‘In Even the Best Coverage There Is No Accountability for the Fossil Fuel Industry’

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Original article by JANINE JACKSON republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

CounterSpin interview with Evlondo Cooper on climate coverage

Janine Jackson interviewed Media Matters’ Evlondo Cooper about climate coverage for the March 22, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Media Matters (3/14/24)

Janine Jackson: Climate disruption is, of course, one of the most disastrous phenomena of today’s life, affecting every corner of the globe. It’s also one of the most addressable. We know what causes it, we know what meaningful intervention would entail. So it’s a human-made tragedy unfolding in real time before our eyes.

To understate wildly, we need to be talking about it, learning about it, hearing about it urgently, which is why the results of our next guest’s research are so alarming. I’ll just spoil it: Broadcast news coverage of the climate crisis is going down.

Evlondo Cooper is a senior writer with the Climate and Energy Program at Media Matters for America. He joins us now by phone from Washington state. Welcome to CounterSpin, Evlondo Cooper.

Evlondo Cooper: Thank you for having me. I’m excited about our conversation today.

JJ: We’re talking about the latest of Media Matters’ annual studies of climate crisis coverage. First of all, just tell us briefly what media you are looking at in these studies.

EC: So we’re looking at corporate broadcast network coverage. That’s ABC, CBS and NBC. And for the Sunday morning shows, we also include Fox BroadcastingFox News Sunday.

JJ: All right. And then, for context, this decline in coverage that you found in the most recent study, that’s down from very little to even less.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

EC: Yeah, so a little context: 2021 and 2022 were both record years for climate coverage, and that coverage was a little bit more than 1%. This year, we saw a 25% decrease from 2022, which brought coverage to a little bit less than 1%. We want to encourage more coverage, but even in the years where they were doing phenomenal, it was only about 1% of total coverage. And so this retrenchment by approximately 25% in 2023 is not a welcome sign, especially in a year where we saw record catastrophic extreme weather events, and scientists are predicting that 2024 might be even worse than ’23.

JJ: Let’s break out some of the things that you found. We’re talking about such small numbers—when you say 1%, that’s 1% of all of the broadcast coverage; of their stories, 1% were devoted to the climate crisis. But we’ve seen, there’s little things within it. For example, we are hearing more from actual climate scientists?

EC: That was a very encouraging sign, where this year we saw 41 climate scientists appeared, which was 10% of the featured guests in 2023, and that’s up from 4% in 2022. So in terms of quality of coverage, I think we’re seeing improvements. We’re seeing a lot of the work being done by dedicated climate correspondents, and meteorologists who are including climate coverage as part of their weather reports and their own correspondents’ segments, a bigger part of their reporting.

So there are some encouraging signs. I think what concerns us is that these improvements, while important and necessary and appreciated, are not keeping up with the escalating scale of climate change.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

JJ: It’s just not appropriate to the seriousness of the topic. And then another thing is, you could say the dominance of white men in the conversation, which I know is another finding, that’s just kind of par for the elite media course; when folks are talked to, they are overwhelmingly white men. But it might bear some relation to what you’re seeing as an underrepresentation of climate-impacted populations, looking at folks at the sharp end of climate disruption. That’s something you also consider.

EC: Yeah, we look at coverage of, broadly, climate justice. I think a lot of people believe it’s representation for representation’s sake, but I think when people most impacted by climate change—and we’re talking about communities of color, we’re talking about low-income communities, we’re talking about low-wealth rural communities—when these folks are left out of the conversation, you’re missing important context about how climate change is impacting them, in many cases, first and worse. And you’re missing important context about the solutions that these communities are trying to employ to deal with it. And I think you’re missing an opportunity to humanize and broaden support for climate solutions at the public policy level.

So these aren’t communities where these random acts of God are occurring; these are policy decisions, or indecisions, that have created an environment where these communities are being most harmed, but least talked about, and they’re receiving the least redress to their challenges. And so those voices are necessary to tell those stories to a broad audience on the corporate broadcast networks.

JJ: Yes, absolutely.

CBS (7/17/23)

Another finding that I thought was very interesting was that extreme weather seemed to be the biggest driver of climate coverage, and that, to me, suggests that the way corporate broadcast media are coming at climate disruption is reactive: “Look at what happened.”

EC: Totally.

JJ:  And even when they say, “Look at what’s happening,” and you know what, folks pretty much agree that this is due to climate disruption, these houses sliding into the river, it’s still not saying, “While you look at this disaster, know that this is preventable, and here is who is keeping us from acting on it and why.”

