(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Overnight News Digest: Climate rushing to irreversible tipping points, civilization could collapse [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-26 Tonight’s news awaits your comments. Everyone is encouraged to share their 2¢ or articles, stories, and tweets. This is an open thread. The Guardian Earth’s “vital signs” are worse than at any time in human history, an international team of scientists has warned, meaning life on the planet is in peril. Their report found that 20 of the 35 planetary vital signs they use to track the climate crisis are at record extremes. As well as greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature and sea level rise, the indicators also include human and livestock population numbers. Many climate records were broken by enormous margins in 2023, including global air temperature, ocean temperature and Antarctic sea ice extent, the researchers said. The highest monthly surface temperature ever recorded was in July and was probably the hottest the planet has been in 100,000 years. The scientists also highlighted an extraordinary wildfire season in Canada that produced unprecedented carbon dioxide emissions. These totalled 1bn tonnes of CO 2 , equivalent to the entire annual output of Japan, the world’s fifth biggest polluter. They said the huge area burned could indicate a tipping point into a new fire regime. The researchers urged a transition to a global economy that prioritised human wellbeing and cut the overconsumption and excessive emissions of the rich. The top 10% of emitters were responsible for almost 50% of global emissions in 2019, they said. Earth on Brink of Tipping Points That Could 'Destroy Very Systems Our Life Depends On': Report Common Dreams Human activity is pushing Earth to the brink of major "risk tipping points" that, if triggered, could have catastrophic impacts on life-sustaining ecosystems, warns a report released Wednesday by the United Nations University's Institute for Environment and Human Security. The new report identifies six risk tipping points that human actions, principally the burning of fossil fuels, have introduced and intensified: accelerating species extinctions, groundwater depletion, mountain glacier melting, space debris, unbearable heat, and an uninsurable future. […] Dr. Zita Sebesvar, the lead author of the new report, said that "as we indiscriminately extract our water resources, damage nature and biodiversity, and pollute both Earth and space, we are moving dangerously close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points that could destroy the very systems that our life depends on." Earth close to ‘risk tipping points’ that will damage our ability to deal with climate crisis, warns UN The Guardian Humanity is moving dangerously close to irreversible tipping points that would drastically damage our ability to cope with disasters, UN researchers have warned, including the withdrawal of home insurance from flood-hit areas and the drying up of the groundwater that is vital for ensuring food supplies. These “risk tipping points” also include the loss of the mountain glaciers that are essential for water supplies in many parts of the world and accumulating space debris knocking out satellites that provide early warnings of extreme weather. A new report from the UN University (UNU) in Germany has set out a series of risk tipping points that are approaching, but said having foresight of these meant that it remained possible to take action to prevent them. Tipping points are triggered by small increases in their driving force but rapidly lead to large impacts. The risk tipping points are different from the climate tipping points the world is on the brink of, including the collapse of Amazon rainforest and the shutdown of a key Atlantic Ocean current. The climate tipping points are large-scale changes driven by human-caused global heating, while the risk tipping points are more directly connected to people’s lives via complex social and ecological systems. 15,000 Scientists Warn Society Could 'Collapse' This Century In Dire Climate Report Vice Scientists are warning that we are now in “uncharted territory” as a result of human-driven climate change in a new “state of the climate” report that was signed by 15,000 researchers from 163 countries. Researchers emphasized the current suffering caused by record-breaking climate extremes and raised alarms about the possibility of widespread societal and ecological collapse in the future, while also decrying recent increases in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, which is the primary driver of climate change. The 2023 report, published on Tuesday in the journal BioScience, is the latest update in an annual series called World Scientists Warning of a Climate Emergency. Since 2019, scientists have been tracking escalating threats that warming global temperatures present to humans and ecosystems around the world. The new report, led by Oregon State University ecologist William Ripple, warns that 2023 was a particularly devastating year of extreme wildfires, floods, heatwaves, and other natural disasters that are amplified by climate change. The authors suggest that temperatures this past July may well have been the warmest on Earth over the past 100,000 years, which they called “a sign that we are pushing our planetary systems into dangerous instability.” “As scientists, we are increasingly