[✔️] May 13, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Woke awakens climate action, Scenarios, SCOTUS, India heat, China, Thailand too, Pregnant metaphor, Denial more difficult

Sat May 13 07:49:30 EDT 2023

/*May*//*13, 2023*/

/[ Why yes,  Yes it does.  ]
/*Is the GOP War on ‘Woke Finances’ Delaying Climate Action?*
Red states are trying to block money managers from considering climate 
change when investing in utilities. Recent evidence suggests that 
political pressure could be swaying investors.
By Kristoffer Tigue
May 12, 2023
Republican-led states are asking federal regulators to block the world’s 
largest investment firm from imposing climate-related financial 
practices on utilities. While the GOP’s war on so-called “woke finances” 
has had limited success in stemming the flow of money into clean energy, 
there’s growing evidence the political pressure could be delaying 
climate action.

On Wednesday, Republican attorneys general from 17 states filed a motion 
with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking the agency to stop 
BlackRock from buying $10 million voting shares in any utility that 
adopts the firm’s environmental, social and governmental investing 
priorities—also known as ESG. That acronym has become synonymous with 
climate-conscious investing, meaning money managers are taking climate 
change and other sustainability measures into account in their 
decision-making.

Because the practice inherently devalues fossil fuel companies and other 
carbon-intensive industries, Republicans have been particularly 
aggressive critics of the practice. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita 
led Wednesday’s motion, joined by his counterparts from Utah, Alabama, 
Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, 
Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and West 
Virginia.

“These elitists are trying to impose restrictions on energy companies 
and utilities that would never win approval at the ballot box,” Rokita 
said in a press release. “Their schemes could raise utility bills for 
regular Americans, including elderly Hoosiers on fixed incomes, and they 
could diminish the value of investment accounts.”

It’s hard to definitively say how much success Republicans have had in 
their pushback against ESG investing. And climate activists in general 
are skeptical that the investment practices go far enough to make any 
real difference in curbing global warming—ESG funds often ignore the 
massive climate impact of the food and agricultural industry, for example.

But there’s growing evidence that the political pressure from 
Republicans is confusing the global market, which can spook investors on 
the fence about climate-related financing and generally slow progress 
when it comes to diverting money away from fossil fuels and toward 
renewable energy. That’s a problem, experts say, mostly because society 
is quickly running out of time to keep rising temperatures below tipping 
points that, once crossed, could make the climate crisis far more 
difficult to manage.

The political pressure has prompted Biden administration officials with 
the Securities and Exchange Commission to consider watering down a new 
rule that would require large companies operating in the United States 
to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related risks. It 
has also led to several delays of the rule, which was drafted last 
spring but has yet to be finalized. In fact, former SEC Commissioner 
Robert Jackson said in late April, when a final rule was expected to be 
released, that it could now take until this fall for regulators to put 
out the final version.

Last month, shareholders also failed by wide margins to pass 
climate-related resolutions at three of the biggest U.S. banks: 
Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The resolutions called for 
the lenders to wind down new fossil fuel financing, but garnered just 10 
percent support at Citigroup and 7 percent at Bank of America. Wells 
Fargo shareholders also failed to pass its proposed resolution, but the 
exact tally wasn’t disclosed publicly.

“It seems pretty clear that the big banks are going to keep financing 
fossil-based energy development, even though that is enabling the 
growing systemic risks and costs that are already hitting us from 
climate change,” Heidi Welsh, executive director of the Sustainable 
Investments Institute, told Reuters in reaction to the failed resolutions.

Despite warnings from global economic experts who say any new oil and 
gas development is incompatible with the world’s climate goals, new 
reports have shown that banks continue to pump hundreds of billions of 
dollars into fossil fuel companies, including spending at least $150 
billion last year on fossil fuel expansion projects.

That news could be an ominous sign for climate-related resolutions that 
will be voted on next month at some of the biggest fossil fuel 
companies, starting with Shell. Activist investors are ramping up 
pressure on Shell’s shareholders to support the measure.

But investors continue to get conflicting messages, especially from 
conservative-leaning policymakers in the U.S. On Thursday, Christopher 
Waller, a governor for the Federal Reserve who was appointed by former 
President Donald Trump, said there’s no need for central bankers to pay 
special attention to the risks climate change poses to the global 
financial system—contradicting major economic reports in recent years 
that claim the opposite.

Climate-related natural disasters in the U.S. alone caused a staggering 
$165 billion in damages in 2021, recent government data revealed. And 
some of the world’s largest financial analysis firms have estimated that 
without stronger intervention, the impacts of global warming could slash 
the world’s gross domestic product anywhere from 4 percent to 18 percent 
by 2050, which translates to trillions of dollars in potential lost revenue.

Waller, however, apparently hasn’t seen those reports.

