieved under a centralized, socialist planned economy. Here in the heart of empire, we need to see past the demonization campaigns that are meant to win our support for U.S. war with China, and instead learn from the ecologically sustainable development efforts that they are leading.
BUKIT LAWANG, INDONESIA – SEPTEMBER 09 : Sumatra Orangutan (Pongo abelii) named Sandra was estimated to be 27 years while holding her son in search of food at the Mount Leuser National Park on September 09, 2015 in Bukit Lawang, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Orangutan habitat in Sumatra increasingly pressured due to land clearing for palm oil plantation so that forests for Orangutans less. Mount Leuser National Park only for tourists to be able to directly see the Sumatra Orangutans in their natural habitat, currently estimated only 3000 Sumatra Orangutan. The species has been assessed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2000.It is considered one of “The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates..Photo : Yuli Seperi/Sijori Images
[Conservation Innovations: How sustained resistance is saving one of the Earth’s most critical rainforests from corporate greed
Originally published: Observatory on June 19, 2025 by Laurel Sutherlin (more by Observatory) (Posted Jun 25, 2025)
Introduction
In Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, orangutans swing through the treetops, rhinos roam free, and elephants share the land with tigers. It is the last place on Earth where they still coexist in the wild—and it’s under siege. The battle to save it reveals the deep connections between consumer products, Indigenous rights, and the fight for climate justice.
In the far northwest corner of Indonesia’s Sumatra island lies a place so biologically rich and ecologically vital that scientists consider it one of the most critical rainforests left on Earth. The Leuser Ecosystem encompasses over 6.5 million acres of dense forest, peat swamp, and rugged mountains. It is a haven for life—and, until recently, a blind spot in the global imagination.
Leuser is more than a biodiversity hotspot. Beyond its charismatic megafauna, the forest is home to thousands of unique plant and animal species. The deep peat soil stores vast amounts of carbon, making it a natural buffer against the climate crisis. And its rivers and rainfall sustain millions of people in the Aceh and North Sumatra provinces who depend on the forest for clean water, medicine, food, and cultural heritage.
For the Indigenous Gayo, Alas, Kluet, Aneuk Jamee, and Karo peoples, Leuser is not merely a forest—it is sacred ancestral land. Their stewardship has kept the ecosystem intact for centuries. But in recent decades, an insatiable global hunger for one cheap commodity has pushed Leuser to the brink: palm oil.
Conflict Palm Oil: The High Cost of Cheap Convenience
From cookies and instant noodles to shampoo and lipstick, palm oil is everywhere. Found in nearly half of all packaged products on supermarket shelves, it’s the most widely consumed vegetable oil in the world. It’s also one of the most destructive.
Indonesia and Malaysia produce more than 85 percent of the world’s palm oil. To meet rising demand, corporations have cleared vast tracts of rainforest, often illegally, to plant monocultures of oil palm. The result has been catastrophic deforestation, widespread human rights violations, and the draining of carbon-rich peatlands that accelerate global warming.
Nowhere has this destruction been more visceral than in the Leuser Ecosystem. Fires were raging in the Tripa peat swamp—a part of the Leuser Ecosystem—set intentionally to clear land for plantations. Endangered orangutans were dying in the flames. Smoke blanketed nearby villages. The world wasn’t watching—yet.
In 2012, an emergency call from Indonesian allies reached the offices of my organization, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in San Francisco. We responded by launching what would become a decade-long campaign of investigations, corporate pressure, grassroots action, and international media advocacy aimed at defending this last wild stronghold from the bulldozers of industrial agriculture.
Exposing the Supply Chain: From Rainforest to Retail
Our approach was bold and methodical. We traced the origins of palm oil from the scorched frontlines of the Leuser ecosystem to the boardrooms of major consumer goods companies, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Mars, Mondelēz, and others. Using satellite imagery, drone surveillance, field investigations, and shipping records, RAN’s teams followed the trail of destruction from plantations grown on deforested lands to mills, traders, refiners, and—finally—into the snacks, soaps, and cereals we buy every day.