being asked to tell the public the truth about the crises we face in simple and direct terms,” Ripple and his colleagues wrote in the report. “The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023. We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.” New House Speaker Champions Fossil Fuels and Dismisses Climate Concerns The New York Times Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the newly elected House speaker, has questioned climate science, opposed clean energy and received more campaign contributions from oil and gas companies than from any other industry last year. […] He has consistently voted against dozens of climate bills and amendments, opposing legislation that would require companies to disclose their risks from climate change and bills that would reduce leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells. He has voted for measures that would cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency. At a town hall in 2017, Mr. Johnson said: “The climate is changing, but the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history? Or is it changing because we drive S.U.V.s? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.” IEA Report Makes Clear the Urgent Need to 'Rapidly Replace and Phase Out All Fossil Fuels' Common Dreams The International Energy Agency warned Tuesday that governments aren't moving with nearly enough urgency to phase out fossil fuels, leaving the world on a perilous track toward 2.4°C of warming above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. While the IEA's latest World Energy Outlook (WEO) report celebrates "the phenomenal rise of clean energy technologies such as solar, wind, electric cars, and heat pumps," it makes clear that the continued burning of oil, gas, and coal is undermining global renewable energy progress. "As things stand, demand for fossil fuels is set to remain far too high to keep within reach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5°C," the IEA said. "The costs of inaction could be enormous: despite the impressive clean energy growth based on today's policy settings, global emissions would remain high enough to push up global average temperatures by around 2.4°C this century, well above the key threshold set out in the Paris Agreement." The IEA released its annual report just over a month before the COP28 summit in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world's top oil producers. Why Exxon and Chevron are doubling down on fossil fuel energy with big acquisitions NBC News On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency released its annual world energy outlook report that projects global demand for coal, oil and natural gas will hit an all-time high by 2030, a prediction the IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol had telegraphed in September. […] But based on their acquisitions, Chevron and Exxon are seemingly preparing for a different world than the IEA is portending. “The large companies — nongovernment companies — do not see an end to oil demand any time in the near future. That’s one of the messages you have to take from this. They are committed to the industry, to production, to reserves and to spending,” Larry J. Goldstein, a former president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation and a trustee with the not-for-profit Energy Policy Research Foundation, told CNBC in a phone conversation Monday. “They’re in this in the long haul. They don’t see oil demand declining anytime in the near term. And they see oil demand in fairly large volumes existing for at least the next 20, 25 years,” Goldstein told CNBC. “There’s a major difference between what the big oil companies believe the future of oil is and the governments around the world.” Global fossil fuel subsidies double as 2023 expected to be hottest in 100,000 years The Sydney Morning Herald This year will probably be the hottest in the past 100,000 years as global climate scientists warn global temperatures have soared to such an extent that Earth has entered “uncharted territory”. Life on the planet is imperilled, says a group of 12 international scientists in a global stocktake on climate published today by the journal Bioscience that finds 20 of 35 identified planetary vital signs are at record extremes. These record-breaking temperatures increase the likelihood that the world will reach 1.5C warming above the long-term temperature average as early as next year, meaning the world would fail to meet the central goal of the Paris Agreement. “Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing … an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold,” write the scientists including co-author Dr Thomas Newsome from the University of Sydney. […] Fossil fuel subsidies roughly doubled between 2021 and 2022 globally, from $US531 billion to just over $US1 trillion, the researchers found. Shell cuts low-carbon jobs, scales back hydrogen in overhaul by CEO Reuters Shell will cut at least 15% of the workforce at its low-carbon solutions division and scale back its hydrogen business as part of CEO Wael Sawan's drive to boost profits, it said on Wednesday. The staff cuts and organizational changes come after Sawan, who took the helm in January, vowed to revamp Shell's strategy to focus on higher-margin projects, steady oil output and grow natural gas production. The climate crisis has a price — and it’s $391 million a day CNBC Damage from the global climate crisis