“Based on what I’ve seen so far, I believe that placing an outsized 
focus on climate-related risks is not needed,” he said Thursday at a 
conference in Madrid. “Climate change is real, but I do not believe it 
poses a serious risk to the safety and soundness of large banks or the 
financial stability of the United States.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12052023/gop-esg-woke-finances-climate//
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/[  some serious attention to the data - useful video  ] /
*USGCRP Advisory Committee: Spring Meeting*
National Academies - Earth and Life Studies
May 12, 2023
Session 1: Scenarios Overview and Current Status
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DAktLlWlbk
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/[ SCOTUS rules fairly -- ]/
*A Supreme Court Ruling the Fossil-Fuel Industry Doesn’t Like*
Communities can now sue in state courts for compensation for the costs 
of climate change—something oil companies have fought against for years.
By Bill McKibben
May 10, 2023...
- -
The Colorado lawsuit, she says, is asking players like Exxon to pay 
their fair share. But it could come to more than that. “I think the 
outcome could be an awakening that there has been some serious bad 
acting going on, some misinformation and disinformation from these 
companies that have led us to chase our tails, to focus on our own 
carbon footprints, and not on the massive shift we need to see. This 
could be our moment of system change.”
- -
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-supreme-court-ruling-the-fossil-fuel-industry-doesnt-like?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_McKibben_05102023&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5e4f6ed6954fcf61233b06c1&user_id=&hasha=92d43392605ea6bb4bdc7142e9488efb&hashb=e5a49d109ab34b50b44ff43c860af628d814d3cb&hashc=dfb33c48616eba03c56bb797058ee3fb42a389c7d938b4eb39adebaae0008a62&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_ClimateCrisis/
/

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/[ India is greatly concerned with heatwave - and China and Thailand,  
YouTube Aljazeera ]/
*Heatwaves of the Future Are Here Already*
Regan Parenton
May 10, 2023
We're in runaway climate change.
This is what it looks like.

"More than 90% of the world's population is projected to face increased 
risks from the compound impacts of extreme heat and drought, potentially 
widening social inequalities as well as undermining the natural world's 
ability to reduce CO2 emissions in the atmosphere—according to a study 
from Oxford's School of Geography.

Warming is projected to intensify these hazards ten-fold globally under 
the highest emission pathway, says the report, published in Nature 
Sustainability.

In the wake of record temperatures in 2022, from London to Shanghai, 
continuing rising temperatures are projected around the world. When 
assessed together, the linked threats of heat and drought represent a 
significantly higher risk to society and ecosystems than when either 
threat is considered independently, according to the paper by Dr. Jiabo 
Yin, a visiting researcher from Wuhan University and Oxford Professor 
Louise Slater.

These joint threats may have severe socio-economic and ecological 
impacts which could aggravate socio inequalities, as they are projected 
to have more severe impacts on poorer people and rural areas.

According to the research, "The frequency of extreme compounding hazards 
is projected to intensify tenfold globally due to the combined effects 
of warming and decreases in terrestrial water storage, under the highest 
emission scenario. Over 90% of the world population and GDP is projected 
to be exposed to increasing compounding risks in the future climate, 
even under the lowest emission scenario."
- http://phys.org/news/2023-01-compound...

An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to 
transition at a rate that is determined by the climate system 
energy-balance, and which is more rapid than the rate of change of the 
external forcing, though it may include sudden forcing events such as 
meteorite impacts. Abrupt climate change therefore is a variation beyond 
the variability of a climate. Past events include the end of the 
Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, Younger Dryas, Dansgaard-Oeschger 
events, Heinrich events and possibly also the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal 
Maximum. The term is also used within the context of climate change to 
describe sudden climate change that is detectable over the time-scale of 
a human lifetime, possibly as the result of feedback loops within the 
climate system or tipping points.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_c...

At this rate, by 2030, the equator will be completely fried with mass 
casualty incidents arising from heatwaves. Business would grind to a 
halt & entire economies would need to shut down.
Including nuclear reactors.

This, on top of everything else.

We barely managed COVID.
All of this spells two words: Game Over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcFQbCc4QwU

/[   maybe start at  57:14  ]/
*ZJMaayan comments *
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/96o0rhhuh1ylschrphzoh/h?dl=0&preview=PDNG+Skills+%234+VIDEO.mp4&rlkey=yvq5jwui73yrlqfeni9uifait

/[ video documentary of the Great Depression 1:24:00 ]/
*The Scary Parallels Between The Great Depression And Today | When the 
World Breaks | Real History*
Real History
May 3, 2023
An investigation into the use of creativity, art and entertainment as a 
form of survival during the Great Depression of 1929; parallels are 
drawn between the creativity generated during the Great Depression and 
the global recession of 2009.

 From the ancient civilizations of years past to the dawn of the Space 
Race, every week we'll be bringing you award-winning documentaries 
featuring some of the world's best historians. Subscribe so you don't 
miss out.

Real History is part of the History Hit Network.
Any queries, please contact owned-enquiries at littledotstudios.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUAHqrdIAz8

/[The news archive - looking back at 2011 when ... wait, are we still in 
that time?  ]/
/*May 13, 2011*/
May 13, 2011: In an editorial, the Washington Post declares, "Climate 
change denial becomes harder to justify."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-denial-becomes-harder-to-justify/2011/05/13/AF44QQ4G_story.html

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