Climate change

"I'm agnostic as to the causes. All I know is there is water where there once was ice."

"We need to address climate change, we need to limit the temperature rise globally to the maximum extent but we cannot do it at the expense of keeping people in poverty and stopping their economic development."

"We were warned plenty that we were creating a disaster in the only atmosphere we’ve got, and we kept on doing it. Now we are facing the consequences."

"We don't have much time left. We are moving towards temperature increases of around two degrees Celsius, which is going to have consequences in the tropics, and we will lose things like glaciers. That's not a theory; it's happening right now. It's not a prediction; it's happening right now. But you just sightsee near those glaciers. But the glaciers are a big source of water. And on the questions of water, in California we store our water in a snowpack. When that's gone, the rain will be the same but it won't accumulate. With warming temperatures the snowpack will not work. It might be possible to substitute with dams, but that's complicated. This is conjoined with a big energy problem and I think that we really have to encourage development in this area. Just waiting for technological improvement won't work. We need to encourage it."

"The lie is that if we address the climate crisis, we will also solve the biodiversity crisis."

"Is humankind itself hastening its own end? Man has, for instance, been burning carbon-containing fuel — wood, coal, oil, gas — at a steadily accelerating rate. All these fuels form carbon dioxide. Some is absorbed by plants and the oceans but not as fast as it is produced. This means the carbon dioxide content of the air is going up — slightly but nevertheless up. Carbon dioxide retains heat, and even a small rise means a warming of the Earth's atmosphere. This may result in the melting of the polar ice caps with unusual speed, flooding the world before we have learned climate control. In reverse, our industrial civilization is making our atmosphere dustier so that it reflects more sunlight away and cools the Earth slightly — thus making possible a glacial advance in a few centuries, also before we have learned climate control."

"When we look at the rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather … What people (must) do is to change their behavior and their attitudes … for our upcoming generation we have to do something, and we have to demand for government support."

"When I was a boy in the 1900s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years."

"Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."

"One very simple truth about Global Warming is this; that it will spare nobody, however rich, mighty and powerful we think we are. … Mister Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the UK once said that without proper action now, the average global temperatures would rise by 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists estimate that the subsequent rise in the sea level would be enough to swamp a large proportion of Bangladesh in 30/40 years time. It would be a serious catastrophe for my country and for the whole region if much of the land in Bangladesh disappears under the sea. I become frightened to think that my grand children (when I touch them) will have no place to live on this planet earth. I really want to be sure that my grandchildren, and their children after them, will be able to enjoy the beauty of my country that I have enjoyed, and be able to have enough land to live, and enough land for food."

"Despite its imperfections, the European Union can be, and indeed is, a powerful inspiration for many around the world. The challenges faced from one region to the other may differ in scale but they do not differ in nature. We all share the same planet. Poverty, organized crime, terrorism, climate change: these are problems that do not respect national borders. We share the same aspirations and universal values: these are progressively taking root in a growing number of countries all over the world. We share “l’irréductible humain”, the irreducible uniqueness of the human being. Beyond our nation, beyond our continent, we are all part of one mankind. Jean Monnet, ends his Memoirs with these words: “Les nations souveraines du passé ne sont plus le cadre où peuvent se résoudre les problèmes du présent. Et la communauté elle-même n’est qu’un étape vers les formes d’organisation du monde de demain.” (“The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present. And the European Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of the future.”) This federalist and cosmopolitan vision is one of the most important contributions that the European Union can bring to a global order in the making."

"There are all kinds of causes to be alarmed about. For example, there's the Greenhouse Effect, which is one of the more recent in a series of alarming worldwide homicidal trends to be discovered by those busy beavers, the scientists. They've found that the Earth is slowly being turned into a vast greenhouse, so that by the year 2010- unless something is done- the entire human race will be crushed beneath a humongous tomato. Or something along those lines. I confess that I haven't been following the Greenhouse Effect all that closely."

"I'm not saying that the Greenhouse Effect is not extremely important. Hey, I live in Miami, and if the polar ice caps start melting, I stand a good chance of waking up one morning and finding myself festooned with kelp. It's just that, what with working and paying bills and transporting my son to and from the pediatrician and trying to teach the dog not to throw up on the only nice rug in the entire house, I just don't seem to have enough room in my brain for the Greenhouse Effect and all the other problems I know I should be concerned about, such as drugs and AIDS and Lebanon and pollution and cholesterol and caffeine and cancer and Japanese investors buying the Lincoln Memorial and nuclear war and dirty rock lyrics and this new barbecue grill we got."

"Allow me to break down the facts of hunger as they stand right now. 811 million people are chronically hungry. 283 million are in hunger crises — they are marching toward starvation. And within that, 45 million in 43 countries across the globe are in hunger emergencies — in other words, famine is knocking on their door. Places like Afghanistan, Madagascar, Myanmar, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Mozambique, Niger, Syria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Haiti and on and on and on. The world has often experienced famine. But when has it ever been so widespread, in so many places, at the same time? Why?"

"There is no more consequential challenge that we must meet in the next decade than the onrushing climate crisis. Left unchecked, it is literally an existential threat to the health of our planet and to our very survival. … We are an economy in crisis but with an incredible opportunity: To not just rebuild back to where we were before, but better, stronger, more resilient and more prepared to the challenges that lie ahead. … These aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. These are actionable policies that we can get to work on right away. … Nothing’s a hoax. Nothing’s a hoax about that. It’s a very serious subject. I want clean air. I want clean water. I want the cleanest air, want the cleanest water. The environment is very important to me."

"Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it."

"The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge."

"Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, and it is the world’s most vulnerable populations who are most immediately at risk. The actions of the wealthiest nations — those generating the vast majority of greenhouse gases — have tangible consequences for people in the rest of the world, especially in the poorest nations."

"Some governments are intent on having ambitious plans for meeting the Paris climate conference goals, but they have to survive politically long enough to put them in place. Macron and the French government have skipped over the part involving the workers and the community."

"Earth's oceans and land cover are doing us a favor. As people burn fossil fuels and clear forests, only half of the carbon dioxide released stays in the atmosphere, warming and altering Earth's climate. The other half is removed from the air by the planet's vegetation ecosystems and oceans. As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue their rapid, human-made rise past levels not seen for hundreds of thousands of years, NASA scientists and others are confronted with an important question for the future of our planet: How long can this balancing act continue? And if forests, other vegetation and the ocean cannot continue to absorb as much or more of our carbon emissions, what does that mean for the pace of climate change in the coming century? "Today and for the past 50 to 100 years, the oceans and land biosphere have consistently taken up about half of human emissions," said Dave Schimel of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "If that were to change, the effect of fossil emissions on climate would also change. We don't understand that number, and we don't know how it will change in the future.""

"It seems highly likely to me that climate change poses a major problem for the planet. I say “highly likely” rather than “certain” because I have no scientific aptitude and remember well the dire predictions of most “experts” about Y2K. It would be foolish, however, for me or anyone to demand 100% proof of huge forthcoming damage to the world if that outcome seemed at all possible and if prompt action had even a small chance of thwarting the danger. This issue bears a similarity to Pascal’s Wager on the Existence of God. Pascal, it may be recalled, argued that if there were only a tiny probability that God truly existed, it made sense to behave as if He did because the rewards could be infinite whereas the lack of belief risked eternal misery. Likewise, if there is only a 1% chance the planet is heading toward a truly major disaster and delay means passing a point of no return, inaction now is foolhardy. Call this Noah’s Law: If an ark may be essential for survival, begin building it today, no matter how cloudless the skies appear."

"Global warming causing climate change may be the ultimate issue that unites us all."

"This may surprise you, because it surprised me when I found out, but the single biggest thing that an individual can do to combat climate change is to stop eating animals. Because of the huge, huge carbon footprint of animal agriculture. I was shocked to find out that animal agriculture directly or indirectly accounts for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to all transportation – every ship, car, truck, plane on the planet only accounts for 13%. Less than animal agriculture. So most people think that buying a Prius is the answer, and it’s certainly not wrong, but it’s not the biggest agent of climate change."

"Let’s cut to the chase — and I’m sorry if the next statement upsets you — but in order to stop climate change and create a sustainable world, it requires the end of capitalism. I know I’m not “allowed” to say that. Saying such a thing would be heresy on one of the corporate media dog-and-pony bullshit infotainment hours. If I spoke that unholy fact on CNN or Fox News or CBS or NPR, a tranquilizer dart would immediately hit me in the neck, and they’d cut to a commercial while my lifeless body was dragged off. But let’s take our intellectual honesty out for a spin, shall we? As Guardian columnist George Monbiot said, “Capitalism has three innate characteristics that drive us towards destruction … firstly, that it generates and relies upon perpetual growth.” Endless growth on a planet with finite resources. Such a thing is physically impossible, no more scientifically feasible than Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touching his toes. The reason we’re now in the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression is because capitalism requires nonstop growth, much like cancer."

"Like cancer, capitalism grows until it murders the host body. … The pandemic shutdown has shown us the problem. It has revealed what the world looks like without as much pollution, without the chaos and roar of mostly meaningless “work” performed by the exploited, using materials stolen from the abused, for the benefit of the pampered and oblivious. Another world is possible, and we’ve just gotten a glimpse of it. You can buy all the land, water, and air you want — even as others die from starvation or thirst. It means that no matter what environmentalists do to try to mitigate climate change, the richest corporations in the world can easily undo it by buying and polluting ever more. It also means the biggest sociopaths … have the most impact."

"In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate. Activities in the nonhuman world also reflect the warming of the Arctic—the changed habits and migrations of many fish, birds, land mammals, and whales."

"Climate change and biodiversity loss pose an even greater existential threat than the COVID-19 pandemic; to the extent that we have to put ourselves on what might be called a war-like footing. Putting a value on carbon is absolutely critical. We need a vast military style campaign to marshall the strength of the global private sector, which has trillions at its disposal. Each sector needs a clear strategy to speed up the process of getting innovations to market and we need to align private investment behind these industry strategies. If we can develop a pipeline of many moresustainable and "bankable" projects, at a sufficient scale, it will attract greater investment. CEOs and institutional investors have told me that alongside the promises countries have made, their nationally determined contributions, they need clear market signals, agreed globally, so that they have the confidence to invest without the goal posts suddenly moving. We are working to drive trillions of dollars in support of transition across ten of the most emitting and polluting industries including energy, agriculture, transportation, health systems and fashion. I can only urge you, as the world’s decision-makers, to find practical ways of overcoming differences so we can all rescue this precious planet and save the threatened future of our young people."

"The Coronavirus is serious enough but it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching, we are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's ever happened in human history. … In fact there are two immense threats that we are facing. One is the growing threat of nuclear war, which has exacerbated it by the tearing what's left of the arms control regime and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming. Both threats can be dealt with but there isn't a lot of time. … If we don't deal with them we're done."

"We may add that focus on maximizing profits is also not always consistent with the hope for the survival of humanity, to borrow the phrase of a leaked memo from JP Morgan Chase, the U.S.’s largest bank, warning that "the survival of humanity" is at risk on our current course, including the bank's own investments in fossil fuels. Thus, Chevron canceled a profitable sustainable energy project because there’s more profit to be made in destroying life on Earth. ExxonMobil refrained from doing so, because it had never opened such a project in the first place, having made more rational calculations of profitability. And rightly so, according to neoliberal doctrine. As Milton Friedman and other neoliberal luminaries have instructed us, the task of corporate managers is to maximize profits. Any deviation from this moral obligation would shatter the foundations of "civilized life." There will be no recovery from the melting of the polar ice sheets and the other devastating consequences of global warming. Here, too, the catastrophe results from a market failure — in this case, of truly earth-shaking proportions."

"We hear the term “climate” every day, so it is worth thinking about what we actually mean by it. Obviously, “climate” is not the same as weather. The climate is one of Earth’s fundamental life support systems, one that determines whether or not we humans, and millions of other species, are able to live on this planet. It is generated by four components: the atmosphere (the air we breathe); the hydrosphere (the planet’s water); the cryosphere (the ice sheet and glaciers); the biosphere (the planet’s plants and animals). By now, our activities had started to modify every one of these components. Our emissions of CO2 had started to modify our atmosphere. Our increasing water use had started to modify our hydrosphere. Rising atmospheric and sea-surface temperatures had started to modify the cryosphere, most notably in the unexpected shrinking of the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets. Our increasing use of land, for agriculture, cities, roads, mining—as well as all the pollution we were creating—had started to modify our biosphere. Or, to put it another way: We had started to change our climate."

"Right now, climate change is accelerating. We should more properly say an accelerating change in the Earth System—of which our climate is one component. This impact is most obvious at high latitudes. What this means is that if we want to see what our future looks like, the Arctic is the place to look first. And it doesn’t look good. Arctic coastlines are retreating by up to 30 meters per year in areas such as the Laptev Sea and Beaufort Sea. Greenland and Antarctica are now losing somewhere between 300 billion and 600 billion tons of ice mass per year into the sea. And to make matters worse, probably much worse, melting sea ice caused by our activities is now causing the release of significant quantities of methane from the Arctic Ocean. For the first time, over a hundred plumes of methane—many of them over half a mile in diameter—have been observed rising from previously frozen methane stores in the East Siberian Sea. Indeed a conclusion was that thousands of such plumes, many of them nearly a mile across, now exist. This could be very big trouble on a very big scale. Methane is many times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. If, as seems likely, melting sea ice, triggered by our activities, is now causing the release of this methane, it will go on for decades, possibly centuries, and we will be completely unable to stop it. Almost all of the data that’s emerging now from the Arctic is worse—far worse—than the most extreme predictions of even ten years ago. But of course it’s not just the Arctic. It’s everywhere."

"All complex systems, such as the earth’s system, are characterized by one important feature: a very small change (“perturbation”) can lead to an extraordinarily large and unpredictable impact that “tips” the system into an entirely different and unpredictable state.Let’s take just one of the tipping points we’re heading for: a rise in global average temperature of above 2 degrees Celsius. There is a politically agreed global target—driven by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—to limit the global average temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. The rationale for this target is that a rise above 2 degrees carries a significant risk of catastrophic climate change that would almost certainly lead to irreversible planetary “tipping points” caused by events such as the melting of the Greenland Ice Shelf, the release of frozen methane deposits from Arctic permafrost, or dieback of the Amazon. But in fact the first two are happening now—at below the 2-degree threshold. As for the third, we’re not waiting for climate change to do this—we’re doing it right now through deforestation. And unfortunately, recent research shows that we look certain to be heading for a larger rise in global average temperature than 2 degrees—a far larger rise. It is now very likely that we are looking at a future global average temperature rise of 4 degrees—and we can’t rule out a rise of 6 degrees. A 4-to 6-degree rise in global average temperature will be absolutely catastrophic. It will lead to runaway climate change, capable of tipping the planet into an entirely different state, rapidly. Earth would become a hellhole. In the decades along the way, we will witness unprecedented extremes in weather, fires, floods, heat waves, loss of crops and forests, water stress, and catastrophic sea-level rises. But even if we’re lucky enough to fall short of anything like a 4-to 6-degree rise in global temperature, there almost certainly won’t be a country called Bangladesh by the end of this century—it will be underwater. Large parts of Africa will become permanent disaster areas. The Amazon could be turned into savannah or even desert. And the entire agricultural system will be faced with an unprecedented threat. More “fortunate” countries such as the United States, the UK, and most of Europe may well look like something approaching militarized countries, with heavily defended border controls designed to prevent millions of people who are on the move from entering, because their own country is no longer habitable, or has insufficient water or food, or is experiencing conflict over increasingly scarce natural resources. These people will be “climate migrants.” The term “climate migrants” is one we will increasingly have to get used to. Indeed, anyone who thinks that the emerging global state of affairs does not have great potential for civil and international conflict is deluding themselves."

"Overall, the (new) paper is one more twig in the bundle of concerns that low-lying coastal cities, and especially Pacific islands, are highly vulnerable to this problem of sea-level rise, these Pacific islands have contributed almost nothing to the problem of global warming."

"We are in an emergency situation in the Anthropocene epoch in which the disruption of the Earth system, particularly the climate, is threatening the planet as a place of human habitation."

"We are on a runaway train headed over the climate cliff as we stoke the engine with more coal to increase its speed."

"We are already facing growing catastrophes due to climate change. It is too late to avoid soaring temperatures, scarce water, and extreme weather. That ship has in many ways already sailed. The earth is going to be much less hospitable to human beings in the future."

"The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. … A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. … Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption:, in order to combat this warming."

"The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."

"Two forces are emerging that will moot global warming. First, the end of the population explosion will, over the decades, reduce the increases in demand for just about everything. Second, the increase in the cost of both finding and using hydrocarbons will increase the hunger for alternatives."

"Capitalism as a driving force for climate change must, at the very least, be interrogated, and already-existing Indigenous rights frameworks and language can help us do this."

"Central to our reporting on climate change is the reality that global warming is real, is happening now, and is killing tens of thousands of people and displacing millions more. The warming planet presents an existential crisis for humanity."

"Television stations pour millions of dollars into building flashy "Weather Centers" to grab their audience's attention. As they flash the words "Severe Weather" and "Extreme Weather," why not also flash the words, "Climate Change" or "Global Warming"? The public depends on broadcasters for most of their news and information, even in this internet age]]. The daily deluge of sensational weather reporting must include explanations of the deeper changes occurring on our planet."

"The young people at these climate summits have always amazed me with their eloquence and bravery."

"…the advantages of fossil fuels come with a devastating downside. We now understand that the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels is warming our planet faster than anything we have seen in the geological record. One of the greatest challenges facing humanity today is slowing this warming before it changes our world beyond recognition."

"Although there is enormous uncertainty about the exact progression of climate change, the direction of travel is entirely clear. This is a problem that demands coordinated global action. … A responsible government would be planning for this perfectly foreseeable outcome. Ours, however, is otherwise preoccupied."

"Treating the symptoms of climate change makes no sense if the causes are not tackled at the same time."

"Climate change is the defining issue of our time – and we are at a defining moment. We face a direct existential threat."

"Even though climate change science has gone through this exhaustive 20-year peer review process with the 3,000 best scientists in the world unanimously endorsing it, every National Academy of Science in a developed country on this planet endorsing it, still, based on some radio talk show host or some odd orthogonal argument; Science magazine did a review of every peer-review article for the previous ten years. None of them disagreed with this consensus."

"We are in the make-or-break decade in our effort to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius, to keep the planet livable"

"All life is impermanent. We are all children of the Earth, and, at some time, she will take us back to herself again. We are continually arising from Mother Earth, being nurtured by her, and then returning to her. Like us, plants are born, live for a period of time, and then return to the Earth. When they decompose, they fertilize our gardens. Living vegetables and decomposing vegetables are part of the same reality. Without one, the other cannot be. After six months, compost becomes fresh vegetables again. Plants and the Earth rely on each other. Whether the Earth is fresh, beautiful, and green, or arid and parched depends on the plants. It also depends on us."

"Our way of walking on the Earth has a great influence on animals and plants. We have killed so many animals and plants and destroyed their environments. Many are now extinct. In turn, our environment is now harming us. We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth. The future of all life, including our own, depends on our mindful steps."

"The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can."

"What do you tell a terminal patient seeking relief? Yes, this period of distress may pass, but it’s not over. It will get worse. There will be more highs and lows and then mostly lows, and then death. But no one wants to look that far ahead. We live moment to moment, illusion to illusion. And when the skies clear we pretend that normality will return. Except it won’t. Climate science is unequivocal. It has been for decades. The projections and graphs, the warming of the oceans and the atmosphere, the melting of polar ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, droughts and wildfires and monster hurricanes are already bearing down with a terrible and mounting fury on our species, and most other species, because of the hubris and folly of the human race. The worse it gets the more we retreat into fantasy. The law will solve it. The market will solve it. Technology will solve it. We will adapt. Or, for those who find solace in denial of a reality-based belief system, the climate crisis does not exist. The earth has always been like this. And besides, Jesus will save us. Those who warn of the looming mass extinction are dismissed as hysterics, Cassandras, pessimists. It can’t be that catastrophic."

"Climate change is a wicked problem … and there is no way to solve it without sacrificing something that society currently holds dear, and without thereby generating more problems. For example, shrinking the economy would reduce carbon emissions, but it would throw a lot of people out of work (in effect, we did trial runs during the financial crash of 2008 and the COVID pandemic of 2020; both times, carbon emissions plunged, yet everyone was eager to “get back to normal”). Building vast amounts of low-carbon energy-producing and energy-using infrastructure would also reduce emissions, but that would require tens of trillions of dollars of investment as well as enormous quantities of depleting, non-renewable minerals—the mining of which would generate pollution and destroy wildlife habitat."

"Climate change is a huge, complicated problem. Therefore, many people have an understandable tendency to mentally simplify it by focusing on just one cause (carbon emissions) and just one solution (alternative energy). Sustainability scholar Jan Konietzko has called this “carbon tunnel vision.” Oversimplifying the problem this way leads to techno-fixes that actually fix nothing. Despite trillions of dollars already spent on low-carbon technologies, carbon emissions are still increasing, and the climate is being destabilized faster than ever. Understanding climate change requires us to embrace complexity: not only are greenhouse gases trapping heat, but we are undermining natural systems that cool the planet’s surface and sequester atmospheric carbon—systems of ice, soil, forest, and ocean. Grasping this complexity leads to new ways of thinking about climate change and viable responses to it. Almost everything we’re doing to cause climate change involves technology—from cars to cement kilns to chainsaws. We humans love technology: it yields profits, jobs, comfort, and convenience (for some, anyway; it also tends to worsen overall economic inequality). So, predictably, we’re looking to alternative technologies to solve what is arguably the biggest dilemma humanity has ever created for itself. But what if that’s the wrong approach? What if more technology will actually worsen the problem in the long run? … there is no viable techno-fix to climate change, and why trees, soil, and biodiversity are our real lifelines."

"They started by referencing the Doomsday Clock (Science and Security Board Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), which has pegged humanity’s risk of annihilation at an all-time high of only 100 seconds to midnight. Chomsky feels we’re actually closer to midnight than that. For example, his opinion is influenced by information in a leaked draft of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) upcoming report … With regard to nuclear weapons, the situation is far more dangerous than the last Doomsday Clock report. New weapons systems under development are much more effectively dangerous. The Biden administration, expanding upon Trump’s confrontational approach, has Chomsky at a loss for words to describe the danger at hand. Only recently, Biden met with NATO leaders and instructed them to plan on two wars, China and Russia. According to Chomsky: “This is beyond insanity.” Not only that, the group is carrying out provocative acts when diplomacy is really needed. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation."

"According to Chomsky, the Doomsday Clock setting at 100 seconds to midnight is based upon: (1) global warming (2) nuclear war and (3) disinformation, or the collapse of any kind of rational discourse. As such, number three makes it impossible to deal with the first two major problems. Along those lines, within the Republican Party there’s virtually a disappearance of any pretense of rational discourse. Twenty-five (25%) percent of Republicans believe the government is run by an elite satanic group of pedophiles. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans believe that the election was stolen. Only fifteen percent (15%) of Republicans believe that global warming is a serious problem. Therein lies an insurmountable problem to solving the main issues that continually tick the clock ever closer to a disaster scenario that will likely be unprecedented in the annals of warfare and environmental degradation. As a result, Chomsky says: “We’re living in a world of total illusion and fantasy.” Accordingly, “Unless this is dealt with soon, it’ll be impossible to deal with the two major issues within the time span that we have available, which is not very long.”"

"By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy … Yet, the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements … Any talk of climate change which does not include the military is nothing but hot air … It’s a loophole in the Kyoto Convention on Climate Change big enough to drive a tank through, according to the report ” A Climate of War.” In 1940, the US military consumed one percent of the country’s total energy usage; by the end of World War II, the military’s share rose to 29 percent. … Militarism is the most oil-exhaustive activity on the planet, growing more so with faster, bigger, more fuel-guzzling planes, tanks and naval vessels employed in more intensive air and ground wars. At the outset of the Iraq war in March 2003, the Army estimated it would need more than 40 million gallons of gasoline for three weeks of combat, exceeding the total quantity used by all Allied forces in the four years of World War 1. Among the Army’s armamentarium were 2,000 staunch M-1 Abrams tanks fired up for the war and burning 250 gallons of fuel per hour."

"The US Air Force (USAF) is the single largest consumer of jet fuel in the world … the F-4 Phantom Fighter burns more than 1,600 gallons of jet fuel per hour and peaks at 14,400 gallons per hour at supersonic speeds. The B-52 Stratocruiser, with eight jet engines, guzzles 55 gallons per minute... A quarter of the world’s jet fuel feeds the USAF fleet of flying killing machines; in 2006, they consumed … an astounding 2.6 billion gallons."

"The (US) military reports no climate change emissions to any national or international body, thanks to US arm-twisting during the 1997 negotiations of the first international accord to limit global warming emissions, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. To protect the military from any curbs on their activities, the United States demanded and won exemption from emission limits on “bunker” fuels (dense, heavy fuel oil for naval vessels) and all greenhouse gas emissions from military operations worldwide, including wars. Adding insult to injury, George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol as one of the first acts of his presidency, alleging it would straitjacket the US economy with too costly greenhouse emissions controls. Next, the White House began a neo-Luddite campaign against the science of climate change. In researching “The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism,” … getting war casualty statistics out of the Department of Defense (DoD) is easier than getting fuel usage data."

"We should not use all the known fossil energy if we would like to prevent the most serious climate change catastrophes. It does not make any sense to look for new oil from a fragile environment in the Arctic when we have to leave the known resources on ground."

"Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850."

"I do think that climate change is occurring, that it is man-caused. One of the proposals that I think is a very libertarian proposal, and I'm just open to this, is taxing carbon emission that may have the result of being self-regulating. ... The market will take care of it. I mean, when you look at it from the standpoint of better results, and actually less money to achieve those results, that's what is being professed by a carbon tax."

"Climate change is a crisis leading toward disaster. Everything will change, whether by force of nature or by our choice. We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth, a mass movement. … The resources required to rapidly move away from fossil fuels and prepare for the coming heavy weather could pull huge swaths of humanity out of poverty, providing services now sorely lacking, from clean water to electricity. … There are plenty of signs that climate change will be no exception to The Shock Doctrine—that, rather than sparking solutions that have a real chance of preventing catastrophic warming and protecting us from inevitable disasters, the crisis will once again be seized upon to hand over yet more resources to the 1 percent. … Opposition movements will need a comprehensive vision for what should emerge in the place of our failing system, as well as serious political strategies for how to achieve those goals. … We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology. … Challenge the extreme ideology; show how unfettered corporate power poses a grave threat to the habitability of the planet."

"We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism … We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. … It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s."

"Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed. We also know, I would add, how that system will deal with the reality of serial climate-related disasters: with profiteering, and escalating barbarism to segregate the losers from the winners. (p. 450) … If climate justice carries the day, the economic costs to our elites will be real—not only because of the carbon left in the ground but also because of the regulations, taxes, and social programs needed to make the required transformation. Indeed, these new demands on the ultra-rich could effectively bring the era of the footloose Davos oligarch to a close. (p. 457)"

"The real reason we are failing to rise to the climate moment is because the actions required directly challenge our reigning economic paradigm (deregulated capitalism combined with public austerity), the stories on which Western cultures are found (that we stand apart from nature and can outsmart its limits), as well as many of the activities that form our identities and define our communities (shopping, living virtually, shopping some more). They also spell extinction for the richest and most powerful industry the world has ever known—the oil and gas industry. … There are plenty of solid economic arguments for moving beyond fossil fuels. … But we will not win the battle for a stable climate by trying to beat the bean counters at their own game—arguing, for instance, that it is more cost-effective to invest in emission reduction now than disaster response later. We will win by asserting that such calculations are morally monstrous."

"The planet will continue to cook."

"If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money."

"Global warming is no longer a theory being disputed by political interests, but an established scientific consensus. The possible effects range from events as drastic as a hydrothermal shutdown of the Gulf Stream—meaning a much colder Europe with much-reduced agriculture—to desertification of major world crop-growing areas, to the invasion of temperate regions by diseases formerly limited to the tropics, to the loss of harbor cities all over the world. Whether the cause of global warming is human activity and “greenhouse emissions,” a result of naturally occurring cycles, or a combination of the two, this does not alter the fact that it is having swift and tremendous impacts on civilization."

"An overwhelming majority of scientists who have looked into the matter agree that global warming is underway and is probably caused by people burning fossil fuels. This is the meta-fact hovering over all the details. After all, in mining and burning so much coal, oil, and gas we've released a fraction of 460 million years of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in a mere two hundred years. There are consequences for doing this. The trajectory of climate problems has gotten only more severe. Greenhouse gas emissions have exceeded predictions. The IPCC report expects a sea level rise of at least three feet by 2100; James Hansen of NASA says possibly seventeen feet. If that is the case, there would be no need to argue over the finer points of how many square miles in the Netherlands would be underwater along with Bangladesh, many Pacific islands, most of Florida, and the Mississippi River Delta, Houston, Jacksonville, Key West, and thousands of other places. We need to remember that most of the people on the planet live near the world’s seacoasts."

"The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global health, social and economic crisis. … The pandemic, in other words, is now testing the capacity of our political and economic systems to cope with a global problem situated at the level of our individual interdependence, which is to say at the very foundation of our social life. Like a dystopia made real, the current situation provides us with a glimpse of what soon awaits humanity if global economic and political structures are unable to radically and rapidly transform in order to confront the climate change crisis."

"Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution, and with it, greater wealth, and advances in health care. But the age of fossil fuels has had dramatic consequences. It almost doubled the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in less than three hundred years, causing the unprecedented speed of global warming that humanity is experiencing today."

"Even if the Democratic administration were resoundingly successful on all fronts, its initiatives would still be utterly insufficient to resolve the existential threat of climate breakdown and the devastation of our planet’s life-support systems. That’s because the multiple problems confronting us right now are symptoms of an even more profound problem: The underlying structure of a global economic and political system that is driving civilization toward a precipice. … As long as government policies emphasize growth in gross domestic product and transnational corporations relentlessly pursue shareholder returns, we will continue accelerating toward global catastrophe. … We need to forge a new era for humanity — one that is defined, at its deepest level, by a transformation in the way we make sense of the world, and a concomitant revolution in our values, goals, and collective behavior. In short, we need to change the basis of our global civilization. We must move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to one that is life-affirming: an ecological civilization."

"This is the fundamental idea underlying an ecological civilization: using nature’s own design principles to reimagine the basis of our civilization. … An ecological civilization is both a new and ancient idea. While the notion of structuring human society on an ecological basis might seem radical, Indigenous peoples around the world have organized themselves from time immemorial on life-affirming principles. … Every year that we head closer to catastrophe—as greater climate-related disasters rear up, as the outrages of racial and economic injustice become even more egregious, and as life for most people becomes increasingly intolerable—the old narrative loses its hold on the collective consciousness. Waves of young people are looking for a new worldview—one that makes sense of the current unraveling, one that offers them a future they can believe in. It’s a bold idea to transform the very basis of our civilization to one that’s life-affirming. But when the alternative is unthinkable, a vision of a flourishing future shines a light of hope that can become a self-fulfilling reality. Dare to imagine it. Dare to make it possible by the actions you take, both individually and collectively—and it might just happen sooner than you expect."

"There IS one thing I think paleontologists can do better or more of, than we have, and that is talking about the rate of climate change. We all know very well the rates of climate change in various parts of the ; we can tell that from the plants, and so on. But, compared to today, things are happening in decades that would take millions of years in the late Tertiary. That’s a problem paleontologists can be more helpful with, trying to bring perspective for the public on the velocity of climate change. Scientists can be more publically engaged; we can tell the public what we see in the way climates are changing now. If we do not do that, who is going to do it? This topic is vitally important."

"Prediction of the sufficiently distant future is impossible by any method, unless the present conditions are known exactly. In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise, very-long-range weather forecasting would seem to be non-existent."

"At some point, political pragmatism has to reckon with the reality of climate change. You can’t negotiate with science. You can’t meet it halfway."

"Unfortunately for mankind, there are now far too many of Homo colossus in the global population. And the damage is done. NASA climatologist James Hanson [sic] has claimed that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere should not be over 350 parts per million (ppm) in order to avoid calamitous climate shifts. But we are already at 400ppm and climbing."

"The Government Rules by Force, Fraud and Deception. The information blockade starts with the military itself. The military purposely restricts information plus its immense size and bureaucratic complexity means that it is so hard to grasp that political leaders cannot themselves understand the institution they are supposed to command. You want proof? Just try reading the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) 2016 report which could not figure out just how much oil the military burns. The GAO concluded: “Congress does not have full visibility over the amount of fuel volume the military services require on an annual basis for their activities…” This should not come as a surprise. Since its inception in 1950 or so, the modern military has resisted any accounting of costs in violation of Article I, Section 9, of the US Constitution. In 2018 the Pentagon failed its first-ever audit. It’s not just about the missing 6.5 trillions [sic] dollars, (although that really matters too) it’s that the opaque accounting system is armor — a defensive weapon used to neutralize anyone that wants to understand, let alone oppose, the US government."