The revelations were damning. Multinational corporations were repeatedly caught sourcing Conflict Palm Oil—oil linked to deforestation, illegal land clearing, and the violation of the rights of local communities. We launched Leuser Watch, a watchdog platform that names and publishes detailed investigations connecting palm oil grown in deforested areas of Leuser directly to global brands.
These investigations weren’t confined to dusty PDFs. We collaborated with filmmakers, artists, and high-profile environmental advocates. Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate documentary, Before the Flood, prominently features the Leuser Ecosystem and the palm oil threat, bringing global attention to the issue. Suddenly, what was once obscure was now on the radar of millions.
People Power: Shaming the Snack Food Giants
With the facts laid bare, we mobilized public outrage into pressure. The “Snack Food 20” campaign targeted the biggest corporate buyers of palm oil, demanding they adopt and enforce real standards: No Deforestation, No Peatlands, No Exploitation (NDPE).
Through petitions, creative protests, and shareholder activism, supporters around the world have called out companies such as PepsiCo, Nestlé, Mondelēz, and General Mills. Actions ranged from disrupting corporate meetings to massive banner drops, like the 100-foot-long message unfurled from PepsiCo’s billboard on the Manhattan waterfront. Grassroots groups placed warning stickers on offending products in grocery stores. Social media was flooded with messages demanding reform.
Inside boardrooms, the heat worked. Over 200 companies, brands, traders, and banks eventually committed to NDPE policies. These weren’t empty gestures: they included hard requirements to map supply chains, verify sourcing, and end business relationships with bad actors. Some companies began funding forest restoration and monitoring programs. A few even took direct responsibility for their sourcing impacts in the Leuser Ecosystem.
But progress was uneven. While companies like Unilever, Nestlé, Mars, and Ferrero took significant steps, claiming to be achieving more than 90 percent traceability to plantations in the Leuser Ecosystem, others lagged behind. Many NDPE policies remain poorly enforced, with loopholes and vague language that allow deforestation to persist behind a veil of “sustainability” branding.
From Exposure to Restoration: A Landscape-Level Revolution
Recognizing that real change wouldn’t come from isolated pledges, RAN pivoted toward an ambitious new strategy: landscape-level conservation. The idea was to go beyond advocacy for individual companies to encourage collaboration on creating jurisdiction-wide initiatives that involved governments, smallholder farmers, regional civil society organizations, and local communities working together to protect forests, achieve responsible palm oil production, and improve livelihoods.
The sub-district of Aceh Tamiang became the first test case. There, the head of the district government worked with a coalition of actors to launch a deforestation-free palm oil verified sourcing area in 2019. By 2021, deforestation had plummeted. Over 5,100 hectares of degraded land were restored, and an innovative radar-based monitoring system enabled real-time responses to illegal clearing. Local patrols and community programs, run by civil society organizations and supported by government agencies and companies such as PepsiCo and Unilever, played a key role.
The model worked—and it spread. Landscape programs have since been launched in Aceh Timur, Aceh Singkil, and at the provincial level. These initiatives aim to protect critical lowland forests, establish “No-Go Zones” for palm oil expansion into forest frontiers, and support Indigenous land rights and the resolution of conflicts between communities and palm oil companies. Brands began funding alternative livelihoods and land titling for smallholder farmers. Local civil society organizations took the lead in restoration.
Musim Mas, a prominent Indonesian trader previously exposed by RAN, has shifted its focus from deforestation to leadership, working with its clients to provide over $2 million for conservation projects in Aceh.
These aren’t just charity projects. These efforts aim to rebuild trust, repair damage, and demonstrate that commodity production doesn’t have to result in destruction.