has amounted to $391 million per day over the past two decades, a report showed. Wildfires, heatwaves, droughts and other extreme events attributable to climate change have incurred costs averaging over a hundred billion per year from 2000 to 2019, a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications showed. “We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%) of this is due to human loss of life,” scientists wrote in the report. The remainder stems from the destruction of property and other assets. These 6 tipping points could be catastrophic for humanity, says the UN (alt link) The New Scientist The world is in danger of hitting six interconnected “tipping points” that could have catastrophic impacts on both people and the planet, according to a report by a United Nations think tank. They include mounting space debris, depleting groundwater and the melting of mountain glaciers. Tipping points are critical thresholds in natural and societal systems that are reached when the system can no longer provide its expected function. Caitlyn Eberle at the United Nations University (UNU) in Germany and her colleagues have identified the key tipping points that connect the physical climate system to society. “We wanted to look at what point all these physical changes will lead to people experiencing this risky future,” says Eberle. The first is species extinctions, which are being accelerated by human activities and now occur at more than 10 times the natural rate. If too many species are wiped out in quick succession, it could trigger even more extinctions and lead to ecosystem collapses. […] Some of these tipping points have already been crossed, says Eberle: groundwater has been depleted in parts of Saudi Arabia and extreme temperatures near the limits of human survivability have been observed in Asia. Extinction removed 21 species from endangered list, U.S. wildlife officials say CBS News Nearly two dozen species are being taken off the endangered species list because they are extinct, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. Most of the species were listed under the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s or 1980s and were very low in numbers or likely already extinct at the time of listing. In the years since, "rigorous reviews of the best available science" have been conducted to determine whether the animals are extinct. "Federal protection came too late to reverse these species' decline, and it's a wake-up call on the importance of conserving imperiled species before it's too late," Service Director Martha Williams said. Scientists in 2019 warned that worldwide, 1 million species of plants and animals were at risk of extinction. There are more than 1,300 species listed as either endangered or threatened in the United States under the Endangered Species Act. The 21 species being removed include one mammal, 10 types of birds, two species of fish and eight types of mussels. Eight of the 21 species were found in Hawaii. Study: Birds on agricultural lands more vulnerable to heat The Columbian As climate change intensifies extreme heat, farms are becoming less hospitable to nesting birds, a new study found. That could be another barrier to maintaining rapidly eroding biodiversity that also provides benefits to humans, including farmers who get free pest control when birds eat agricultural pests. Researchers who examined data on over 150,000 nesting attempts found that birds in agricultural lands were 46 percent less likely to successfully raise at least one chick when it got really hot than birds in other areas. “I don’t think we expected it to be as extreme as it was,” said Katherine Lauck, a PhD candidate at University of California, Davis and lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Science. Bird scientists have been tracking the decline of avian wildlife for years. In 2019, a comprehensive study showed that there were three billion fewer wild birds than in 1970. The new study represents a closer look at what might be behind the dramatic decline. In the Amazon, communities next to the world’s most voluminous river are queuing for water AP News As the Amazon drought rages on, public authorities in Brazil are scrambling to deliver food and water to thousands of isolated communities throughout a vast and roadless territory, where boats are the only means of transportation. Across Amazonas state, which has a territory the size of three Californias, 59 out of its 62 municipalities are under state of emergency, impacting 633,000 people. In the capital Manaus, Negro River — a major tributary of the Amazon — has reached its lowest level since official measurements began 121 years ago. One of the most impacted cities is Careiro da Varzea, near Manaus by the Amazon River. On Tuesday, the municipality distributed emergency kits using an improvised barge originally designed to transport cattle. Ancient Amazon River rock carvings exposed by drought Reuters Human faces sculpted into stone up to 2,000 years ago have appeared on a rocky outcropping along the Amazon River since water levels dropped to record lows in the region's worst drought in more than a century. Some rock carvings had been sighted before but now there is a greater variety that will help researchers establish their origins, archaeologist Jaime de Santana Oliveira said on Monday. One area shows smooth grooves in the rock thought to be where Indigenous inhabitants once sharpened their arrows