EC: Yeah, that is so insightful, because that’s a core critique of even the best coverage we see, that there is no accountability for the fossil fuel industry and other industries that are driving the crisis. And then there’s no real—solutions are mentioned in about 20% of climate segments this year. But the solutions are siloed, like there are solution “segments.”

But to your point, when we’re talking about extreme weather, when you have the most eyeballs hearing about climate change, to me, it would be very impactful to connect what’s happening in that moment—these wildfires, these droughts, these heat waves, these hurricanes and storms and flooding—to connect that to a key driver, fossil fuel industry, and talk about some potential solutions to mitigate these impacts while people are actually paying the most attention.

CNN (3/3/23)

JJ: And then take it to your next story about Congress, or your next story about funding, and connect those dots.

EC: Exactly. I mean, climate is too often siloed. So you could see a really great segment, for instance, on the Willow Project, at the top of the hour—and this is on cable, but the example remains—and then later in the hour, you saw a story about an extreme weather event. But those things aren’t connected, they’re siloed.

And so a key to improving coverage in an immediate way would be to understand that the climate crisis is the background for a range of issues, socioeconomic, political. Begin incorporating climate coverage in a much broader swath of stories that, whether you know it or not, indirectly or directly, are being impacted by global warming.

JJ: It’s almost as though corporate media have decided that another horrible disaster due to climate change, while it’s a story, it’s basically now like a dog-bites-man story. And if they aren’t going to explore these other angles, well, then there really isn’t anything to report until the next drought or the next mudslide. And that’s just a world away from what appropriate, fearless, future-believing journalism would be doing right now.

Evlondo Cooper: “It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action.”

EC: It’s out of step, right? Pull up the poll showing bipartisan support for government climate action, because, whether people know it or not, as far as the science, —and there’s some deniers out there, but anecdotally, people know something is happening, something is changing in their lives. We’re seeing record-breaking things that no one’s ever experienced, and they want the government to do something about it.

And so it’s important to cover extreme weather and to cover these catastrophes. And I know there’s a range of thought out there that says if you’re just focusing on devastating impacts, it could dampen public action. But to me, to your point, report on it and connect it to solutions, empower people to call their congressperson, their representative, their senator, to vote in ways that have local impacts to deal with the local climate impacts.

It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action in their own lives, and to galvanize public support.

And the public wants it. The public is asking for this. So I think just being responsive to what these polls are showing would be a way to immediately improve the way that they cover climate change right now.

JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with Evlondo Cooper of Media Matters for America. You can find this work and much else at MediaMatters.org. Evlondo Cooper, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

EC: Thank you for having me.

Original article by JANINE JACKSON republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Continue Reading‘In Even the Best Coverage There Is No Accountability for the Fossil Fuel Industry’

Pope Francis Urges Climate Action as World Nears ‘Breaking Point’

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Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Pope Francis during the act of appointment of cardinals in the Vatican Basilica of St. Peter, on September 30, 2023, in Rome, Italy.
 (Photo: Stefano Spaziani/Europa Press via Getty Images)

“The necessary transition towards clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed,” he said.

In his second major address on the climate crisis, Pope Francis called for urgent global action ahead of the COP28 United Nations climate conference.

The pontiff’s remarks came in a papal exhortation published Wednesday morning titled “Laudate Deum” or “praise God.”

“We must move beyond the mentality of appearing to be concerned but not having the courage needed to produce substantial changes,” Francis said.

The pope made waves in 2015 when he published an encyclical on climate and the environment titled Laudato Si, shortly before world leaders negotiated the Paris agreement. An exhortation is a shorter, less prestigious document, according to The Washington Post. In Wednesday’s document, the first he has published on the climate crisis in eight years, Francis reflected on how far the world hadn’t come.

“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,” he said.

As the world prepares for COP28, he said that international agreements had not so far led to effective action.

“The necessary transition towards clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed,” he said. “Consequently, whatever is being done risks being seen only as a ploy to distract attention.”

“In conferences on the climate, the actions of groups negatively portrayed as ‘radicalized’ tend to attract attention. But in reality they are filling a space left empty by society as a whole.”

He also addressed concerns about the conference being hosted in a major oil-producing country, though he acknowledged that the United Arab Emirates had made significant investments in renewable energy.

“Meanwhile, gas and oil companies are planning new projects there, with the aim of further increasing their production,” he said.

