<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><i><font size="+1"><b>October 18, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[CBS Sunday Morning - text and video]<br>
<b>For many climate change finally hits home</b><br>
- -<br>
If you've been paying attention, none of this is news. What is new
is that public opinion about the climate crisis is finally changing.<br>
<br>
Pogue said, "When you see these headlines, like, '70% of Americans
are now at least mildly curious,' it's not something to brag about.
It still seems really low to me."<br>
<br>
"To me, something like 70% or 75% of the country expressing concern
about an issue seems really high," Wallace-Wells said. "We live an
incredibly polarized world, where most of these issues, if you can
nudge it past 50%, you're doing incredibly well."<br>
<br>
So, what took us so long to become alarmed?<br>
<br>
Wallace-Wells said, "Until quite recently, people didn't see the
effects in their lives. I think almost no one now can look at their
TV screens and think to themselves, 'Climate change isn't real.'"<br>
<br>
The federal government has done virtually nothing about climate
change in the last few years, but in many ways, the country has
marched right ahead anyway - the mayors of 438 cities, the governors
of 25 states, and 700 universities have committed to cutting their
emissions, mostly in line with the Paris Agreement, the 2016
international commitment to limit the Earth's heating up to 3.6
degrees Fahrenheit or less in the next 80 years.<br>
So, what took us so long to become alarmed?<br>
- -<br>
Wallace-Wells said, "Until quite recently, people didn't see the
effects in their lives. I think almost no one now can look at their
TV screens and think to themselves, 'Climate change isn't real.'"<br>
<br>
So, there is some good news: more people are talking about the
climate crisis; more countries are doing something about it (even
China); and last year, for the first time, the price of clean,
renewable energy actually fell below the price of burning coal.<br>
<br>
On the other hand, we're getting started far too late.<br>
<br>
Pogue asked David Wallace-Wells if the latest developments give him
any hope: "If you're hoping to preserve the planet of our
grandparents, there's no reason for hope," he replied. "If you're
hoping to preserve the climate as we know it today, there's really
no reason for hope there, either. But I think that the worst-case
scenarios are getting considerably less likely, because a lot of
this action has taken place, a lot of the political momentum that
we're seeing."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/for-many-climate-change-finally-hits-home/">https://www.cbsnews.com/news/for-many-climate-change-finally-hits-home/</a>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[a few words on climate change - economists in general discussion -
audio]<br>
<b>RANA FOROOHAR AND MARK BLYTH - How Deep Will the Depression Get?</b><br>
Oct 8, 2020<br>
theAnalysis-news<br>
Rana Foroohar, Financial Times columnist and author (Don't Be Evil:
How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles), and Mark Blyth,
political economist and author (Angrynomics), join Paul Jay for a
wide-ranging conversation about the deepening depression,
inequality, and China. On theAnalysis.news podcast.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIiloLrnkBM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIiloLrnkBM</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[clips from Foreign Affairs]<br>
<b>Welcome to the Final Battle for the Climate</b><br>
The great powers have taken big steps to fight global warming. Now
attention turns to the rest of the world.<br>
BY ADAM TOOZE - OCTOBER 17, 2020<br>
China's unilateral commitment to carbon neutrality by 2060 took the
West by surprise. If President Xi Jinping's words can be taken at
face value, the country which emits more carbon dioxide than the
United States, Europe, and Japan put together is embarking on a
radical program of decarbonization. Climate change politics at a
global level thus shift into a new gear.<br>
<br>
There were no doubt tactical motives behind the timing of Xi's
announcement. But to imagine that China's strategy is a