"This very big, very dirty secret — that war drives climate change — is carefully guarded. To keep things hush-hush the military is excused from oversight or obligation. This exception to the rule of law has always been the practice but G.W. Bush formalized it demanding language to that effect in the 1997 Kyoto Accords, which he later refused to sign anyway … The complete U.S. military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions calculations includes more than 1,000 U.S. bases in more than 130 countries around the world, its 6,000 facilities in the U.S., its aircraft carriers, and jet aircraft. Also excluded are its weapons testing and all multilateral operations such as the giant U.S.-commanded NATO military alliance and AFRICOM, the U.S. military alliance now blanketing Africa. The provision also exempts U.S./UN-sanctioned activities of “peacekeeping” and “humanitarian relief.”"

"It is within this context of 70 long years of secrecy, special legal exemptions, deception, fraud, lies by omission, non-binding agreements — and the global role of militarism as climate crisis multiplier — that we can best evaluate the Democratic Party’s version of the Green New Deal (GND) … The GND now has overwhelming public support and that is truly a great accomplishment. The Democrat’s version has many fine ideas linking inequality and social justice to efforts to fight climate change — and those ideas are all true … In its current form the plan also uses the language of market solutions and technical fixes that sadly repeat the weakest features of failed climate “action” already offered by elites. But most important, the Democrat’s GND — once again — omits the US government and military as a cause of climate disaster. The other — almost unbelievable omission — is the failure of the Democrat’s GND to explicitly call for dramatic reductions in the use of fossil fuels. In fact, the words “oil” “gas” “coal” or “fossil fuels” do not even appear in the final document that established the committee … The Democrat’s GND remains a vague non-binding wish. The 2050 deadlines are standard political dodgeball. When faced with crisis, corporate politicians always want to ‘kick the can down the road” — postponing real action until the damage is already done and someone else takes the blame. Adaptation to disaster and management of the crisis rather than prevention of climate chaos is the hidden but actual program of the Democrat’s GND."

"Ideas of terraforming Mars must be seen in a new light given the challenge revealed by global warming. Compared to pre-industrial levels, we have a 100 part-per-million (0.01%) CO2 problem in our atmosphere that has us completely stymied. Crudely speaking, Mars has a one-million part-per-million (100%) problem with its atmosphere. As much trouble as we are having mitigating climate change with unfettered access to all the resources on Earth, what hope would we have of turning around a place like Mars with no infrastructure to rely upon?"

"There is broad agreement within the scientific community that amplification of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect by the buildup of various gases introduced by human activity has the potential to produce dramatic changes in climate. Only by taking action now can we ensure that future generations will not be put at risk."

"I do not think that for the future of humanity, and for our country to continue to prosper, that we cannot have another presidential cycle where climate change is not being asked about at almost every debate, and that includes the role of fossil fuel, fossil fuel industries, and that includes the role of a broad spectrum of issues."

"Since global warming Eskimos now have twenty different words for water."

"Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights – it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want. It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can’t aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within. And that’s why helping farmers feed their own people – or nations educate their children and care for the sick – is not mere charity. It’s also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement – all of which will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action – it’s military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance. Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more – and that’s the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there's something irreducible that we all share."

"The world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades."

"2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century. I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act. Well, “I’m not a scientist”, either. But you know what, I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and at NOAA, and at our major universities. And the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it."

"Climate change has an inherent image problem. While you can clearly visualize plastic pollution or deforestation, climate change has a less obvious mugshot: the gases that cause global warming, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are colourless, while impacts are slow-paced and not always visually striking."

"[To help combat climate change] Give up meat for one day (per week) initially, and decrease it from there. In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity."

"Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change."

"Nature is fragile, environmentalists often tell us. But the lesson of this book is that it is not so. The truth is far more worrying. Nature is strong and packs a serious counterpunch. Its revenge for man-made global warming will very probably unleash unstoppable planetary forces. And they will not be gradual. The history of our planet's climate shows that it does not do gradual change. Under pressure, whether from sunspots or orbital wobbles or the depredations of humans, it lurches—virtually overnight. We, humans, have spent 400 generations building our current civilization in an era of climatic stability—a long, generally balmy spring that has endured since the last ice age. But this tranquility looks like the exception rather than the rule in nature. And if its end is inevitable one day, we seem to be triggering its imminent and violent collapse. Our world may be blown away in the process."

"From the time the European invaders of North America established themselves and began keeping records, the bitter winters of the Little Ice Age become part of written history. From that point also, the natural history of northern North America began to deviate from its “natural” course. The continent was no longer isolated. The foreign invaders multiplied rapidly, destroying native ecosystems at an ever increasing rate. In time, the byproducts of technology began to poison earth, water, and air and have now begun to influence the climate. The measured responses of biosphere to climate, and of climate to astronomical controls have, for the foreseeable future, come to an end."

"The main challenges of our times are the rise in inequality and global warming. We must therefore implement international treaties enabling us to respond to these challenges and to promote a model for fair and sustainable development."

"under a slate-grey sky on a Monday afternoon is enough to challenge the most optimistic and rational liberal. It focuses the mind on the waste, greed, and short-sightedness of our species: you wonder how we are going to survive the enormous changes that the 21st century undoubtedly has in store, the largest of which any sane mind knows is global warming."

"Despite contributing only a minute amount of global greenhouse gas emissions, the African continent suffers the deleterious effects of climate change to a disproportionate degree. … African agriculture is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because it is heavily dependent on rainfall, and climate change has seriously affected rainfall throughout the continent."

"Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity."

"I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records, and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build-up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels."

"The Paris accord assumes that each government consults with its own country’s engineers to devise a national energy strategy, with each of the 193 UN member states essentially producing a separate plan. … Global engineering systems require global coordination. Both the scale and reliability of globally connected high-tech systems are astounding, and depend on solutions implemented internationally, not country by country."

"To my mind, global climate change is the single greatest threat facing the planet. It poses an actual existential threat to our country and our world."

"While fossil fuels (FFs)—coal and later oil and natural gas—have been humanity’s major source of energy over the past two centuries, 50% of all FFs ever burned have been consumed in just the past 30 years (as much as 90% since the early 1940s) as super-exponential growth has taken hold. It should be no surprise, therefore, that carbon dioxide emissions—the major material by-product of FF combustion and principal anthropogenic driver of climate change—have long exceeded photosynthetic uptake by green plants. By 1997 (when annual consumption was 40% less than in 2021), humanity was already burning FFs containing about 422 times the net amount of carbon fixed by photosynthesis globally each year. Between 1800 and 2021, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 48%, from 280 ppm to approximately 415 ppm."

"Plunging biodiversity and climate change, along with air/land/ocean pollution, deforestation, desertification, incipient resources scarcity, etc., are the inevitable consequences—indeed, parallel symptoms—of the same root phenomenon: the spectacular and continuing growth of the human enterprise on a finite planet. H. sapiens is in overshoot, exploiting ecosystems beyond their regenerative and assimilative capacities. The human enterprise now uses the bio-productive and assimilative capacities of 1.75 Earth equivalents. In simple terms, the industrial world’s ecological predicament is the result of too many people consuming too much and over-polluting the ecosphere. Clearly, the climate crisis cannot be solved in isolation from the macro-problem of overshoot—certainly not by using technologies that are reliant on the same FFs and ecologically destructive processes that created the problem in the first place."

"The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world’s governments finally bring the engineers to the fore. … I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke, the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely, “I don’t really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion: Tell us engineers the desired ‘specs’ and the timeline, and we’ll get the job done.” This is not bravado. The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot."

"We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting, profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

"The long-term trends or the expected sequence of records are far more important than whether any single year is a record or not."

"We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late. The science is clear. The global warming debate is over."

"In the last six months, B.C. has both burned and drowned. So there’s really no greater evidence of climate change right now than here in British Columbia."

"Following the trail of spice shipments, we made our way up to Nunavut Bay, Canada - he secret hub of Jean Bison's shipping empire. As a young man, he trekked across Canada to strike it rich during the Gold Rush of 1852. An avid prospector, he took some chances and ended up buried alive in an avalanche. Miraculously, the quick freeze kept him alive, and 120 years later, thanks to global warming, he thawed out."

"Outright climate denial – the old story that climate change isn’t real – has been rendered largely obsolete (outside social media) by climate-driven catastrophes around the globe and good work by climate activists and journalists. But other stories still stop us from seeing clearly. Greenwashing – the schemes created by fossil fuel corporations and others to portray themselves as on the environment’s side while they continue their profitable destruction – is rampant. It’s harder to recognise a false friend than an honest enemy, and their false solutions, delaying tactics and empty promises can be confusing for non-experts. Fortunately, as the climate movement has diversified, one new organisation, Clean Creatives, focuses specifically on pressuring advertising and PR agencies to stop doing the industry’s dirty work. Likewise, climate journalists are exposing how fossil fuel money is funding pseudo-environmental opposition to offshore wind turbines."

"“Don’t worry about the weather!” Kalu replied. “We can’t control it, and these days we can’t even predict it. For the past few years, the wet season has been very strange; nobody knows when the rains will come. The climate is changing here.” I had heard versions of this story in an unsettling number of places this year, and many of the birders who accompanied me had complained about unpredictable seasons. It was difficult to tease out other effects, like deforestation and overharvesting, but my view of global climate change had shifted lately after hearing enough local people talk about it. It wasn’t just something for academics and politicians to argue about; these changes were already affecting those who depended on the land and environment."

"No matter what lengths politicians, corporate interests and others take to avoid, downplay and obfuscate serious issues around environmental degradation and our economic system’s destructive path, we can’t deny reality. Studies show we must refrain from burning most fossil fuel reserves to avoid catastrophic warming. In little more than a century, the human population has more than quadrupled to seven billion and rising, and our plastic-choked, consumer-driven, car-obsessed cultures have led to resource depletion, species extinction, ocean degradation, climate change and more. It’s past time to open our eyes and shift to a more sensible approach to living on this small, precious planet."

"Many solutions are being employed or developed, but not fast enough to forestall catastrophe. In Canada, we have federal and provincial governments hell-bent on expanding fossil fuel infrastructure and development to reap as much profit as possible from a dying industry and to satisfy the vagaries of short election cycles. The fossil fuel industry continues to receive massive subsidies, including a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer bailout for an American pipeline company, while clean energy receives far less support."

"Many scientists in the physical world are also subject to such foolishness, misreading statistics. One flagrant example is in the global-warming debate. Many scientists failed to notice it in its early stages as they removed from their sample the spikes in temperature, under the belief that these were not likely to recur. It may be a good idea to take out the extremes when computing the average temperatures for vacation scheduling. But it does not work when we study the physical properties of the weather — particularly when one cares about a cumulative effect. These scientists initially ignored the fact that these spikes, although rare, had the effect of adding disproportionately to the cumulative melting of the ice cap. Just as in finance, an event, although rare, that brings large consequences cannot just be ignored."

"But haven’t you heard? We’re in a collapsing climate disaster. The Zone’s just one part of it. Collapsing as in, all our usable biomes crunching together as the heat pushes out from the equator. And you've all seen how that goes. Everything wants to live. People move north and south, animals move north and south, diseases move north and south. Waves of epidemics as all those people and animals and microbes mix in new configurations. Every year a new wave of hospitalisations from some fresh plague that's mutating to survive the conditions we’re imposing on the world."

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it? Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect: It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York City. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe."

"At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, by Teller’s accounting], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the radiation leaving the earth. Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5. But when the temperature does rise by a few degrees over the whole globe, there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise. Well, I don’t know whether they will cover the Empire State Building or not, but anyone can calculate it by looking at the map and noting that the icecaps over Greenland and over Antarctica are perhaps five thousand feet thick."

"I often talk to people who say, ‘No, we have to be hopeful and to inspire each other, and we can’t tell people too many negative things’. But, no — we have to tell it like it is. Because if there are no positive things to tell, then what should we do, should we spread false hope? We can’t do that, we have to tell the truth."

"This target is not sufficient to protect the future for children growing up today. If the EU is to make its fair contribution to stay within the carbon budget for the 2C limit then it needs a minimum of 80 percent reduction by 2030, and that includes aviation and shipping. There is simply not enough time to wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge. Unite behind the science, that is our demand. (Thunberg told a plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)."

"Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. The rules have to be changed. For 25 years, countless of people have stood in front of the United Nations asking our nations’ leaders to stop the emissions. But clearly this has not worked, since the emissions just continue to rise. So I will not ask them anything. Instead, I will ask the people around the world to realize that our political leaders have failed us, because we are facing an existential threat and there is no time to continue down this road of madness."

"At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God's creation and the one human family. It is about protecting both `the human environment' and the natural environment."

"Our economy is built very heavily on fossil fuels, and that's the challenge we face. We have agreed that moving over 2 degrees Celsius is an unacceptable target for humanity. That translates into very clear physical constraints."

"Because the numbers are so small, we tend to trivialize the differences between one degree and two, two degrees and four. Human experience and memory offers no good analogy for how we should think about those thresholds, but with degrees of warming, as with world wars or recurrences of cancer, you don’t want to see even one."

"It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions: that global warming is an Arctic saga, unfolding remotely; that it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastlines, not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life undeformed; that it is a crisis of the “natural” world, not the human one; that those two are distinct, and that we live today somehow outside or beyond or at the very least defended against nature, not inescapably within and literally overwhelmed by it; that wealth can be a shield against the ravages of warming; that the burning of fossil fuels is the price of continued economic growth; that growth, and the technology it produces, will allow us to engineer our way out of environmental disaster; that there is any analogue to the scale or scope of this threat, in the long span of human history, that might give us confidence in staring it down."

"Man has reached the point where his impact on the climate can be as significant as [the rest of] nature's."

"We need to do more research to really try and understand what’s going on here. Is this also a sign of climate change or did British Columbia just get incredibly unlucky this year?"

"Our nation has eight million jobs in clean energy! Can we double it, guys, before the sea levels rise And I'm roommates with a manatee?"

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

"Although photosynthesis typically has an energy conversion efficiency below three percent, it is, together with heat from the sun, the main energy source of all living organisms, and the energy source from which biomass and fossil fuels are derived. Each year the earth receives an energy input from the sun equal to 15,000 times the world's commercial energy consumption and 100 times the world's proven coal, gas and oil reserves."

"There is one forecast of which you can already be sure: someday renewable energy will be the only way for people to satisfy their energy needs. Because of the physical, ecological and (therefore) social limits to nuclear and fossil energy use, ultimately nobody will be able to circumvent renewable energy as the solution, even if it turns out to be everybody’s last remaining choice. The question keeping everyone in suspense, however, is whether we shall succeed in making this radical change of energy platforms happen early enough to spare the world irreversible ecological mutilation and political and economic catastrophe."

"[The] solar-energy firm known as Solyndra, which the [[w:United_States_Department_of_Energy|[US] Energy Department]] had backed with a $535 million loan guarantee [made the] unexpected announcement last week that it is filing for bankruptcy, leaving hundreds of workers jobless - and taxpayers on the hook for almost all of its government-backed loan. . . . [I]t’s not too early to draw some policy lessons from Solyndra’s ignominious downfall. . . . [G]overnment is no better than the private sector at picking industrial winners - and usually worse. . . . To the extent that government creates jobs by subsidizing particular companies, it does so by shifting resources that might have created jobs elsewhere. Political favoritism, or the appearance thereof, is an inherent risk . . . . When "green jobs" promises don’t pan out, it does the environmental cause more harm than good."

"More solar energy falls on Earth in one hour than all the energy our civilization consumes in an entire year. If we could harness a tiny fraction of the available solar and wind power, we could supply all our energy needs forever, and without adding any carbon to the atmosphere."

"Renewable energy: dumbest phrase since climate change. See the first law of thermodynamics, dumbass."

"Every percentage point increase in homegrown renewable energy makes us that much more energy secure. The progress in electricity is encouraging, but growth is not yet strong enough in renewable heat and transport to meet the government's objectives."

"One of the real breakthroughs is when someone figures out long-term storage capacity."

"The only way you can get to the very positive scenario is by great innovation. Innovation really does bend the curve."

"If you told me that innovation had been frozen and we just have today's technologies, will the world run the climate change experiment? You bet we will. We will not deny India coal plants; we will run the scary experiment of heating up the atmosphere and seeing what happens. The only reason I'm optimistic about this problem is because of innovation. . . . I want to tilt the odds in our favor by driving innovation at an unnaturally high pace, or more than its current business-as-usual course. I see that as the only thing. I want to call up India someday and say, "Here's a source of energy that is cheaper than your coal plants, and by the way, from a global pollution and local pollution point of view, it's also better.""

"Cheaper coal and cheaper gas will not derail the transformation and decarbonisation of the world’s power systems. By 2040, zero-emission energy sources will make up 60% of installed capacity."

"We have long supported a carbon tax as the best policy of those being considered. Replacing the hodge-podge of current, largely ineffective regulations with a revenue-neutral carbon tax would ensure a uniform and predictable cost of carbon across the economy. It would allow market forces to drive solutions. It would maximize transparency, reduce administrative complexity, promote global participation and easily adjust to future developments in our understanding of climate science as well as the policy consequences of these actions."

"Rather than an eyesore on the roof, it becomes actually a feature of the home. People are going to start wanting to put {building-integrated photovoltaics} on the front side of their home to show that they have solar."

"[W]ind and solar power have been rapidly winning market acceptance. Last year, the installed capacity of solar power in the United States nearly doubled. And wind is now being harnessed to produce 5.5 percent of America’s electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration."

"The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world’s governments finally bring the engineers to the fore... I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke... the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely. “I don’t really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion... Tell us engineers the desired ‘specs’ and the timeline, and we’ll get the job done.” This is not bravado.... The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot."

"A carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future. . . . A consistently rising carbon price will encourage technological innovation and large-scale infrastructure development."

"Offshore wind's remarkable potential: The global offshore wind market grew nearly 30% per year between 2010 and 2018, benefitting from rapid technology improvements and about 150 new offshore wind projects . . . in active development around the world. . . . Yet today's offshore wind market doesn't even come close to tapping the full potential - with high-quality resources available in most major markets, offshore wind has the potential to generate more than 420,000 [terawatt-hours] per year worldwide. This is more than 18 times global electricity demand today."

"Offshore wind is in a category of its own, as the only variable baseload power generation technology. . . . Offshore wind output . . . hourly variability is lower than that of solar [photovoltaics]. Offshore wind typically fluctuates within a narrower band, up to 20% from hour-to-hour, than is the case for solar [photovoltaics], up to 40% from hour-to-hour."

"The clean energy portfolios of some of the largest corporate buyers rival those of the world’s biggest utilities. These companies are facing mounting pressure from investors to decarbonize - clean energy contracts serve as a way to diversify energy spend and reduce susceptibility to the tangible risks associated with climate change."

"[N]ew renewable power generation projects now increasingly undercut existing coal-fired plants. On average, new solar photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind power cost less than keeping many existing coal plants in operation, and auction results show this trend accelerating – reinforcing the case to phase-out coal entirely."

"I think it’s clear now that energy has to be clean. . . . And we should do it in ways that give jobs to everybody. . . . There’s so much to do in renewable power, there is so little to do in coal."

"An old proverb states: When the winds of change blow, some build walls . . . others build windmills. So, fellow windmill builders: Let’s push back on doubt and fear. Climate disasters worldwide tell us that the scariest thing we could do is nothing at all. . . . [W]e’ll all gain when we succeed - starting with jobs! We’re looking at a $23 trillion global market in the clean energy transition by 2030. . . . That means we can remake our economies, build new businesses, and put millions upon millions of people to work. . . . For too long, the climate conversation has been viewed as a zero-sum game. One of trade-offs: the climate or the economy. No longer."

"There are two practical ways to create the magic conditions that make fusion happen. One is called magnetic confinement fusion and the other is inertial confinement fusion. There’s gravity too, of course, but for that you need scales bigger than can be created on Earth: you need, quite literally, a star. The magnetic approach is to bind the hot matter in a reactor with an invisible web of magnetic fields. The inertial approach sets matter crashing into itself, thereby both heating and compressing it, and aims to get all the fusion done before the assembled star matter falls apart again. NIF {the National Ignition Facility} uses lasers to do this."

"There’s one aspect of the current fleet of magnetic fusion machines that is holding back progress. It’s a lesson that has been learned time and time again in fusion: . . . fusion works best on big scales. For conventional tokamaks, the confinement of plasma gets better the bigger the machine is. . . . When it is completed, ITER will be the world’s largest tokamak, and one of its key objectives will be to demonstrate net energy gain. It’s a behemoth. . . . ITER will take up 180 hectares (equivalent to 250 soccer fields), and when finished, its structure will have a mass equivalent to three Eiffel Towers."

"Future Outlook: Global offshore wind energy deployment is expected to accelerate in the future, with forecasts from 4C Offshore and Bloomberg New Energy Finance indicating a sevenfold increase in global cumulative offshore wind capacity - to 215 [gigawatts] or more by 2030 (BNEF 2020; 4C Offshore 2021). As part of that predicted surge, the U.S. offshore wind energy market continues to expand, primarily driven by increasing state-level procurement targets in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, an increased number of projects clearing major permitting milestones, as well as growing vessel, port, and infrastructure investments needed to keep pace with development."

"Solving climate change should taste at least as good as carrots, at best ice cream, but it should not be painful. . . . How do we ensure the lowest cost of energy while electrifying everything? First, policymakers have to rewrite the federal, state and local rules and regulations that were created for the fossil-fueled world and which prevent the US from having the cheapest electricity ever. Our country needs to massively scale up the industrial production of technological solutions, just as we did to win World War II. We cannot take our foot off the innovation gas - although I'll argue that we don't need any major breakthroughs, as thousands of little inventions and cost reductions are the key to achieving our end goal. Finally, we must have cheap financing for our transition to a zero-carbon energy system with low-interest "climate loans." Climate change will not be solved if only the richest 10% can afford it; we need mechanisms to bring everyone along for the ride."

"In 2006, I hosted a dinner after a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, former vice president Al Gore's seminal documentary on the climate crisis. We went around the table for everyone's reaction to the film's urgent message. When it came to my fifteen-year-old daughter, Mary, she declared with her typical candor: "I'm scared, and I'm angry." Then she added, "Dad, your generation created this problem. You better fix it." . . . As a venture capitalist, my job is to find big opportunities, target big challenges, and invest in big solutions. I was best known for backing companies like Google and Amazon early on. But the environmental crisis dwarfed any challenge I'd ever seen. . . . Eugene Kleiner, the late cofounder of Kleiner Perkins . . . left behind a set of twelve laws that [included the following:] There is a time when panic is the appropriate response. That time had come. . . . My partners and I made climate a top priority. We got serious about investing in clean and sustainable technologies . . . . Our climate investments were [slow] out of the gate, and many of them failed. . . . But with patience and persistence [by 2019] our surviving cleantech investments began to hit one home run after the next. [However, we currently] have no time for a victory lap. . . . Atmospheric carbon already exceeds the upper limit for climate stability. . . . The effects of runaway global warming are already plain to see: devastating hurricanes, biblical flooding, uncontrollable wildfires, killer heat waves, and extreme droughts. . . . I must warn you up front: we're not cutting emissions fast enough to outrun the damage on our doorstep. I said this in 2007, and I say it again today: what we're doing is not nearly enough. Unless we course correct with urgent speed and at a massive scale, we'll be staring at a doomsday scenario. The melting polar ice caps will drown coastal cities. Failed crops will lead to widespread famine. By midcentury, a billion souls worldwide could be climate refugees. . . . Fortunately, we have a powerful ally in this fight: innovation. Over the past fifteen years, prices for solar and wind power have plunged 90 percent. . . . Batteries are expanding the range of electrified vehicles at an ever lower cost. Greater energy efficiency has sharply reduced greenhouse gas emissions. . . . While a good many solutions are in hand, their deployment is nowhere near where it needs to be. We'll need massive investment and robust policy to make these innovations more affordable. We need to scale the ones we have - immediately - and invent the ones we still need. In short, we need both the now and the new."

"What do we need to build to fight global warming? . . . The answer is actually quite simple and requires no miracle technology: we must electrify everything, fast. That means not just the supply-side sources of energy; we’ve got to electrify everything on the demand-side - the things we use in our households and small businesses every day, including cars, furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and dryers. I’m optimistic because over the last two decades {we've made} advances and cost reductions in electric vehicles, solar cells, batteries, heat pumps, and induction cooking . . . . People who are relying on governments to solve this problem don’t understand the power they have in their own hands and homes to fight global warming. . . . One astounding thing happens when we electrify everything: we would need only one-half of the primary energy that currently powers the economy. . . . The electrification of things you do for climate is good for your health. The air in our homes will be cleaner, our cars zippier and community air quality better, our appliances faster and more high-tech, like smartphones compared to rotary phones. The electrified future can be awesome."

"When it comes to climate change, I know innovation isn’t the only thing we need. But we cannot keep the earth livable without it. Techno-fixes are not sufficient, but they are necessary."

"[W]e’re going to need much more clean electricity in the coming years. Most experts agree that as we electrify other carbon-intensive processes like making steel and running cars, the world’s electricity supply will need to double or even triple by 2050. And that doesn’t even account for population growth, or the fact that people will get richer and use more electricity. So the world will need much more than three times the electricity we generate now."

"Deploying today’s renewables and improving transmission couldn’t be more important. . . . Unless we use large amounts of nuclear energy . . . every path to zero {net emissions} in the United States will require us to install as much wind and solar power as we can build and find room for. It’s hard to say exactly how much of America’s electricity will come from renewables in the end, but what we do know is that between now and 2050 we have to build them much faster - on the order of 5 to 10 times faster - than we’re doing right now. And remember that most countries aren’t as lucky as the United States when it comes to solar and wind resources. The fact that we can hope to generate a large percentage of our power from renewables is the exception rather than the rule. That’s why, even as we deploy, deploy, deploy solar and wind, the world is going to need some new clean electricity inventions too."

"[I]t's . . . possible that some innovation will come along and make [other energy storage] ideas obsolete, the way the personal computer came along and more or less made the typewriter unnecessary. Cheap hydrogen could do that for storing electricity. . . . We could use electricity from a solar or wind farm to create hydrogen, store the hydrogen as a compressed gas or in another form, and then put it in a fuel cell to generate electricity on demand. [This] would solve the location problem; . . . although you can't ship sunlight in a railcar, you can turn it into fuel first and then ship it any way you like."

"Over the past decade, installed wind capacity has grown by an average of 20 percent a year, and wind turbines now provide about 5 percent of the world's electricity. Wind is growing for one simple reason: It's getting cheaper."

"[W]e [must] make this COP 26 in Glasgow the moment when we get real about climate change, and we can. We can get real on coal, cars, cash and trees. . . . But we cannot and will not succeed by government spending alone. . . . [T]he task now is to work together to help our friends to decarbonise using . . . the funds we have in development assistance and working with all the multilateral development banks so that in the key countries that need to make progress, we can jointly identify the projects that we can help to de-risk so that the private sector money can come in . . . . [Let us] in the next days devote ourselves to this extraordinary task. So that we not only continue with . . . a green industrial revolution, that is already creating millions of high wage, high skill jobs in power and technology, taking our economies forward. Let us also do enough to save our planet and our way of life."

"Climate change and biodiversity loss . . . pose an even greater existential threat [than the COVID-19 pandemic], to the extent that we have to put ourselves on what might be called a war-like footing. . . . Putting a value on carbon . . . [is] absolutely critical. . . . [W]e need a vast military style campaign to marshall the strength of the global private sector[, which has] trillions at its disposal . . . . [E]ach sector needs a clear strategy to speed up the process of getting innovations to market [and we] need to align private investment behind these industry strategies. . . . If we can develop a pipeline of many more sustainable and "bankable" projects, at a sufficient scale, it will attract greater investment. . . . CEOs and institutional investors have told me that alongside the promises countries have made, their nationally determined contributions, they need clear market signals, agreed globally, so that they have the confidence to invest without the goal posts suddenly moving. . . . [[w:Charles, Prince of Wales#Natural environment|[W]e are working]] to drive trillions of dollars in support of transition across ten of the most emitting and polluting industries [including] energy, agriculture, transportation, health systems and fashion. . . . I can only urge you, as the world’s decision-makers, to find practical ways of overcoming differences so we can all . . . rescue this precious planet and save the threatened future of our young people."

"Climate change is already . . . costing our nations trillions of dollars [and] we know that none of us can escape the worst that’s yet to come if we fail to seize this moment. . . . But . . . within the growing catastrophe, I believe there’s an incredible opportunity . . . . We have the ability to invest in ourselves and build an equitable clean-energy future and in the process create millions of good-paying jobs [while we] create an environment that raises the standard of living around the world. . . . When I talk to the American people about climate change, I tell them it’s about jobs. It’s about workers [and the] communities that will revitalize themselves around new industries and opportunities. . . . So, let’s get to work."

"We are aware that the industrialised countries have a particular responsibility. . . . The financing is essential if the industrialised countries are to maintain their credibility. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, with government activities alone we will not make progress. For this requires radical transformation of how we live, work and conduct business. I therefore want to take this opportunity to make a very clear appeal for pricing for CO2 emissions. With this form of pricing, which we already have in the European Union, which is to be introduced in China and which needs to be developed together with many others throughout the world, we could get our industries and businesses to find the technologically most effective and efficient ways to achieve climate neutrality. We need to work out how we can best integrate CO2-free mobility, CO2-free industry and CO2-free processes into our lives. My clear call in the Decade of Action, in the decade in which we now live, is for us to become more ambitious at a national level and at the same time to find global instruments that not only make use of taxpayers’ money but are also economically viable. And for me, the answer is CO2 pricing."

"In the midst of this global brainstorming on climate change, on behalf of India, I would like to present five [commitments] to deal with this challenge. First - India will take its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 gigawatts by 2030. Second - India will meet 50 percent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030. . . . And fifth - by the year 2070, India will achieve the target of Net Zero. . . . Today, when India has resolved to move forward with a new commitment and a new energy, the transfer of climate finance and low cost climate technologies have become more important. . . . India also understands the suffering of all other developing countries, shares them, and will continue to express their expectations."

"India is pioneering a new model of economic development that could avoid the carbon-intensive approaches that many countries have pursued in the past - and provide a blueprint for other developing economies. . . . {India's} economic growth has been among the highest in the world over the past two decades {as coal} and oil have so far served as bedrocks of India’s industrial growth and modernisation . . . . India’s annual CO2 emissions have risen to become the third highest in the world {but} India’s CO2 emissions per person put it near the bottom of the world’s emitters . . . India’s sheer size and its huge scope for growth means that its energy demand is set to grow by more than that of any other country in the coming decades. . . . {T}he good news is that the clean energy transition in India is already well underway. . . . Subsidies for petrol and diesel were removed in the early 2010s, and subsidies for electric vehicles were introduced in 2019. . . . {The country is} laying the groundwork to scale up important emerging technologies such as hydrogen, battery storage, and low-carbon steel, cement and fertilisers. . . . A transition to clean energy is a huge economic opportunity {but support} from the international community is essential to help shift India’s development onto a low-carbon path {and} access of low cost long term capital is key to achieve net zero. . . . India aims to become a global hub for green hydrogen production and exports. . . . As a large developing economy with over 1.3 billion people, India’s climate adaptation and mitigation ambitions are not just transformational for India but for the entire planet."

"[T]he solution has to be real economy government regulations to ban or to make higher [the] cost of the brown and polluting industries. That said, there are parts of finance which are longer-term and [evaluate] climate risks . . . and these are asset owners, the pension funds, the wealth funds and the insurance companies who are not so transactional [and] they’re not [as] interested in a deal to be done today. And they are in fact often mandated by their governments to take into account climate risk. So, I think those players will step up in this instance [turmoil in energy markets following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine] and [now who might be] investing for [an electricity generation project with a] 10-year horizon which you have to do with gas they will [say], "Let’s do it with renewables." And we’ve seen movements like that in the UK, where they’re pivoting towards onshore wind, which before the invasion was politically unviable because of the NIMBY factor. . . . [T]he pension funds and the actual asset owners . . . have a longer term of perspective. And they are actually driving the issue to their commercial managers who have to service them and they’re saying, "Look, we want you to act on climate change," and that's a huge driver."

"[A]s an atmospheric scientist and environmental engineer, I focus most on technologies — that’s what we think about most of what we need to be able to clean up electricity, what we need for cleaner cars. But those aren’t going to make it to market and those aren’t going to help cool the climate unless there are policies that get those to be deployed domestically. And what we do domestically isn’t enough because we’re only 1/7th of the world’s emissions, so we need diplomacy to take what we do here in the U.S. and make sure that that starts being applied in other parts of the world as well. . . . [A]s I was looking at the diplomacy [I noticed that what] the United States really gets right is being reciprocal . . . when we do something, we usually insist that our trading partners go along as well. You even hear in Congress talk about if we ever did have a carbon tax, being sure it got applied as tariffs on goods that got brought in."