and spears long before Europeans arrived. Climate Change Now a Major Factor in Formation of El Niño Yale Environment 360 A new study finds that warming has come to influence the formation of El Niño. During El Niño, warm waters pool in the eastern Pacific and radiate heat into the air, leading to hotter weather across much of the globe. A strong El Niño is now taking shape and, according to NOAA, there is a 99 percent chance that 2023 will be the hottest year ever recorded. […] The research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, shows that until around 50 years ago changes in solar output played a major role in the formation of El Niños. “From the 1970s onwards, however, we see clear signals that can only be attributed to the consequences of man-made climate change,” lead author Paul Wilcox, of the University of Innsbruck, said in a statement. How Hurricane Otis stunned forecasters with its leap to a Category 5 The Washington Post When residents of Acapulco, Mexico, went to bed on Monday, Wednesday’s forecast called for gusty winds and some downpours. Otis, a run-of-the-mill tropical storm, was expected to only “gradually strengthen” en route to the coast. Instead, Otis intensified faster than any other eastern Pacific storm on record Tuesday and became the strongest hurricane to ever strike Mexico slamming Acapulco as a “potentially catastrophic Category 5.” […] In 2017, MIT hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel published a paper titled “Will Global Warming Make Hurricane Forecasting More Difficult?” In it, he argued that instances of extreme rapid intensification could be up to 20 times more common by the end of the 21st century. Otis careened from a tropical storm to Category 5 strength in 12 hours, and its peak winds increased 115 mph in 24 hours. That’s around a threshold that Emanuel wrote was “essentially nonexistent in the late twentieth-century climate” but increasingly probable in the current warming climate. Increased West Antarctic Ice Sheet melting ‘unavoidable’ British Antarctic Survey The West Antarctic Ice Sheet will continue to increase its rate of melting over the rest of the century, no matter how much we reduce fossil fuel use, according to British Antarctic Survey (BAS) research published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. A substantial acceleration in ice melting likely cannot now be avoided, which implies that Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise could increase rapidly over the coming decades. Scientists ran simulations on the UK’s national supercomputer to investigate ocean-driven melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet: how much is unavoidable and must be adapted to, and how much melting the international community still has control over through reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. […] The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing ice and is Antarctica’s largest contributor to sea-level rise. Even with carbon emissions cuts, a key part of Antarctica is doomed to slow collapse, study says The Canadian Press via APTN National News No matter how much the world cuts back on carbon emissions, a key and sizable chunk of Antarctica is essentially doomed to an “unavoidable” melt, a new study found. Though the full melt will take hundreds of years, slowly adding nearly 1.8 metres (6 feet) to sea levels, it will be enough to reshape where and how people live in the future, the study’s lead author said. Researchers used computer simulations to calculate future melting of protective ice shelves jutting over Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea in western Antarctica. The study in Monday’s journal Nature Climate Change found that even if future warming was limited to just a few tenths of a degree more – an international goal that many scientists say is unlikely to be met – it would have “limited power to prevent ocean warming that could lead to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.” Scientists call out rogue emissions from China at global ozone summit Nature Efforts to curb emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas commonly produced as a by-product of refrigerant manufacture might be falling short, and it seems eastern China is a major culprit. The hydrofluorocarbon gas, HFC-23, is around 14,700 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at warming the globe and has long been the subject of national and international climate-change mitigation efforts. Those efforts gained new traction nearly a decade ago when China and India — the world’s largest producers of the chemical — agreed to dial down its emissions. New research, however, confirms that emissions continued to rise in subsequent years, and an analysis of data from atmospheric-monitoring stations suggests that factories in eastern China are responsible for nearly half of the total. […] Overall, the analysis suggests that HFC-23 emissions in China nearly doubled, from some 5,000 tonnes in 2008, to around 9,500 tonnes in 2019, although those emissions were not covered under the Montreal Protocol at the time. (In 2016, the protocol was amended such that governments agreed to destroy HFC-23 ‘to the extent practicable’, but only from 2020 onwards.) […] A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington DC declined to answer questions regarding the HFC-23 emissions trends. Nature was unable to reach China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment for comment. The ‘underwater bushfire’ coming for Australia that can’t be stopped The Sydney Morning Herald A severe marine heatwave is bearing down on southern Australia, threatening fisheries, tourism and biodiversity along a vast tract of coast that hosts 67 per cent of the nation’s population. The approaching heatwave is like an “underwater bushfire that can’t be extinguished”, according to a group of experts concerned about the fate of the 8000-kilometre Great Southern Reef. […] The heatwave will peak between December and February, and the most intense anomalies will flare off the coast of Tasmania, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. The bureau’s oceanographer Grant Smith told AAP the heat could climb 2.5 degrees above the average, surpassing the highest temperature level on the forecasting scale. Canada’s methane leaks — underreported and overwhelming Canada’s National Observer Methane is becoming a serious threat to humanity, and Canada’s oil and gas industry is emitting a huge amount of it. Methane is a short-lived greenhouse gas that disappears within a decade or two. Unfortunately, it is extremely powerful while it exists — 82.5 times more potent than CO2 during the first couple of decades after its release. This planetary superheater has caused roughly a third of global heating so far. And atmospheric levels of it are at record highs and surging higher. Canada is a major emitter of methane — both in total emissions and emissions per capita. Our single largest source is “fugitive emissions” from the oil and gas industry. That’s a fancy term for leaks. According to Canada’s official National Inventory Report (NIR), these oil and gas industry leaks emit roughly half our national methane total. But the actual amount the industry is leaking is likely much larger. Lawmakers Want Answers on Damage and Costs Linked to Idled ‘Zombie’ Coal Mines Inside Climate News Lawmakers, including two from Pennsylvania, are asking for a federal investigation into the full extent of environmental damage caused by what are known as “zombie” surface mines, which may technically still be considered active for coal extraction but have been idled for months or years and can leak toxic waste. For environmental and public safety reasons, coal mining companies are supposed to stabilize and repair damaged land surfaces as they mine and not wait until all their digging or blasting is done. But as the economy around coal mining has crashed over the last decade, giving way to wind, solar and natural gas, mining companies have gone through bankruptcies, and environmental advocates have noticed delays in the kind of reclamation that federal law requires. Identical requests for an investigation—one from seven members of the House of Representatives and the other from Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.)—were sent to the General Accountability Office on Thursday. For Many in Wyoming, a Biden Plan to Protect Land Is Beyond Unpopular The New York Times Of all of the efforts by the Biden administration to protect environmentally fragile lands, few have generated as much vitriol as a proposal that would block oil and gas drilling on 1.6 million acres of high desert sagebrush steppe in Wyoming. […] The 1,350-page proposal for managing 3.6 million of acres of federal land in Southwest Wyoming was years in the making but still took many Wyoming residents by surprise when the Bureau of Land Management made it public in August. In addition to blocking energy development on nearly half that land, or 1.6 million acres, the plan would also restrict mining and some grazing. Those areas include petroglyphs dating back some 200 years, North America’s largest sand dunes and migration corridors in the Red Desert for bighorn sheep, mule deer and elk. […] “The actions that this administration has taken to date have been perilous for Wyoming by and large,” Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said in an interview. “I think people in Wyoming realize this administration has put its foot on the neck of their state.” New satellite readings show full extent of mining in the Amazon Rainforest Mongabay Earlier this month, the leaders of eight countries in South America signed the Belém Declaration, billed as a landmark step towards saving the Amazon Rainforest. But it was criticized for its weak language and lack of concrete strategies, raising questions about whether current policies are on track to meet conservation targets. When it comes to illegal mining, one of the top drivers of deforestation and pollution in the region, the declaration mentions monitoring fisheries and water quality at sites using mercury — but not much else. “There’s this text about preventing and combatting illegal mining, including strengthening international cooperation, but there’s no specifics there. A first step to addressing illegal mining is to get a good handle on where it is,” Matt Finer, senior research specialist at Amazon Conservation and the Director of Monitoring of the Amazon Project (MAAP), told Mongabay. A new report from MAAP compiles some of the most up-to-date and extensive analysis of mining in the Amazon… The map shows 58 cases of illegal mining in virtually every Amazonian country (Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname and Guyana), 49 of them illegal. I Ate All Your Precious Golf Worms And I’d Do It Again Defector Oh, is your precious grass all torn up? Your