The pope warned about the consequences of inaction:

We know that at this pace in just a few years we will surpass the maximum recommended limit of 1.5° C and shortly thereafter even reach 3° C, with a high risk of arriving at a critical point. Even if we do not reach this point of no return, it is certain that the consequences would be disastrous and precipitous measures would have to be taken, at enormous cost and with grave and intolerable economic and social effects. Although the measures that we can take now are costly, the cost will be all the more burdensome the longer we wait.

Yet he also counseled against abandoning hope, saying it “would be suicidal, for it would mean exposing all humanity, especially the poorest, to the worst impacts of climate change.”

Instead, he argued that hope should be found in structural changes rather than relying entirely on technological fixes like carbon capture.

“We risk remaining trapped in the mindset of pasting and papering over cracks, while beneath the surface there is a continuing deterioration to which we continue to contribute,” he wrote. “To suppose that all problems in the future will be able to be solved by new technical interventions is a form of homicidal pragmatism, like pushing a snowball down a hill.”

Throughout the text, he emphasized climate justice, pointing out that the wealthy world had contributed more to the crisis, while the Global South suffered disproportionately from its impacts. In particular, he called on the United States to alter its energy-intensive lifestyle.

“If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” he said.

“Global leaders meeting in Dubai for COP28 must heed the pope’s call to agree to a just and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels and a transition to renewable energy, with adequate financial support for impacted countries.”

He also defended climate activists who have been criticized for disruptive tactics.

“In conferences on the climate, the actions of groups negatively portrayed as ‘radicalized’ tend to attract attention,” he said. “But in reality they are filling a space left empty by society as a whole, which ought to exercise a healthy ‘pressure,’ since every family ought to realize that the future of their children is at stake.”

Several long-time climate advocates welcomed Pope Francis’ remarks.

“The pope’s intervention ahead of the Dubai climate talks is welcome and adds to an increasingly loud chorus of voices demanding that countries tackle the root cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels,” Mariam Kemple Hardy, global campaigns manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement. “The pope is right to point out the growing gap between the urgent need to phase out all fossil fuels and the fact that countries and the oil and gas industry are doubling down on new production that is incompatible with a livable climate.”

Hardy also echoed the pope’s emphasis climate justice, calling out wealthy nations for continuing to exploit fossil fuels.

“Global leaders meeting in Dubai for COP28 must heed the pope’s call to agree to a just and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels and a transition to renewable energy, with adequate financial support for impacted countries. Unless it does so, COP28 will be a failure,” Hardy said.

350.org and Third Act co-founder Bill McKibben hoped that the pope’s message might succeed where others had failed.

“The work of spiritual leaders around the world may be our best chance of getting hold of things,” McKibben toldThe Guardian. “Yes, the engineers have done their job. Yes, the scientists have done their job. But it’s high time for the human heart to do its job. That’s what we need this leadership for.”

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingPope Francis Urges Climate Action as World Nears ‘Breaking Point’

‘Not Yet Defeated’: 1,000+ March for Climate Justice at COP27

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Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

People participate in the Global Day of Action Climate Justice March at COP27 on November 12, 2022 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. (Photo: Gertie Goddard/Greenhouse Communications via Twitter)

“COP27 needs to be a turning point for the climate crisis,” said one activist.

KENNY STANCILNovember 12, 2022

Hundreds of people rallied Saturday at the United Nations COP27 summit in Egypt to demand the fundamental political-economic transformations required to achieve climate justice.

“There can be no climate justice without human rights,” declared the COP27 Coalition, an alliance of progressive advocacy groups that planned the protest as part of its push for “an urgent response from governments to the multiple, systemic crises” facing people around the world. “We are not yet defeated!”

“We march today as part of the global day of action,” Janet Kachinga, spokesperson for the COP27 Coalition, said in a statement. “Solidarity is the cornerstone of climate justice.”

https://twitter.com/ActionAid/status/1591409380007858177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1591409380007858177%7Ctwgr%5Ee407071973c19dd5d7c81054882853c69c37bfee%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2022%2F11%2F12%2Fnot-yet-defeated-1000-march-climate-justice-cop27

“We are marching inside the U.N. space to highlight that our movements are unable to march freely on the streets of Egypt,” said Kachinga.

Ahead of COP27, human rights groups denounced Egypt’s repression of dissidents, including hunger-striking political prisoner Alaa Abd El Fattah. Since the conference began last week in the resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egyptian officials have been accused of spying on and otherwise intimidating participants.