"Solar has plunged by 90% in cost. Wind has plunged by 80% just in the past 11 or 12 years. . . . Things like wind and solar power really can already out-compete dirtier forms of electricity, and we just need to build more of them quickly; we’re not adding them fast enough. There are other technologies where we really need a big breakthrough. We don’t yet have affordable enough heat pumps. We don’t yet have a next generation nuclear technology that’s cheap enough, if we ever will. Geothermal is really at the cusp of becoming something that I think could really take off. What I also see, though, is that what carries those cutting-edge technologies to the cheaper cost can’t just happen in the lab. We need policies that pull those into the market, that get them adopted more — because if we can adopt them while they’re at that edge; while they’re not quite cheap enough, that can drive the economies of scale; that can drive what technologists call learning by doing."

"The ability to use renewables for the lion’s share of a grid’s supply, coupled with the fact that renewables have been made cheap and are getting yet cheaper, is the basis of a decarbonisation strategy all but universally accepted by those determined to stabilise the climate. Make the power on electric grids emissions-free, cheap and copious. Start electrifying all processes that now require fossil fuels - such as powering cars, or heating homes and steel foundries - where electrification is clearly possible. It does not deliver everything that is needed. But it delivers a lot."

"Even if you're a climate denier, you should be on board with what we're advocating. . . . Our central conclusion is that we should go full speed ahead with the green energy transition because it's going to save us money."

"[[w:Energy storage#Chemical|[Storing energy using] hydrogen]] . . . is getting a lot of play now. You could burn hydrogen in a gas turbine to produce electricity. You could use hydrogen in fuel cells that produce electricity without combustion; still a chemical reaction. Or you could simply use hydrogen to create ammonia, NH3, which is another liquid, as opposed to gaseous, chemical storage medium. . . . [E]xperts say that we could probably convert the grid 80% to renewable - that's wind and solar - without having to deal with [the] long-duration storage problem. We'd still use gas peaker plants for . . . 20% of the electricity that we need. If you want to do the other 20%, you're going to have to solve that problem of . . . long-term storage for the grid, days in a row. And you could do that with gravity storage. You could do that with a chemical energy carrier. It's done with methane now. So we've got to get rid of the methane. But you could have hydrogen or ammonia or another chemical energy medium which is yet to be discovered. That's the challenge. We can get to 80%, but we can't get to 100%."

"The global energy crisis is driving a sharp acceleration in installations of renewable power, with total capacity growth worldwide set to almost double in the next five years, overtaking coal as the largest source of electricity generation along the way and helping keep alive the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C . . . . Global renewable power capacity is now expected to grow by 2,400 gigawatts (GW) over the 2022-2027 period, an amount equal to the entire power capacity of China today, according to Renewables 2022, the latest edition of the IEA {International Energy Agency}’s annual report on the sector. . . . The amount of renewable power capacity added in Europe in the 2022-27 period is forecast to be twice as high as in the previous five-year period, driven by a combination of energy security concerns and climate ambitions. . . . Beyond Europe, the upward revision in renewable power growth for the next five years is also driven by China, the United States and India, which are all implementing policies and introducing regulatory and market reforms more quickly than previously planned to combat the energy crisis. . . . China is expected to account for almost half of new global renewable power capacity additions over the 2022-2027 period. Meanwhile, the US Inflation Reduction Act has provided new support and long-term visibility for the expansion of renewables in the United States. . . . Utility-scale solar PV [photovoltaics] and onshore wind are the cheapest options for new electricity generation in a significant majority of countries worldwide. Global solar PV capacity is set to almost triple over the 2022-2027 period, surpassing coal and becoming the largest source of power capacity in the world. The report also forecasts an acceleration of installations of solar panels on residential and commercial rooftops . . . . Global wind capacity almost doubles in the forecast period, with offshore projects accounting for one-fifth of the growth. Together, wind and solar will account for over 90% of the renewable power capacity that is added over the next five years. . . . While China remains the dominant player [in photovoltaic supply chains], its share in global manufacturing capacity could decrease from 90% today to 75% by 2027. . . . Total global biofuel demand is set to expand by 22% over the 2022-2027 period. . . . In advanced economies . . . faster growth [in renewable power capacity] would require various regulatory and permitting challenges to be tackled and a more rapid penetration of renewable electricity in the heating and transport sectors. In emerging and developing economies, [faster growth] would mean addressing policy and regulatory uncertainties, weak grid infrastructure and a lack of access to affordable financing that are hampering new projects. . . . Worldwide, the accelerated case requires efforts to resolve supply chain issues, expand grids and deploy more flexibility resources to securely manage larger shares of variable renewables. The accelerated case’s faster renewables growth would move the world closer to a pathway consistent with reaching net zero emissions by 2050, which offers an even chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C."

"We have taken the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world."

"Offshore wind turbines reach even higher and wider than land-based ones. Though twice as expensive as land-based wind, their costs are falling fast. That’s making offshore wind increasingly attractive in coastal regions of Europe and the northeastern United States, where population density is high, land is scarce, and winds over the ocean far outpace those over land."

"[W]e’ll never build enough batteries to back up the grid. Batteries are costly to build and costly to operate, since energy is dissipated each time they are charged and discharged. Transmission moves power more efficiently. Complementary resources smooth out supply. Demand flexibility narrows gaps and surpluses between supply and demand. The more robustly we deploy complementary resources, transmission, and flexibility, the less storage we will need to build and the less often we will have to deploy it, reducing the overall costs of electricity."

"[[w:Hydrogen economy|[H]ydrogen has many potential uses]], including electricity storage, trucking, chemical production, and industrial heat - which means options for producing and distributing hydrogen deserve a closer look. "Hydrogen is hard to make, hard to move, and hard to store, but once you’ve got it, it is a brilliant ingredient," [[w:Michael Webber|[Professor Michael] Webber]] told me."

"The [provisions of the proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, including] expansion of the wind and solar credits, the exciting expansion, or creation, of additional credits in green hydrogen, the inclusion of hydrogen cars in electric car credits, the extension of the electric car credits - all those things are good [but they're] not enough. The question now is, what do we do next?"

"The Inflation Reduction Act calls for spending less than $500 billion over a decade, compared with the American Rescue Plan’s $1.9 trillion in a single year . . . . But if the spending isn’t very large, how can it have such a big impact? The answer is that right now we’re sitting on a sort of cusp. Renewable energy technology has made revolutionary progress, and renewables are already cheaper in many areas than fossil fuels. A moderate push from public policy is all that it will take to transition to a much greener economy. And the Inflation Reduction Act will provide that push."

"[The Inflation Reduction Act] . . . doesn’t solve the climate challenge. This is the beginning . . . and the implementation is going to be everything. This is . . . like a starting gun for a race that's going to . . . hopefully define the coming decade of building something better."

"I’m about to sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law . . . . The [climate component of this legislation] invests $369 billion to take the most aggressive action ever . . . in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening . . . our energy security."

"{The US Inflation Reduction Act of 2022} is really good for a developing economy like Indonesia due to spillover effects because of lower costs {for technologies that help mitigate climate change}."

"[T]he analogy [regarding the three recent US climate laws] we’ve been thinking about is the backbone, the brain, and the lungs. So, the backbone being the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law {November 2021} . . . . That law [includes] investment in US infrastructure [such as] roads and bridges, but including significant energy infrastructure. Then there's the brain, the CHIPS and Science Act {August 2022}, and chips being the semiconductors that are in {electric vehicles, energy infrastructure, etc.} . . . and the science part authorizes additional investments from Congress in science {related to grid upgrades, zero emissions research, etc. by the} National Science Foundation and DOE {Department of Energy}. And then the third piece is the lungs. So, [taking a deep breath] breathing into that clean energy economy, the Inflation Reduction Act {August 2022} incentivizes deployment of clean technologies and really focuses on lowering costs for American families."

"Great, that is fantastic . . . . We want to be able to see energy - clean energy - produced in every pocket of the country. Blue states, red states, really it helps to save people money, so it’s all about green."

"[[w:Climate change policy of the United States#Federal policy|[I]f you think about how many times [US] politicians have tried and failed to pass climate legislation]], it's really notable that the Inflation Reduction Act went through. So in the past, basically legislators tried to have sticks: . . . there would be a cap and trade bill; people had debated a carbon tax. The Inflation Reduction Act includes no sticks, it's only carrots. . . . [T]his law is kind of a complicated way to try to go about decarbonizing America, but it proved to be the only politically viable option that American politicians had yet come up with. And so, I think, on those terms, it's absolutely a victory . . . for those who were trying to advance some kind of climate legislation through Washington."

"Climate security goes hand in hand with energy security. Putin’s abhorrent war in Ukraine and rising energy prices across the world are not a reason to go slow on climate change. They are a reason to act faster. Because diversifying our energy supplies by investing in renewables is precisely the way to insure ourselves against the risks of energy dependency. It is also a fantastic source of new jobs and growth."

"[COP27] ended on Sunday morning with researchers largely frustrated at the lack of any ambition to phase out fossil fuels. However, there was one silver lining: delegates from low and middle income countries (LMICs) came away with an agreement on a new 'loss and damage' fund to help them cover the costs of climate-change impacts. . . . Many blamed the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for a lack of progress on fossil fuels."

"[T]he change we need is to put innovation at the heart of everything we do. . . . [M]ajor challenges like energy security and net zero will be solved by innovation. The more we innovate, the more we grow."

"India has to do it for itself. . . . And India needs to do it for the world."

"Last year was a double milestone for decarbonizing the world’s energy system. It was the first year when investment in the energy transition equaled global investment in fossil fuels . . . . [And] 2022 was . . . the first year when investment in decarbonizing energy surpassed $1 trillion. The year-on-year increase of more than $250 billion from 2021 was the largest jump yet."

"[T]he process for the permitting of renewable energy generation and electric transmission projects in the United States is multi-layered and often extremely long. If the U.S. is to achieve its climate ambitions and fully implement transformative legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress will also have to enable a massively accelerated build-out of clean energy infrastructure. At the same time, valuable environmental safeguards, and the established public participatory and related administrative processes used to adopt and implement them, cannot simply be sidestepped. Congress should approach federal permitting reform in a way that maximizes efficiency in government decisionmaking through shorter timelines for regulatory approvals without sacrificing the value of the current process in protecting the environment and local stakeholders. Further, it is essential that reforms are evidence-based in targeting the major sources of current delays."

"Because Australia has {aggressively incentivized adoption of} rooftop solar, the economics are extraordinary. . . . So if we use our cheap sunshine to drive our cars and heat our homes, we're going to save money sooner."

"In the last several months all the key associations looked across the table and realised we were arguing for the same thing. . . . This is Big Wind and Big Solar coming to the table and saying we want to get things done. . . . It will not be possible to achieve anything close to a climate solution with the current {permitting} system in place."

"{H}ydrogen is seen as a way to substitute large amounts of energy that we’re buying now at extremely high costs from countries that we shouldn’t buy this from."

"And it's just the beginning. You know, we also protected the most significant breakthrough ever—ever—in dealing with the existential threat of climate change. Today, new wind and solar power is cheaper than fossil fuel. Since I've been in office, clean energy and advanced manufacturing have brought in $470 billion in private investments. That's going to create thousands of jobs—good-paying jobs—all across this country and help the environment at the same time. And remember, at the beginning of this debate, some of my Republican colleagues were determined to gut the clean energy investments. And I said no, and we kept them all."

"We have a tremendous sense of pride in our history . . . But we also understand that energy is energy, whether it is generated by wind, steam or whatever it might be."

"Solar energy is the most widely available energy resource on Earth, and its economic attractiveness is improving fast in a cycle of increasing investments. . . . [D]ue to technological trajectories set in motion by past policy, a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies. Uncertainties arise, however, over grid stability in a renewables-dominated power system, the availability of sufficient finance in underdeveloped economies, the capacity of supply chains and political resistance from regions that lose employment."

"{T}he challenges are great but we have the conviction that by working together - the {European} Commission, the ITER Organization and F4E {Fusion for Energy} - we can overcome them and slowly but steadily bring the ITER project back on its rails."

"Electricity generation. We expect that the 23 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 and 37 GW in 2024 of new solar capacity scheduled to come online will help U.S. solar generation grow by 15% in 2023 and by 39% in 2024. We expect solar and wind generation together in 2024 to overtake electric power generation from coal for the first year ever, exceeding coal by nearly 90 billion kilowatthours."

"We're not interested in a pilot [climate project] just for experimentation. . . . We're interested in proving that they work and that then we can scale them. . . . Utilities [can't afford to] move fast and break things [but they] can be great mechanisms for scaling up innovation."

"I think [it’s] to be determined {whether the post-pandemic, low-interest-rate-fueled investment spike which flowed to non-governmental fusion companies will actually result in commercially viable fusion power}. . . . When interest rates were low, people were willing to make long-term bets. [However, the] level of investment was substantial, and it should yield technological progress."

"If the world is to decarbonise, then more clean energy is needed, fast. [To meet current UNFCCC pledges, countries must] raise global renewable-energy capacity to 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030. [However, supply chain problems and rising interest rates cloud the industry's future. Another obstacle is slow permitting] approval, which delays projects for years and can needlessly tie up capital, lowering returns. [And,] too little development is happening in the global south [because investors require a premium when venturing money in emerging markets]. A last obstacle is protectionism, which raises costs and threatens shortages. . . . Rather than micromanaging production, governments should unleash investment, by acting boldly to strip back permitting rules and ease the risk of projects in the global south [which can come from blending in government money in southern projects that assumes some risk]. They also need to face up to the fact that protectionism frustrates their climate goals. It leads to lower returns, higher prices for power and more broken promises over decarbonisation."

"[D]ata from the World Meteorological Agency show that, as the U.N. Secretary-General, António Guterres, told the {COP28} global climate talks in Dubai last week, we can safely say, even with weeks to go, that 2023 will take the title {as the world's hottest year on record}. . . . And yet . . . [a]lmost simultaneous with the breakout in temperature, there was a breakout in the installation of renewable energy, especially solar power, around the world. . . . {T}he cost of clean energy has dropped so far that it is now possible that saving the planet might be a corollary of saving cash. This ongoing drop in price is more than a decade old, but sometime in the past few years it crossed an invisible line, making it cheaper than hydrocarbons, and this was the year when that reality finally translated into dramatic action on the ground. . . . There are plenty of other technologies we’re [currently] spending money on, including small nuclear reactors and giant carbon-sucking machines, that may or may not someday play a role in the climate fight, but, for all the furor they produce, they seem unlikely to make much difference anytime soon. In the next few years, while the planet’s climate system teeters on the edge of breaking, it’s sun, wind, and batteries that matter. They’re cheap, and they’re ready."

"{In 2023 it was the clean economy expansion efforts of} China that blew everyone away. In what may be the single biggest sustainability headline of the year, China’s national oil company, Sinopec, said the country had reached peak gasoline demand (in part by radically increasing sales of EVs). Some analysts believe China may have peaked in total carbon emissions already. The country was on track to add 150 gigawatts of solar this year (versus adding 87 gigawatts in 2022), more than the total capacity in the U.S. And in a rare positive moment in U.S.-China relations, the countries agreed to ramp up renewables. If all the estimates are true, it’s a monumental and fundamental shift in global energy and transportation systems . . . . On the other hand . . . As critics point out, China is permitting more coal plants, but this can get misconstrued. (People say to me that China is building two plants per week when, in reality, many don’t get built.) The new plants are much cleaner, it’s generally backup power, and China is also cancelling and shelving plants rapidly as well."

"It is often heard . . . that efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing the use of fossil fuels and developing cleaner energy sources will lead to a reduction in the number of jobs. What is happening is that millions of people are losing their jobs due to different effects of climate change: rising sea levels, droughts and other phenomena affecting the planet have left many people adrift. Conversely, the transition to renewable forms of energy, properly managed, as well as efforts to adapt to the damage caused by climate change, are capable of generating countless jobs in different sectors. This demands that politicians and business leaders should even now be concerning themselves with it."

"We are edging ever-closer to a fusion-powered reality. And at the same time, yes, significant scientific and engineering challenges exist. . . . Careful thought and thoughtful policy is going to be critical to navigate this."

"{UNFCCC participant countries should transition} away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science[; they should also accelerate] efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power[; and triple] renewable energy capacity globally."

"{UNFCCC participant countries should accelerate} zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage."

"No, the Cop28 agreement will not enable the world to hold the 1.5C limit, but yes, the result is a pivotal landmark. This agreement delivers on making it clear to all financial institutions, businesses and societies that we are now finally – eight years behind the Paris schedule – at the true "beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel-driven world economy."

"Tripling {global renewable energy capacity} is a monumental change. . . . We don't have any structures that fit 100% with the new system that is coming."

"This is not a transition that will happen from one day to the other . . . . Whole economies and societies are dependent on fossil fuels. Fossil capital will not disappear just because we made a decision here. [But the COP28 final agreement sends] a strong political message that this is the pathway."

"China's status as the colossus of renewable energy is set to be cemented in the next five years, with the world's second-biggest economy adding more capacity than the rest of globe combined. The International Energy Agency said in its Renewables 2023 report . . . that China will account for 56% of renewable energy capacity additions in the 2023-28 period. . . . There is also a caveat to China's rapid build-out of renewable capacity because at the same time it is still adding substantial coal-fired generation. China is the world's biggest coal producer and importer and has more coal-fired capacity under construction than the rest of the world combined. China is building 136.24 GW of coal-fired generation, and has another 255.5 GW at the announced, pre-permit or permitted stage, according to data compiled by the Global Energy Monitor. . . . It's clear that renewables are increasing their share of China's power generation, but it's equally clear coal-fired power is going to be around for decades to come, and that if China does meet its goal of net-zero emissions by 2060, it will largely be achieved in the final years prior to the deadline."

"A virtual power plant is a system of distributed energy resources - like rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, and smart water heaters - that work together to balance energy supply and demand on a large scale. They are usually run by local utility companies who oversee this balancing act. . . . VPPs can . . . allow grid operators to control the demand from end users. For example, smart thermostats linked to air conditioning units can [stagger] cooling times [to] help prevent abrupt demand hikes that might overwhelm the grid and cause outages. Similarly, electric vehicle chargers can adapt to the grid’s requirements by either supplying or utilizing electricity. These distributed energy sources connect to the grid through communication technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular services."

"[Batteries are] able to very effectively manage that evening ramp where solar is going down and customer demand is increasing. [Batteries also] made some differences last summer. We were able to meet high load days and wildfire days when we might lose some power lines."

"We have to be able to integrate all {the new} low-cost, renewable energy {flowing into the North American electrical grid} fast . . . . {With reconductoring, you’re} not acquiring a new right of way; you’re not building new towers. So it can be done much faster. . . . In the longer run, newer lines will play an important role{, but reconductoring is an inexpensive, quick way of keeping up with the increasing stresses placed on the electrical grid by changes in both supply and demand.}"

"Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. . . . The benefits [of cheaper energy] start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less - and that includes pretty much everything. . . . Cheap energy can purify water, and even desalinate it. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers . . . . But [the] most consequential [result will be that] cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting [the] wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities."

"Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. Some afternoons, solar panels alone have produced more power than the state uses. And, at night, large utility-scale batteries that have been installed during the past few years are often the single largest source of supply to the grid—sending the excess power stored up during the afternoon back out to consumers across the state. It’s taken years of construction—and solid political leadership in Sacramento—to slowly build this wave, but all of a sudden it’s cresting into view. California has the fifth-largest economy in the world and, in the course of a few months, the state has proved that it’s possible to run a thriving modern economy on clean energy."

"Our nation has eight million jobs in clean energy! Can we double it, guys, before the sea levels rise And I'm roommates with a manatee?"

"As summer heat strikes, the US grid increasingly relies on a kind of invisible weapon - the "virtual power plant" - to prevent blackouts. . . . Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie says the VPPs already deployed or under development in the US will be able to save as much juice as 33 nuclear reactors can produce. . . . The US Energy Department estimates that peak consumption will increase by as much as 200 gigawatts through 2030, and about 80% of that boost could be met through VPPs."

"The International Energy Agency (IEA) . . . reckons that the global installed capacity of battery storage will need to rise from less than 200 gigawatts (GW) last year to more than a terawatt (TW) by the end of the decade, and nearly 5TW by 2050 . . . . Fortunately, though, the business of storing energy on the grid is at last being turbocharged. . . . A plunge in the price of lithium batteries is fuelling their adoption on the grid. . . . Sodium-ion batteries are one promising alternative {and incumbents} are rushing to develop the technology for the grid."

"At this point the {Texas} legislature can’t do anything to stop the growth of solar and wind and batteries . . . . The state desperately needs it."

"With global electricity demand set to grow strongly, new technologies {like enhanced geothermal systems and closed-loop geothermal systems} are opening up the massive potential of geothermal energy to provide around-the-clock clean power in almost all countries around the world, according to a new IEA report. The report, The Future of Geothermal Energy, finds that geothermal energy could meet 15% of global electricity demand growth between now and 2050 if project costs continue to decline. This would mean . . . delivering annual output equivalent to the current electricity demand of the United States and India combined. . . . Importantly, geothermal energy can draw upon the expertise of today’s oil and gas industries by using existing drilling techniques and equipment to go deeper under the earth’s surface . . . . Conventional geothermal remains a location-specific, niche technology today with most of the installed capacity in countries that have either volcanic activity or straddle tectonic fault lines . . . . But new technologies are . . . opening up the potential to benefit from it in nearly all countries. . . . [T]he report finds that costs could fall by 80% by 2035 to around $50 per megawatt hour (MWh). This would make geothermal the cheapest source of dispatchable low-emissions electricity on a par with existing hydropower and nuclear installations. . . . If next-generation geothermal grows strongly in the coming years, employment in the overall geothermal sector could increase sixfold to 1 million jobs by 2030 . . . . Up to 80% of the investment required in geothermal involves capacity and skills that are transferrable from existing oil and gas operations. The oil and gas industry can also benefit {because next-generation geothermal can} serve as a hedge against commercial risks related to projected future declines in oil and gas demand. At a time when the digital economy and artificial intelligence applications are growing strongly {and with} next-generation geothermal offering a stable and essentially inexhaustible power source, large technology companies are already signing power purchase agreements with new projects."

"[1] 2023 saw a step change in renewable capacity additions, driven by China’s solar PV market. Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. . . . [2] Achieving the COP28 target of tripling global renewable capacity by 2030 hinges on policy implementation. . . . [C]hallenges [that could prevent reaching the tripling goal] fall into four main categories and differ by country: 1) policy uncertainties and delayed policy responses to the new macroeconomic environment; 2) insufficient investment in grid infrastructure preventing faster expansion of renewables; 3) cumbersome administrative barriers and permitting procedures and social acceptance issues; 4) insufficient financing in emerging and developing economies. . . . [3] The global power mix will be transformed by 2028. . . . In 2028, renewable energy sources [are expected to] account for over 42% of global electricity generation, with the share of wind and solar PV doubling to 25%. . . . [4] China is the world’s renewables powerhouse. . . . China’s role is critical in reaching the global goal of tripling renewables because the country is expected to install more than half of the new capacity required globally by 2030. . . . [5] The US, the EU, India and Brazil remain bright spots for onshore wind and solar PV growth. . . . Supportive policy environments and the improving economic attractiveness of solar PV and onshore wind are the primary drivers behind this acceleration. . . . [6] Solar PV prices plummet amid growing supply glut. . . . Despite unprecedented PV manufacturing expansion in the United States and India driven by policy support, China is expected to maintain its 80‑95% share of global supply chains . . . . [7] Onshore wind and solar PV are cheaper than both new and existing fossil fuel plants. . . . Despite the increasing contribution needs for flexibility and reliability to integrate variable renewables, the overall competitiveness of onshore wind and solar PV changes only slightly by 2028 in Europe, China, India and the United States. . . . [8] The new macroeconomic environment presents further challenges that policy makers need to address. . . . Since 2022, central bank base interest rates have increased from below 1% to almost 5%. . . . The implications . . . are manifold . . . . [I]nflation has increased equipment costs . . . [H]igher interest rates are increasing the financing costs of capital-intensive variable renewable technologies. . . . [And] policy has been relatively slow to adjust to the new macroeconomic environment due in part to expectations that cost reductions would continue . . . . [9] The forecast for wind capacity additions is less optimistic outside China, especially for offshore. . . .The wind industry, especially in Europe and North America, is facing challenges due to a combination of ongoing supply chain disruptions, higher costs and long permitting timelines. . . . [10] Faster deployment of variable renewables increases integration and infrastructure challenges. . . . Although European Union interconnections help integrate solar PV and wind generation, grid bottlenecks will pose significant challenges and lead to increased curtailment in many countries as grid expansion cannot keep pace with accelerated installation of variable renewables. . . . [11] Current hydrogen plans and implementation don’t match. . . . We have revised down our forecasts for all regions except China. The main reason is the slow pace of bringing planned projects to final investment decisions due to a lack of off‑takers and the impact of higher prices on production costs. . . . [12] Biofuel deployment is accelerating and diversifying more into renewable diesel and biojet fuel. . . . Emerging economies, led by Brazil, dominate global biofuel expansion . . . . Biofuels remain the dominant pathway for avoiding oil demand in the diesel and jet fuel segments. EVs outpace biofuels in the gasoline segment, especially in the United States, Europe and China. . . . [13] Aligning biofuels with a net zero pathway requires a huge increase in the pace of deployment. . . . Much faster biofuel deployment is possible through new policies and addressing supply chain challenges. [14] Renewable heat accelerates amid high energy prices and policy momentum – but not enough to curb emissions. . . . [The renewable heat acceleration comes] predominantly from the growing reliance on electricity for process heat – notably with the adoption of heat pumps in non‑energy‑intensive industries – and the deployment of electric heat pumps and boilers in buildings, increasingly powered by renewable electricity."

"The world’s demand for electricity is rising at its fastest rate in years, driven by robust economic growth, intense heatwaves and increasing uptake of technologies that run on electricity such as EVs and heat pumps, according to a new report by the IEA. At the same time, renewables continue their rapid ascent, with solar PV on course to set new records. . . . Global electricity demand is forecast to grow by around 4% in 2024 and {will do so} into 2025, with growth around 4% again . . . . {The} share of global electricity supply {generated by renewables is} forecast to rise from 30% in 2023 to 35% in 2025. The amount of electricity generated by renewables worldwide in 2025 is forecast to eclipse the amount generated by coal for the first time. Solar PV alone is expected to meet roughly half of the growth in global electricity demand over 2024 and 2025 - with solar and wind combined meeting as much as three-quarters of the growth. Despite the sharp increases in renewables, global power generation from coal is unlikely to decline this year due to the strong growth in demand, especially in China and India . . . As a result, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the global power sector are plateauing, with a slight increase in 2024 followed by a decline in 2025. …Some of the world’s major economies are registering particularly strong increases in electricity consumption. Demand in India is expected to surge by a massive 8% this year . . . . China is also set to see significant demand growth of more than 6% . . . . After declining in 2023 amid mild weather, electricity demand in the United States is forecast to rebound this year by 3% . . . . By contrast, the European Union will see . . . growth forecast at 1.7% . . . . In many parts of the world, increasing use of air-conditioning will remain a significant driver of electricity demand. Multiple regions faced intense heatwaves . . . . With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the electricity demand of data centres is drawing increased attention . . . ."

"{COP29 set} a new annual target for global climate finance {by} reaching a deal for $300 billion a year by 2035. {However,} many developing countries said {this} amount was far too low. They also warned that the deadline for a decade away in 2035 would hold back the world's transition to clean energy. . . . Though he has yet to take office, climate denier Donald Trump's . . . election meant the U.S. could offer little at {the conference. . . . Also, the parties} reached a deal to allow countries to begin establishing {carbon} credits to bring in funding and offset their emissions, or to trade them on a market exchange."

"The current level of climate finance ambition has broadly been preserved. There is no regression, which was a real risk given the current context. . . . While some have argued that no agreement would have been better than a bad one, I fail to see how waiting until next year — or even the year after — would have led to a more favorable outcome."

"We have at most three years to reverse climate change."

"The common narrative on climate change is a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the global economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misleading climate science has been transformed into a massive journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, it has been made the scapegoat for a myriad of unrelated evils."

"If you disagree with the majority opinion on global warming, you are an enemy of science. There is a secular religion around the world that we can call environmentalism."

"Eight years have passed since I published the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, when I wanted to share with all of you, my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet, my heartfelt concerns about the care of our common home. Yet, with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point. In addition to this possibility, it is indubitable that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many persons. We will feel its effects in the areas of healthcare, sources of employment, access to resources, housing, forced migrations, etc. This is a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life. The Bishops of the United States have expressed very well this social meaning of our concern about climate change, which goes beyond a merely ecological approach, because “our care for one another and our care for the earth are intimately bound together. Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community. The effects of climate change are borne by the most vulnerable people, whether at home or around the world”. In a few words, the Bishops assembled for the Synod for Amazonia said the same thing: “Attacks on nature have consequences for people’s lives”. And to express bluntly that this is no longer a secondary or ideological question, but a drama that harms us all, the African bishops stated that climate change makes manifest “a tragic and striking example of structural sin”."

"Outside the Ministry of Transition, or rather, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, there is a huge climate clock that tells us how few years we really have left. We have five years. So this legislative term will be crucial, and we cannot allow it to be remembered as the term when the names of ministries were changed, now including “Ecological Transition”, which is disappearing from the lexicon, because a name change is a cultural change, and we cannot afford that."

"Climate change is the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, and it is a crisis that we will always be called upon to solve together and simultaneously tackle on our own. We cannot maintain the type of diet we are used to and at the same time maintain the planet we are used to. We must give up some of our eating habits or give up the planet. The choice is clear and dramatic. Where were you when you made your decision?"

"Like the meteorite that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, we are having a huge impact. In the case of the climate, we are not the dinosaurs, we are the meteorite. Not only are we in danger, we are the danger."

"It is acceptable to debate whether the mass of the proton changes over time, but is the evidence for global warming really incontrovertible? It is a new religion."

"It's common today to explain anything and everything as the result of climate change, but the truth is that earth's climate never rests. It is in constant flux. Every event in history occurred against the background of some climate change. In particular, our planet has experienced numerous cycles of cooling and warming."

"Extreme natural phenomena caused by climate changes provoked by human activity are growing in intensity and frequency (cf. Laudato Deum, 5), to say nothing of the medium and long-term effects of the human and ecological devastation being wrought by armed conflicts. [...] For believers it is also a duty born of faith, since the universe reflects the face of Jesus Christ, in whom all things were created and redeemed. In a world where the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters are the first to suffer the devastating effects of climate change, deforestation and pollution, care for creation becomes an expression of our faith and humanity."

"Donald Trump has never been one to side with science, especially climate science. He has often spread false claims about climate change being some sort of “hoax” or “scam.” You can imagine, then, how he feels about the Environmental Protection Agency, which is supposed to help counteract the effects of climate change and – as the name suggests – keep the environment healthy. A major pillar of the EPA’s efforts pre-Trump was the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which established the government position that greenhouse gases were detrimental to human health. However, the Trump administration announced it was formally revoking the EPA’s endangerment finding last week, beginning the supposed “single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” This revocation goes against established fact in order to service the interests of big business and the MAGA movement’s obsession with climate change denial. It leaves the EPA adrift and powerless, unable to address the ongoing tide of global warming."

"The endangerment finding was built on a 2007 Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. EPA, which determined that the EPA did have the authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases because of their threat to public health. This decision allowed the EPA to carry out regulatory policies to restrict emissions of these harmful gases. Regulations are particularly important for transportation, which represents the largest share – 28% – of greenhouse gases released by the U.S. each year. The EPA’s own website says as much, which is deeply ironic given the Trump administration’s new policy eliminates all federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles and engines from 2012 onwards. These regulations help prevent companies from simply having their fossil fuel output run rampant. Eliminating the regulations would mean America is now significantly out of step with other industrialized countries, which are busy expanding their own environmental protections and renewable energy sources. Trump’s mission of deregulation represents a major step backwards, and it’s about to cast aside restrictions in an area where the U.S. is already failing to protect the environment. Essentially, the Trump administration’s main argument for revoking the endangerment finding is that American taxpayers will save $1.3 trillion due to deregulation. Since the idea of cost is apparently so important to Trump, according to a federal report from 2023, climate change is costing the U.S. $150 billion per year. That is a conservative estimate that only factors in direct damages, and the number will only grow larger as temperatures and sea levels rise, setting up more frequent and more destructive extreme weather events."

"Yet the Trump administration ignores that cost is a highly suspect way to measure the impacts of climate change in the first place. The damage of global warming is difficult to quantify, but we know its effects will significantly affect human life for the worse. As the Earth gets hotter and more inhospitable, we are barreling towards the point of no return when our effects on the climate cannot be stopped, and that future cannot be quantified in numbers. It can only be quantified in the suffering that will result. People will have to uproot their entire lives to deal with ever-more frequent disasters and the long-term effects of global heating, especially in coastal areas where seas will rise. The country of Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation, is already trying to upload a digital copy of itself in the face of being swallowed by the rising ocean. The potential loss of an entire nation cannot be quantified, and neither can many of climate change’s adverse effects."

"At the heart of the Trump administration’s decision is catering to the MAGA base. For years, Trump and the rightwing media apparatus have primed Republicans to be very skeptical of climate change, or at least deny it is a pressing issue. According to surveys from Pew Research Center, just 12% of Republicans think dealing with climate change should be a top priority. Deregulation has also long been a crucial part of the Republican agenda – the Reaganite principle of trickle-down economics rests partly on deregulation of businesses. In addition, the current EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, formerly served as a Republican U.S. House member and was previously most well-known as a Trump sycophant. He was specifically selected as a fully political, rightwing appointee."