Holding the Line: The Work Still Ahead
Despite the victories, the threats to Leuser haven’t disappeared. Rogue producers still operate. Banks continue to finance palm oil giants without full accountability. Many brands still cannot trace all their supply. Grievance trackers exist, but enforcement is inconsistent. The risk of backsliding is high.
Worse still, as new global regulations, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), come into effect, some corporations may shift their dirty palm oil to less regulated markets. Without sustained pressure, the progress made could be undone.
That’s why we are expanding our efforts. In 2025, we surveyed major brands and traders on their implementation of No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) in the Leuser Ecosystem. The findings were mixed, but offered hope. Companies with deep traceability and transparent monitoring showed measurable results. Those investing in collaborative forest monitoring and conflict resolution were beginning to collaborate meaningfully with civil society groups.
But a key lesson remains: transformation requires transparency. Without visibility into sourcing practices, without robust grievance systems, and without public accountability, corporate promises hold little value.
A Global Model for Environmental Justice
The Leuser campaign is not just a story about forests. It’s a story about power—how it’s wielded, challenged, and ultimately rebalanced. It’s about how grassroots movements, Indigenous communities, and international solidarity can take on global corporations and win real, measurable change.
It’s also a cautionary tale. Had no one answered that urgent call in 2012, the most threatened lowland rainforests of the Leuser Ecosystem might already be gone. It underscores the urgency of responding quickly to emerging threats—and the necessity of a long-term commitment to protect what remains.
Now, with global forest frontlines under pressure—from the Amazon to the Congo to Borneo—the Leuser campaign offers a replicable model. It demonstrates that when policy, pressure, and partnership converge, even the most complex problems can be effectively addressed.
The Next Chapter Starts Now
After more than a decade of fierce activism, relentless investigation, and unlikely collaboration, the Leuser Ecosystem is still standing. It’s not pristine. It’s not out of danger. But it’s stronger than it was. And that’s because people around the world chose to act.
This work is far from finished. Activists are carrying Leuser’s lessons into new landscapes, challenging the expansion of industrial agriculture, and advocating for corporate accountability rooted in human rights and environmental justice. And they’re asking the rest of us—consumers, voters, donors, and dreamers—to stay engaged. Because what happens next in the Leuser Ecosystem may determine the future of tropical forests everywhere.
Laurel Sutherlin is the senior communications strategist for Rainforest Action Network. He is a lifelong environmental and human rights campaigner as well as a naturalist and outdoor educator with a passion for birds and wild places.
Financial Times on Coming Climate-Change-Driven Meltdown in Real Estate: Gradually, Then Suddenly?
Posted on June 27, 2025 by Yves Smith
The Financial Times has an extremely informative new article, Meltdown: How the Next Financial Crisis Starts, on the certainty of the loss of considerable financial wealth due to insurers becoming unable to provide coverage for heretofore routine property risks as a result of climate change. I urge you to read it in full. It confirms our earlier coverage on this subject.
However, the title misrepresents the piece. Experts aren’t close to the “I begin to discern the profile of my death” phase.1 The story features experts who are highly confident that huge swathes of the US real estate market are certain to suffer a major price plunge as mortgages become unattainable due to the inability to get insurance. They further posit that this will lead to a collapse of other services, particularly banking, since with mortgages a major source of branch profits, banking services are no longer profitable and many locations will be shuttered. The article does not discuss commercial property, but there are similar obvious concerns about what happens to retail and office space in a world where their value is also drastically lower due to the inability to sell them to anyone other than a cash buyer….who also is exposed to the risk of climate change incidents and routine “shit happens” fires.
One of the big questions is how fast the implosion happens. While the article starts by envisioning the possibility of a 2008-level implosion, they don’t deliver much of a case as to why. Recall that Japan had far bigger (relative to GDP) real estate and stock market bubbles in the late 1980s, yet did not have a market seizure. It instead had zombification. Then many years into the crisis (1997), it tried going into “Mission Accomplished” mode, relaxing some constraints, and then some financial institutions did fall over.