bluegrass/rye mixture, so uniform, so manicured, now a heaping pile of unsightly dirt after I got my tusks and snout in there to get at some delicious, delicious earthworms? Are you going to cry about it? Go ahead and whine about it to the state government. See what they do! I'll just lie here in the shade, digesting those juicy worms and thinking about my next meal: I think I smelled a bunch of grubs under that creeping bentgrass you call the 16th green. I'm gonna invite even more of my friends over next time. Javelinas don't belong on golf courses? Buddy, your golf course doesn't belong in javelina country. I was here first. I'm a javelina, also known as a peccary or, colloquially, a New World pig. That last one is a clue to how long we've been here: I'm not actually a pig. We're the Western Hemisphere's closest relatives to swine, which means we split off from them and settled here while you were still a monkey in a tree—apes didn't even exist yet, let alone "Arizona." NOAA cites environmental impact of rockets in Earth’s stratosphere The Washington Post The dry, stable air of Earth’s stratosphere is like a parking lot for aerosols, fine atmospheric particles that can affect the climate below. During high-altitude flights conducted over the Arctic by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this year, researchers collected and analyzed these particles. Their analysis, published this month in the journal PNAS, relied on a mobile mass spectrometer that measured particles’ chemical composition during the flights, allowing the scientists to pinpoint the chemical signatures of elements embedded in individual particles of sulfuric acid, which make up the majority of stratospheric particles. “Two of the most surprising elements we saw in these particles were niobium and hafnium,” NOAA research chemist Daniel Murphy, who led the research, said in a news release. “These are both rare elements that are not expected in the stratosphere. It was a mystery as to where these metals are coming from and how they’re ending up there.” Our Fixation on Green Technology Harms Our Ability to Confront Climate Crisis Truthout Massachusetts Climate Chief Wants MassDOT To Start Treating the Climate Emergency Like an Actual Emergency Streets Blog On Wednesday, Governor Healey's new climate chief published an 86-page catalog of recommendations for the state government to start addressing the climate emergency in earnest. The report is one of the earliest policy initiatives from the new Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience, a new cabinet office in Governor Healey's administration, and its chief, Melissa Hoffer. In one of her first executive orders when she took office in January, Gov. Healey created the new climate office and ordered that the new office would, "within 180 days, present to the Governor initial recommendations for modifications and improvements to better align executive department decision-making and action on climate matters." […] For instance, Hoffer's report says that "all discretionary State government spending should be aligned with our 2050 Net Zero mandate and climate resilience priorities. Grant programs and capital spending should advance, not undermine, state climate goals." How Climate Change Drives Conflict and War Crimes Around the Globe Inside Climate News Drought, flooding and extreme weather are driving and amplifying violent conflict around the world. At the same time, warfare has devastated ecosystems, imperiled access to vital resources and left behind toxic legacies that sicken civilian populations. On Thursday, a coalition of human rights organizations and lawyers published an open letter urging the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan, to begin assessing the links between climate change and crimes in the court’s remit. The letter also calls on Khan to prioritize the prosecution of crimes that cause environmental destruction, citing a host of examples… “Climate change and ecological degradation must be given due legal consideration as the threat multipliers to international peace and security that they are,” said Richard J. Rogers, the executive director of the Netherlands-based Climate Counsel and a signatory of the open letter. Kahn’s office at the International Criminal Court in The Hague did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The U.S. Is Spending a Fortune on War and a Pittance on the Climate Crisis The New Republic […] For about as long as the U.N. has discussed climate change, the U.S.—the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases—has sought to evade questions about nations’ historical responsibility for the crisis. That’s because those questions have tended to have dollar signs attached; as poorer and more climate-vulnerable countries have long argued, the richer countries that are more responsible for the problem ought to pay more to address it. After years of haggling, the text of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, codified a diplomatic consensus in 1992: “In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities.” Those words have been argued over ever since, particularly on the issue of “loss and damage,” which refers to the cost of recovering from climate-fueled destruction (whether it be extreme weather events like hurricanes or longer-term degradation by, say, sea level rise). Countries in the global south have pushed to establish a dedicated loss and damage fund, similar