"Trump’s history of spreading conspiracy theories and falsehoods about climate change has served to muddy the waters with his base about whether the climate crisis is indeed real. Global heating has been settled science for years, but Republicans have grown more indifferent towards tackling it in recent years. Since Trump first took power after winning the 2016 election, ignoring climate change has become a political cudgel, wielded against the idea of “wokeness.” All of this means gutting the EPA’s authority doesn’t hold much meaning with Republicans, but it should. The climate crisis affects both Democrats and Republicans, independents and radicals. It is a crisis for humanity itself. Humanity, however, is not the Trump administration’s concern. The EPA, instead of protecting the environment and public health, is now beholden to the interests of fossil fuel corporations and purely political considerations. Without regulations, the EPA will work to increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not decrease them. The agency has corrupted its mission, because without the endangerment finding, it is useless. And useless is just how Trump wants it."

"You only need to meet and listen to people in the sector to know that agriculture is one of the hardest hit by the climate emergency. Extreme weather events, which are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, cause damage and uncertainty for production continuity, such as this summer's drought, but also unusual frosts at unusual times, the Asian bug and other external pathogens: a fragility that our agriculture has never experienced before. But agriculture also knows that it is one of the contributors to climate-changing emissions."

"We need to focus every inch of our being on climate change, because if we fail to do so than all our achievements and progress have been for nothing and all that will remain of our political leaders’ legacy will be the greatest failure of human history. And they will be remembered as the greatest villains of all time, because they have chosen not to listen and not to act."

"It should be noted that climate change and pollution are two completely different things. Pollution can be combated immediately and without difficulty by prohibiting the release of toxins into the air. Global warming is something else entirely, as it depends on meteorological forces dominated by the power of the Sun. Human activity accounts for 5% of global warming: 95% depends on natural phenomena linked to the Sun. For example, an analysis of climate variations over the past millions of years, up to a few centuries ago, shows that cosmic rays have a major influence on the climate, but no mathematical model has yet introduced this variable. Yet it is because of cosmic rays that the Earth loses its two polar ice caps every 140 million years. This has happened four times in the last half billion years, and humans had not yet appeared on Earth. Attributing global warming solely to human activity has no scientific basis. There is no mathematics that allows such a prediction to be made."

"We consider it irresponsible to manipulate public opinion and stir up fears of an imminent climate catastrophe among the population."

"Through our predatory behaviors, systems of exploitation, and growth-oriented societies, we have lived in contradiction to one another, other species, and the planet for so long that we have brought about a new geologic epoch. We have hastened the end of the Holocene Era, which endured over the last ten thousand years, and thereby have precipitated the arrival of the Anthropocene Era–whose very name proclaims our global dominance and the severe environmental impact of Homo sapiens. In our current Anthropocene period of runaway climate change, the crisis in earth's history, resource scarcity, global capitalism, aggressive neoliberalism, economic crashes, increasing centralization of power, rampant militarism, chronic warfare, and suffering and struggle everywhere, we have come to a historical crossroads where momentous choices have to be made and implemented."

"The geometric growth rate of humans is unprecedented and never in the history of the earth has a single species grown to such bloated proportions, completely out of balance with living systems. The problem is only worsening. On conservative estimates the human population is expected to swell upwards to 8-10 billion by 2050, and perhaps expand significantly by 2100. Human population growth represents a crisis of the highest order, but of course it is only one aspect of multiple crises -- including species extinction and climate change -- merging together in a perfect storm of catastrophe that forms the daunting challenges facing humanity in the Anthropocene."

"... the cause of the sixth mass extinction is a very different type of cataclysm: expansion of one element of biodiversity to planetary dominance. In short, that is, expansion of the human enterprise—the explosion of the numbers of Homo sapiens and their domesticates and the near-instantaneous (in terms of geological time) burst of ecosystem altering and destroying technologies. That expansion has created a new geological epoch, dubbed the Anthropocene ... The term Anthropocene, meant to replace the formal, geologically accepted label of the Holocene epoch, encapsulates the consequences of humanity's activities on Earth's life-support systems. Indeed, humanity's planetary impact includes alterations of geological processes so profound as to leave stratigraphic signatures in multiple structures of the Earth's surface. These new structures are technofossils like plastics, metal junk, radioactive wastes and other synthetic material footprints ... Therefore, the term Anthropocene is increasingly penetrating the lexicon of not only the academic socio-sphere, but also society more generally (e.g. it is now an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary) and is useful for discussion of the sixth mass extinction."

"We are in an emergency situation in the Anthropocene epoch in which the disruption of the Earth system, particularly the climate, is threatening the planet as a place of human habitation. However, our political-economic system, capitalism, is geared primarily to the accumulation of capital, which prevents us from addressing this enormous challenge and accelerates the destruction."

"Driven by the Anthropocene engine, human population has grown exponentially, and individual societies have approached collapse multiple times over the past 8,000 years. The disappearance of the Easter Island civilization and the collapse of the Mayan empire, for example, have been linked to the depletion of environmental resources as populations rose. The dramatic decline of the European population during the Black Death in the 1300s was a direct consequence of crowded and unsanitary living conditions that facilitated the spread of Yersenia pestis, or plague."

"Our planetary impacts have increased since our earliest ancestors stepped down from the trees, at first by hunting some animal species to extinction. Much later, following the development of farming and agricultural societies, we started to change the climate. Yet Earth only truly became a “human planet” with the emergence of something quite different. This was capitalism, which itself grew out of European expansion in the 15th and 16th century and the era of colonisation and subjugation of indigenous peoples all around the world."

"The Anthropocene makes for an easy story. Easy, because it does not challenge the naturalized inequalities, alienation, and violence inscribed in modernity’s strategic relations of power and production. It is an easy story to tell because it does not ask us to think about these relations at all. The mosaic of human activity in the web of life is reduced to an abstract Humanity: a homogeneous acting unit. Inequality, commodification, imperialism, patriarchy, racial formations, and much more, have been largely removed from consideration. ... Are we really living in the Anthropocene, with its return to a curiously Eurocentric vista of humanity, and its reliance on well-worn notions of resource- and technological-determinism? Or are we living in the Capitalocene, the historical era shaped by relations privileging the endless accumulation of capital?"

"Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science. It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best."

"Global warming — at least the modern nightmare vision — is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy makers are not."

"The problem we are faced with is that the meteorological establishment and the global warming lobby research bodies which receive large funding are now apparently so corrupted by the largesse they receive that the scientists in them have sold their integrity."

"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."

"To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: “These results are derived with the help of a computer model.” But now, large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world—increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. … On this issue [global warming], science and policy have become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them out."

"The global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers."

"My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."

"Global warming is indeed a scam, perpetrated by scientists with vested interests, but in need of crash courses in geology, logic and the philosophy of science."

"The problem of complexity is at the heart of mankind’s inability to predict future events with any accuracy. Complexity science has demonstrated that the more factors found within a complex system, the more chances of unpredictable behavior. And without predictability, any meaningful control is nearly impossible. Obviously, this means that you cannot control what you cannot predict. The ability ever to predict long-term events is a pipedream. Mankind has little to do with changing climate; complexity does."

"Sea levels have been rising steadily since the peak of the last Ice Age about 18,000 years ago. The total rise since then has been four hundred feet. For the last 5,000 years or so, the rate of rise has been about seven inches per century. The Medieval and Roman warmings, with their intervening cold periods, present a huge problem for the advocates of man-made global warming. If the Medieval and Roman occurred warmer than today - without greenhouse gases, what would be so unusual about modern times being warm as well? The temperatures at the North and South Poles are lower now than they were in 1930. The Antarctic Peninsula, the finger of land pointing north towards Argentina (and the equator) has been getting warmer. The other 97 percent of Antarctic has been cooling since the mid-1960s."

""Global Warming" represents the last gasp of so-called "scientific progressivism", a mass of pitifully transparent falsehoods being employed to justify reducing mankind under the absolute despotism of "experts", the obvious implication being that we can’t even breathe responsibly. Environmentalism, Gaianism, is a religion on the basis of which — illegally under the First Amendment — public policy is being generated. Exhaling carbon dioxide is Original Sin, a reliable source of unlimited power and wealth to a Parasitic Class of politicians, bureaucrats, and cops with which our civilization now finds itself infested."

"There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!"

"All this concern with the effects of global warming is another manifestation of being politically correct."

"In the time of the Wakhan ancient ancestors [Alexander the Great era, 4th century BC], the climate here was very different. Scientists suggest that it was as much as 5 degrees warmer. In these [high Afghanistan] ranges, ancient terraced fields and irrigation canals have been found. Judged to be thousands of years old, it’s evidence of sustained cultivation."

"Beyond the danger that a totalitarian takeover in the USA would present to other democracies, an America in the firm grip of authoritarians would threaten every human being, nay most living things, on the planet. Earth’s biosphere deteriorates more and more with each passing day, and one of the first things Donald Trump did in 2017 was cancel almost every effort the federal government was making to slow climate change and protect the environment. It was all a hoax, he repeatedly said, dismissing a mountain of consensus-forming research with a brainless quip. The concerned nations on the planet are in a sinking canoe baling hard at last to avert disaster, but for four years the United States government sat in the stern scooping water into the boat. Give Trump, or anyone else who does not understand the gravity of the planet’s situation, another four years to put their own selfish needs and profound ignorance ahead of everything else, and the damage may be irreversible."

"We’re in an emergency situation that requires radical responses. For 70 years the world has ignored the warnings of scientists, and now we are paying the price. The climate is changing must faster than we are. We are losing a football field size of the Amazon rainforest every minute. We have years, not decades, to create net-zero societies, a short window of time for the formidable task of forging political alliances, international treaties, and mass resistance movements. This is no time for moderation or tepid reform measures."

"If present climate-change trends continue, the “global carbon budget” associated with a 2°C increase in average global temperature will be broken in sixteen years (while a 1.5°C increase in global average temperature—staying beneath which is the key to long-term stabilization of the climate—will be reached in a decade). Earth System scientists warn that the world is now perilously close to a Hothouse Earth, in which catastrophic climate change will be locked in and irreversible. The ecological, social, and economic costs to humanity of continuing to increase carbon emissions by 2.0 percent a year as in recent decades (rising in 2018 by 2.7 percent—3.4 percent in the United States), and failing to meet the minimal 3.0 percent annual reductions in emissions currently needed to avoid a catastrophic destabilization of the earth’s energy balance, are simply incalculable. Nevertheless, major energy corporations continue to lie about climate change, promoting and bankrolling climate denialism—while admitting the truth in their internal documents. These corporations are working to accelerate the extraction and production of , including the dirtiest, most -generating varieties, reaping enormous profits in the process. The melting of the Arctic ice from global warming is seen by capital as a new , opening up massive additional oil and gas reserves to be exploited without regard to the consequences for the . In response to scientific reports on climate change, Exxon Mobil declared that it intends to extract and sell all of the fossil-fuel reserves at its disposal. Energy corporations continue to intervene in climate negotiations to ensure that any agreements to limit carbon emissions are defanged. Capitalist countries across the board are putting the accumulation of wealth for a few above combatting climate destabilization, threatening the very future of humanity."

"By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy yet, the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements. Any talk of climate change which does not include the military is nothing but hot air."

"The US Air Force (USAF) is the single largest consumer of jet fuel in the world; the F-4 Phantom Fighter burns more than 1,600 gallons of jet fuel per hour and peaks at 14,400 gallons per hour at supersonic speeds. The B-52 Stratocruiser, with eight jet engines, guzzles 55 gallons per minute. A quarter of the world’s jet fuel feeds the USAF fleet of flying killing machines. The (US) military reports no climate change emissions to any national or international body, thanks to US arm-twisting during the 1997 negotiations of the first international accord to limit global warming emissions, George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, alleging it would straitjacket the US economy with too costly greenhouse emissions controls. Next, the White House began a neo-Luddite campaign against the science of climate change. In researching “The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism,” it was easier to get war casualty statistics out of the Department of Defense (DoD) than getting fuel usage data."

"Not surprisingly, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil scientists understood quite well the mechanisms of climate change and its broad implications for the oil business."

"Now, I know there are still a few who insist that climate change is one big hoax, even a political conspiracy. My friends, these people are so out of touch with science that they believe rising sea levels don’t matter, because, in their view, the extra water is just going to spill out over the sides of a flat Earth."

"And that is what is behind the abrupt rise in climate change denial among hardcore conservatives: they have come to understand that as soon as they admit that climate change is real, they will lose the central ideological battle of our time—whether we need to plan and manage our societies to reflect our goals and values, or whether that task can be left to the magic of the market."

"The Yale researchers [of Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project] explain that people with strong ‘egalitarian’ and ‘communitarian’ worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality, and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. ...Those with strong ‘hierarchical’ and ‘individualistic’ worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all pretty much get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.… they are protecting powerful political and economic interests…"

"These children are ready to deliver their moral verdict on the people and institutions who knew all about the dangerous, depleted world they would inherit and yet chose not to act. They know what they think of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Scott Morrison in Australia and all the other leaders who torch the planet with defiant glee while denying science so basic that these kids could grasp it easily at age eight. Their verdict is just as damning, if not more so, for the leaders who deliver passionate and moving speeches about the imperative to respect the Paris Climate Agreement and "make the planet great again" (France's Emanuel Macron, Canada's Justin Trudeau, and so many others), but who then shower subsidies, handouts, and licenses on the fossil fuel and agribusiness giants driving ecological breakdown."

"Exxon Mobil is a worse environmental villain than other big oil companies. Exxon, headed by Mr. Raymond, chose a different course of action: it decided to fight the science. And that's just what Exxon Mobil has done: lavish grants have supported a sort of alternative intellectual universe of global warming skeptics. The fact is that whatever small chance there was of action to limit global warming became even smaller because ExxonMobil chose to protect its profits by trashing good science."

"Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual? Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable ... Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real. Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is."

"As far as I can tell, every one of the handful of well-known scientists who have expressed climate skepticism has received large sums of money from these companies or from dark money conduits like DonorsTrust — the same conduit, as it happens, that supported Matthew Whitaker, the new acting attorney general, before he joined the Trump administration. Climate denial is rooted in greed, opportunism, and ego, it’s depravity – isn’t just killing people – it may well kill civilization. Don’t some of these people have children?"

"Prediction of the sufficiently distant future is impossible by any method, unless the present conditions are known exactly. In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise, very-long-range weather forecasting would seem to be non-existent."

"Donald Trump has never been one to side with science, especially climate science. He has often spread false claims about climate change being some sort of “hoax” or “scam.” You can imagine, then, how he feels about the Environmental Protection Agency, which is supposed to help counteract the effects of climate change and – as the name suggests – keep the environment healthy. A major pillar of the EPA’s efforts pre-Trump was the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which established the government position that greenhouse gases were detrimental to human health. However, the Trump administration announced it was formally revoking the EPA’s endangerment finding last week, beginning the supposed “single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” This revocation goes against established fact in order to service the interests of big business and the MAGA movement’s obsession with climate change denial. It leaves the EPA adrift and powerless, unable to address the ongoing tide of global warming."

"The endangerment finding was built on a 2007 Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. EPA, which determined that the EPA did have the authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases because of their threat to public health. This decision allowed the EPA to carry out regulatory policies to restrict emissions of these harmful gases. Regulations are particularly important for transportation, which represents the largest share – 28% – of greenhouse gases released by the U.S. each year. The EPA’s own website says as much, which is deeply ironic given the Trump administration’s new policy eliminates all federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles and engines from 2012 onwards. These regulations help prevent companies from simply having their fossil fuel output run rampant. Eliminating the regulations would mean America is now significantly out of step with other industrialized countries, which are busy expanding their own environmental protections and renewable energy sources. Trump’s mission of deregulation represents a major step backwards, and it’s about to cast aside restrictions in an area where the U.S. is already failing to protect the environment. Essentially, the Trump administration’s main argument for revoking the endangerment finding is that American taxpayers will save $1.3 trillion due to deregulation. Since the idea of cost is apparently so important to Trump, according to a federal report from 2023, climate change is costing the U.S. $150 billion per year. That is a conservative estimate that only factors in direct damages, and the number will only grow larger as temperatures and sea levels rise, setting up more frequent and more destructive extreme weather events."

"Yet the Trump administration ignores that cost is a highly suspect way to measure the impacts of climate change in the first place. The damage of global warming is difficult to quantify, but we know its effects will significantly affect human life for the worse. As the Earth gets hotter and more inhospitable, we are barreling towards the point of no return when our effects on the climate cannot be stopped, and that future cannot be quantified in numbers. It can only be quantified in the suffering that will result. People will have to uproot their entire lives to deal with ever-more frequent disasters and the long-term effects of global heating, especially in coastal areas where seas will rise. The country of Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation, is already trying to upload a digital copy of itself in the face of being swallowed by the rising ocean. The potential loss of an entire nation cannot be quantified, and neither can many of climate change’s adverse effects."

"At the heart of the Trump administration’s decision is catering to the MAGA base. For years, Trump and the rightwing media apparatus have primed Republicans to be very skeptical of climate change, or at least deny it is a pressing issue. According to surveys from Pew Research Center, just 12% of Republicans think dealing with climate change should be a top priority. Deregulation has also long been a crucial part of the Republican agenda – the Reaganite principle of trickle-down economics rests partly on deregulation of businesses. In addition, the current EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, formerly served as a Republican U.S. House member and was previously most well-known as a Trump sycophant. He was specifically selected as a fully political, rightwing appointee."

"Trump’s history of spreading conspiracy theories and falsehoods about climate change has served to muddy the waters with his base about whether the climate crisis is indeed real. Global heating has been settled science for years, but Republicans have grown more indifferent towards tackling it in recent years. Since Trump first took power after winning the 2016 election, ignoring climate change has become a political cudgel, wielded against the idea of “wokeness.” All of this means gutting the EPA’s authority doesn’t hold much meaning with Republicans, but it should. The climate crisis affects both Democrats and Republicans, independents and radicals. It is a crisis for humanity itself. Humanity, however, is not the Trump administration’s concern. The EPA, instead of protecting the environment and public health, is now beholden to the interests of fossil fuel corporations and purely political considerations. Without regulations, the EPA will work to increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not decrease them. The agency has corrupted its mission, because without the endangerment finding, it is useless. And useless is just how Trump wants it."

"ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science. We know now that behind the scenes Exxon understood precisely what was going on, in public they feigned ignorance or worse. Thanks to Exxon’s willingness to sucker the world, that world is now a chaotic mess."

"Documents released during tobacco litigation demonstrate the crucial role that scientists played in sowing doubt about the links between smoking and the health effects of smoking. The same strategy was applied not only to global warming, but to a laundry list of environmental and health concerns, including asbestos, secondhand smoke, acid rain, and the ozone hole."

"The logic of divestment couldn't be simpler: if it's wrong to wreck the climate, it's wrong to profit from that wreckage."

"We see this as both a moral imperative and an economic opportunity."

"I think this is part of a process of delegitimising this sector and saying these are odious profits, this is not a legitimate business model."

"This Agreement [...] aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, [...] including by [...] Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C and [...] Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development."

"It is clear the transition to a clean energy future is inevitable, beneficial and well underway, and that investors have a key role to play."

"Reasonably, all these investments are financial dead-ends or ecological disasters."

"We need to rapidly shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels. [...] Nothing less than our future and the fate of humankind depends on how we rise to the climate challenge."

"The Vatican urged Catholics on Thursday to disinvest from the armaments and fossil fuel industries and to closely monitor companies in sectors such as mining to check if they are damaging the environment. The calls were contained in a 225-page manual for church leaders and workers to mark the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical “Laudato Si” (Praised Be) on the need to protect nature, life and defenseless people. The compendium suggests practical steps to achieve the goals of the encyclical, which strongly supported agreements to contain global warming and warned against the dangers of climate change. The manual’s section on finance said people “could favor positive changes ... by excluding from their investments companies that do not satisfy certain parameters.” It listed these as respect for human rights, bans on child labor and protection of the environment... Last month, more that 40 faith organizations from around the world, more than half of them Catholic, pledged to divest from fossil fuel companies. The document urges Catholics to defend the rights of local populations to have a say in whether their lands can be used for oil or mineral extraction and the right to take strong stands against companies that cause environmental disasters or over-exploit natural resources such as forests."

"The UK government’s overseas development bank has bowed to calls to end fossil fuel financing abroad by promising to invest only in companies that align with the Paris climate agreement. The CDC Group revealed its new climate strategy, which will end support for the most polluting fossil fuel projects, including the production of oil and coal, and channel almost a third of its spending towards climate finance. The publicly owned investor, which supports job-creating sectors in Africa and south Asia, will end financing for coal mining, and oil and gas production, as well as new or existing power plants and refineries that use coal or heavy oil. The UK government is under growing pressure to end its support for overseas fossil fuel projects after campaigners revealed that more than £3bn in public money was used to support polluting projects abroad since the Paris climate agreement was signed..."

"The decision to curb support follows an exodus of major institutional investors from the coal industry in recent years, including Goldman Sachs and Blackrock. Investors are wary of supporting industries that contribute to the climate crisis, and may risk the financial stability of their funds. Norway’s $1.19tn (£950bn) sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, has decided to reduce its exposure to oil and gas investments too."

"The UK’s biggest pension fund, the government-backed National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) scheme with nine million members, is to begin divesting from fossil fuels in what climate campaigners have hailed as a landmark move for the industry. The fund will ban investments in any companies involved in coal mining, oil from tar sands and arctic drilling. But the move puts Nest – a public corporation of the Department for Work and Pensions – potentially at odds with the current pensions minister, Guy Opperman, who earlier this month condemned divestment as “counter productive”. Nest, which handles much of the pensions of workers saving under the government’s “auto enrolment” scheme, will shift £5.5bn into “climate aware” investments as it anticipates a green economic recovery from coronavirus."

"The ban will mean that some of the world’s biggest mining companies, such as BHP, can never be part of Nest’s share holdings, as long they derive profits from digging coal. It said it will sell its final holdings in BHP by 3 August. Nest will also seek to reduce its carbon-intensive holdings, such as with the traditional oil giants, while investing more money in renewable energy infrastructure. The fund’s chief investment officer, Mark Fawcett, said Nest was sending a strong and clear message about the seriousness of climate change."

"The College’sendowment will no longer be directly invested in fossil fuels and the Dartmouth Investment Office intends to allow its remaining public holdings in the sector to expire, according to an Oct. 8 announcement. Although this release marks the College’s first formal announcement of its divestment plan, the DIO banned fossil fuel holdings in 2020. The College’s divestment approach results from two decisions made over a four-year span: a 2017 decision that barred the endowment from making any “new investments in private fossil fuel extraction, exploration and production funds” and a decision in early 2020 “for [the College’s] direct public portfolio to no longer hold investments in fossil fuel companies,” according to the announcement. The move comes after Harvard University announced a similar divestment strategy in September, after the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report outlined the disastrous effects of continued climate inaction, after the student body presidents of the eight Ivy League schools called on the League to divest in April and after years of activism from Divest Dartmouth... According to the statement, “evidence that correlates the production of fossil fuels with the warming of the atmosphere is convincing and widely accepted.”"

"Together, these bylaws prohibit any future fossil fuel investments from entering the endowment....As the terms of these partnerships approach their legally-contracted conclusions… the [investment] managers will move through the sale processes of those assets... In the past few years... the College has found that the investment in sustainable energy companies provides great returns and also allows the College to support new technology developments and make a huge difference.... Our investment team’s analysis indicated that there is a continued growing global shift in demand towards renewable and clean energy,... What we’ve noticed is that investments in energy transitions are now comparable or better than the investment opportunities in fossil fuel companies...Our investment team’s analysis indicated that there is a continued growing global shift in demand towards renewable and clean energy... What we’ve noticed is that investments in energy transitions are now comparable or better than the investment opportunities in fossil fuel companies."

"A movement to divest from fossil fuel is gaining support among foundations as activists push for funding to be shifted away from coal, oil and natural gas. The call from activists to the charitable world is simple: Ditch fossil fuels and direct your investments into climate-friendly companies and funds. The worldwide divestment campaign has sought commitments from universities, corporations and other entities. Now, two of the biggest names in philanthropy — the Ford and MacArthur foundations — are reorienting their investments away from fossil fuels, a move that leaders of the divestment movement hope will prove to be a tipping point for the charitable world.... “We’re calling on governments and corporations to act on climate aggressively and commensurate with the science,” said Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund and a leader in Divest-Invest Philanthropy, which is pushing the philanthropic community to dump its fossil fuel investments.... The MacArthur Foundation, an $8 billion organization known for its “genius grants,” pledged two years ago to halt new investments in oil and gas. It went further in September, saying it would switch to U.S. index funds that exclude fossil fuel companies. And it's aiming to change its global index funds to do the same within a year."

"On October 27, University of Toronto (UofT) President Meric Gertler announced the university’s commitment to divest from fossil fuel companies within its endowment fund of $4 billion, citing findings from the United Nations and the World Health Organization on the impending climate crisis which “now demands bold actions that have both substantive and symbolic impact.” This divestment includes a pledge to divest from all direct investments in fossil fuel companies within the next 12 months... This decision follows those of many other universities across Canada and the United States in the past few years, including Concordia University in 2019 and Harvard University this past September....As of 2021, approximately 220 postsecondary institutions have divested from the fossil fuel industry. UofT’s decision was motivated by its perceived role as a leading academic institution to meet the “urgent challenge” of the climate crisis and its responsibility for the detrimental effects that will “disproportionately fall on students and generations of future students and children around the world.”"

"The city’s mayor signed a bill to eliminate the controversial investments by 2025. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has signed into law an ordinance to divest the city from the fossil fuel, tobacco, and private prison industries by the end of 2025. The ordinance prohibits using public funds to invest in the stocks, securities, or other obligations of any company that derives more than 15% of its revenue from those industries. Under the new law, fossil fuel investments are defined as investments in any company that derives more than 15% of its revenue from the combustion, distribution, extraction, manufacture, or sale of fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas, or fossil fuel products. It also includes electric distribution companies with corporate affiliates that derive revenue from fossil fuels."

"Boston is among an increasing number of municipalities, universities, and private foundations that have announced plans to divest from fossil fuels. In late October, ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26, Auckland, New Zealand; Copenhagen, Denmark; Glasgow, Scotland; Paris; Rio de Janeiro; and Seattle announced commitments to divest from fossil fuel companies and increase investments to make cities more sustainable. Also last month, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott signed a bill that requires the city’s three pension funds to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Those are in addition to divestment commitments made last year by Berlin; Bristol, England; Cape Town, South Africa; Durban, South Africa; London; Los Angeles; Milan; New Orleans; New York City; Oslo; Norway; Pittsburgh; and Vancouver, Canada. “Cities are at the forefront of tackling the climate emergency and there is real momentum to move investments away from fossil fuels and toward climate solutions,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is chair-elect of C40 Cities, a network of mayors working to confront climate change, said in a statement. “I will continue to encourage more cities to join the movement, and urge national governments and private finance institutions to mobilize more finance to invest directly in cities to support a green and fair recovery.”"

"The state of Oregon should divest from the fossil fuels industry to protect both the environment and its investments, three Oregon lawmakers said Wednesday as a new study put the level of that investment at $1.8 billion or more. “The Oregon Treasury, which manages $130 billion of the state’s investment portfolio, is invested in oil, gas, and coal companies responsible for our climate emergency,” Reps. Khanh Pham, Paul Holvey and Jeff Golden said in a column published in The Oregonian/OregonLive, the state's largest newspaper."

"Bill McKibben"

"Greta Thunberg"

"Christiana Figueres"

"This Agreement [...] aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, [...] including by [...] Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C and [...] Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development."

"The UK government’s overseas development bank has bowed to calls to end fossil fuel financing abroad by promising to invest only in companies that align with the Paris climate agreement. The CDC Group revealed its new climate strategy, which will end support for the most polluting fossil fuel projects, including the production of oil and coal, and channel almost a third of its spending towards climate finance. The publicly owned investor, which supports job-creating sectors in Africa and south Asia, will end financing for coal mining, and oil and gas production, as well as new or existing power plants and refineries that use coal or heavy oil. The UK government is under growing pressure to end its support for overseas fossil fuel projects after campaigners revealed that more than £3bn in public money was used to support polluting projects abroad since the Paris climate agreement was signed..."

"Climate change and biodiversity loss . . . pose an even greater existential threat [than the COVID-19 pandemic], to the extent that we have to put ourselves on what might be called a war-like footing. . . . Putting a value on carbon . . . [is] absolutely critical. . . . [W]e need a vast military style campaign to marshall the strength of the global private sector[, which has] trillions at its disposal . . . . [E]ach sector needs a clear strategy to speed up the process of getting innovations to market [and we] need to align private investment behind these industry strategies. . . . If we can develop a pipeline of many more sustainable and "bankable" projects, at a sufficient scale, it will attract greater investment. . . . CEOs and institutional investors have told me that alongside the promises countries have made, their nationally determined contributions, they need clear market signals, agreed globally, so that they have the confidence to invest without the goal posts suddenly moving. . . . [[wikipedia:Charles III#Natural_environment|[W]e are working]] to drive trillions of dollars in support of transition across ten of the most emitting and polluting industries [including] energy, agriculture, transportation, health systems and fashion. . . . I can only urge you, as the world’s decision-makers, to find practical ways of overcoming differences so we can all . . . rescue this precious planet and save the threatened future of our young people."

"Because the President has undisputed authority over foreign policy, President Biden... will be able to reinsert the United States into the international system. He will rejoin the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accords, he will go to NATO and reaffirm support for... our Asian allies, for Australia, for every other country that has depended on... American power, but... it's going to be extremely difficult to return to the kind of world that we assumed existed before 2016, because America does remain fundamentally divided. That bipartisan support for the liberal international order that we thought was extremely strong is no longer..."

"We have opened a new chapter of hope in the lives of 7 billion people on the planet. We have [the planet] on loan from future generations. We have today reassured these future generations that we will all together … give them a better earth."

"These children are ready to deliver their moral verdict on the people and institutions who knew all about the dangerous, depleted world they would inherit and yet chose not to act. They know what they think of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Scott Morrison in Australia and all the other leaders who torch the planet with defiant glee while denying science so basic that these kids could grasp it easily at age eight. Their verdict is just as damning, if not more so, for the leaders who deliver passionate and moving speeches about the imperative to respect the Paris Climate Agreement and "make the planet great again" (France's Emanuel Macron, Canada's Justin Trudeau, and so many others), but who then shower subsidies, handouts, and licenses on the fossil fuel and agribusiness giants driving ecological breakdown."

"By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster."

"The Paris accord assumes that each government consults with its own country’s engineers to devise a national energy strategy, with each of the 193 UN member states essentially producing a separate plan... Global engineering systems require global coordination. ...Both the scale and reliability of... globally connected high-tech systems are astounding, and depend on solutions implemented internationally, not country by country."

"The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world’s governments finally bring the engineers to the fore... I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke... the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely. “I don’t really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion... Tell us engineers the desired ‘specs’ and the timeline, and we’ll get the job done.” This is not bravado.... The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot."

"As President, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people. The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world. It is time to exit the Paris Accord and time to pursue a new deal that protects the environment, our companies, our citizens, and our country. It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- along with many, many other locations within our great country -- before Paris, France. It is time to make America great again."

"New carbon-sucking technologies ... are so far from scalability at present that they are best described as fantasies of industrial absolution."

"There are people here who want to just continue business as usual. And the great facade is: 'Oh no, we'll be able to [use carbon capture to] capture everything.' . . . No scientist tells me we can capture it all. Can't do it. Can we capture some? Yes, and by the way, I'm for it. [It's up to the oil and gas industry] to show us they can capture all those emissions, to tell us whether it's really going to be part of the future. But don't lie to people and tell them it's green. And don't pretend to people that that's the main alternative."

"This is for my nieces and nephews. So that we can work towards a greater planet for them to live on. A healthy planet, a sustainable future for my little 3-year-old niece. This is for you, Adeline"

"It seems like everyone is in an odd sense of denial about climate change. I was in a quandary about what I could do. I felt taking part was a way of putting my name down and doing something for the environment. It was an incredibly peaceful demonstration and I think we put down some kind of marker. The message is really very slow to get through to people, but it will come to us all, we will all have to deal with the impact of this climate emergency. I hope this kind of action has caught the public imagination. It is the new future."

"People are sick of being told it’s enough to sign a petition when we’re faced with extinction."

"I think this is the first time, certainly since the direct action protests of the 1990s that there has been a mass campaign of non-violent direct action taking place all over the UK. So it’s a very exciting moment"

"I am doing this because I am hugely concerned about the future for my children and grandchildren. The government is not doing enough to tackle the issue."

"You're standing up for something that needed to be stood up for. We all needed someone to do that. You are doing it. I totally support you."

"It has been the nicest week of my working life."

"This is a movement devoted to disruptive, nonviolent disobedience in protest against ecological collapse."

"Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can't save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today. So everyone out there: it is now time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel."