As we explained long form in ECONNED, the sudden shock of the Lehman crash was not the result of a real estate bubble deflating (which if that were the driver, would have created a savings & loan and half level seize-up) but a derivatives crisis. Derivatives written on the riskiest tranches of subprime securitizations were 4-6x the value of those instruments. And unlike losses on mortgages, where recoveries historically were about 70%, most of these tranches went to zero, and so to did the derivatives. Oh, and those exposures were significantly on the balance sheets of systemically important, overleveraged finance giants.
However, a variant of Japan in the 1990s is plausible: a slowly accelerating decline, and then a plunge from there, in classic Hemingway bankruptcy form.
We’ll turn after looking at the “profile of the death” issue to a discussion of whether interventions to try to make things less bad will make them worse. The default answer on topics like this is “yes”. We’ve regularly discussed the concept of obliquity, which in simple terms is the finding that when dealing with highly complex, adaptive systems, trying to cut simple paths through them generally takes you in the wrong direction.
Keep in mind also that the authors presume that this “meteor hitting Planet Earth and killing all the dinosaurs” level event is the driver of a coming crash, whether slow motion or not. There is so much overvaluation and excess leverage, with financial asset prices in the main not adequately pricing that in, that there are many other proximate causes for a financial crash: an emerging markets crisis rolling through exposed economies and having a measure of contagion to the advanced world; resumption of Israel/US aggression against Iran leading to an oil price spike (or perhaps even an embargo), Trump escalating his tariff war one times too many (and/or even the impact of his supposedly interim tariffs leading to contractions and failure that start to lead to defaults, for instance among highly leveraged private equity/private debt plays).
So while the coming real estate crisis is poised to eventually become The Mother of All Financial Crises, it may not be the first to get going in a big way.
First to the pink paper’s experts forecasting how this decline will unfold:
In January, the Financial Stability Board, which was set up to keep an eye on the global financial system after the 2008 crisis, said insurance was becoming more costly and scarce in disaster-prone areas and “climate shocks” could set off wider market turmoil. In early February, US Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell warned that the Fed was also seeing banks and insurers pull out of risky areas. “If you fast forward 10 or 15 years, there are going to be regions of the country where you can’t get a mortgage. There won’t be ATMs [and] banks won’t have branches,” he told Congress. “….
Then, as Europe experienced its hottest March on record, Günther Thallinger, a management board member at Germany’s insurance giant Allianz, warned global temperatures were fast approaching levels where insurers would no longer be able to operate, creating “a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector”.
“If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post that made headlines. “The economic value of entire regions — coastal, arid, wildfire-prone — will begin to vanish from financial ledgers,” he added. “Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally.”..
There is no single scenario…But here is one that has emerged…
It begins with the number of insurers pulling back from US states swelling from a stream to a flood…homeowners face soaring premiums or an inability to renew their cover…
Cash-strapped governments try to plug the gaps with more last-resort insurance schemes. But these plans typically cost more and cover less, raising a chilling new reality for thousands of homeowners. The value of their family home, which had risen year after comforting year, instead begins to sink.
We wrote in January how this pattern has started in Florida and California. Notice that part of the pattern is to try to socialize risks of badly-exposed areas (which by a cold calculus should either be insurable only at nosebleed prices or not at all) to ones that at least as of now don’t seem much to be in harm’s way. So there is also a simmering political question of why exactly should those live inland, for instance, subsidize properties near the coast?
And these patchwork schemes are already starting to come unglued. As we wrote:
As with the odds of success of the West against Russia in Ukraine or America in a military contest with China, there’s rampant denial of the impact of climate change on property values (commercial as well as residential) in at-risk areas. Along with that is undue fixation of trying to tinker with property insurance as if that could somehow combat the fact that losses are sure to swamp the ability of anyone but perhaps governments to pick up the tab. And that’s not a viable solution.