propagandistic diversion or a concession to Western diplomacy--a
liberal quid pro quo for Xi's dictatorship--is both to overestimate
Western leverage and to underestimate the climate problem. It is
precisely because the Communist Party regime is bent on shaping the
next century that its leader takes climate change seriously. In the
calculus of the regime, Yangtze river floods are, like Hong Kong
rights protestors, a threat to its grip on power. The future for
Beijing's authoritarian China Dream looks far more uncertain in a
world of runaway global warming...<br>
- - <br>
A quarter century before it is expected to overtake the United
States in terms of GDP, China surpassed it in terms of carbon
emissions. China dominates all the heavily polluting industries
worldwide--coal, steel, aluminum, cement. Once this could have been
attributed to offshored Western production. Today, China consumes
most of its heavy industrial output at home. With his
decarbonization commitment, which eclipses any plausible future move
that the EU or the United States might make, Xi has simply made
clear where the real decision lies...<br>
- -<br>
As more and more countries enter the energy-intensive middle-income
phase of growth, as they urbanize, build power stations, and their
better off citizens buy cars and air conditioners, overall CO2
emissions surge. It is the environmental concomitant of the rise of
the global middle class.<br>
As a result, we are already well past the point at which global
stabilization can be achieved by a deal between the G3. What both
Western and Chinese climate policy need is a stabilization pact that
involves not only India, but other big emerging market economies
like Brazil and Indonesia, future population giants like Pakistan
and Nigeria and the big coal, oil, and gas producers, like
Australia, Canada, Russia, and the Gulf states. Those debates have
been going on for years at global climate talks. But the
announcement by China changes the game for all the players...<br>
- -<br>
Global emissions have continued to rise. The overall energy mix has
hardly shifted. Economic growth wipes out any energy efficiency
gains. Trump's withdrawal from Paris made an already disastrous
situation worse, opening the door to backsliding by the Brazilians,
Australians, Russians, and Saudis. It was this profoundly alarming
situation that triggered the grassroots political mobilization for
climate action that has been such a remarkable feature of the last
few years. As the year started, the question was whether America's
exit from Paris would be offset by new commitments from the EU and
China.<br>
<br>
Xi's announcement has gone further than anyone anticipated. In 2015,
the refusal by China to commit to a definitive emissions path
defined the Paris fudge. If the biggest piece of the future refused
to be pinned down, there was no way to even define the equation to
be solved. Now, Beijing has staked its claim. It has abandoned once
and for all the line that separated emerging from advanced economies
in previous climate talks. This will make it harder for Europe to
renege and it will put significant pressure on India as well as the
United States. But it also marks the terminus for the strategy of
superpower bargaining that laid the groundwork for Paris. Now we
have to finally come to terms with multipolarity...<br>
- -<br>
China has now doubled down on the Paris framework. For the first
time since climate talks began in the early 1990s, the largest
emitter has committed to decarbonization. But important as that is,
it will not, by itself, be enough. What Beijing and anyone else who
cares about climate stabilization needs now is not just a parallel
commitment by the United States but binding commitments to deep
decarbonization from the rest of the world. And for that, we will
need a suitable tent...<br>
- -<br>
There are several hundred large and profitable corporations whose
entire business model will be upended by rapid and deep
decarbonization. Western oil majors like Exxon are high on that
list. But of the ten companies that most dramatically increased
their CO2 emissions over the last five years, four were Indian, two
were Chinese, the others were Australian, Russian, and Korean.