"It was a moment of the kind that changes lives. At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims? [...] Softer aims might be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic. Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them. Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess. It will not get us out. [...] Those to whom we look for solutions trundle on as if nothing has changed. As if the accumulating evidence has no purchase on their minds. Decades of institutional failure ensures that only “unrealistic” proposals – the repurposing of economic life, with immediate effect – now have a realistic chance of stopping the planetary death spiral. And only those who stand outside the failed institutions can lead this effort. Two tasks need to be performed simultaneously: throwing ourselves at the possibility of averting collapse, as Extinction Rebellion is doing, slight though this possibility may appear; and preparing ourselves for the likely failure of these efforts, terrifying as this prospect is. Both tasks require a complete revision of our relationship with the living planet."

"In fewer than 12 months, Extinction Rebellion has become the fastest-growing environmental organisation in the world."

"[...] Extinction Rebellion, the climate activist group that in its short existence has arguably become the most prominent and radical climate movement worldwide. The approach those activists hit upon – using nonviolent mass disruption to increase awareness of climate change and force action on the issue – has catapulted the group to worldwide recognition and leadership on the issue."

"Extinction Rebellion are carrying a message we all need to hear. They won’t be silenced by a police crackdown, nor should they be in a free democratic society."

"Forget the idea Extinction Rebellion is about environmental activism. The group has no realistic goals, but instead serves as a last desperate attempt at relevance from a middle class that realise their days are numbered."

"The generally tired and narcissistic aspect of this protest, which harkens back to the larger yet equally ineffectual Occupy movement, speaks to XR being more of a kind of performance art – a media spectacle or late-stage ritual to keep a certain cultural subset of the society in a state of placated nostalgia. The activists in this movement do not emanate any sense of genuine rebellion, many of them resembling a gang of JK Rowling enthusiasts protesting during their corporate-cubicle lunch break. They have a desire to feel like effective ‘activists’, but they will ultimately affect nothing, being generally 50 years too late."

"The older demographic in XT – ageing 90s pseudo-hippies – seem to be enthusiastically reliving a final chance to act superior. By ignoring a changed world in which they are ever-more obsolete, a nostalgic and public ‘giving out’ can make them feel that they are still doing good and ‘fighting the man’. However, the apparent system tolerance for XR is itself a likely indicator that the group is, in fact, working for ‘the man’. Genuine rebels are almost never treated as media darlings."

"The effects of addition to the carbon cycle in nature of carbon dioxide from industrial activities have been the subject of speculation in several fields of science. Of particular interest is the fate of the enormous quantity of carbon dioxide which has been introduced into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 19th century, and the manner in which the added carbon dioxide has been distributed in the carbon cycle. Although appreciable amounts of carbon dioxide have undoubtedly been added from soils by tilling of land, apparently a much greater amount has resulted from the combustion of fossil fuels."

"First, current scientific opinion overwhelmingly favors attributing atmospheric carbon dioxide increase to fossil fuel combustion."

"On October 17, 1977, I attended a meeting in Atlanta of the study group on global environmental effects of carbon dioxide.... Dr. [[w:Thomas F. Malone|[Thomas F.] Malone]] [Director of the Holcomb Research Institute at Butler University] then discussed the report recently completed by the National Academy of Sciences on Energy and Climate. He distributed a 40-page summary of the report to all attendees. The National Academy of Sciences report concludes that: 1. The climatic effects of carbon dioxide release may be the primary limiting factor on energy production from fossil fuels over the next few centuries. 2. It does not now appear that the direct generation of heat from the production and consumption of energy over the next few centuries will cause a rise of more than 0.5oC in global average air temperature. 3. There are profound uncertainties regarding the carbon cycle, climate, and their interdependence. These uncertainties can be resolved only by a well-coordinated effort of extraordinarily interdisciplinary character. The National Academy therefore recommended: 1. The possibility of modification of the world's climate by carbon dioxide release should be given serious prompt consideration by concerned national and international organizations and agencies. Two kinds of action are needed: a. organization of a comprehensive world-wide research program, and b. new institutional arrangements. 2. A world-wide comprehensive research program should include studies on the carbon cycle, climate, future population changes and energy demands, and ways to mitigate the effective climatic change on world-food production. 3. All the foregoing recommendations for research relate to global concerns, and therefore the cooperation of such international agencies as the World Meteorological Organization, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and the International Council of Scientific Unions should be sought in responding to them. A high degree of international government cooperation is called for because of the need for a world-wide set of measurements and network of observing stations. As to the United States, consideration should be given to the establishment at the national level of a mechanism to weave together the interests and capabilities of the scientific community and the various agencies of the federal government in dealing with climate-related problems."

"I propose that Exxon be the initiator of a worldwide 'CO2 in the Atmosphere' R&D program along the lines of the International Geophysical Year concept. This may be the kind of opportunity that we are looking for to have Exxon technology, management and leadership resources put into the context of a project aimed at benefiting mankind. What would be more appropriate than for the world's leading energy company and leading oil company take the lead in trying to define whether a long-term CO2 problem really exists, and if so, what counter measures would be appropriate."

"What is considered the best presently available climate model for treating the Greenhouse Effect predicts that a doubling of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would produce a mean temperature increase of about 2°C to 3°C over most of the earth. The model also predicts that the temperature increase near the poles may be two to three times this value.... Some countries would benefit but others could have their agricultural output reduced or destroyed.... In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels. A doubling of carbon dioxide is estimated to be capable of increasing the average global temperature by from 1 [degree] to 3 [degrees Celsius], with a 10 [degrees Celsius] rise predicted at the poles. More research is needed, however, to establish the validity and significance of predictions with respect to the Greenhouse Effect. Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical."

"I think there is a transition period. We are not going to stop burning fossil fuels and start looking toward solar or nuclear fusion and so on. We are going to have a very orderly transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources."

"The rationale for Exxon's involvement and commitment of funds and personnel is based on our need to assess the possible impact of the greenhouse effect on Exxon business. Exxon must develop a credible scientific team that can critically evaluate the information generated on the subject and be able to carry bad news, if any, to the corporation. This team must be recognized for its excellence in the scientific community, the government, and internally by Exxon management."

"Present climactic models predict that the present trend of fossil fuel use will lead to dramatic climatic changes within the next 75 years. However, it is not obvious whether these changes would be all bad or all good. The major conclusion from this report is that, should it be deemed necessary to maintain atmospheric CO2 levels to prevent significant climatic changes, dramatic changes in patterns of energy use would be required."

"Atmospheric Science will be of critical importance to Exxon in the next decade.... It behooves us to start a very aggressive defensive program in the indicated areas of atmospheric science and climate because there is a good probability that legislation affecting our business will be passed. Clearly, it is in our interest for such legislation to be based on hard scientific data."

"In addition to the effects of climate on the globe, there are some particularly dramatic questions that might cause serious global problems. For example, if the Antarctic ice sheet which is anchored on land, should melt, then this could cause a rise in the sea level on the order of 5 meters. Such a rise would cause flooding in much of the US East Coast including the state of Florida and Washington D.C."

"Much is still unknown about the sources and sinks for atmospheric CO2, as well as about the climatic effect of increasing CO2 levels in the air, so that prognostications remain highly speculative. The models that appear most credible (to us) do predict measurable changes in temperature, rainfall patterns, and sea-level by the year 2030 for the postulated fossil fuel combustion rates, but changes of a magnitude well short of catastrophic and probably below the magnitude that need trigger otherwise non-economic responses to the problem of energy supply."

"..."but changes of a magnitude well short of catastrophic..." I think that this statement may be too reassuring. Whereas I can agree with the statement that our best guess is that observable effects in the year 2030 are likely to be "well short of catastrophic", it is distinctly possible that the CPD scenario will later produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the earth's population). This is because the global ecosystem in 2030 might still be in a transient, headed for much significant effects after time lags perhaps of the order of decades. If this indeed turns out to be the case, it is very likely that we will unambiguously recognize the threat by the year 2000 because of advances in climate modeling and the beginning of real experimental confirmation of the CO2 problem."

"Attached for your information and guidance is briefing material on the CO2 'Greenhouse' Effect which is receiving increased attention in both the scientific and popular press as an emerging environmental issue....The material has been given wide circulation to Exxon management and is intended to familiarize Exxon personnel with the subject. It may be used as a basis for discussing the issue with outsiders as may be appropriate. However, it should be restricted to Exxon personnel and not distributed externally.... Predictions of the climatological impact of a carbon dioxide induced "greenhouse effect" draw upon various mathematical models to gauge the temperature increase. The scientific community generally discussed the impact in terms of doubling of the current carbon dioxide content in order to get beyond the noise level of the data. We estimate doubling could occur around the year 2090 based upon fossil fuel requirements projected in Exxon's long range energy outlook. The question of which predictions and which models best simulate a carbon dioxide-induced climate change is still being debated by the scientific community. Our best estimate is that doubling of the current concentration could increase average global temperature by about 1.3 to 3.1 degrees Centigrade. The increase would not be uniform over the earth's surface with the polar caps likely to see temperature increases on the order of 10 degrees Centigrade and the equator little, if any, increase.... The state-of-the-art in climate modelling allows only gross global zoning while some of the expected results from temperature increases of the magnitude indicated are quite dramatic. For example, areas that were deserts 4,000 to 8,000 years ago in the Altithermal period (when the global average temperature was some 2 degrees Centigrade higher than present), may in due time return to deserts. Conversely, some areas which are deserts now were formerly agricultural regions. It is postulated that part of the Sahara Desert in Africa was quite - wet 2,000 to 8,000 years ago. The American Midwest, on the other band, was much drier, and it is projected that the Midwest would again become drier should there be a temperature increase of the magnitude postulated for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. In addition to the effects of climate on global agriculture, there are some potentially catastrophe events that must be considered. For example, if the Antarctic ice sheet which is anchored on land should melt, then this could cause e rise in sea level on the order of 5 meters. Such a rise would cause flooding on much of the U.S. East Coast, including the state of Florida and Washington, D.C.... The greenhouse effect ls not likely to cause substantial climactic changes until the average global temperature rises at least 1 degree Centigrade above today's levels. This could occur in the second to third quarter of the next century. However, there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible and little could be done to correct the situation in the short term. Therefore, a number of environmental groups are calling for action now to prevent an undesirable future situation from developing. Mitigation of the "greenhouse effect" would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion."

"I would like to summarize the findings of our research in climate modeling and place our results in the context of the existing body of knowledge of the CO2 greenhouse effect. Although the increase of atmospheric CO2 is well documented it has not yet resulted in a measurable change in the earth's climate. The concerns surrounding the possible effects of increased CO, have been based on the predictions of models which simulate the earth's climate. These models vary widely in the level of detail in which climate processes are treated and in the approximations used to describe the complexities of these processes. Consequently the quantitative predictions derived from the various models show considerable variation. However, over the past several years a clear scientific consensus has emerged regarding the expected climatic effects of increased atmospheric CO2. The consensus is that a doubling of atmospheric CO, from its pre-industrial revolution value would result in average global temperature rise of (3.0 +/- 1.5) degrees Centigrade. The uncertainty in this figure is a result of the inability of even the most elaborate models to simulate climate in a totally realistic manner. The temperature rise is predicted to be distributed non-uniformly over the earth, with above-average temperature elevations in the polar regions and relatively small increases near the equator. There is unanimous agreement in the scientific community that a temperature increase of this magnitude would bring about significant changes in the earth's climate, including rainfall distribution and alterations in the biosphere. The time required for doubling of atmospheric CO, depends on future world consumption of fossil fuels. current projections indicate that doubling will occur sometime in the latter half of the 21st century. The models predict that CO2-induced climate changes should be observable well before doubling. It is generally believed that the first unambiguous CO2-induced temperature increase will not be observable until around the year 2000.... In summary, the results of our research are in accord with the scientific consensus on the effect of increased atmospheric CO2 on climate.... Furthermore our ethical responsibility is to permit the publication of our research in the scientific literature. Indeed, to do otherwise would be a breach of Exxon's public position and ethical credo on honesty and integrity."

"...faith in technologies, markets, and correcting feedback mechanisms is less than satisfying for a situation such as the one you are studying at this year's Ewing Symposium... Few people doubt that the world has entered an energy transition away from dependence on fossil fuels and toward some mix of renewable resources that will not pose problems of CO2 accumulation. ...I'm generally upbeat about the chances of coming through this most adventurous of all human experiments with the ecosystem.... Beyond our normal twenty-year outlook period, we recently attempted a forecast of the CO2 [carbon dioxide] build-up. We assumed different growth rates at different times, but with an average growth rate in fossil fuel use of about one percent per year starting today, our estimate is that the doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels might occur sometime late in the 21st century. That includes the impact of a synfuels industry. Assuming the greenhouse effect occurs, rising CO2 concentrations may begin to induce climactic changes around the middle of the 21st century.... Clearly, there is vast opportunity for conflict. For example, it is more than a little disconcerting the few maps showing the likely effects of global warming seem to reveal the two superpowers losing much of the rainfall, with the rest of the world seemingly benefitting."

"Exxon position: Emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced Greenhouse effect."

"These CO2 projections are used in current climate models to predict important changes over the next 100 years. This set of results is taken from the National Research Council (NRC) report "Changing Climate". Consensus predictions call for warming 1.5-4.5 [degrees Celsius] for doubled CO2 with greater warming at the poles. Note that these numbers reflect the range produced by available models. No one knows how to evaluate the absolute uncertainty in the numbers. The extent and thickness of glaciers are predicted to decrease, leading to sea level rise. The NRC report chose a most likely value of 70 cm sea level rise. Other predictions suggest a broader range from 30-200 cm. The rise occurs both from a larger amount of water in the oceans, and from thermal expansion. Finally, climate change and higher levels of atmospheric CO2 affect agriculture and ecosystems.... Data confirm that greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels contribute most of the CO2.... Projections suggest significant climate change with a variety of regional impacts. Sea level rise with generally negative consequences.... Arguments that we can’t tolerate delay and must act now can lead to irreversible and costly Draconian steps.... To be a responsible participant and part of the solution to [potential enhanced greenhouse], Exxon's position should recognize and support 2 basic societal needs. First ... to improve understanding of the problem ... not just the science ... but the costs and economics tempered by the sociopolitical realities. That's going to take years (probably decades). But there are measures already underway that will improve our environment in various ways ... and in addition reduce the growth in greenhouse gases. That's the second need including things like energy conservation, restriction of CFC emissions, and efforts to increase the global ratio of re/de forestation. Of course, we'll need to develop other response options...implementing measures when they are cost effective in the near term and pursuing new technologies for the future."

"Certainly any major development with a life span of say 30-40 years will need to assess the impacts of potential global warming. This is particularly true of Arctic and offshore projects in Canada, where warming will clearly affect sea ice, icebergs, permafrost and sea levels."

"First, let's agree there's a lot we really don't know about how climate will change in the 21st century and beyond. That means we need to understand the issue better, and fortunately, we have time. It is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now. It also means it's bad public policy to impose very costly regulations and restrictions when their need has yet to be proven, their total impact undefined, and when nations are not prepared to act in concert."

"...projections are based on completely unproven climate models, or, more often, on sheer speculation."

"...Exxon Mobil is a worse environmental villain than other big oil companies...Exxon, headed by Mr. Raymond, chose a different course of action: it decided to fight the science....And that's just what Exxon Mobil has done: lavish grants have supported a sort of alternative intellectual universe of global warming skeptics....the fact is that whatever small chance there was of action to limit global warming became even smaller because ExxonMobil chose to protect its profits by trashing good science."

"This message of scientific uncertainty has been reinforced by the public relations campaigns of certain corporations with a large stake in the issue. The most well known example is ExxonMobil, which in 2004 ran a highly visible advertising campaign on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Its carefully worded advertisements—written and formatted to look like newspaper columns and called op-ed pieces by ExxonMobil—suggested that climate science was far too uncertain to warrant action on it. One advertisement concluded that the uncertainties and complexities of climate and weather means that "there is an ongoing need to support scientific research to inform decisions and guide policies". Not many would argue with this commonsense conclusion. But our scientists have concluded that existing research warrants that decisions and policies be made today."

"[M]ajor energy corporations continue to lie about climate change, promoting and bankrolling climate denialism—while admitting the truth in their internal documents. These corporations are working to accelerate the extraction and production of , including the dirtiest, most -generating varieties, reaping enormous profits in the process. The melting of the Arctic ice from global warming is seen by capital as a new , opening up massive additional oil and gas reserves to be exploited without regard to the consequences for the . In response to scientific reports on climate change, Exxon Mobil declared that it intends to extract and sell all of the fossil-fuel reserves at its disposal. Energy corporations continue to intervene in climate negotiations to ensure that any agreements to limit carbon emissions are defanged. Capitalist countries across the board are putting the accumulation of wealth for a few above combatting climate destabilization, threatening the very future of humanity."

"Then-Vice President George H. W. Bush ran for president of the United States pledging to combat the “greenhouse effect with the White House effect”. 1988 was also the year in which the world nations joined together to create the w:Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a scientific basis for policy action. Fossil fuel corporations might have begun to take steps to limit the damages their products caused to the global environment. Instead, leading investor-owned fossil fuel corporations, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and British Petroleum, created the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) to oppose greenhouse gas emission reduction policies. From 1989 to 2002, the GCC led an aggressive lobbying and advertising campaign aimed at achieving these goals by sowing doubt about the integrity of the IPCC and the scientific evidence that heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels drive global warming. They worked successfully to prevent the United States from signing the Kyoto Protocol after it was negotiated in 1997. When the GCC disbanded, they stated that they had achieved their goals.... Between 1988 and 2005, ExxonMobil invested over $16 million in a network of front groups that spread misleading claims about climate science. It also exploited its close relationship with the administration of President George W. Bush to pressure the administration to remove top scientists from leadership roles in the IPCC and the US National Climate Assessment and to promote federal policies driving further reliance on fossil energy"

"At a meeting in Exxon Corporation's headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity. ...toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. It put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day."

"[A]s early as 1977, Exxon (now ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies) knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously. This did not prevent the company from then spending decades helping to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed—perhaps fatally—the planet’s response to global warming....Exxon responded, instead, by helping to set up or fund extreme climate-denial campaigns....The company worked with veterans of the tobacco industry to try and infuse the climate debate with doubt."

"Through much of the 1980s, Exxon researchers worked alongside university and government scientists to generate objective climate models that yielded papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Their work confirmed the emerging scientific consensus on global warming's risks. Yet starting in 1989, Exxon leaders went down a different road. They repeatedly argued that the uncertainty inherent in computer models makes them useless for important policy decisions. Even as the models grew more powerful and reliable, Exxon publicly derided the type of work its own scientists had done. The company continued its involvement with climate research, but its reputation for objectivity began to erode as it campaigned internationally to cast doubt on the science."

"As early as 1977, one of Exxon’s senior scientists warned a gathering of oilmen of a “general scientific agreement” that the burning of fossil fuels was influencing the climate. A year later, he had updated his assessment, warning that “present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”... Exxon chose the path of disinformation, denial and delay. More damagingly, the company set a model for the rest of the industry. More than 30 years ago, Exxon scientists acknowledged in internal company memos that climate change could be catastrophic. Today, scientists who say the exact same thing are ridiculed in the business community and on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. We have lost precious time as a result: decades during which we could have built a smart electricity grid, fostered efficiency and renewables and generated thousands of jobs in a cleaner, greener economy. There is still time to prevent the worst disruptions of human-driven climate change, but the challenge is now much greater than it needed to be, in no small part because of the choices that Exxon Mobil made."

"A fossil fuel company intentionally and knowingly obfuscating research into climate change constitutes criminal negligence and malicious intent at best, and a crime against humanity at worst. The Department of Justice| has a moral obligation to prosecute Exxon and its co-conspirators accordingly."

"ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.... But though we know now that behind the scenes Exxon understood precisely what was going on, in public they feigned ignorance or worse.... Thanks to Exxon’s willingness to sucker the world, that world is now a chaotic mess."

"Sadly, Exxon had the opportunity to lead the world toward a measured, manageable approach toward a solution. With profits to protect, Exxon provided climate-change doubters a bully pulpit they didn’t deserve and gave lawmakers the political cover to delay global action until long after the environmental damage had reached severe levels. That’s the inconvenient truth as we see it."

"Throughout much of the 1980s, Exxon earned a public reputation as a pioneer in climate change research. It sponsored workshops, funded academic research and conducted its own high-tech experiments exploring the science behind global warming. But by 1990, the company, in public, took a different posture. While still funding select research, it poured millions into a campaign that questioned climate change.... How did one of the world’s largest oil companies, a leader in climate research, become one of its biggest public skeptics? The answer, gleaned from a trove of archived company documents and the recollections of former employees, is that Exxon, now known as Exxon Mobil, feared a growing public consensus would lead to financially burdensome policies."

"Mr./Madam President, it is time for this body to wake up, not just to climate change, but to the decades-long, purposeful corporate smokescreen of misleading public statements from the fossil fuel industry and its allies on the dangers of carbon pollution. I am here for the 116th time, seeking an open, honest and factual debate in Congress about global climate change. The energy industry’s top dog, ExxonMobil—number two for both revenue and profits among the Fortune 500—has been getting some bad press lately. Two independent investigative reports, from InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times, revealed that Exxon’s own scientists understood as far back at the late 1970s the effects of carbon pollution on the climate and warned company executives of the potential outcomes for the planet and human society. But Exxon’s own internal report recognizing heading off global warming “would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.” So rather than behave responsibly, reveal that truth, and lead the effort to stave off catastrophic changes to the climate, Exxon ultimately chose to fund and participate in a massive misinformation campaign to protect their business model and their bottom line.... Despite documented warnings from their own scientists dating from the 1970s, ExxonMobil pursued a campaign of deceit, denial, and delay. They may soon have to face the consequences. History will not look kindly on their choice."

"Year after year throughout the last two decades they’ve made more money than any company in the history of money. But poor people around the world are already paying for those profits, and every generation that follows us now will pay as well, because the “Exxon position” has helped take us over one tipping point after another. Their sins of emission, like so many other firms and individuals, are bad. But their sins of omission are truly inexcusable."

"Not surprisingly, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil scientists understood quite well the mechanisms of climate change and its broad implications for the oil business."

"Earlier this year our organization, the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF), announced that it would divest its holdings in fossil fuel companies. We mean to do this gradually, but in a public statement we singled out ExxonMobil for immediate divestment because of its “morally reprehensible conduct.” For over a quarter-century the company tried to deceive policymakers and the public about the realities of climate change, protecting its profits at the cost of immense damage to life on this planet. ...Exxon, in particular, has been a leader of the movement to deny the facts of climate change. Often working indirectly through front groups, it sponsored many of the scientists and think tanks that have sought to obfuscate the scientific consensus about the changing climate, and it participated in those efforts through its paid advertisements and the statements of its executives. It seemed to us, however, that for business reasons, a company as sophisticated and successful as Exxon would have needed to know the difference between its own propaganda and scientific reality. If it turned out that Exxon and other oil companies had recognized the validity of climate science even while they were funding the climate denial movement, that would, we thought, help the public understand how artificially manufactured and disingenuous the “debate” over climate change has always been. In turn, we hoped this understanding would build support for strong policies addressing the crisis of global warming."

"Exxon Mobil misled the public about the state of climate science and its implications. Available documents show a systematic, quantifiable discrepancy between what Exxon Mobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change in private and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public.... In short, Exxon Mobil contributed quietly to climate science and loudly to raising doubts about it. We found that, accounting for reasonable doubt given the state of the science at the time of each document, roughly 80 percent of the company’s academic and internal papers acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused. But 81 percent of their climate change advertorials in one way or another expressed doubt.... Even while Exxon Mobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale."

"This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change.... Our assessment of ExxonMobil's peer-reviewed publications and the role of its scientists supports the conclusion that the company did not 'suppress' climate science—indeed, it contributed to it. However, on the question of whether ExxonMobil misled non-scientific audiences about climate science, our analysis supports the conclusion that it did. ...in public, ExxonMobil contributed quietly to the science and loudly to raising doubts about it.... Available documents show a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil's scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles and what it presented to the general public. The company's peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal communications consistently tracked evolving climate science: broadly acknowledging that AGW [Anthropogenic Global Warming] is real, human-caused, serious, and solvable, while identifying reasonable uncertainties that most climate scientists readily acknowledged at that time. In contrast, ExxonMobil's advertorials in the NYT [New York Times] overwhelmingly emphasized only the uncertainties, promoting a narrative inconsistent with the views of most climate scientists, including ExxonMobil's own. This is characteristic of what Freudenberg et. al. term the Scientific Certainty Argumentation Method (SCAM)—a tactic for undermining public understanding of scientific knowledge. Likewise, the company's peer-reviewed, non-peer-reviewed, and internal documents acknowledge the risks of stranded assets, whereas their advertorials do not. In light of these findings, we judge that ExxonMobil's AGW communications were misleading; we are not in a position to judge whether they violated any laws."

"Why didn’t we act? A common boogeyman today is the fossil-fuel industry, which in recent decades has committed to playing the role of villain with comic-book bravado. An entire subfield of climate literature has chronicled the machinations of industry lobbyists, the corruption of scientists and the propaganda campaigns that even now continue to debase the political debate, long after the largest oil-and-gas companies have abandoned the dumb show of denialism. But the coordinated efforts to bewilder the public did not begin in earnest until the end of 1989. During the preceding decade, some of the largest oil companies, including Exxon and Shell, made good-faith efforts to understand the scope of the crisis and grapple with possible solutions."

"Swedish climate leader Greta Thunberg donned a mask and joined a socially distanced Fridays for Future protest in Berlin just a day after she and three other youth activists met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government took over the European Council presidency in July, to discuss the planetary emergency... Tweeting about the meeting with the chancellor, Fridays for Future Berlin wrote that "conversations must be followed by deeds—that's why we take to the streets together!""

"Swedish activist Greta Thunberg... urged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to be "brave" in the fight against global warming as she sought to breathe fresh life into a climate movement overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic. The 17-year-old... was joined by co-campaigners Luisa Neubauer from Germany and Belgium's Anuna De Wever and Adelaide Charlier, all of whom wore masks as they made their way to the chancellery from Berlin's main train station. During 90 minutes of talks, the young campaigners said they urged Merkel to tackle carbon emissions with the same urgency and drastic measures that leaders have displayed in the battle against COVID-19. "We want leaders... to be brave enough to think long-term," Thunberg told an outdoor press conference after the meeting. "We want leaders to step up and take responsibility and treat the climate crisis like a crisis." She said Merkel, as the current chair of the EU rotating presidency, had a "huge responsibility but also a huge opportunity" to help the European Union meet its commitments under the Paris climate agreement."

"On Thursday, two years to the day after Greta Thunberg first skipped school, she is to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Joining her will be Luisa Neubauer, Anuna de Wever and Adélaïde Charliér, fellow members of the global movement sparked by Thunberg's lone protest against climate change. The four Fridays for Future activists are to use their hour-and-a-half audience with the Chancellor to present a letter demanding EU leaders "stop pretending that we can solve the climate- and ecological crisis without treating it as a crisis."... Signed by nearly 125,000 people, the letter demands an immediate halt to investments and subsidies in fossil fuels. Fridays for Future is also calling for Germany to bring forward its deadline to phase out coal from 2038 to 2030, and to go carbon-neutral by 2035 instead of 2050. "The system is not broken, it was built to be unjust. We don't need recovery, we need a reboot," the letter reads, stressing that "black people, indigenous peoples and people of color," have been disproportionately hit by the economic, climate and coronavirus crises... The ministers were criticized for failing to relieve the debt of poorer countries, and according to Energy Policy Tracker, G20 countries have pledged $169 billion (142 billion euros) to fossil fuels since the beginning of the pandemic."

"We can have as many meetings as we like, but the will to change is nowhere in sight. Society must start treating this as a crisis...On Thursday 20 August, it will be exactly two years since the first school strike for the climate took place.... Today, leaders all over the world are speaking of an “existential crisis”. The climate emergency is discussed on countless panels and summits. Commitments are being made, big speeches are given. Yet, when it comes to action we are still in a state of denial. The climate and ecological crisis has never once been treated as a crisis. The gap between what we need to do and what’s actually being done is widening by the minute. Effectively, we have lost another two crucial years to political inaction.... We understand the world is complicated and that what we are asking for may not be easy or may seem unrealistic. But it is much more unrealistic to believe that our societies would be able to survive the global heating we’re heading for – as well as other disastrous ecological consequences of today’s business as usual... This mix of ignorance, denial and unawareness is at the very heart of the problem... The only way forward is for society to start treating the crisis like a crisis... We can still avoid the worst consequences. But to do that, we have to face the climate emergency and change our ways. And that is the uncomfortable truth we cannot escape."

"Many people in the US aren't aware of the youth climate movement that was started by 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg in August 2018 and has inspired students in countries all across the world to come together to protest for climate action weekly. But the fact that Fridays for Future (FFF) is less well known stateside doesn't mean that young activists in the US are less passionate... On a rainy Friday in Washington, DC, a small group of teens sit on a fountain on the western side of the Capitol with a clear view of the Washington Monument. Madeline Graham, 16, is prepping her fellow protesters for potential trouble. The Capitol Police might tell them to leave, she says to the five or so protesters around her, but they should stay right where they are. "We have a right to be here,"... Graham firmly believes that the young movement can bring about change in the US. "Any politician who underestimates us won't underestimate us for much longer," she said. "You can't hide from righteous anger." The focus of Friday's protest was the fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest."

"Repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States..."

"meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources...[p.7]"

"providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States... [p.11]"

"making public investments in the research and development of new clean and renewable energy technologies and industries..."

"directing investments to spur economic development, deepen and diversify industry and business in local and regional economies, and build wealth and community ownership, while prioritizing high-quality job creation and economic, social, and environmental benefits..."

"ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes... to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal at the local level;"

"ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition;"

"Strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment;"

"strengthening and enforcing labor, workplace health and safety, antidiscrimination, and wage and hour standards across all employers, industries, and sectors;"

"enacting and enforcing trade rules, procurement standards, and border adjustments with strong labor and environmental protections—"

"to stop the transfer of jobs and pollution overseas; and (ii) to grow domestic manufacturing in the United States;"

"ensuring that public lands, waters, and oceans are protected and that eminent domain is not abused;"

"obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples;"

"ensuring a commercial environment where every businessperson is free from unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies..."

"“Ecotopian” aspirations are already in full view in community networks attempting to create more conscious ways of living such as... bold policy proposals such as the USA’s “Green New Deal.” What’s more, many of the ideas put forth by these projects were long since imagined in prominent ecotopian literary works."

"“Right now, we have about ninety per cent or ninety-five per cent of the technology we need,” Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, told me. In a series of papers, Jacobson and his colleagues have laid out “roadmaps” to a zero-emissions economy for fifty states, fifty-three towns and cities, and a hundred and thirty-eight other countries, with a completion date of 2050. Just as in the Democrats’ Green New Deal, the central element... is converting the electric grid to clean energy by shutting down power stations that rely on fossil fuels and making some very large investments in wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal facilities."

"Jacobson said this could be completed by 2035... At the same time, policymakers would introduce a range of measures to promote energy efficiency, and electrify other sectors of the economy that now rely heavily on burning carbon, such as road and rail transport, home heating, and industrial heating. “We don’t need a technological miracle to solve this problem,” Jacobson reiterated. “‘The bottom line is we just need to deploy, deploy, deploy.”"

"Saul Griffith, a materials scientist and inventor who is the chief executive of OtherLab, a San Francisco-based technology incubator that focusses on clean energy, agrees. In recent presentations, Griffith has sketched out an aggressive plan for switching to clean power and electrifying heating and transportation, which he says could be completed within twenty years. “It’s entirely reasonable to do it,” he said. “The United States is lucky because of its natural advantages. It’s a country with low population density, good wind, good solar, and good hydro resources. The only reason not to do it is political inertia and the influence of the existing fossil-fuel industry.”"

"I am really heartened by the initiatives like Green New Deal. The idea is still contested and may need many clarifications before it could be implemented. It needs to bring forth the Catholic Social Teaching principle of human dignity and integrity of creation..."

"The Green New Deal needs to be fortified by spiritual foundations. That this idea is being discussed is a refreshing encouragement. Not everything is lost. But this is the time to act..."

"The framework of the Green New Deal gives us some radical, concrete, aspirational, yet achievable goals to fight for."

"...the Green New Deal is exactly the right idea. You can raise questions about the specific form in which Ocasio-Cortez and Markey introduced it: Maybe it shouldn’t be exactly this way; it should be a little bit differently. But the general idea is quite right. And there’s very solid work explaining, developing in detail, exactly how it could work. So, a very fine economist at UMass Amherst, Robert Pollin, has written extensively on, in extensive detail, with close analysis of how you could implement policies of this kind in a very effective way, which would actually make a better society. It wouldn’t be that you’d lose from it; you’d gain from it. The costs of renewable energy are declining very sharply. If you eliminate the massive subsidies that are given to fossil fuels, they probably already surpass them. There are many means that can be implemented and carried out to overcome, certainly to mitigate, maybe to overcome, this serious crisis... A lot of the media commentary ridiculing this and that aspect of it are essentially beside the point... the basic idea is correct."