Socialization of risk on this level, particularly given the lack of precedents, is already intensely political and will become only more so. And there’s no consensus on what to do. There are still quite a few who regard talk of global warming as a World Economic Forum “eat your bugs” plot. Climate cognoscenti argue for relocating people and communities to more “sustainable” places. But many are unwilling to move. So as things get more dire, what draconian measure will be imposed to dislodge them? Condemning entire communities with the required eminent domain payoffs? Or resorting to cheaper forms of coercion, like cutting off power or water or garbage services?
Or consider what is happening in Los Angeles. We’ve pointed out that allowing rebuilding with wooden homes is asking for more of the same. But wood-framed houses are likely the cheapest option. But new construction is going to be beyond the means of most, even in the wealthiest neighborhoods…
And there’s been resistance by burnt-out residents to the idea of rebuilding the less affluent Altadena area as apartments. But there’s no other realistic option given the typical financial situation.
And this points to a second general problem as to what to do next. No one seems willing to lower the hammer and change zoning requirements in climate-whacked neighborhoods so as to greatly reduce their vulnerability….
In other words, there’s widespread rejection of a new normal: that a downward reset in living standards and/or wealth that many (most?) Katrina victims suffered is in store for all but the wealthiest climate change housing casualties. And as climate damage to real property accumulates, those values will similarly reset in a big way. But due to the way the US property and casualty insurance industry operates, and the problem we flagged above, that the kick-the-can approach is to try to forestall the inevitable with insurance, it will happen on a state-by-state level as opposed to community level.
In other words, as we’ll describe, the inertial path is that in states with large climate change exposed regions, the entire states will have unaffordable or barely affordable home insurance. That means property values will fall. Even cash only buyers face high insurance costs or bearing the risks themselves. For buyers that can’t stump up a purchase price, their ability to borrow will be greatly constrained because they have to be able to afford the insurance premiums, and that will eat up so much from a monthly housing budget that very little would be left for mortgage payments. Much lower mortgage borrowings means much lower housing prices…..
We recently cited an article from Dissent which focused on what has become the three card Monte of Florida’s insurance market to argue for a public model. But as much as that scheme is internally coherent, it foresees a level of government intervention in housing that’s not workable in America, even before getting to the Trump libertarian takeover effort underway. But what is happening in Florida looks all too likely to happen in some form in other afflicted states, particularly California. Remember the key fact that insurance is state regulated and each insurer writes policies via an entity in that state. So insurers fail on a state-by-state basis. They can also stop operating in that state. Home insurance policies are typically renewed annually, which is when price increases occur.
It’s not hard to see that a death spiral has begun. From Dissent:
More than a dozen insurance companies have exited the Florida market in recent years, and just since 2022 at least six insurers in the state have become insolvent—leaving homeowners scrambling to find new providers, typically at drastically increased prices.
Florida’s political leadership has attempted to address these problems with market deregulation and financial incentives. Several public institutions also help to prop up the private insurance market, including Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a nonprofit public company created as an insurer of last resort in 2002, and the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association, a state-run fund that pays policyholder claims in the event that an insurer goes bankrupt.
Despite these efforts, Florida is having trouble retaining large, national, diversified insurance companies, which are more financially stable and often more affordable. The private insurance companies still operating in Florida are primarily newer, smaller companies that conduct almost all of their business in Florida; some have an even narrower focus, such as one company that primarily sells wind-only policies in South Florida….
Policymakers in the state have responded with measures to raise Citizens’ premium rates and further encourage depopulation. These measures mean not only that Citizens rates are going up in several parts of the state—one analysis found that Citizens will have to raise rates in Miami-Dade County by 80 percent in order to comply with a state law that forbids it from competing with private insurers—but also that private insurers can easily obtain a swath of new customers who will have to pay higher rates. Meanwhile, with Citizens now responsible for a tenth of the states’ policies, it may not have enough capital to fully pay out claims after major disasters.