Swiss-based LafargeHolcim, cement supplier to the world, came in at
number two. Energy is a business for state capitalists. Twelve of
the top 20 corporate CO2 emitters are state-owned. The national oil
corporations of Iran, Iraq, Mexico, Algeria, and Venezuela are not
just businesses. They are pillars of their national economies and
state finances.<br>
<br>
One worry must be that recalcitrant coalitions will develop, whose
projects for energy autonomy and economic development thwart the
overall decarbonization push. Even within the EU, Poland, with its
heavy reliance coal, has refused to join the otherwise unanimous
commitment to net zero by 2050. In July this year, it used its
bargaining power to puncture the carbon credentials of the European
corona recovery pact. Repeated on a global scale, that is a worrying
prospect. The increasingly frantic struggle for influence over the
gas fields of the eastern Mediterranean is a case in point. Turkey
has a rapidly growing demand for energy. It wants new sources of gas
to relieve its alarming dependence on gas imports from Russia...<br>
- -<br>
And a narrow focus on prices and short-term profit margins may
underestimate the forces that are at work. There are signs that,
like the communist regime in Beijing, “big money” in the West is
beginning to take a strategic view. In the week before Xi's speech
to the UN, Climate Action 100 Plus, a lobby group whose members
represent global investors with a collective $47 trillion in assets,
announced that it would be judging 161 of the largest companies,
collectively responsible for up to 80 percent of global industrial
greenhouse gases, by their progress towards net-zero carbon
emissions.<br>
<br>
Like Xi's speech there was no doubt an element of greenwashing in
this statement. But it can also be read as a recognition by giant
asset managers like BlackRock and Pimco that the stability of
capital accumulation depends in the long run on maintaining a stable
environmental envelope. For Western capital as for Xi's regimes,
those risks are political as well as physical. In the event of
future climate crises, firms that might be seen as recklessly
endangering climate stability may be at risk of suddenly losing
their license to operate. The experience of the airlines in 2020 has
shown how suddenly the societal response to a future environmental
crisis might jeopardize an entire industry...<br>
- - <br>
<b>It is tempting, therefore, to hope that with the climate
commitments of</b> China and the EU, the world has achieved
critical mass. Technological change, regulatory leadership, price
incentives, and investor pressure will drive decarbonization. But to
count on these forces alone is naïve.<br>
<br>
The fossil fuel systems that define our lives are anchored not just
in technology and profit. Decarbonization, like the construction of
the fossil fuel economy in the first place, will involve questions
of international power and geopolitics.<br>
- - <br>
Of course, the geopolitics of the exit from fossil fuels are not an
American problem alone. For the last half century, Europe built its
relationship with the Soviet Union and then with Russia on an energy
import policy. (The Nordstream 2 pipeline is the offspring of that
history.) Japan and now China are the major customers of the Gulf
states. The leading OPEC states have considerable reserves and they
vigorously assert their autonomy. In the Gulf, production costs are
so low that states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar can confidently
expect to be amongst the last suppliers of fossil fuels to the
world. Fragile high-cost producers, the likes of Nigeria or
Venezuela for instance, will feel the pinch first. But eventually,
the balance of demand and supply will shift and, if minimum carbon
pricing works, price wars will offer no escape. Between 2040 and
2060, the century of the oil-fueled global economy will come to an
end.<br>
<br>
This will be a revolutionary transformation, and the United States
must carefully calibrate its intervention. There are of course
plenty of reasons to welcome the disempowering of both Russia and
Saudi Arabia. Visions of regime change will be tempting. But we
should be clear about the risks. Simply to face the fossil-fuel
producers with a fait accompli, with no way out, will incite
resistance and encourage beleaguered incumbents to make dangerous
gambles for salvation. Such a confrontational approach may appeal to
those who want to see not so much a Green New Deal as a Green
Revolution.<br>
<br>
But if the timeline is as pressing as the science suggests, then the
absolute priority is decarbonization. To that end we need to devise
off ramps and ways of converting existing assets and wealth into
claims on a new, low-carbon world. The most urgent priority is to
generalize the interest in the project of climate stabilization.
That, at least, is something the West now has in common with
Beijing.<br>
Adam Tooze is a history professor and director of the European
Institute at Columbia University. His latest book is Crashed: How a
Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, and he is currently
working on a history of the climate crisis. Twitter: @adam_tooze<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/17/great-power-competition-climate-china-europe-japan/">https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/17/great-power-competition-climate-china-europe-japan/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
["Stand Up - or stand aside!" a new podcast on activism]<br>
<b>A Matter of Degrees</b><br>
Katharine Wilkinson, Leah Stokes<br>
Give up your climate guilt. Sharpen your curiosity. This show is for
the climate-curious people who know climate change is a problem, but
are trying to figure out how to tackle it. We're telling stories
about the levers of power that have created the problem -- and the
tools we have to fix it.<br>
Climate change is no longer a far-off scenario. It's happening now.