"Progressive organizers are mobilizing behind the Green New Deal resolution—unveiled last week by Rep. Alexandria Ocastio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—with renewed energy to build "an unprecedented political coalition" to radically transform the nation's energy system and address the climate crisis while also facilitating a just transition to a new, greener economy."

"Since initial backers hailed the introduction of the historic resolution as a huge accomplishment on Thursday, a growing number of labor, economic justice, racial justice, indigenous, environmental, and community organizations have lined up behind the bold proposal and vowed to pressure lawmakers to pass it. The youth-led Sunrise Movement, which has spearheaded grassroots organizing in favor of the deal, is planning more than 600 congressional office visits this week to garner support..."

"Organic Consumers Association international director Ronnie Cummins described it as "The only solution that matches the scale of our multiple crises, including global warming, corporate control of our food system, income inequality, and the general decline of our environment and our democracy...""

"When we talk about the concern of the environment as an elitist concern, one year ago I was waitressing in a taco shop in Downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago. This is not an elitist issue; this is a quality-of-life issue. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids have—their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist... People are dying. This should not be a partisan issue. This is about our constituents and all of our lives. Iowa, Nebraska, broad swaths of the Midwest are drowning right now, underwater. Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back. And we’re here, and people are more concerned about helping oil companies than helping their own families? I don’t think so...This is about American lives. And it should not be partisan. Science should not be partisan. We are facing a national crisis. And if... if we tell the American public that we are more willing to invest and bail out big banks than we are willing to invest in our farmers and our urban families, then I don’t know what we’re here doing..."

"And with respect to our brothers and sisters and neighbors that are in agriculture, bring them to the table. Let’s hold hearings. Let’s add provisions. Let’s amend the legislation to accommodate for the just transition and for the encouragement of those industries to grow. And I would also encourage, to my colleague on the other side of the aisle that thinks we’re trying to ban cows, to actually read the resolution and understand that there’s nothing to that effect in the legislation, and not only that, but we’re trying to invest in these communities and our agricultural workers, so that they can enjoy prosperity into the next century."

"On the national level, the Green New Deal is a step in the right direction toward building environmental justice into climate change policy. And as Iʼve written about elsewhere, there are steps that can be taken to “Indigenize” it, thus making it more responsive to Indigenous issues. This would include explicit recognition of Indigenous nationhood and political relationships to the US (not based on race), and the affirming of TEK as a methodology for tackling climate change. The GND is modeled after FDRʼs New Deal, which is always celebrated as progressive action that lifted the US out of economic depression through infrastructure development projects like dams and extractive industries that put people to work. Whatʼs far less acknowledged, however, is how much environmental and cultural death and destruction all that development wreaked on Indian country. We see a similar pattern occurring globally in the realm of “sustainable” development, which has given rise to a modern global land rush that impacts Indigenous communities the most. Ultimately, unchecked capitalism is the problem and we need to heed the research that connects cultural diversity with biodiversity if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."

"Specifically, the resolution says it is the duty of the federal government to craft a Green New Deal “to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”. That includes getting all power from “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources”... The document also endorses universal healthcare, a jobs guarantee and free higher education – a huge shift in messaging from nearly a decade ago, when Democrats were advocating for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gases by allotting industry permits for pollution."

"The Green New Deal is wildly popular among both Republican and Democratic voters, as HuffPost previously reported. Still, Republican lawmakers have been quick to dismiss it as a “top-down” and “impossible” proposal. The Trump administration’s relentless push for so-called “energy dominance” includes plans to massively expand offshore oil and gas drilling. And an internal document that surfaced last year suggested the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s leading ocean science agency, is planning to gut protections for America’s marine national monuments, opening millions of acres of federal water to commercial fishing. Ocean conservation nonprofit Oceana is among the many groups that celebrated the introduction of the Green New Deal last week. Protecting oceans, as the resolution calls for, is a “no-brainer,” Beth Lowell, the group’s deputy vice president U.S. campaigns, told HuffPost... “By rebuilding ocean abundance, we can help the coastal communities and fisheries that rely on healthy oceans for generations to come,” she said."

"A large-scale effort to protect and restore wild spaces would be a grand departure from the last two years, when the Trump administration slashed protections for 2 million acres of national monument land in Utah, offered up millions of federal acres for oil and gas leasing, some of which sold for as little as $1.50 per acre, and prioritized opening Alaska’s fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to fossil fuel development. A press release put out by the Interior Department last week, titled “Energy Revolution Unleashed,” touted a record $1.1 billion in oil and gas lease sales last year... It is time the federal government end its practice of leasing lands for fossil fuel production at below market value, and instead explore boosting renewable energy development that helps protect ecosystems, species and indigenous lands."

"The Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (AFT), the sec­ond largest teach­ers’ union in the coun­try, passed a res­o­lu­tion in sup­port of the Green New Deal at its bien­ni­al con­ven­tion at the end of July. The Green New Deal, fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion intro­duced in ear­ly 2019, would cre­ate a liv­ing-wage job for any­one who wants one and imple­ment 100% clean and renew­able ener­gy by 2030. The endorse­ment is huge news for both Green New Deal advo­cates and the AFL-CIO, the largest fed­er­a­tion of unions in the Unit­ed States. The AFT’s endorse­ment could be a sign of envi­ron­men­tal activists’ grow­ing pow­er, and it sends a mes­sage to the AFL-CIO that it, too, has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get on board with the Green New Deal."

"The Green New Deal’s focus on invest­ing in high-speed rail could mean sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial work for elec­tri­cians and rail work­ers like Lib­er­a­to. The leg­is­la­tion also calls for ​“repair­ing and upgrad­ing the infra­struc­ture in the Unit­ed States,” which means fix­ing bridges and roads, retro­fitting build­ings, and updat­ing sewage and water sys­tems. And the AFT’s green school build­ings cam­paign will need the sup­port of build­ing trades unions, like elec­tri­cians, plumbers, roofers, and boil­er­mak­ers. All of this infra­struc­ture work means more union jobs — but only if the labor move­ment acknowl­edges the true mag­ni­tude of cli­mate change and decides to play a lead­er­ship role in fight­ing it."

"Starting with a visit by...young climate activists to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Bay Area office...Their exchange — about whether the California senator would vote for or co-sponsor the Green New Deal...went viral. It led to a turbocharged debate about whether the video had been edited, but it also brought with it a tangible change in the halls of Congress...In her now-infamous response, Feinstein said she was in the process of drafting her own, more moderate resolution on confronting climate change that she felt would have a better chance of passing in the GOP-run Senate. The group of young people, who ranged from 11 to 24, were from several different climate action groups. The viral Twitter clip has racked up more than 9 million views, and was the first time many people had heard of Feinstein’s alternative resolution, and when climate activists learned about it, they went into overdrive to stop it. Feinstein, facing pressure... elected to shelve it."

"On Monday (25 Feb 2019), the Sunrise Movement in the form of roughly 250 Kentucky high schoolers, occupied McConnell’s Senate office, resulting in 35 arrests. Some protesters held up a banner that read “Mitch, Look Us in the Eyes,” while others lined the halls outside his office... While the sit-in got little attention in the press, it appeared to have gotten McConnell’s. The majority leader, who is up for re-election in 2020, had recently been eager to put the Green New Deal on the Senate floor. All of a sudden, however, he suggested that it would come up at some point before the August recess. “This wouldn’t have happened without thousands of people across the country pressuring senators of both parties. Two weeks ago, McConnell was excitedly telling the media about his plans. Now, he seems happy to let this vote be forgotten,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise. “You can bet Mitch McConnell was hearing from his own caucus about this vote. There were sit-ins and rallies at the offices of the Republicans most vulnerable in 2020: Ernst, [David] Perdue, Collins, Gardner, and of course, McConnell himself. They’re smart and don’t want to stand on the wrong side on the Green New Deal, which is very popular in their states.”"

"The Green New Deal, a proposal introduced by Democratic lawmakers Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey and galvanized by an engaged youth movement, is perhaps the U.S. government's most robust attempt to make a dent in the country's outsized carbon emissions and end its reliance on fossil fuels, both of which propel the ongoing climate disaster when in use (burning them releases harmful chemicals into the atmosphere) and during extraction (via methods like oil drilling and coal mining, which cause irreparable damage to the environment). The Green New Deal also seeks to address the dire income inequality that has existed since European colonizers stepped foot on this native land, and has only been exacerbated by climate change, both here and on global terms. This policy proposal isn't a fix-all, but it is an ambitious program that, if implemented, has the potential to enact real, much-needed change, especially if other entities (for example, New York City, whose city council recently passed a Climate Mobilization Act) are inspired to take action on a local level."

"“I really don't like their policies of taking away your car, taking away your airplane flights, of ‘let’s hop a train to California,’ or ‘you’re not allowed to own cows anymore!'”...bellowed President Donald Trump in El Paso, Texas, his first campaign-style salvo against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey’s Green New Deal resolution. There will surely be many more. It’s worth marking the moment. Because those could be the famous last words of a one-term president, having wildly underestimated the public appetite for transformative action on the triple crises of our time: imminent ecological unraveling, gaping economic inequality (including the racial and gender wealth divide), and surging white supremacy."

"There is a grand story to be told here about the duty to repair — to repair our relationship with the earth and with one another, to heal the deep wounds dating back to the founding of the country. Because while it is true that climate change is a crisis produced by an excess of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it is also, in a more profound sense, a crisis produced by an extractive mindset — a way of viewing both the natural world and the majority of its inhabitants as resources to use up and then discard. I call it the “gig and dig” economy and firmly believe that we will not emerge from this crisis without a shift in worldview, a transformation from “gig and dig” to an ethos of care and repair...The Green New Deal will need to be subject to constant vigilance and pressure from experts who understand exactly what it will take to lower our emissions as rapidly as science demands, and from social movements that have decades of experience bearing the brunt of false climate solutions, whether nuclear power, the chimera of carbon capture and storage, or carbon offsets. But in remaining vigilant, we also have to be careful not to bury the overarching message: that this is a potential lifeline that we all have a sacred and moral responsibly to reach for."

"Texas is about as far from a Green New Deal as you can possibly get, seeing as a Green New Deal is a plan to bring together the need to get off fossil fuels in the next decade to radically decarbonize our energy system,.. to marry that huge infrastructure investment in the next green economy with a plan to battle poverty, to create huge numbers of good, union, green jobs, to take care of people. It’s a plan to have universal public healthcare and child care and a jobs guarantee. So it’s all the things that are not happening in Texas, because there isn’t just this extreme weather, which many scientists believe is linked to our warming planet — you know, you can’t link one storm with climate change, but the patterns are very clear, and this should be a wake-up call — but Texas is also suffering a pandemic of poverty, of exclusion, of racial injustice... we’ve heard this messaging, I think, because of panic, frankly, because the Green New Deal is a plan that could solve so many of Texas’s problems and the problems across the country, and Republicans have absolutely nothing to offer except for more deregulation, more privatization, more austerity. And so they have been frantically seeking to deflect from the real causes of this crisis, which is an intersection of extreme weather, of the kind that we are seeing more of because of climate change, intersecting with a deregulated, fossil fuel-based energy system."

"Pompous little twit. You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get the food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death."

"It is within this context of 70 long years of secrecy, special legal exemptions, deception, fraud, lies by omission, non-binding agreements — and the global role of militarism as climate crisis multiplier — that we can best evaluate the Democratic Party’s version of the Green New Deal (GND).... The GND now has overwhelming public support and that is truly a great accomplishment. The Democrat’s version has many fine ideas linking inequality and social justice to efforts to fight climate change — and those ideas are all true... In its current form the plan also uses the language of market solutions and technical fixes that sadly repeat the weakest features of failed climate “action” already offered by elites. But most important, the Democrat’s GND — once again — omits the US government and military as a cause of climate disaster. The other — almost unbelievable omission — is the failure of the Democrat’s GND to explicitly call for dramatic reductions in the use of fossil fuels. In fact, the words “oil” “gas” “coal” or “fossil fuels” do not even appear in the final document that established the committee... The Democrat’s GND remains a vague non-binding wish. The 2050 deadlines are standard political dodge-ball. When faced with crisis, corporate politicians always want to ‘kick the can down the road” — postponing real action until the damage is already done and someone else takes the blame. Adaptation to disaster and management of the crisis rather than prevention of climate chaos is the hidden but actual program of the Democrat’s GND."

"The Green New Deal...[is] attracting a number of powerful co-sponsors from both houses of Congress...On Thursday, the resolution landed with more than 60 backers in the House and nine in the Senate, conspicuously including presidential contenders Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). The resolution outlines a complete realignment of the US economy for a just and sustainable future on an ambitious timeline to slash greenhouse gas emissions to zero in just a decade—roughly the time limit that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world has before we blow past any hope to contain disastrous levels of warming. The lawmakers are calling for “a new national, social industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal Era.”"

"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., think they have a start to a [climate change] solution...They are introducing... a "Green New Deal"... sets goals for some drastic measures to cut carbon emissions across the economy, from electricity generation to transportation to agriculture. In the process, it aims to create jobs and boost the economy... The bill calls for a "10-year national mobilizations" toward accomplishing a series of goals... Among the most prominent... meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources... ultimate goal is to stop using fossil fuels entirely... to transition away from nuclear energy In addition... a variety of other lofty goals....upgrading all existing buildings... for energy efficiency.... working with farmers "to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions... as much as is technologically feasible....while supporting family farms and promoting "universal access to healthy food... Overhauling transportation systems... expanding electric car manufacturing... charging stations everywhere... expanding high-speed rail to "a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary".... guaranteed job "with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family... medical leave, paid vacations.... retirement security.... High-quality health care for all Americans..."

"It’s no accident that this Green New Deal has been championed by a legislator not yet 30. It’s Ocasio-Cortez’s generation who’ll bear the full brunt of the results of three decades of legislative inertia on climate change. All of us owe it to her generation and future ones to ensure that the political and economic choices she and others face in 20 years won’t be even worse because of our failure of leadership, nerve and imagination today. Timely support of this bold new deal, and the principles it stands for, may in fact be our only hope."

"Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden unveiled a $2 trillion energy plan Tuesday with a heavy focus on the Green New Deal agenda being pushed by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the far-left flank of his party. Speaking in Wilmington, Del., Biden promised a “clean energy revolution,” which he said would deliver millions of jobs, as he attacked President Trump for calling climate change a “hoax.” Biden detailed what he called a pro-union platform that would replace the US government’s car fleet with American-made electric vehicles and includes a pledge to create a “carbon pollution-free electric sector by the year 2025.” Biden’s announcement comes as the presidential wannabe courts idols on the left of his party including Bronx-Queens Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the hope that they will support him and steer young voters his way in November. In May, AOC announced she had been selected to co-chair Biden’s climate change panel along with former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. The former veep on Tuesday promised to “create millions of high-paying union jobs by building a modern infrastructure and a clean energy future” and described his vision of a US covered in 500,000 electric car charging stations and thriving factories producing green products."

"Let’s have what many people were calling for long before this disaster hit: a green new deal. But please let’s stop describing it as a stimulus package. We have stimulated consumption too much over the past century, which is why we face environmental disaster. Let us call it a survival package, whose purpose is to provide incomes, distribute wealth and avoid catastrophe, without stoking perpetual economic growth. Bail out the people, not the corporations. Bail out the living world, not its destroyers. Let’s not waste our second chance."

"The Green New Deal seems to have driven the Republicans as crazy as its primary proponent in the House does... In El Paso, for example, the president... told his gathering of bot-minded fans that AOC plans to ban automobiles, airplanes, and cows... Mitch McConnell has decided again to be... clever... and put the proposal up to a vote, figuring that it somehow puts Democratic candidates in a bind... GND is wildly popular among the people who will be voting for the next 40 years. The GND forces on people two realities with which their 30 years of climate denial has managed to insulate them. First, the problem is so severe that it is going to require a massive national response even to mitigate the effects of the crisis which are affecting us now. (This is why the Pentagon has taken the crisis as an existential one.) Second, the denial argument itself is completely out of steam."

"The American people want climate action. New polling from Climate Power 2020 finds 71 percent favor bold government action on climate change, while only 18 percent oppose it... Running boldly on tackling the climate crisis, running on a Green New Deal, these are policies that can be popular in all 50 states. Democrats should run toward, not away from these fights. The evidence is clear: If we loudly make the case for bold climate action, we will win... We’ve never seen our country so eager to elect leaders who will take bold action to stop the climate crisis. Neither have we ever known a country in such dire need of such bold action. In a moment of historic unemployment, Democrats want to put millions of people back to work now by investing in bold climate action that would create millions of clean energy jobs and begin to repair decades of environmental injustice. That’s what the American people want too. By 23 points, voters support investing trillions of dollars in clean energy infrastructure."

"We are in the process of utterly wrecking the planet by burning fossil fuels and thereby raising Earth’s temperature. We are now experiencing higher temperatures than in any decade of the past 10,000 years, and the temperature continues to rise. As a result, humanity faces the risk of a catastrophic multimeter sea level rise at the current or slightly warmer temperature...The Green New Deal... endorses the science... As with every great engineering challenge our nation has faced — the Erie Canal, the 20th-century power grid, the Interstate Highway System, the civil aviation system and the moonshot — we need bold timelines, clear milestones, breakthrough engineering and public-sector leadership. No doubt, when properly regulated and guided by engineering plans, the private sector will do its part with excellence and timeliness."

"A half million people in Oregon evacuate as wildfires rage. Over 3 million acres in California burned. The western sky is red. An 800-mile derecho destroyed towns in Iowa. The Arctic topped 100 degrees. The Green New Deal has been called "expensive." Compared to what?"

"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."

"I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called “Carbon Footprint” to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military - even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!"

"Activists have made it clear — politicians can get on board with the Green New Deal or “fade into oblivion.” ...As a blueprint for collective action on climate change, the Green New Deal has attracted a great deal of enthusiasm... The proposal raised eyebrows with its ambitious 10-year plan to cut carbon emissions by 2030, transition to renewable energy sources, and invest heavily in job creation and infrastructure... It amounts to nothing short of a wholesale transformation: The Green New Deal framework rests on the idea of a just economy... The resolution... focuses holistically on the right to a clean and sustainable climate. It emphasizes the effects of climate change on frontline and vulnerable communities and recognizes the role of systemic inequalities and injustices. It ties together far-reaching ideas around sustainable work and wages, unionization, universal health care, housing and trade."

"Democratic officials and activists are pushing the party to unify behind a plan to quickly wean the U.S. economy off fossil fuels and cement climate change as a central issue in the 2020 election. The plan, released on Thursday and dubbed the “Green New Deal,” aims to dramatically overhaul the country’s energy and transportation infrastructure to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” in the next 10 years."

"Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale 'tipping point' highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes."

"Social injustice and the climate crisis have a common root cause."

"Climate change is a crisis leading toward disaster. Everything will change, whether by force of nature or by our choice. We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth, a mass movement."

"The resources required to rapidly move away from fossil fuels and prepare for the coming heavy weather could pull huge swaths of humanity out of poverty, providing services now sorely lacking, from clean water to electricity. p. 7"

"There are plenty of signs that climate change will be no exception [to The Shock Doctrine]—that, rather than sparking solutions that have a real chance of preventing catastrophic warming and protecting us from inevitable disasters, the crisis will once again be seized upon to hand over yet more resources to the 1 percent."

"… opposition movements … will need a comprehensive vision for what should emerge in the place of our failing system, as well as serious political strategies for how to achieve those goals."

"… we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology … p.18"

"Challenge the extreme ideology... blocking so much sensible action... to show how unfettered corporate power [poses] a grave threat to the habitability of the planet. p.20"

"… our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on Earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature. p. 21"

"… even more powerful than capitalism… is the fetish of centrism—of reasonableness, seriousness, splitting the difference, and generally not getting overly excited about anything. This is the habit of thought that truly rules our era … p. 22"

"[A shift is needed in] "power—specifically … a shift in who wields it, a shift away from corporations and toward communities, which in turn depends on whether or not the great many people who are getting a rotten deal under our current system can build a determined and diverse enough social force to change the balance of power. p. 25"

"I have never said that we need to “slay,” “ditch” or “dismantle” capitalism in order to fight climate change. And I most certainly didn’t say we need to do so first. Indeed I say the opposite, very early on in the book, precisely because it would be so dangerous to make such a purist claim. (No, We Don’t Need to Ditch/Slay/Kill Capitalism Before We Can Fight Climate Change. But We Sure As Hell Need To Challenge It by Naomi Klein) p. 25"

"Some say there is no time for this transformation; the crisis is too pressing and the clock is ticking. I agree that it would be reckless to claim that the only solution to this crisis is to revolutionize our economy and revamp our worldview from the bottom up—and anything short of that is not worth doing."

"There are all kinds of measures that would lower emissions substantively that could and should be done right now. But we aren’t taking those measures, are we? The reason is that by failing to fight these big battles that stand to shift our ideological direction and change the balance of who holds power in our societies, a context has been slowly created in which any muscular response to climate change seems politically impossible, especially during times of economic crisis (which lately seems to be all the time). p. 25"

"So this book proposes a different strategy: think big, go deep, and move the ideological pole far away from the stifling market fundamentalism that has become the greatest enemy to planetary health. If we can shift the cultural context even a little, then there will be some breathing room for those sensible reformist policies that will at least get the atmospheric carbon numbers moving in the right direction."

"Maybe within a few years, some of the ideas highlighted in these pages that sound impossibly radical today—like a basic income for all, or a rewriting of trade law, or real recognition of the rights of Indigenous people to protect huge parts of the world from polluting extraction—will start to seem reasonable, even essential."

"… the thing about a crisis this big, this all-encompassing, is that it changes everything. It changes what we can do, what we can hope for, what we can demand from ourselves and our leaders. It means there is a whole lot of stuff that we have been told is inevitable that simply cannot stand. And it means that a whole lot of stuff we have been told is impossible has to start happening right away." p. 28"

"The Yale researchers [of Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project] explain that people with strong ‘egalitarian’ and ‘communitarian’ worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality, and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. ...Those with strong ‘hierarchical’ and ‘individualistic’ worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all pretty much get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.… they are protecting powerful political and economic interests…"

"… the tight correlation between ‘worldview’ and acceptance of climate science [is attributed] to ‘cultural cognition,’ the process by which all of us … filter new information in ways that will protect our ‘preferred vision of the good society.’ If new information seems to confirm that vision, we welcome it and integrate it easily. If it poses a threat to our belief system, then our brain immediately gets to work producing intellectual antibodies designed to repel the unwelcome invasion."

"… In other words, it is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered …"

"This kind of defensive reasoning helps explain the rise of emotional intensity that surrounds the climate issue today. p. 36-37"

"There will obviously need to be substantial transfers of resources and technology to help battle poverty using low carbon tools. … a Marshall Plan for the Earth. … [a] sort of wealth redistribution … P.40"

"… the real reason we are failing to rise to the climate moment is because the actions required directly challenge our reigning economic paradigm (deregulated capitalism combined with public austerity), the stories on which Western cultures are found (that we stand apart from nature and can outsmart its limits), as well as many of the activities that form our identities and define our communities (shopping, living virtually, shopping some more). They also spell extinction for the richest and most powerful industry the world has ever known—the oil and gas industry..."

"Climate change demands that we consume less, but being consumers is all we know. Climate change is not a problem that can be solved simply by changing what we buy—a hybrid instead of an SUV, some carbon offsets when we get on a plane. At its core, it is a crisis born of overconsumption by the comparatively wealthy, which means the world’s most manic consumers are going to have to consume less."

"… The problem is the inflated role that consumption has come to play in our particular era."

"I always tell people that the most important thing they can do is join groups of other people taking action. And that action depends on where they can have the most influence. If they’re university students, that may mean divestment. If they live somewhere in the path of a pipeline, it may mean stopping that pipeline. If they’re a brilliant economist, it may mean working with colleagues on policy approaches that movements can champion."

"What’s important is to break out of the mindset that climate change can be tackled by invidual [sic] action. Those actions are important when they model change, but they do not substitute for organizing."

"Indeed the three policy pillars of the neoliberal age—privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending—are each incompatible with many of the actions we must take to bring our emissions to safe levels."

"… wealthy countries need to start cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by something like 8 to 10 percent a year—and they need to start right now. p. 87"

"The truth is, if we want to live within ecological limits, we would need to return to a lifestyle similar to the one we had in the 1970s, before consumption levels went crazy in the 1980s. p. 91"

"… as we remake our economies to stay within our global carbon budget, we need to see less consumption (except among the poor), less trade (as we relocalize our economies), and less private investment in producing for excessive consumption. These reductions would be offset by increased government spending, and increased public and private investment in the infrastructure and alternatives needed to reduce our emissions to zero. Implicit in all of this is a great deal more redistribution, so that more of us can live comfortably within the planet’s capacity. p.91"

"Imagine … a powerful social movement—a robust coalition of trade unions, immigrants, students, environmentalists, and everyone else whose dreams were getting crushed by the crashing economic model … p. 121"

"If that kind of coherent and sweeping vision had emerged in the United States in that moment of flux as the Obama presidency began, right-wing attempts to paint climate action as an economy killer would have fallen flat. It would have been clear to all that climate action is, in fact, a massive job creator, as well as a community rebuilder, and a source of hope in moments when hope is a scarce commodity indeed. But all of this would have required a government that was unafraid of bold long-term economic planning, as well as social movements that were able to move masses of people to demand the realization of that kind of vision. p. 124"

"Progressives [must show] that the real solutions to the climate crisis are also our best hope of building a much more stable and equitable economic system, one that strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work, and radically reins in corporate greed."

"But before that can happen, it’s clear that a core battle of ideas must be fought about the right of citizens to democratically determine what kind of economy they need. Policies that simply try to harness the power of the market—by minimally taxing or capping carbon and then getting out of the way—won’t be enough. p. 125"

"… attempts to fix glaring and fundamental flaws in the system have failed because large corporations wield far too much political power—a power exerted through corporate campaign contributions, many of them secret; through almost unfettered access to regulators via their lobbyists; through the notorious revolving door between business and government; as well as through the ‘free speech’ rights these corporations have been granted by the U.S. Supreme Court. p. 151"

"… the only thing politicians fear more than losing donations is losing elections. And this is where the power of climate change—and its potential for building the largest possible political tent—comes into play. … a rallying cry could bring together all of the various constituencies that would benefit from reducing corporate power over politics—from health care workers to parents worried about their children’s safety at school. p. 152"

"… the climate moment [the urgent need for bold action] offers an overarching narrative in which everything from the fight for good jobs to justice for migrants to reparations for historical wrongs like slavery and colonialism can all become part of the grand project of building a nontoxic, shockproof economy before it’s too late."

"… the alternative to such a project is not the status quo extended indefinitely. It is climate-change-fueled disaster capitalism—profiteering disguised as emission reduction, privatized hyper-militarized borders, and, quite possibly, high-risk geoengineering when things spiral out of control. p. 154"

"Free market ideology may still bind the imaginations of our elites, but for most of the general public, it has been drained of its powers to persuade. The disastrous track record of the past three decades of neoliberal policy is simply too apparent. p. 154"

"… for a great many people, climate action is their best hope for a better present, and a future far more exciting than anything else currently on offer. p. 156"

"The kind of counter-power that has a chance of changing society on anything close to the scale required is still missing.… most leftists and liberals are still averting their eyes, having yet to grasp that climate science has handed them the most powerful argument against unfettered capitalism since William Blake’s ‘dark Satanic Mills’ blackened England’s skies …. And yet when demonstrators are protesting the various failures of this system [throughout the world], climate change is too often little more than a footnote when it could be the coup de grâce." p. 156-57"

"As many are coming to realize, the fetish for structurelessness, the rebellion against any kind of institutionalization is not a luxury today’s transformative movements can afford. p. 158"

"To understand how we got to this place of profound disconnection from our surroundings and one another, and to think about how we might build a politics based on reconnection, we will need to go back a good deal further than 1988. …"

"… Indeed the roots of the climate crisis date back to core civilizational myths on which post-Enlightenment Western culture is founded—myths about humanity’s duty to dominate a natural world that is believed to be at once limitless and entirely controllable. This is not a problem that can be blamed on the political right or on the United States; these are powerful cultural narratives that transcend geography and ideological divides. p. 159"

"[The environmental movement] tried to prove that saving the planet could be a great new business opportunity."

"Extractivism is also directly connected to the notion of sacrifice zones—places that, to their extractors, somehow don’t count and therefore can be poisoned, drained, or otherwise destroyed… p. 169"

"… just one of the reasons climate change is so deeply frightening. Because to confront this crisis truthfully is to confront ourselves—to reckon, as our ancestors did, with our vulnerability to the elements that make up both the planet and our bodies. … we should not underestimate the depth of the civilizational challenge that this relationship represents. … facing these truths about climate change ‘means recognizing that the power relation between humans and the earth is the reverse of the one we have assumed for three centuries. p. 175"

"The strongest challenges to this worldview have always come from outside its logic, in those historical junctures when the extractive project clashes directly with a different, older way of relating to the earth—and that older way fights back. p. 177"

"But for those of us born and raised inside this system, though we may sell see the dead-end flaw of its central logic, it can remain intensely difficult to see a way out. p. 178"

"… the deeper message carried by the ecological crisis—that humanity has to go a whole lot easier on the living systems that sustain us, acting regeneratively rather than extractively—is a profound challenge to large parts of the left as well as the right… self-described socialist states devoured resources with as much enthusiasm as their capitalist counterparts, and spewed waste just as recklessly. p. 178"

"The good news, and it is significant, is that large and growing social movements in all of these countries are pushing back against the idea that extraction-and-redistribution is the only route out of poverty and economic crisis. p.182"

"Space is opening up for a growing influence of Indigenous thought on new generations of activists … [so that] progressive movements are being exposed to worldviews based on relationships of reciprocity and interconnection with the natural world that are the antithesis of extractivism. p.182"

"The failure of this polite strategy is beyond debate. p. 200"

"Simple principles governed this golden age of environmental legislation [1960s and 1970s]: ban or severely limit the offending activity or substance and where possible, get the polluter to pay for the cleanup. p. 203"

"Far from using climate change as a tool to alter the American way of life, many of the large environmental organizations spend their days doing everything in their power to furiously protect that way of life, at the direct expense of demanding the levels of change required by science. p. 210"

"… the refusal of so many environmentalists to consider responses to the climate crisis that would upend the economic status quo forces them to place their hopes in solutions—whether miracle products, or carbon markets, or ‘bridge fuels’—that are either so weak or so high-risk that entrusting them with our collective safety constitutes what can only be described as magical thing. p. 210-211"

"But most of all, regular, noncelebrity people were called upon to exercise their consumer power—not by shopping less but by discovering new and exciting ways to consume more."

"If guilt set in, well, we could click on the handy carbon calculators on any one of dozens of green sites and purchase an offset, and our sins would instantly be erased."

"In addition to not doing much to actually lower emissions, these various approaches also served to reinforce the very ‘extrinsic’ values that we now know are the greatest psychological barriers to climate action—from the worship of wealth and fame for their own sakes to the idea that change is something that is handed down from above by our betters, rather than something we demand for ourselves."