To address this issue, state leaders have permitted Citizens to levy emergency fees on nearly all statewide property insurance policies for as long as is required to repay debt. This means that a serious financial loss for Citizens and other Florida insurers could result in additional fees for residents already dealing with a catastrophe. The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (a state-run provider of insurance for insurers) and the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association are backed up by yet more emergency fees on policyholders, meaning they could face multiple stacking fees during a devastating hurricane season.
Forgive the detail, but you can see the drift of the gist. More insurers are leaving Florida. Some have gone bankrupt, with the costs imposed on the surviving insurers, meaning in the end their policy holders. The new entrants aren’t all that strong, financially. Citizens is already imposing what amounts to an emergency levy on all policy-holders (not clear if the surcharges are higher in higher climate exposure areas or not).
Back to the current post. With the cracks in the current system becoming fissures in at-risk jurisdictions, it’s not hard to see why expert freakout is starting to go mainstream.
The Financial Times curiously skips over the problem we just recapped, of how trying to shore up property insurance market is destined to fail because these risks are becoming too large and frequent to be insurable. It turns to a different matter, that the fight over climate remediation (the Green New Deal and all that) can also become destabilizing. Erm, to me this is arguing about whether rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic impeded getting passengers into lifeboats. Yes, at the margin, some moves are better than others, but the policy/governing “we” can do perilously little to change the direction of travel. We are way past the point where Band-Aid level interventions based on the fantasy that over the next 40 years, it will be possible to preserve modern living standards on their current scale.
The article contends that the size of climate events themselves could induce a crisis and are abandoning old-think that “transition risk”, from creating fossil fuel stranded assets (which is coming to include internal-combustion-engine auto operations), was a more serious hazard than climate-created damage:2
Meanwhile, signs of the physical climate risks that initially seemed more remote than transition threats have grown ever more apparent. Monster rains brought Dubai to a standstill in April last year and forced thousands to evacuate in China. Hundreds died a few months later when Typhoon Yagi roared into south-east Asia. In October, authorities in Florida were still dealing with the wreckage left by two enormous hurricanes that slammed into the state within an unusually short 13 days of each other when disaster hit the Spanish province of Valencia. More than 200 people died after a deluge dumped a year’s worth of rain in hours.
Less than three months later, the world watched as enormous wildfires brought chaos to the Los Angeles area, killing dozens and razing thousands of homes including the mansions of Hollywood celebrities.
The pace of destruction has continued this year. In March, South Korean leaders said deadly wildfires sweeping the country were the worst in the nation’s history, while Japan ordered thousands to evacuate from its worst wildfires in decades. Massive wildfires have forced thousands of Canadians to evacuate, and Australia has faced a disastrous set of floods that officials say hit economic growth. This month, authorities issued extreme heat warnings across North America, Europe and Asia….
“My thinking has always been that transition risk is a bigger risk for the financial system because it can take the form of very sudden shifts that lead to huge financial losses,” says finance professor Patrick Bolton…“But I think what we’ve seen with the LA fires and other unexpectedly destructive disasters is that we’re already now in the territory where physical risks could be a threat to the financial system.”
Banks have had a similar rethink, says a financial services strategist who has worked on climate stress testing for nearly a decade.
Again, this “too little, too late” recognition of rapidly advancing ugly realities is painful to watch and difficult to explain, save via the Upton Sinclair saying, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends him on not understanding it.” But the reason soi disant leaders get the big bucks and special privileges is that they are supposed to be somewhat resistant to those incentives and more oriented to preserve the systems which allow them to wield power. But forty plus years of neoliberalism and libertarianism have crushed whatever was left of those impulses.
This is the fix we are in collectively, except the corruption and incompetence are very much in progress.
(A little more but gratuitous red-baiting)
1 From Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian.
2 Lordie, it must have taken a lot of indoctrination to believe that (destined to be not effective enough) “transition” policies were a bigger hazard than the baked-in climate crisis.