to those that already exist for climate mitigation and adaptation. Year after year, the U.S. has fought those proposals, fearing it could be on the hook for an ordinate amount of cash. Many were surprised, then, when—during the eleventh hour of last year’s climate talks in Egypt—the U.S. dropped its long-standing opposition to a dedicated fund and agreed to have the U.N. start the process of establishing one. […] Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Sky News earlier this week that the U.S. could “absolutely” afford to support the war efforts of both Ukraine and Israel simultaneously. “America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel’s military needs, and we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia,” she said. That’s not exactly new information: The $3.8 billion of military aid that the U.S. furnishes to Israel each year well outpaces America’s initial $3 billion commitment to the Global Climate Fund. So far, it has given just $2 billion. In Kenya, flooding lakes have displaced thousands. A novel lawsuit blames climate change Science The town of Kampi Ya Samaki was once a bustling fishing and tourism center on the shores of Lake Baringo, one of a chain of major lakes nestled in the Great Rift Valley of western Kenya. Today, however, much of the town is submerged, with only the tops of houses, hotels, churches, and schools still visible. Seven islands used to sit just offshore. But the rising waters mean now “there are six,” says Evans Limo, a local tour guide. Such flooding has become a common sight throughout the Rift Valley, where lakes have swelled over the past decade. Lake Baringo, for example, has doubled in area since 2010 to about 26,000 hectares. Kenyan officials say the flooding has created “panic and anxiety” in lakeshore communities and affected nearly 400,000 people, with many forced to abandon their homes. In some communities, shifting shorelines have exposed residents to deadly attacks by crocodiles and hippos. Now, a novel lawsuit brought by people living around Lake Baringo has put a spotlight on the question of whether climate change is to blame for the rising lakes—and whether Kenya’s constitution and a landmark 2016 climate law obligate government agencies to compensate flooding victims. The goal of the court challenge, which was scheduled to get a hearing this week, is to “enforce the climate change duties of public officials,” says Omondi Owino, the lead attorney representing the residents. The case, analysts say, is among the first in Africa to test a government’s responsibility for helping its citizens cope with the impacts of climate change. ‘Greatest challenge for humanity’: Judge convicting rebel scientists acknowledges climate crisis EuroNews Members of Scientist Rebellion took part in three days of action against multinational investment company BlackRock, car manufacturer BMW and the German government. Four activists from Scientist Rebellion have been sentenced in Germany following non-violent protests in October last year. Yesterday a judge at the Munich Regional Court convicted the activists from Spain, the US and Italy of criminal damage and trespassing but a further charge of coercion was dropped. The judge reportedly acknowledged the climate crisis as “the greatest challenge for humanity” and took into account that their aim was to call attention to the crisis, not to damage property. But the four activists were sentenced to fines totalling €1,680 each. If they don’t pay, they will be required to serve 105 days in prison. The activists were sentenced following three days of action against multinational investment company BlackRock, car manufacturer BMW and the German government for their role in fueling the climate crisis. “There are moments in history in which we are called to take a clear position. This is the time,” says Lorenzo Masini, one of the activists and a Master of Science in Plant Biotechnology from Italy. “The judge acknowledged the climate emergency, but still, he stated that he had to convict us for damaging private property, apparently valuing private property higher than life.” The Scientists Watching Their Life’s Work Disappear The New York Times Amid the chaos of climate change, humans tend to focus on humans. But Earth is home to countless other species, including animals, plants and fungi. For centuries, we have been making it harder for them to exist by cutting down forests, plowing grasslands, building roads, damming rivers, draining wetlands and polluting. Now that wildlife is depleted and hemmed in, climate change has come crashing down. In 2016, scientists in Australia announced the loss of a rodent called the Bramble Cay melomys, one of the first known species driven to global extinction by climate change. Others are all but certain to follow. How many depends on how much we let the planet heat. The seven scientists here document the impacts of global warming on the nonhuman world. Their work brings them face to face with realities that few of us see firsthand. Some are stubborn optimists. Some struggle with despair. To varying degrees, they all take comfort in nature’s resilience. But they know it goes only so far. These scientists are witnesses to an intricately connected world that we have pushed out of balance. Their faces show the weight they carry. Scientists urge WHO to declare health emergency for planet Deutsche Welle Scientists from across the world on Wednesday collectively