"Indeed a growing number of communications specialists now argue that because the ‘solutions’ to climate change proposed by many green groups in this period [2000s] were so borderline frivolous, many people concluded that the groups must have been exaggerating the scale of the problem... wouldn’t the environmental movement be asking the public to do more than switch brands of cleaning liquid, occasionally walk to work, and send money? Wouldn’t they be trying to shut down the fossil fuel companies? p. 213"

"In order for multinational corporations to protect their freedom to pollute the atmosphere, peasants, farmers, and Indigenous people are losing their freedom to live and sustain themselves in peace. p. 222"

"Richard Branson ...dangled the prospect of a miracle technological fix for carbon pollution just over the horizon in order to buy time to continue escalating emissions, free of meddlesome regulation. p. 249"

"Branson set out to harness the profit motive to solve the climate crisis—but the temptation to profit from practices worsening the crisis proved too great to resist. Again and again, the demands of building a successful empire trumped the climate imperative—whether that meant lobbying against needed regulation, or putting more planes in the air, or pitching oil companies on using his pet miracle technologies to extract more oil. p. 251-52"

"There is plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy; but the profit motive is not going to be the midwife for that great transformation. p. 252"

"… the profits from our dirtiest industries must be diverted into the grand and hopeful project of cleaning up their mess. … it won’t happen on a voluntary basis or on the honor system. It will have to be legislated—using the kinds of tough regulations, higher taxes, and steeper royalty rates these sectors have resisted all along. p. 254"

"… I have been repeatedly struck by how the hard-won lessons about humility before nature that have reshaped modern science, particularly the fields of chaos and complexity theory, do not appear to have penetrated this particular bubble. p. 267"

"… we would be wise to anticipate even small amounts of geoengineering unleashing a new age of weather-related geopolitical recrimination, paranoia, and possibly retaliation, with every future natural disaster being blamed—rightly or wrongly—on the people in faraway labs playing god. p.269"

"We have options, ones that would greatly decrease the chances of ever confronting those impossible choices, choices that indeed deserve to be described as genocidal. To fail to exercise those options—which is exactly what we are collectively doing—knowing full well that eventually the failure could force government to rationalize ‘risking’ turning whole nations, even subcontinents, into sacrifice zones, is a decision our children may judge as humanity’s single most immoral act. p.284"

"In pragmatic terms, our challenge is less to save the earth from ourselves and more to save ourselves from an earth that, if pushed too far, has ample power to rock, burn, and shake us off completely. p.285"

"As environmental author Kenneth Brower writes, ‘The notion that science will save us is the chimera that allows the present generation to consume all the resources it wants, as if no generations will follow. It is the sedative that allows civilization to march so steadfastly toward environmental catastrophe. It forestalls the real solution, which will be in the hard, nontechnical work of changing human behavior. p. 289"

"Blockadia is not a specific location on a map but rather a roving transnational conflict zone that is cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill … p. 294-95"

"Resistance to high-risk extreme extraction is building a global, grassroots, and broad-based network the likes of which the environmental movement has rarely seen. And perhaps this phenomenon shouldn’t even be referred to as an environmental movement at all, since it is primarily driven by a desire for a deeper form of democracy, one that provides communities with real control over those resources that are most critical to collective survival—the health of the water, air, and soil. In the process, these place-based stands are stopping real climate crimes in progress. p.295"

"The collective response to the climate crisis is changing from something that primarily takes place in closed-door policy and lobbying meetings into something alive and unpredictable and very much in the streets (and mountains, and farmers’ fields, and forests). p.295-96"

"These activists understand that keeping carbon in the ground, and protecting ancient, carbon-sequestering forests from being clear-cut for mines, is a prerequisite for preventing catastrophic warming… Indeed, if the movement has a guiding theory, it is that it is high time to close, rather than expand, the fossil fuel frontier. p.304"

"People organized in Nigeria against oil extraction, and the government responded brutally. The conflict escalated to "a full-blown armed insurgency, complete with bombings of oil infrastructure and government targets, rampant pipeline vandalism, ransom kidnapping of oil workers…. In the process, the original goals of the movement—to stop the ecological plunder, and take back control over the region’s resource—became harder to decipher. p.308-09"

"… in the era of extreme energy, there is no longer the illusion of discreet sacrifice zones anymore. p.314"

"One battle doesn’t rob from another but rather causes battles to multiply, with each act of courage, and each victory, inspiring others to strengthen their resolve. p.324"

"This sense of moral clarity, after so many decades of chummy green partnerships, is the real shock for the extractive industries. p.336"

"… when the extractive industry’s culture of structural transience bumps up against a group of deeply rooted people with an intense love of their homeplace and a determination to protect it, the effect can be explosive. p.344"

"… what has emerged in the movement against extreme extraction is less an anti-fossil fuels movement than a pro-water movement. p.344"

"Water is contaminated not only by spills, but in regular production of tar sands and in fracking."

"The student-led divestment movement has "put the fossil fuel companies’ core business model on trial, arguing that they have become rogue actors whose continued economic viability relies on radical climate destabilization—and that, as such, any institution claiming to serve the public interest has a moral responsibility to liberate itself from these odious profits....[it is] chipping away at the social license with which these companies operate. p.354"

"Divestment is just the first stage of this delegitimization process, but it is already well under way."

"None of this is a replacement for major policy changes that would regulate carbon reduction across the board. But what the emergence of this networked, grassroots movement means is that the next time climate campaigners get into a room filled with politicians and polluters to negotiate, there will be many thousands of people outside the doors with the power to amp up the political pressure significantly—with heightened boycotts, court cases, and more militant direct action should real progress fail to materialize. p.355"

"Again and again, after failing to persuade communities that these projects are in their genuine best interest, governments are teaming up with corporate players to roll over the opposition, using a combination of physical violence and draconian legal tools reclassifying peaceful activists as terrorists. p.362"

"… Indigenous land and treaty rights have proved a major barrier for the extractive industries in many of the key Blockadia struggles."

"… Even more critically, many non-Natives are also beginning to see that the ways of life that Indigenous groups are protecting have a great deal to teach about how to relate to the land in ways that are not purely extractive. p.370"

"[Renewables] demand that we adapt ourselves to the rhythms of natural systems, as opposed to bending those systems to our will with brute force engineering. p.394"

"Part of the job of the climate movement, then, is to make the moral case that the communities who have suffered most from unjust resource relationships should be first to be supported in their efforts to build the next, life-based economy now. And that means a fundamentally new relationship, in which those communities have full control over resource projects, so that they become opportunities for skills training, jobs, and steady revenues (rather than one-off payments). p.399"

"As discussed, the resources for this just transition must ultimately come from the state, collected from the profits of the fossil fuel companies in the brief window left while they are still profitable. p.401"

"During these times of continual economic stress and exclusion, the communities on the front lines of saying no to dirty energy have discovered that they will never build the base they need unless they can simultaneously provide economic alternatives to the projects they are opposing. p.403"

"… developing countries [are] owed a debt for the inherent injustice of climate change—the fact that wealthy countries had used up most of the atmospheric capacity for safely absorbing CO2 before developing countries had a chance to industrialize. …if wealthy countries do not want poorer ones to pull themselves out of poverty in the same dirty way that we did, the onus is on Northern governments to help foot the bill."

"This, of course, is the core of the argument for the existence of a ‘climate debt’ … p. 409"

"The truth is—and this is a humbling thing for cultures accustomed to assuming that our actions shape the destiny of the world to accept—the real battle will not be lost or won by us. It will be won or lost by those movements in the Global South that are fighting their own... struggles—demanding their own clean energy revolutions, their own green jobs, their own pools of carbon left in the ground. And they are up against powerful forces within their own countries that insist that it is their ‘turn’ to pollute their way to prosperity and that nothing matters more than economic growth. p.412"

"And there are alternatives—models of development that do not require massive wealth stratification, tragic cultural losses, or ecological devastation. p. 413"

"With many of the biggest pools of untapped carbon on lands controlled by some of the poorest people on the planet, and with emissions rising most rapidly in what were, until recently, some of the poorest parts of the world, there is simply no credible way forward that does not involve redressing the real roots of poverty. p.418"

"… protecting and valuing the earth’s ingenious systems of reproducing life and the fertility of all of its inhabitants, may lie at the center of the shift in worldview that must take place if we are to move beyond extractivism. A worldview based on regeneration and renewal rather than domination and depletion. p.424"

"It suddenly dawned on me that I was indeed part of a vast biotic community, and it was a place where a great many of us—humans and nonhuman alike—found ourselves engaged in an uphill battle to create new living beings. p.427"

"What is emerging, in fact, is a new kind of reproductive rights movement, one fighting not only for the reproductive rights of women, but for the reproductive rights of the planet as a whole …. All of life has the right to renew, regenerate, and heal itself. p.443"

"Again and again, linear, one-way relationships of pure extraction are being replaced with systems that are circular and reciprocal. p.446"

"… systems are being created that require minimal external inputs and produce almost no waste—a quest for homeostasis …."

"Contrary to capitalism’s drift toward monopoly and duopoly in virtually every arena, these systems mimic nature’s genius for built-in redundancy by amplifying diversity wherever possible …. The beauty of these models is that when they fail, they fail on a small and manageable scale—with backup systems in place. Because if there is one thing we know, it’s that the future is going to have plenty of shocks."

"… living nonextractively means relying overwhelmingly on resources that can be continuously regenerated …."

"These processes are sometimes called ‘resilient’ but a more appropriate term might be ‘regenerative.’ Because resilience—though certainly one of nature’s greatest gifts—is a passive process, implying the ability to absorb blows and get back up. Regeneration, on the other hand, is active: we become full participants in the process of maximizing life’s creativity. p.447"

"The solution to global warming is not to fix the world, but to fix ourselves."

"… global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient, and barrier-free that ‘earth-human systems’ are becoming dangerously unstable in response. p. 450"

"… only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed. We also know, I would add, how that system will deal with the reality of serial climate-related disasters: with profiteering, and escalating barbarism to segregate the losers from the winners. p. 450"

"… if climate justice carries the day, the economic costs to our elites will be real—not only because of the carbon left in the ground but also because of the regulations, taxes, and social programs needed to make the required transformation. Indeed, these new demands on the ultra rich could effectively bring the era of the footloose Davos oligarch to a close. p. 457"

"[Climate justice economic demands] represent nothing less than the unfinished business of the most powerful liberation movements of the past two centuries, from civil rights to feminism to Indigenous sovereignty. … Such is the promise of a Marshall Plan for the Earth. p. 458"

"[Activism] becomes an entirely normal activity throughout society …. During extraordinary historical moments—both world wars, the aftermath of the Great Depression, or the peak of the civil rights era—the usual categories dividing ‘activists’ and ‘regular people’ became meaningless because the project of changing society was so deeply woven into the project of life. Activists were, quite simply, everyone. p. 459"

"We are products of our age and of a dominant ideological project. One that too often has taught us to see ourselves as little more than singular, gratification-seeking units, out to maximize our narrow advantage, while simultaneously severing so many of us from the broader communities whose pooled skills are capable of solving problems big and small. p. 460"

"[We need] game-changing [policy battles] that don’t merely aim to change laws but change patterns of thought... a space for a full-throated debate about values—about what we owe to one another based on our shared humanity, and what it is that we collectively value more than economic growth and corporate profits."

"Indeed a great deal of the work of deep social change involves having debates during which new stories can be told to replace the ones that have failed us. Because if we are to have any hope of making the kind of civilizational leap required of this fateful decade, we will need to start believing, once again, that humanity is not hopelessly selfish and greedy—the image ceaselessly sold to us by everything from reality shows to neoclassical economics. p. 461"

"Fundamentally, the task is to articulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis—embedded in interdependence rather than hyperindividualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy."

"In the hot and stormy future we have already made inevitable through our past emissions, an unshakable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep compassion will be the only things standing between civilization and barbarism. p. 462"

"[political movements of the past] ...modeled different values in their own behavior, and in the process liberated the political imagination and rapidly altered the sense of what was possible. They were also unafraid of the language of morality—to give the pragmatic, cost-benefit arguments a rest and speak of right and wrong, of love and indignation. p. 462"

"Abolitionists used "highly polarizing rhetoric" to emphasize their moral arguments. Climate activists need to take a similarly clear moral stance."

"… there are plenty of solid economic arguments for moving beyond fossil fuels … But we will not win the battle for a stable climate by trying to beat the bean counters at their own game—arguing, for instance, that it is more cost-effective to invest in emission reduction now than disaster response later. We will win by asserting that such calculations are morally monstrous… p. 464"

"There is little doubt that another crisis will see us in the streets and squares once again, taking us all by surprise. The real question is what progressive forces will make of that moment, the power and confidence with which it will be seized. p. 466"

"This Changes Everything is well worth a read... but we’ve distilled some of its key points here. 1. Band-Aid solutions don’t work... 2. We need to fix ourselves, not fix the world... 3. We can’t rely on “well-intentioned” corporate funding... When capitalism itself is a principal cause of climate change, Klein argues, it doesn’t make sense to expect corporations and billionaires to put the planet before profit... when Big Greens become dependent on corporate funding, they start to push a corporate agenda... 4. We need divestment, and reinvestment... divestment opens the door for reinvestment. A few million dollars out of the hands of ExxonMobil or BP frees up money that can now be spent developing green infrastructure or empowering communities to localize their economies... 5. Confronting climate change is an opportunity to address other social, economic and political issues... In The Shock Doctrine, Klein explained how corporations have exploited crises around the world for profit. In This Changes Everything, she argues that the climate change crisis can serve as a wake-up call for widespread democratic action... “Implicit in all of this,” Klein writes, “is a great deal more redistribution, so that more of us can live comfortably within the planet’s capacity.”"

"All together, This Changes Everything holds the Big Greens accountable for redirecting public attention away from the need for big, systemic change and toward lifestyle and consumer approaches to climate change—complete with on-line carbon calculators—that did little to actually lower emissions."

"[H]uman influence on the climate system is clear and growing, with impacts observed across all continents and oceans."

"Many of the observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over decades to millennia."

"The IPCC is now 95 percent certain that humans are the main cause of current global warming."

"[T]he more human activities disrupt the climate, the greater the risks of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems, and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system."

"[This report] calls for the urgent attention of both policymakers and citizens of the world to tackle this challenge."

"Ignorance can no longer be an excuse for tergiversation."

"This report distils, synthesizes and integrates the key findings of the three Working Group contributions—The Physical Science Basis, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability and Mitigation of Climate Change..."

"Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history."

"Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems."

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia."

"The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen."

"Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century."

"In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans."

"Many terrestrial, freshwater and marine species have shifted their geographic ranges, seasonal activities, migration patterns, abundances and species interactions in response to ongoing climate change..."

"[N]egative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts..."

"Changes in many extreme weather and climate events have been observed since about 1950. Some of these changes have been linked to human influences, including a decrease in cold temperature extremes, an increase in warm temperature extremes, an increase in extreme high sea levels and an increase in the number of heavy precipitation events in a number of regions."

"It is very likely that the number of cold days and nights has decreased and the number of warm days and nights has increased on the global scale."

"It is very likely that human influence has contributed to the observed global scale changes in the frequency and intensity of daily temperature extremes since the mid-20th century."

"Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability..."

"Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems."

"Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks."

"Cumulative emissions of CO2 largely determine global mean surface warming by the late 21st century and beyond."

"Multiple lines of evidence indicate a strong, consistent, almost linear relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions and projected global temperature change to the year 2100..."

"Surface temperature is projected to rise over the 21st century under all assessed emission scenarios. It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer, and that extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent in many regions. The ocean will continue to warm and acidify, and global mean sea level to rise."

"It is virtually certain that there will be more frequent hot and fewer cold temperature extremes over most land areas on daily and seasonal timescales, as global mean surface temperature increases."

"It is very likely that heat waves will occur with a higher frequency and longer duration. Occasional cold winter extremes will continue to occur."

"Extreme precipitation events over most of the mid-latitude land masses and over wet tropical regions will very likely become more intense and more frequent."

"The global ocean will continue to warm during the 21st century, with the strongest warming projected for the surface in tropical and Northern Hemisphere subtropical regions..."

"Climate change will amplify existing risks and create new risks for natural and human systems. Risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development."

"Most plant species cannot naturally shift their geographical ranges sufficiently fast to keep up with current and high projected rates of climate change in most landscapes; most small mammals and s will not be able to keep up at the rates projected... in flat landscapes in this century..."

"Marine organisms will face progressively lower oxygen levels and high rates and magnitudes of ..."

"Coral reefs and polar ecosystems are highly vulnerable."

"Coastal systems and low-lying areas are at risk from sea level rise, which will continue for centuries even if the global mean temperature is stabilized..."

"Climate change is projected to undermine ..."

"Due to projected climate change by the mid-21st century and beyond, global marine species redistribution and marine biodiversity reduction in sensitive regions will challenge the sustained provision of fisheries productivity and other ecosystem services..."

"Global temperature increases of ~4°C or more above late 20th century levels, combined with increasing food demand, would pose large risks to food security globally..."

"Climate change is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources in most dry subtropical regions... intensifying competition for water..."

"[C]limate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist... Throughout the 21st century, climate change is expected to lead to increases in ill-health in many regions and especially in developing countries with low income..."

"By 2100... the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year is expected to compromise common human activities, including growing food and working outdoors..."

"In urban areas climate change is projected to increase risks for people, assets, economies and ecosystems, including risks from heat stress, storms and extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, landslides, air pollution, drought, water scar-city, sea level rise and storm surges... These risks are amplified for those lacking essential infrastructure and services or living in exposed areas."

"Rural areas are expected to experience major impacts on water availability and supply, food security, infrastructure and agricultural incomes..."

"Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped. The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of the warming increases."

"Surface temperatures will remain approximately constant at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation of net anthropogenic CO2 emissions. A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial timescale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period."

"Stabilization of global average surface temperature does not imply stabilization for all aspects of the climate system. Shifting , , s, ocean temperatures and associated all have their own intrinsic long timescales which will result in changes lasting hundreds to thousands of years after global surface temperature is stabilized."

"[[w:Ocean acidification|[O]cean acidification]] will increase for centuries if CO2 emissions continue, and will strongly affect s."

"[G]lobal mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100..."

"A reduction in extent is virtually certain with continued rise in global temperatures."

"Adaptation and mitigation are complementary strategies for reducing and managing the risks of climate change. Substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades can reduce climate risks in the 21st century and beyond, increase prospects for effective adaptation, reduce the costs and challenges of mitigation in the longer term and contribute to climate-resilient pathways for sustainable development."

"Many of those most vulnerable to climate change have contributed and contribute little to GHG emissions."

"Climate change has the characteristics of a collective action problem at the global scale, because most GHGs accumulate over time and mix globally, and emissions by any agent (e.g., individual, community, company, country) affect other agents."

"Effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests independently."

"Cooperative responses, including international cooperation, are... required to effectively mitigate... and address other climate change..."

"There are multiple mitigation pathways that are likely to limit warming to below 2°C relative to pre-industrial levels. These pathways would require substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades and near zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases by the end of the century."

"Delaying additional mitigation to 2030 will substantially increase the challenges associated with limiting warming over the 21st century to below 2°C..."

"In the absence or under limited availability of mitigation technologies (such as , CCS and their combination BECCS, nuclear, wind/solar), mitigation costs can increase substantially..."

"(SRM) involves large-scale methods... is untested and is not included in any of the mitigation scenarios. If it were deployed, SRM would entail numerous uncertainties, side effects, risks and shortcomings... If it were terminated [after and if once begun], there is high confidence that surface temperatures would rise very rapidly impacting ecosystems..."

"Many adaptation and mitigation options can help address climate change, but no single option is sufficient by itself."

"Adaptation and mitigation responses are underpinned by common enabling factors. These include effective institutions and governance, innovation and investments in environmentally sound technologies and infrastructure, sustainable livelihoods and behavioural and lifestyle choices."

"Improving institutions as well as coordination and cooperation in governance can help overcome regional constraints associated with mitigation, adaptation and disaster risk reduction..."

"Mitigation can be more cost-effective if using an integrated approach that combines measures to reduce energy use and the green-house gas intensity of end-use sectors, decarbonize energy supply, reduce net emissions and enhance carbon sinks..."

"The most cost-effective mitigation options in forestry are , sustainable forest management and reducing ... and in agriculture, cropland management, grazing land management and restoration of organic soils..."

"Behaviour, lifestyle and culture have a considerable influence on energy use and associated emissions... Emissions can be substantially lowered through changes in consumption patterns, adoption of energy savings measures, dietary change and reduction in food wastes."

"International cooperation is critical for effective mitigation..."

"The (UNFCCC) is the main multilateral forum focused on addressing climate change, with nearly universal participation."

"The offers lessons towards achieving the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC..."

"International cooperation for supporting adaptation planning and implementation... has assisted in the creation of adaptation strategies, plans and actions..."

"Substantial reductions in emissions would require large changes in investment patterns..."

"Potential synergies between international finance for disaster risk management and adaptation have not yet been fully realized..."

"Climate change is a threat to sustainable development. ...Successful implementation relies on relevant tools, suitable governance structures and enhanced capacity to respond ..."

"Climate change exacerbates other threats to social and natural systems, placing additional burdens particularly on the poor..."

"Delaying global mitigation actions may reduce options..."

"Strategies and actions can be pursued now... while at the same time helping to improve livelihoods, social and economic well-being and effective environmental management."

"Climate change exposes people, societies, economic sectors and ecosystems to risk. ...[H]igh risk can result not only from high probability outcomes but also from low probability outcomes with very severe consequences."

"Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems."

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen."

"Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic s have been losing mass... s have continued to shrink almost worldwide... Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover has continued to decrease in extent..."

"Glaciers have lost mass and contributed to sea level rise throughout the 20th century."

"The rate of ice mass loss from the has very likely substantially increased over the period 1992 to 2011, resulting in a larger mass loss over 2002 to 2011..."

"Arctic sea ice extent has decreased in every season and in every successive decade since 1979..."

"There is very high confidence that the extent of Northern Hemisphere snow cover has decreased since the mid-20th century by 1.6% [0.8 to 2.4%] per decade for March and April, and 11.7% per decade for June, over the 1967 to 2012 period."

"The rate of since the mid-19th century has been larger than the mean rate during the previous two millennia..."

"Since the early 1970s, glacier mass loss and ocean thermal expansion from warming together explain about 75% of the observed global mean sea level rise..."

"Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era driven largely by economic and population growth. From 2000 to 2010 emissions were the highest in history. Historical emissions have driven atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to levels that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years, leading to an uptake of energy by the climate system."

"Atmospheric concentrations of GHGs are at levels that are unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have all shown large increases since 1750 (40%, 150% and 20%, respectively)..."

"The total anthropogenic over 1750–2011 is... 2.3 [1.1 to 3.3] W/m2... and it has increased more rapidly since 1970 than during prior decades. Carbon dioxide is the largest single contributor to radiative forcing..."

"About half of the cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2011 have occurred in the last 40 years..."

"About 40% of... anthropogenic CO2 emissions have remained in the atmosphere... since 1750."

"Globally, economic and population growth continue to be the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion."

"Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global , in reductions in snow and ice, and in global mean sea level rise; and it is extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans."

"It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings..."

"Anthropogenic influences have very likely contributed to Arctic sea ice loss since 1979..."

"It is very likely that anthropogenic forcings have made a substantial contribution to increases in global upper ocean heat content... observed since the 1970s..."

"It is very likely that there is a substantial anthropogenic contribution to the global mean sea level rise since the 1970s."

"Glaciers continue to shrink almost worldwide due to climate change..."

"Climate change is causing permafrost warming and thawing in high-latitude regions and in high-elevation regions..."

"Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks."

"Extreme precipitation events over most of the mid-latitude land masses and over wet tropical regions will very likely become more intense and more frequent as global mean surface temperature increases."

"Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years... The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture."

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level."

"At continental, regional and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones."

"Average arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years."

"Palaeoclimatic information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years. The last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions in polar ice volume led to 4 to 6 m of sea level rise."

"Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years."

"Global average sea level in the last interglacial period (about 125,000 years ago) was likely 4 to 6 m higher than during the 20th century, mainly due to the retreat of polar ice. Ice core data indicate that average polar temperatures at that time were 3°C to 5°C higher than present, because of differences in the Earth’s orbit."

"Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

"Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns..."

"[I]t is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that it is not due to known natural causes alone..."

"Anthropogenic forcing is likely to have contributed to changes in wind patterns, affecting extratropical storm tracks and temperature patterns in both hemispheres."

"For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected."

"Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections..."

"Model experiments show that even if all radiative forcing agents were held constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming trend would occur in the next two decades at a rate of about 0.1°C per decade, due mainly to the slow response of the oceans. About twice as much warming (0.2°C per decade) would be expected if emissions are within the range of the SRES scenarios."

"[D]ecadal average warming over each inhabited continent by 2030... is very likely to be at least twice as large as the corresponding model-estimated natural variability during the 20th century."

"Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the time scales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilised."

"Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium, due to the time scales required for removal of this gas from the atmosphere..."

"es are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise."

"Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century."

"[N]ational policy decisions made now and in the longer-term future will influence the extent of any damage suffered by vulnerable human populations and ecosystems later in this century."

"Of the greenhouse gases that are directly influenced by human activity, the most important are carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). s released by human activities are also capable of influencing climate."

"Concentrations of (CO2) extracted from s drilled in Greenland and Antarctica have typically ranged from near 190 parts per million by volume (ppmv) during the ice ages to near 280 ppmv during the warmer "interglacial" periods like the present one that began around 10,000 years ago. Concentrations did not rise much above 280 ppmv until the Industrial Revolution. By 1958... they had reached 315 ppmv, and they are currently ~370 ppmv and rising at a rate of 1.5 ppmv per year... Human activities are responsible for the increase. The primary source, fossil fuel burning, has released roughly twice as much... as... required... for the observed increase. Tropical deforestation also has contributed to carbon dioxide releases during the past few decades. The excess... has been taken up by the oceans and land ."

"Like carbon dioxide, (CH4) is more abundant in Earth’s atmosphere now than at any time during the 400,000 year long ice core record, which dates back over a number of glacial/interglacial cycles."

"About two-thirds of the current emissions of methane are released by human activities such as rice growing, the raising of cattle, coal mining, use of land-fills, and natural gas handling, all of which have increased over the past 50 years."

"Besides greenhouse gases, human activity also contributes to the atmospheric burden of s, which include both sulfate particles and (soot)."

"Recent "clean coal technologies" and use of low sulfur fuels have resulted in decreasing sulfate concentrations..."

"Black carbon aerosols are end-products of the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass burning (forest fires and land clearing)."

"Nitrous oxide (N2O) is formed by many microbial reactions in soils and waters, including those acting on the increasing amounts of nitrogen-containing fertilizers. Some synthetic chemical processes that release nitrous oxide have also been identified. Its concentration has increased approximately 13% in the past 200 years."

"Atmospheric concentrations of CFCs rose steadily following their first synthesis in 1928 and peaked in the early 1990s. Many other industrially useful fluorinated compounds... have very long atmospheric lifetimes, which is of concern... s (HFCs), which are replacing CFCs, have a greenhouse effect, but it is much less pronounced..."

"The sensitivity and generality of modern analytical systems make it quite unlikely that any currently significant greenhouse gases remain to be discovered."

"The IPCC’s conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community... Despite the uncertainties, there is general agreement that the observed warming is real and particularly strong within the past 20 years."

"If a central estimate of climate sensitivity is used, about 40% of the predicted warming is due to the direct effects of greenhouse gases and aerosols. The other 60% is caused by s."

"Water vapor feedback (the additional greenhouse effect accruing from increasing concentrations of atmospheric water vapor as the atmosphere warms)... is expected to increase the temperature response to increases in human induced greenhouse gas concentrations by a factor of 1.6. The ice-albedo feedback (the reduction in the fraction of incoming solar radiation reflected back to space as snow and ice cover recede) also is believed to be important. Together, these two feedbacks amplify the simulated climate response to the greenhouse gas forcing by a factor of 2.5."

"With higher sea level, coastal regions could be subject to increased wind and flood damage..."

"[H]eat stress and smog induced respiratory illnesses in major urban areas would increase, if no adaptation occurred."

"[A]ssessments that examine only the next 100 years may well underestimate the magnitude of the eventual impacts."

"[R]isk increases with increases in both the rate and the magnitude of climate change."

"There are two numbers you need to know about climate change. The first is 51 billion. The other is zero. Fifty-one billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere every year. . . . Zero is what we need to aim for [by the year 2050 to] stop the warming and avoid the worst effects of climate change . . . ."

"I [have become] convinced of three things: 1. To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero {net emissions by the year 2050}. 2. We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter. 3. And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way."

"When it comes to climate change, I know innovation isn’t the only thing we need. But we cannot keep the earth livable without it. Techno-fixes are not sufficient, but they are necessary."

"Some companies may go under in the coming years; that comes with the territory when you’re doing cutting-edge work . . . ."

"The reason we need to get to zero is simple. Greenhouse gases trap heat, causing the average surface temperature of the earth to go up. . . . Once greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, they stay there for a very long time . . . . There’s no scenario in which we keep adding carbon to the atmosphere and the world stops getting hotter, and the hotter it gets, the harder it will be for humans to survive, much less thrive."

"We need to accomplish something gigantic we have never done before, much faster than we have ever done anything similar. To do it, we need lots of breakthroughs in science and engineering. We need to build a consensus that doesn’t exist and create public policies to push a transition that would not happen otherwise. . . . But don’t despair. We can do this."

"[Question] 1. How Much of the 51 Billion Tons Are We Talking About? . . . Tip: Whenever you see some number of tons of greenhouse gases, convert it to a percentage of 51 billion, which is the world’s current yearly total emissions (in carbon dioxide equivalents)."

"[Question] 2. What’s Your Plan for Cement? . . . [This question] is just a shorthand reminder that if you're trying to come up with a comprehensive plan for climate change, you have to account for much more than electricity and cars."

"Pages 54 and 55"

"[Question] 3: How Much Power Are We Talking About? . . . [A] watt is a bit of energy per second [like] measuring the flow of water out of your kitchen faucet . . . . Watts are equivalent to "cups per second." A watt is pretty small. A small incandescent bulb might use 40 of them. A hair dryer uses 1,500. A power plant might generate hundreds of millions of watts. . . . Because these numbers get big fast, it's convenient to use some shorthand. A kilowatt is 1,000 watts, a megawatt is a million, and a gigawatt . . . is a billion."

"Pages 56 and 57"

"[Question] 5: How Much Is This Going to Cost? . . . Most . . . zero-carbon solutions are more expensive than their fossil-fuel counterparts. . . . These additional costs are what I call Green Premiums. . . . Green Premiums [can help us] decide which zero-carbon solutions we should deploy now [those with low or negative premiums] and where we should pursue breakthroughs because the clean alternatives aren't cheap enough."

"[W]e’re going to need much more clean electricity in the coming years. . . . [B]y 2050 . . . the world will need much more than three times the electricity we generate now."

"Deploying today’s renewables and improving transmission couldn’t be more important. . . . Unless we use large amounts of nuclear energy . . . every path to zero in the United States will require us to install as much wind and solar power as we can build and find room for. . . . [[w:Renewable energy in the United States#Potential resources|[M]ost countries aren’t as lucky as the United States when it comes to solar and wind resources]]. . . . That’s why, even as we deploy, deploy, deploy solar and wind, the world is going to need some new clean electricity inventions too."

"Offshore wind holds a lot of promise . . . ."

"[W]e don’t have a practical way to make [the cement in concrete] without producing carbon."

"[C]ement . . . steel [and] plastics are cheap because fossil fuels are cheap."

"[In discussing solely cement, steel and plastics in this chapter] I'm leaving out fertilizer, glass, paper, aluminum, and many others. . . . We manufacture enormous amounts of materials, resulting in copious amounts of greenhouse gases, nearly a third of the 51 billion tons per year."

"[T]he path to zero emissions in manufacturing looks like this: (1) Electrify every process possible. This is going to take a lot of innovation. (2) Get that electricity from a power grid that’s been decarbonized. This also will take a lot of innovation. (3) Use carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions. And so will this. (4) Use materials more efficiently. Same."

"With agriculture . . . each year’s emissions of methane and nitrous oxide are the equivalent of more than 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide."

"There’s so much animal poop that it’s actually the second-biggest cause of emissions in agriculture, behind enteric fermentation."

"[W]orldwide, crops take up less than half the nitrogen applied to farm fields. The rest runs off into ground or surface waters, causing pollution, or escapes into the air in the form of nitrous oxide . . . ."

"The most effective tree-related strategy for climate change is to stop cutting down so many of the trees we already have."

"{W}ith transportation, the zero-carbon future is basically this: Use electricity to run all the vehicles we can, and get cheap alternative fuels for the rest. In the first group are passenger cars and trucks, light and medium trucks, and buses. In the second group are long-distance trucks, trains, airplanes, and container ships."

"The path to zero carbon for heating actually looks a lot like the path for passenger cars: (1) electrify what we can, getting rid of natural gas water heaters and furnaces, and (2) develop clean fuels to do everything else."

"In most locations, your overall costs will go down if you get rid of an electric air conditioner and gas (or oil) furnace and replace both with an electric heat pump."

"You already have a heat pump in your home . . . . It's called a refrigerator."

"Just about everyone who’s alive now will have to adapt to a warmer world. As sea levels and floodplains change, we’ll need to rethink where we put homes and businesses. We’ll need to shore up power grids, seaports, and bridges. We’ll need to plant more mangrove forests . . . and improve our early-warning systems for storms."

"As the climate gets warmer, droughts and floods will become more frequent, wiping out harvests more often."

"Rich and middle-income people are causing the vast majority of climate change. The poorest people are doing less than anyone else to cause the problem, but they stand to suffer the most from it. They deserve the world’s help, and they need more of it than they’re getting."

"By the middle of this century, the cost of climate change to all coastal cities could exceed $1 trillion . . . each year."

"There are various ways, including a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program, to ensure that at least some of [the] external costs {associated with greenhouse gas emissions} are paid by whoever is responsible for them. . . . The idea isn't to punish people for their greenhouse gases; it's to create an incentive for inventors to create competitive carbon-free alternatives. By progressively increasing the price of carbon to reflect its true cost, governments can nudge producers and consumers toward more efficient decisions and encourage innovation . . . ."

"[I]f you want a measuring stick for which countries are making progress on climate change . . . don't simply look for the ones that are reducing their emissions. Look for the ones that are setting themselves up to get to zero."

"Technologies needed [to help avoid a climate disaster]: Hydrogen produced without emitting carbon Grid-scale electricity storage that can last a full season Electrofuels Advanced biofuels Zero-carbon cement Zero-carbon steel Plant- and cell-based meat and dairy Zero-carbon fertilizer Next-generation nuclear fission Nuclear fusion Carbon capture (both direct air capture and point capture) Underground electricity transmission Zero-carbon plastics Geothermal energy Pumped hydro Thermal storage Drought- and flood-tolerant food crops Zero-carbon alternatives to palm oil [and] Coolants that don’t contain F-gases."

