"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

"Christiana Figueres"

"Greta Thunberg"

"Bill McKibben"

"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."

"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 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."

"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.”"

"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."

"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."

"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.”"

"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 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 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 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 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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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…"

"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."

"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."