It's getting more intense every year. And young people are seeing a
scary future play out right in front of them.<br>
<br>
In recent years, the youth climate movement has gained unprecedented
strength. Borrowing from the civil rights movement and early
environmental activists, young leaders are forcing politicians to
grapple with climate change in new ways. Are we truly at a
breakthrough moment? Or a breaking moment?<br>
<br>
In this episode, we'll hear stories from Erin Bridges, Isha Clarke,
Varshini Prakash, and Mary Anne Hitt.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-matter-of-degrees/id1534829787">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-matter-of-degrees/id1534829787</a><br>
- - <br>
[Sunrise movement 2 years ago, 1 minute video]<br>
<b>We Demand a Green New Deal</b><br>
Nov 18, 2018<br>
Sunrise Movement<br>
One week after the midterm elections, 200 young people joined
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to demand Democrats back a Green New Deal.
We have just 12 years left to stop the climate crisis. We demand
bold action now, and that means adopting a #GreenNewDeal platform.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khVNhXVZIu8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khVNhXVZIu8</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[History of the 97% - video]<br>
<b>The Story of Climate Consensus</b><br>
Sep 2, 2020<br>
John Cook<br>
The scientific consensus on human-caused global warming has been a
fierce topic for decades. To understand why, you need to know the
history of consensus. The first message the public heard about the
consensus on climate change was that there was no consensus. Next,
scientists published a series of studies quantifying expert
agreement on human-caused global warming - multiple studies found 90
to 100% agreement with multiple studies converging on 97% consensus.
In response, climate deniers continued to argue there was no
consensus (as well as argue scientists should stop talking about it
because science isn't done by consensus).<br>
Follow me here:<br>
TWITTER: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://twitter.com/johnfocook">https://twitter.com/johnfocook</a><br>
INSTAGRAM: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.instagram.com/johnfocook/">https://www.instagram.com/johnfocook/</a><br>
FACEBOOK: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.facebook.com/john.cook.186/">https://www.facebook.com/john.cook.186/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPNr9BeMNLk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPNr9BeMNLk</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> </p>
[Pipeline Safety Trust - incident reports]<br>
<b>A Decade in Review 2010 - 2019</b><b><br>
</b><b>Are we progressing toward the goal of zero incidents?</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://pstrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Decade-In-Review.pdf">http://pstrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Decade-In-Review.pdf</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
October 18, 1983 </b></font><br>
<p>In what would be one of her last "News Digest" broadcasts, NBC
anchor Jessica Savitch mentions a recently released EPA report on
the consequences of carbon pollution.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w4pFNCzhTg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w4pFNCzhTg</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/#videoclip-3279">http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/#videoclip-3279</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/06/21/1101930/-A-Greenhouse-Effect-Warning-from-1983">https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/06/21/1101930/-A-Greenhouse-Effect-Warning-from-1983</a>
<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/<br>
<br>
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html"><https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html></a>
/<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote</a><br>
<br>
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request"><mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request></a>
to news digest./<br>
<br>
*** Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only. It does not
carry images or attachments which may originate from remote
servers. A text-only message can provide greater privacy to the
receiver and sender.<br>
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for
democratic and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.<br>
To subscribe, email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote">contact@theclimate.vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote"><mailto:contact@theclimate.vote></a>
with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe<br>
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote</a><br>
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TheClimate.Vote">http://TheClimate.Vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://TheClimate.Vote/"><http://TheClimate.Vote/></a>
delivering succinct information for citizens and responsible
governments of all levels. List membership is confidential and
records are scrupulously restricted to this mailing list.<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>