"To get these [breakthroughs on the "Technologies needed" list] ready soon enough to make a difference, governments need to . . . [q]uintuple clean energy and climate-related R&D over the next decade. . . ."

"It helps to set ambitious goals and commit to meeting them, the way countries around the world did with the 2015 Paris Agreement. It’s easy to mock international agreements, but they’re part of how progress happens: If you like having an ozone layer, you can thank an international agreement called the Montreal Protocol."

"There are markets worth billions of dollars waiting for someone to invent low-cost, zero-carbon cement or steel, or a net-zero liquid fuel. As I’ve tried to show, making these breakthroughs and getting them to scale will be hard, but the opportunities are so big that it’s worth getting out in front of the rest of the world."

"As a Citizen . . . Make calls, write letters, attend town halls. . . . [M]ake clear that this is an issue that will help determine how you vote. . . . Look locally as well as nationally. . . . Run for office."

"As a Consumer . . . Sign up for a green pricing program with your electric utility. . . . Reduce your home's emissions. . . . Buy an electric vehicle. . . . Try a plant-based burger."

"As an Employee or Employer . . . Prioritize innovation in low-carbon solutions. . . . Be an early adopter. . . . Connect with government-funded research."

"We should spend the next decade focusing on the technologies, [governmental] policies and market structures that will put us on the path to eliminating greenhouse gases by 2050. It's hard to think of a better response to a miserable [year of COVID-19 disruptions during] 2020 than spending the next ten years dedicating ourselves to this ambitious goal."

"Gates is right about the scale and urgency of the problem . . . . [He has a] touching, admirable faith in science and reason, [but he also] knows that the solution he seeks is inextricably tied up in political decisions. . . . [T]o operationalise the [[w:Paris Agreement|Paris [COP21] agreement]] – to limit warming to 1.5 degrees – requires countries to halve their CO2 emissions by 2030. So vested interests like big oil will have to be enlisted for change. The . . . rhetoric of irresponsible demagogues will have to be taken head on. And supporters of a stronger set of commitments will have to show why sharing sovereignty is in every nation’s self-interest . . . . Success will come by demonstrating that the real power countries can wield to create a better world is not the power they can exercise over others but the power they can exercise with others."

"[How to Avoid a Climate Disaster] could not be more timely . . . . [W]e are in dire need of solutions to the greatest crisis our species has yet faced. . . . It is a disappointment, then, to report that this book turns out to be a little underwhelming. . . . [The [[w:Swanson's law|price of] solar power has dropped astonishingly in the last decade]] [and] storage batteries are now dropping in price on a similar curve . . . . [Bill Gates is] absolutely right that we should be investing in research across a wide list of technologies because we may need them down the line to help scrub the last increments of fossil fuel from the system, but the key work will be done (or not) over the next decade, and it will be done by sun and wind. . . . Most people, Gates included, have not caught on yet to just [[w:Cost of electricity by source|how fast [the price decline for solar and wind power] is happening]]. So why aren’t we moving much faster than we are? That’s because of politics, and this is where Gates really wears blinders. "I think more like an engineer than a political scientist," he says proudly — but that means he can write an entire book about the "climate disaster" without discussing the role that the fossil fuel industry played, and continues to play, in preventing action. . . . Power comes in many forms, from geothermal and nuclear to congressional and economic; it’s wonderful that Gates has decided to work hard on climate questions, but to be truly helpful he needs to resolve to be a better geek — he needs to really get down on his hands and knees and examine how that power works in all its messiness. Politics very much included."

"Bill Gates [in his] new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" [asserts that if] humanity is to win the great race between development and degradation . . . green innovation must accelerate. . . . [G]iven the pressing need to decarbonise the global economy, says Mr Gates, "we have to force an unnaturally speedy transition" [to carbon-free energy, and the] linchpin of his argument is the introduction of a meaningful carbon price to account for the externalities involved in using dirty energy. . . . [Some will consider Gates' views on several issues to be] an outmoded mindset. He is an unabashed defender of carbon-free nuclear power, despite the industry's failure to solve serious problems surrounding waste and proliferation. He chastises those who make a fetish out of wind and solar technologies, emphasising the constraints of the intermittent generation they involve. . . . Mr Gates . . . acknowledges the power of the state and a need for intergovernmental co-operation, something not often heard from techno-libertarians; but he also calls for more green ambition and risk-taking by short-termist investors and company bosses. Ultimately his book is a primer on how to reorganise the global economy so that innovation focuses on the world’s gravest problems. It is a powerful reminder that if mankind is to get serious about tackling them, it must do more to harness the one natural resource available in infinite quantity — human ingenuity."

"In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates takes a technology-centered approach to understanding the climate crisis. . . . [I]n 2015, Gates and several dozen other wealthy people launched Breakthrough Energy, an interlinked venture capital fund, lobbying group, and research effort [that invests] in energy innovation. . . . A parallel effort, an international pact called Mission Innovation [persuades governments to fund] clean-energy research and development. These various endeavors are the through line for [the] book . . . As many others have pointed out, a lot of the necessary technology already exists; much can be done now. Though Gates doesn’t dispute this, his book focuses on the technological challenges that he believes must still be overcome to achieve greater decarbonization. He spends less time on the political obstacles . . . . Yet politics, in all its messiness, is the key barrier to progress on climate change."

"Few climate crisis books give cause for hope. But Bill Gates’s new title does just that as [he] charts a way for private enterprises and governments to stave off the worst of global warming. . . . [He] is convinced that fossil fuels have to be replaced with renewable energy – and as soon as possible. Factories, vehicles and heating systems must all become electrified, and then run on green power. . . . So far, so good! [He also] says nuclear plants will stabilise the smart grids that link our energy systems of the future. . . . Here, however, he’s wrong. . . . [H]e underestimates the expert opinion that better storage – batteries and beyond – together with demand management and smart networks can balance the grid. One cornerstone to this way forward: natural gas would have to be on standby. But why not? This is already the case in Germany. . . . The other bone I have to pick with Gates lies in his contention that our market economies and extravagant lifestyles don’t have to change. . . . [C]riticism aside, this readable and jargon-free book offers valuable nuggets and advice for investors and politicos."

"Already in 1874, Jules Verne in his novel The Mysterious Island, lets the engineer Cyrus Harding reply when asked what mankind will burn instead of coal, once it has been depleted: water decomposed into its primitive elements. ... and decomposed doubtless, by electricity ... Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Today's energy and transport system, which is based mainly on fossil fuels, can in no way be evaluated as sustainable. In the light of the projected increase of global energy demand, concerns over energy supply security, climate change, local air pollution and increasing prices of energy services are having a growing impact on policy making throughout the world. At present, oil, with a share of more than one third in the global primary energy mix, is still the largest primary fuel and covers more than 95% of the energy demand in the transport sector."

"The medium of energy transport from an atomic reactor to sites at which energy is required should not be electricity, but hydrogen. The term "hydrogen economy" applies to the energetic, ecological, and economic aspects of this concept. The concept envisages reactors held on platforms floating on water. They are in water sufficiently deep to make heat dissipation easy/ The electricity they make would be converted on site to hydrogen and oxygen by hydrolysis. The hydrogen would be piped to distribution stations and thereafter sent to factory and home. Reconversion to electricity would take place in on-site fuel cells, the only side product ebing pure water."

"While industry players have already started the market introduction of hydrogen fuel cell systems, including fuel cell electric vehicles and micro-combined heat and power devices, the use of hydrogen at grid scale requires the challenges of clean hydrogen production, bulk storage and distribution to be resolved. Ultimately, greater government support, in partnership with industry and academia, is still needed to realize hydrogen's potential across all economic sectors."

"Although in many ways hydrogen is an attractive replacement for fossil fuels, it does not occur in nature as the fuel H2. Rather, it occurs in chemical compounds like water or hydrocarbons that must be chemically transformed to yield H2. Hydrogen, like electricity, is a carrier of energy, and like electricity, it must be produced from a natural resource. At present, most of the world’s hydrogen is produced from natural gas by a process called steam reforming. However, producing hydrogen from fossil fuels would rob the hydrogen economy of much of its raison d’être: Steam reforming does not reduce the use of fossil fuels but rather shifts them from end use to an earlier production step; and it still releases carbon to the environment in the form of CO2. Thus, to achieve the benefits of the hydrogen economy, we must ultimately produce hydrogen from non-fossil resources, such as water, using a renewable energy source."

"Unlike CH4 and CO2, ammonia is not a greenhouse gas. In the atmosphere, it quickly forms hydrogen bonds to water vapor and returns to the ground in alkaline rain. However, NH3 is toxic, chills its surroundings rapidly on vaporizing, and releases heat on contact with water. Engineering a safe fuel tank for an ammonia-fueled vehicle would be a key priority. Ammonia is an excellent material for hydrogen storage. ... the volume density of hydrogen in liquid NH3 is more than 40% greater than in liquid H2, and the comparison becomes much more favorable when one considers the weight of the required fuel tank and peripherals. Unlike H2 gas, ammonia explodes in air only over a narrow range of concentrations. Shipping ammonia from production site to point-of-use does not require a great deal of cooling or high pressure. Thousands of miles of NH3 pipeline in the US stand as evidence that reliable infrastructure for NH3 transport and storage has been engineered. In sum, liquid NH3 is not just an excellent hydrogen-storage material but also an ideal medium for moving hydrogenic energy from place to place."

"One alternative to fossil fuels is ‘green’ hydrogen, which can be produced through water electrolysis by using an electric current to split water into hydrogen and oxygen with no greenhouse gas emissions, provided the electricity used to power the process is entirely from renewables. Hydrogen’s high mass energy density, light weight, and facile electrochemical conversion allow it to carry energy across geographical regions through pipelines or in the form of liquid fuels like ammonia on freight ships ... Across sectors as it can be used as a chemical feedstock, burned for heat, used as a reagent for synthetic fuel production, or converted back to electricity through fuel cells. Furthermore, hydrogen’s long-term energy storage capacity in tanks or underground caverns ... makes it one of the only green technologies that can store energy across seasons."

"There are three different primary energy-supply system classes which may be used to implement the hydrogen economy, namely, fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas, and as yet largely unused supplies such as shale oil, oil from tar sands, natural gas from geo-pressured locations, etc.), nuclear reactors including fission reactors and breeders or fusion nuclear reactors over the very long term, and renewable energy sources (including hydroelectric power systems, wind-energy systems, ocean thermal energy conversion systems, geothermal resources, and a host of direct solar energy-conversion systems including biomass production, photovoltaic energy conversion, solar thermal systems, etc.). Examination of present costs of hydrogen production by any of these means shows that the hydrogen economy favored by people searching for a non-polluting gaseous or liquid energy carrier will not be developed without new discoveries or innovations. Hydrogen may become an important market entry in a world with most of the electricity generated in nuclear fission or breeder reactors when high-temperature waste heat is used to dissociate water in chemical cycles or new inventions and innovations lead to low-cost hydrogen production by applying as yet uneconomical renewable solar techniques that are suitable for large-scale production such as direct water photolysis with suitably tailored band gaps on semiconductors or low-cost electricity supplies generated on ocean-based platforms using temperature differences in the tropical seas."

"Most people are engaged in building up their community as a defense."

"Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon."

"When we look at the rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather … What people (must) do is to change their behavior and their attitudes … for our upcoming generation we have to do something, and we have to demand for government support."

"Just knowing what’s right, or healthy, or environmentally friendly isn’t really a sufficient model for changing behaviors."

"The fact that your neighbor can look at your solar panels and ask you questions has more impact than just listening to experts on TV."

"Climate messages are most impactful when they resonate with and affirm a person’s underlying values and identities."

"There’s a psychological phenomenon called ‘reactance,’ that means when people believe that their choices are being limited or they’re going to have to engage in costly behaviors, they’re likely to push back against that and the message can backfire."

"In an integrated system, all of the products of an interaction can cycle locally. Food scraps from the table can feed the chickens. Chicken waste can feed the worms. Worms can feed the chickens. Worm castings can provide the nutrients for vegetables. Vegetable trimmings can feed the chickens. The chickens, eggs and vegetables can feed the people producing the table scraps."

"Freed from the ‘tyranny of the two-by-four and four-by-eight,’...we can build a house out of anything."

"It seems highly likely to me that climate change poses a major problem for the planet. I say “highly likely” rather than “certain” because I have no scientific aptitude and remember well the dire predictions of most “experts” about Y2K. It would be foolish, however, for me or anyone to demand 100% proof of huge forthcoming damage to the world if that outcome seemed at all possible and if prompt action had even a small chance of thwarting the danger."

"There’s a lot of knowledge built up in experience, and there’s a lot of energy that’s stored in young people....When you put those two together, you have … an excellent recipe for potential success"

"Global warming causing climate change may be the ultimate issue that unites us all."

"The single biggest thing that an individual can do to combat climate change is to stop eating animals. Because of the huge, huge carbon footprint of animal agriculture. I was shocked to find out that animal agriculture directly or indirectly accounts for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, compared to all transportation – every ship, car, truck, plane on the planet only accounts for 13%. Less than animal agriculture. So most people think that buying a Prius is the answer, and it’s certainly not wrong, but it’s not the biggest agent of climate change."

"People always use palm oil, it’s everywhere, but because of shareholder advocacy and proxy voting, investors were able to make sure there was less deforestation in Southeast Asia."

"It’s important to both educate and empower children. Educate them, because they need to know what’s going on. This is their world and they need to be prepared for it."

"In any given neighborhood, there is a huge collection of things that are owned by individuals but could become shared resources. In a single community of fifty homes, there might be close to fifty complete sets of home tools, car seats for newborns and toddlers, toys for every stage of child development, cookbooks, plumbing snakes, clothing of every size and color, furniture, old monitors, camping gear, and so on."

"...most people find it easier to think about their own health than that of the planet, so emphasising the health benefits of low-carbon activities like cycling instead of driving, or insulating draughty homes, might be a better way to go."

"Avoiding wastefulness in energy use, improving health outcomes, conserving green spaces and forests, creating a sense of pride in rebuilding the Great British energy system, and fostering a sense of responsibility to future generations are ways of talking about climate change that are more likely to resonate than guilt-laden messages about self-sacrifice."

"Fashion companies should be encouraging their customers to engage themselves in the circular economy, a process that would entail taking one’s old garments back to the retailer to be recycled into new garments."

"Scientists say solar panels lower peak demand on stressed traditional grids and have reduced the amount of infrastructure dollars that energy utilities must invest. By hooking your solar panels to the grid, you’re sneakily a hands-on investor in your local utilities."

"We dismantled a building on the ETH campus, the material of which was to be disposed of afterwards. It was the students who urged to keep the components. Without their pressure, this would not have been possible. The young generation holds us accountable for our actions."

"...as we start to realize that the world that we live in isn’t sustainable, and that corporations will stop making money if we lose the planet, then that funding is going to start showing up."

"Not only do we get to reduce our waste, but we also find ways to be creative, active, and involved."

"Overall, the (new) paper is one more twig in the bundle of concerns that low-lying coastal cities, and especially Pacific islands, are highly vulnerable to this problem of sea-level rise, [sic] these Pacific islands have contributed almost nothing to the problem of global warming."

"I know myself to be more helpful when I have addressed my own needs: needs for good food and good company, for hope, for long afternoons in the sunshine… I know that hope is not a happy accident. Hope is a right we must protect."

"Choosing to eat fewer animal products is probably the most important action an individual can take to reverse global warming—it has a known and significant effect on the environment, and, done collectively, would push the culture and the marketplace with more force than any march."

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."

"We have enough clothing on the planet right now to clothe the next six generations of the human race: we have to find ways of using what we’ve got."

"Driving an electric car a mile costs you 2 or 3 cents; driving a gas car a mile costs you 20 cents. Having a hot shower with an electric heat pump costs you 20 cents; having a hot shower with gas costs you 60 cents."

"Those jobs would have a multiplying effect, as the woman who gets a good job as a solar installer is going to spend money in her local community."

"Australia ran a certification and training program for building a workforce that also certified the installers as inspectors. This made the process of purchasing and installing solar in Australia simple and doable in a matter of days."

"Our way of walking on the Earth has a great influence on animals and plants. We have killed so many animals and plants and destroyed their environments. Many are now extinct. In turn, our environment is now harming us. We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth. The future of all life, including our own, depends on our mindful steps."

"Eager student volunteers from Frederick Douglass [Academy High School]...helped with mowing, preparing the soil, and [built] the initial 30 garden beds—which grew to 58 the second year."

"Those who know someone who has stopped flying because of climate change are more likely to curtail their own flying—and the effect is increased if it’s a high-profile person that’s stopped flying."

"I begin with the values that I share with whomever I am talking to....something as simple as wondering where our water will be coming from in 20 years; worrying about the local economy; caring for our children; or our desire to live out the faith that is central to who we are."

"...before shopping for fancy zero-waste reusable items you’ve seen on Instagram, look around the house to see what items you can repurpose or upcycle to help you reduce your waste."

"Members of Congress are more open to listening to POW athletes because we’re on the front lines of climate change."

"Libraries of Things are rolling together all the things people only infrequently need and bringing them together in one place, so they have something for everyone. Pay one membership or subscription fee, and you can borrow everything from camping gear to a popcorn maker."

"...we’ve got to get the building trades organizations, the construction trades, and the oil workers. These are the people who need to be brought on board in terms of climate."

"If we want labor to be effective in terms of fighting global warming, we’ve got to have laws that are gonna strengthen labor unions."

"We need energy and activism on the part of the working people to put pressure on Congress and on those legislators who are not cooperating."

"Since I aligned my actions with my values, I have witnessed more of my loved ones giving up flights and opting out of fast lifestyles as well."

"Dining from your garden costs you less, saves energy, and helps us all breathe a little easier."

"Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850."

"I do think that climate change is occurring, that it is man-caused. One of the proposals that I think is a very libertarian proposal, and I'm just open to this, is taxing carbon emission that may have the result of being self-regulating. ... The market will take care of it. I mean, when you look at it from the standpoint of better results, and actually less money to achieve those results, that's what is being professed by a carbon tax."

"The reality is, no politician has ever lost an election due to their stance on climate. It's why we do not see real, meaningful climate action."

"In Cambodia, 40 women are growing and selling crickets as an alternative food source, earning $2,600 for the first tonne of cricket farmed."

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

"The resources required to rapidly move away from fossil fuels and prepare for the coming heavy weather could pull huge swaths of humanity out of poverty, providing services now sorely lacking, from clean water to electricity...."

"The greenest energy to use is the energy we don’t use at all."

"If only 16% of students receive an adequate education about climate change, we could see a nearly 19 gigaton reduction of carbon dioxide by 2050."

"Financial incentives and social pressure worked better at changing behaviors than did education or feedback."

"People are coming to understand...that even the most imposing and seemingly immutable constraints can indeed be overcome when an enraged citizenry sets its mind to it."

"It requires only somewhere between 15%–18% of the target population before we see an exponential increase in adoption."

"[Sustainable design means] designing something that could have multiple iterations of its use over 100 years, rather than making something so specific that it becomes a white elephant."

"In New York, the unions won a far-reaching climate agreement to shift half of New York State’s total energy needs to wind power by 2035. They did it by moving billions of subsidies away from fossil fuels and into a union jobs guarantee known as a project labor agreement."

"Fair or not, boomers and the Silent Generation have about 70% of the country’s money, compared with about 5% for millennials. So if you want to push around Washington, or Wall Street, or your state capital, it helps to have some people with hairlines like mine."

"If you really think that the environment is less important than the economy, try holding your breath while you count your money."

"The rise in electric vehicle sales has created a rush for minerals such as lithium and copper, with devastating impacts on beautiful places."

"In a circular economy, waste is eliminated through better design, rather than developing novel ways to utilise waste that has already been created."

"In Cebu, we were able to close the road from the Provincial Capitol of Cebu all the way to Pier Uno to raise our demand for road sharing. Everybody came―cyclists and joggers of all ages, even children. That was an eye-opener."

"We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it."

"One of the most cost-effective and accessible tactics to combating the climate crisis is better insulation….If even half of existing buildings installed thicker insulation, 8.3 gigatons of emissions could be avoided—that’s more than overhauling efficiency for the entire international shipping industry."

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

"The whole concept of green building is to reduce the demand which enables you to use fewer resources to satisfy the demand."

"There can be this reverse causality that, actually, if you have a lot of cyclists, they will demand better infrastructure, and it’s not really the infrastructure that creates more cycling."

"Solar power appears to be contagious....If you install solar photovoltaic panels on your roof, that greatly increases the odds that your neighbors will, in turn, install their own panels."

"A third of the food raised or prepared does not make it from farm or factory to fork...The food we waste is responsible for roughly eight percent of global emissions."

"Individuals can make a difference, and some educators lean into that to combat this feeling of defeat in their students—whether it’s through school recycling and compost initiatives, cutting back on eating meat like doing meatless Mondays, etc."

"In communicating about climate change, we risk neglecting the most important aspects, which are not just how the climate is changing but how we want to act to mitigate its impacts: where to make wind farms? Do we want to go back to nuclear or not?"

"We can put solar panels on our schools and make money for the school system through the state’s first power purchase agreement [and ultimately] surpass our city’s climate goals and save millions of dollars in the process."

"These women are shattering the glass ceiling! They have installed solar systems to four indigenous communities impacting over 1000 residents...."

"The [mineral estate conservation easement] could restrict mineral extraction under property, which could help landowners concerned about horizontal drilling and other activities."

"At the end of February, thousands of cleaning workers in Minneapolis marched in what’s believed to have been the first union-authorized climate strike in the United States…. Their demands ranged from a guarantee of more environmentally friendly cleaning products to funding for a ‘green technician janitorial training program.’"

"Weaponize the outdoor community as a political movement."

"[Y]ou can vote and get involved in the political process, and you can not support companies that aren't at the very least transparent about their practices."

"Community-managed forests have fewer forest fires, and there is almost zero rate of deforestation."

"If there is an adage that informs life in co-housing, it’s treat thy neighbor as thy family....what do happy families do? For one thing, they share stuff."

"Many of us are absorbing the enormity of climate change in isolation, not realizing that others are also concerned and taking action."

"Intergenerational collaboration around climate issues, particularly in this election season, starts at home, and then goes to the polling booth."

"Do you really need this thing? Can you get it secondhand and reuse it? Can you reimagine how to use it when you’re done with it?"

"The true benefit to changing consumption habits is that you’re also changing your mindset about your relationship with stuff."

"Pollution and climate change by excessive burning of fossil fuels are real threats, not the people who warn that we must take these threats seriously."

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."

"You cannot mass produce fashion or consume ‘sustainably’ as the world is shaped today. That is one of the many reasons why we will need a system change."

"I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is."

"As more systems become complex, the more you have to decentralize – because people can then manage in a much more agile way as they adapt to those complex situations."

"The beautiful thing about healthy soil is that it does not matter if you care about climate change, or if you care about the drought, or if you just care about healthy food, or if you want to see more biodiversity, restoring soil hits all of those targets. Almost everyone has some self-interest or desire for soil to be restored."

"Voting is the single most important action Americans can take to address climate change...."

"In 2014, after repeated calls to government went unheeded, indigenous Guajajara and Ka’apor communities organized their own patrols to rid their land of illegal loggers. They have captured loggers cutting timber or setting fire in their lands, confiscated their chainsaws and seized their trucks."

"If we want people to actually invest in things like decarbonising their home heating, we need them to ‘get’ climate change, and we need them to trust in the actions that they can take."

"What we mean by social connectedness is allowing people to get to know each other that might not have known each other, and also fostering that spirit of collaboration....So when the storms come, and the heat waves happen, and the rain descends, people are looking out for each other."

"It makes sense to help build social infrastructure in a community [to] increase the likelihood of people surviving during these extreme weather events."

"The most direct impacts are seen in community gardens, where the natural setting helps break down social boundaries and unite the neighborhoods under a common goal to improve their environment."

"An Arkansas High School was able to install solar panels on their open field and within three years their budget surplus grew so large they rewarded all teachers with raises between $3,000 – $15,000."

"There is evidence that some corals are now dying on the most severely affected reefs."

"Some coral varieties are also more heat-resistant, and a particular reef that has been exposed to high temperatures in the past may better cope with the current conditions."

"Coral bleaching is the greatest threat to the sustainability of coral reefs worldwide and is now clearly one of the greatest challenges we face in responding to the impact of global climate change."

"“I never felt like it was an option [to not be interested], to be honest,”"

"“Some people say that your parents shape your political views, but it’s been much of the opposite [for me].”"

"“My first and biggest role model is my Mum,”"

"“These are real experiences and this is a very real issue that affects people on a very personal level. Not being afraid to show that vulnerability has been really, really instrumental in getting the coverage that we did.”"

"“I used to deal with so much climate anxiety and fear, thinking, ‘Wow, we are one day closer to that deadline’.”"

"“Growing up in Australia I consider myself really fortunate,” she says. “I got an education that helped me make sense of what was happening.”"

"In the limestone ranges of Western Australia’s Kimberley region, near the town of Fitzroy Crossing, you’ll find one of the world’s best-preserved ancient reef complexes."

"Here lie the remnants of myriad prehistoric marine animals, including placoderms, a prehistoric class of fish that represents some of our earliest jawed ancestors."

"If all jawed vertebrates, including humans, are nothing more than highly evolved placoderms, then key features of ourselves should be traceable to structures that first appeared in our fishy placoderm ancestors. This would include particular jaw and skull bones and the proportions of our face and brain."

"Imagine trying to identify and compare equivalent bits of anatomy shared between an oyster, a beetle and a blue whale. That is essentially the problem we face with early vertebrate fossils."

"Some of the earliest civilizations are known from the Indus (Harappan) and Yellow River (Qijia and Longshan) valleys, developing along with those in Mesopotamia and Egypt. These cultures collapsed around 4200 y BP at a time of rapid monsoon weakening, owing to direct negative impact on regional agriculture and more indirectly through changes in the river systems."

"M. Berkelhammer led an international team to a cave in Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, ‘among the wettest locations on Earth with an annual average precipitation in excess of 11,000 mm’, and studied the isotopic variations in a stalagmite: Oxygen 18 isotope as an index of precipitation, and the Uranium-Thorium method for absolute dating of the stalagmite, which went back almost 12,000 years for a growth of nearly 2 m. The results highlighted a ‘dramatic event ... ~ 4000 years ago when, over the course of approximately a decade, isotopic values abruptly rose above any seen during the early to mid-Holocene and remained at this anomalous state for almost two centuries.’ This suggested either ‘a shift toward an earlier Indian Summer Monsoon withdrawal or a general decline in the total amount of monsoon precipitation.’ The study’s ‘tight age constraints of the record show with a high degree of certainty that much of the documented deurbanization of the Indus Valley at 3.9 kyr B.P. occurred after multiple decades of a shift in the monsoon’s character....’"

"The 4.2 ka event is coherent with the termination of urban Harappan civilization in the Indus valley."

"M. Berkelhammer led an international team to a cave in Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, ‘among the wettest locations on Earth with an annual average precipitation in excess of 11,000 mm’, and studied the isotopic variations in a stalagmite: Oxygen 18 isotope as an index of precipitation, and the Uranium-Thorium method for absolute dating of the stalagmite, which went back almost 12,000 years for a growth of nearly 2 m. The results highlighted a ‘dramatic event ... ~ 4000 years ago when, over the course of approximately a decade, isotopic values abruptly rose above any seen during the early to mid-Holocene and remained at this anomalous state for almost two centuries.’ This suggested either ‘a shift toward an earlier Indian Summer Monsoon withdrawal or a general decline in the total amount of monsoon precipitation.’ The study’s ‘tight age constraints of the record show with a high degree of certainty that much of the documented deurbanization of the Indus Valley at 3.9 kyr B.P. occurred after multiple decades of a shift in the monsoon’s character....’"

"To a considerable extent the process [of weakening of the political fabric of the Indus civilization] must have been linked to the hydrographic changes in the Sarasvati-Drishadvati system."

"Dales, who excavated Balakot, suggested that ‘a sudden rise in the Arabian Sea coastline of West Pakistan apparently took place sometime around the middle of the second millennium. This resulted in a disastrous increase in the already serious floods in the major river valleys. ... The Harappans were forced to migrate gradually to more fertile territory. There is now incontrovertible archaeological evidence that the major population shift was to the southeast into the area of the Kathiawar [= Saurashtra] peninsula....’"

"Human societies are ultimately dependent on the climate and environment they live in. Climate change and environmental degradation very likely contributed to the decline of the Harappan Civilization from the twenty-first century BCE; that is a lesson which, in the twenty-first century CE, we ought to ponder on."

"Convincing evidence, collected from both archaeological and natural science investigations, refutes the popular theories of appreciable climatic change in the South Asian area during the past four to five thousand years ... Climate has thus been practically eliminated as a major factor in the environmental fortunes of the Harappan civilization."

"More recently, the U.S. archaeologist Gregory Possehl supported this assessment: ‘The climate of this region [Greater Indus Valley] was not markedly different in the third millennium BC from the one we have today.’"

"The Indian archaeologist Dilip K. Chakrabarti also argues that ‘there can be no question of aridity = decline of civilization correlation’ and complains that ‘there seem to be too many [environmental determinists] today.’"

"The Indus settlements spanned a diverse range of environmental and ecological zones; therefore, correlation of evidence for climate change and the decline of Indus urbanism requires a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between settlement and climate across a substantial area."

"A climatic event cannot be blamed simplistically for [Harappan] collapse and de-urbanisation, but Quaternary science data make it clear that we cannot accept a view of climatic and environmental stability since the mid-Holocene in the region (as promoted by Possehl ...)"

"For a Civilization so widely distributed, no uniform ending need be postulated. Circumstances which affected it in the sub-montane lands of the central Indus may well have differed widely from those which it encountered south or east of the Indian Desert and in the watery coastlands of the Rann of Kutch. Later archaeologists often disagreed, finding little or no evidence for a climate significantly different in Harappan times from today’s. And the evidence at present available indicates that such indeed was the case."

"It is now clear that climatic and environmental disruptions played a major part in the break-up of the Indus civilization. No one can deny anymore that we are now undergoing another major climatic change; a just published study predicts that at least 70 per cent of the volume of Himalayan glaciers in the Everest region may disappear by the end of this century. With human interference (deforestation, excessive damming, etc.) compounding the problem, there have been warnings that Ganga and the Brahmaputra may turn into seasonal rivers even before. This may spell the end of the 3,000-year-old Ganges civilization in its mother-region. We must hope that mitigating steps will be urgently taken to save Ganga from becoming another Sarasvati. The Late Harappans had some time and plenty of space to relocate, fall back on rural lifestyles and adapt themselves to new situations; if Ganga and the Brahmaputra disappear, we may have neither. How will the tens of millions dependent on the Gangetic system survive when Prayag’s triveni sangam consists of three invisible, ‘mythical’ rivers?"

"A carbon budget is like a household budget. You only have so much money to spend. How you choose to spend and invest your money will determine the available budget for your retirement and the legacy you provide for future generations."

"… as we remake our economies to stay within our global carbon budget, we need to see less consumption (except among the poor), less trade (as we relocalize our economies), and less private investment in producing for excessive consumption. These reductions would be offset by increased government spending, and increased public and private investment in the infrastructure and alternatives needed to reduce our emissions to zero. Implicit in all of this is a great deal more redistribution, so that more of us can live comfortably within the planet’s capacity."

"If present climate-change trends continue, the “global carbon budget” associated with a 2°C increase in average global temperature will be broken in sixteen years (while a 1.5°C increase in global average temperature—staying beneath which is the key to long-term stabilization of the climate—will be reached in a decade). Earth System scientists warn that the world is now perilously close to a Hothouse Earth, in which catastrophic climate change will be locked in and irreversible. The ecological, social, and economic costs to humanity of continuing to increase carbon emissions by 2.0 percent a year as in recent decades (rising in 2018 by 2.7 percent—3.4 percent in the United States), and failing to meet the minimal 3.0 percent annual reductions in emissions currently needed to avoid a catastrophic destabilization of the earth’s energy balance, are simply incalculable. Nevertheless, major energy corporations continue to lie about climate change, promoting and bankrolling climate denialism—while admitting the truth in their internal documents. These corporations are working to accelerate the extraction and production of , including the dirtiest, most -generating varieties, reaping enormous profits in the process. The melting of the Arctic ice from global warming is seen by capital as a new , opening up massive additional oil and gas reserves to be exploited without regard to the consequences for the . In response to scientific reports on climate change, Exxon Mobil declared that it intends to extract and sell all of the fossil-fuel reserves at its disposal. Energy corporations continue to intervene in climate negotiations to ensure that any agreements to limit carbon emissions are defanged. Capitalist countries across the board are putting the accumulation of wealth for a few above combatting climate destabilization, threatening the very future of humanity."

"This target is not sufficient to protect the future for children growing up today. If the EU is to make its fair contribution to stay within the carbon budget for the 2C limit then it needs a minimum of 80 percent reduction by 2030, and that includes aviation and shipping... There is simply not enough time to wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge."

"Leaders should be telling the truth: that we are facing an emergency and we are not doing nearly enough. We need to prioritise the action that needs to be taken right here and right now, because it is right now that the carbon budget is being used up. We need to stop focusing on goals and targets for 2030 or 2050... We need to implement annual binding carbon budgets today."