called for the UN, world leaders, and health authorities to address climate change and biodiversity loss as one global health emergency. The report published by more than 200 health journals urged the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare the climate and nature crisis a singular crisis to be tackled together to avoid catastrophe. These issues will be separately discussed at upcoming United Nations (UN) conferences — the 28th UN Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change in Dubai in November and the 16th COP on biodiversity in Turkey in 2024. The research communities associated with the two COPs are largely separate. However, they concluded in a 2020 joint workshop that there was a need to tackle both together. "Only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex problem … can solutions be developed that avoid maladaptation and maximize the beneficial outcomes,” they had said then. Climate crisis could cause 'catastrophic harm' to human health, 200-plus medical journals warn CBC News More than 200 medical journals are calling on the World Health Organization to deem two overlapping environmental crises — climate change and biodiversity loss — as a global health emergency, while warning of the potential for "catastrophic harm" to human health. In the co-ordinated editorial published on Wednesday , a team of authors outlined the dire impacts linked to rising temperatures, extreme weather events and the loss of wildlife. The world's health-related environmental challenges are now severe, the group wrote, from the spread of infectious diseases, to the rise of waterborne infections, to the health impacts of air pollution. Changes in land use, for instance, have forced "tens of thousands of species into closer contact," increasing the exchange of pathogens and fuelling the emergence of new diseases. Keeping your cool in a warming world: 8 steps to help manage eco-anxiety The Conversation Democrats unveil ‘most comprehensive plan ever’ to address plastics problem Grist As plastic litter builds up in the environment, polluting landscapes and poisoning ecosystems, U.S. lawmakers have unveiled their “most comprehensive plan ever” to tackle the problem. Three Democratic members of Congress on Wednesday introduced the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2023, a sweeping bill to reduce plastic production and hold companies financially responsible for their pollution. Previous iterations of the legislation were introduced in 2020 and 2021, but this year’s version includes stronger protections for communities that live near petrochemical facilities, more stringent targets for companies to reduce their plastic production, and stricter regulations against toxic chemicals used in plastic products. “Our bill tackles the plastic pollution crisis head on, addressing the harmful climate and environmental justice impacts of this growing fossil fuel sector and moving our economy away from its overreliance on single-use plastic,” Representative Jared Huffman of California said in a statement. Huffman co-sponsored the bill with Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. […] Break Free 2023 would establish a nationwide policy of “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR. Under this policy, plastic companies would pay membership fees to a centralized organization that’s responsible for meeting targets around post-consumer recycled content and source reduction — reducing the production of plastic. The bill also retains proposals to ban certain single-use plastic products, implement a national system offering people deposits for recycling their beverage bottles, increase post-consumer recycled content in plastic bottles, and place a moratorium on new or expanded petrochemical facilities, pending a federal review of their health and environmental impacts. How Americans View Future Harms From Climate Change in Their Community and Around the U.S. Pew Research Center A new Pew Research Center survey finds a majority of Americans think climate change is causing harm to people in the United States today and 63% expect things to get worse in their lifetime. When it comes to the personal impact of climate change, most Americans think they’ll have to make at least minor sacrifices over their lifetime because of climate change, but a relatively modest share think climate impacts will require them to make major sacrifices in their own lives. […] Looking ahead, young adults ages 18 to 29 are especially likely to foresee worsening climate impacts: 78% think harm to people in the U.S. caused by climate change will get a little or a lot worse in their lifetime. […] Just under half of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents expect to make no sacrifices in their everyday lives because of climate change. By comparison, 88% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents expect to have to make at least minor sacrifices. These partisan gaps are closely tied to differing expectations about national impacts: 86% of Democrats expect harms from climate change in the U.S. to get worse during their lifetime; just 37% of Republicans say the same. A new hybrid subspecies of puffin is likely the result of climate change Ars Technica [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/26/2201808/-Overnight-News-Digest-Climate-rushing-to-irreversible-tipping-points-civilization-could-collapse?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/