“We refuse to greenwash the Egyptian government’s denial of the right to freedom of association, assembly, and speech by marching in a government-controlled march in the streets of Sharm El-Sheikh,” Kachinga continued.

Instead, from inside a designated Blue Zone governed by U.N. rules, activists sought “to lift up the voices and demands of all our frontline communities and movements facing repression because they dream of a better world,” said Kachinga.

https://twitter.com/EarthRightsIntl/status/1591385029166628865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1591385029166628865%7Ctwgr%5Ee407071973c19dd5d7c81054882853c69c37bfee%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2022%2F11%2F12%2Fnot-yet-defeated-1000-march-climate-justice-cop27

“We are at a crossroads of overlapping crises and governments are not on track to stop the worst of the climate crisis,” said Kachinga. “COP27 needs to be a turning point for the climate crisis, and not a moment to silence people.”

The U.N. recently published a series of reports warning that as a result of woefully inadequate emissions reductions targets and policies, there is “no credible path to 1.5°C in place,” and only “urgent system-wide transformation” can prevent temperatures from rising a cataclysmic 3°C by century’s end.

“Solidarity is the cornerstone of climate justice.”

According to the latest data, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—the three main heat-trapping gases fueling global warming—hit an all-time high in 2021, and greenhouse gas emissions have only continued to climb this year.

Despite overwhelming evidence that new fossil fuel projects will lead to deadly climate chaos, oil and gas corporations are still planning to expand dirty energy production in the coming years, including in Africa.

“The call for greater oil and gas production is completely out of step with climate science,” Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, said Friday in a statement. “Presented as a necessity for development, new investments in fossil fuel infrastructure would instead simply lock a new generation into these dirty fuels, at a time when clean energy is viable and ready to be scaled.”

“The rightful need of people in low- and middle-income countries for access to energy—for clean cooking, for healthcare, for education, for jobs, and many other key determinants of health—must not bring with it the health costs associated with fossil fuels,” Miller added. “It is vital that high-income countries provide financial support for the transition in low- and middle-income countries.”

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Among the key demands of the COP27 Coalition is that the rich nations most responsible for causing the climate crisis “fulfill their obligations and fair shares by reducing their emissions to zero and providing poorer nations the scale of financial support needed to address the crisis.”

The coalition argues that “repayment should include adaptation, loss and damage, technology transfer, and factor in debt cancellation for vulnerable countries [that] have been impoverished while dealing with the impacts of the climate crisis.”

A recent U.N.-backed report estimates that poor nations will need a combined total of $2.4 trillion per year by 2030 to fight the climate emergency—including funding for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage.

“Unless more urgency is shown, marches will only be the start.”

A separate analysis from Carbon Brief reveals the extent of wealthy countries’ failures to mobilize far smaller sums of money to support sustainable development and enable equitable responses to escalating extreme weather disasters.

Since the COP15 meeting in 2009, developing countries have been promised that rich nations would provide at least $100 billion in climate aid each year by 2020. However, just over $83 billion was delivered in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available. The Global North is not expected to hit its annual target, widely regarded as insufficient, until 2023.

The U.S. is most responsible for the shortfall, providing less than $8 billion toward the $100 billion figure in 2020. That constitutes a mere 19% of the country’s approximately $40 billion “fair share,” or what it should be paying based on its cumulative contribution to global greenhouse gas pollution.

U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed to allocate $11.4 billion per year toward international green finance by 2024—less than 2% of the annual Pentagon budget and still far less than Washington’s fair share—but congressional lawmakers approved just $1 billion in a $1.5 trillion spending bill passed earlier this year.

When it comes to the U.N.-backed loss and damage fund, just a handful of high-polluting countries have pledged a combined total of around $250 million so far, a tiny fraction of the $31.8 trillion that the world’s 20 wealthiest economies collectively owe the Global South, according to the Climate Clock, a recently unveiled display at COP27.

“The science of climate breakdown has never been clearer, and seeing the suffering of my fellow Africans facing drought and famine, the impacts have never been more painful,” said Mohamed Adow, a representative of the COP27 Coalition.

“It’s no wonder that people are rising up across the world to make their voices heard that they will not stand for inaction from their leaders,” Adow continued. “Unless more urgency is shown, marches will only be the start.”

“Today we rise as a people, despite the restrictions, to demand our collective rights to a livable future,” said environmental justice champion Nnimmo Bassey. “We demand payment of the climate debt accumulated by centuries of dispossession, oppression, and destruction.”

“We need a COP led by the people and not polluters,” Bassey continued, alluding to the massive presence of fossil fuel lobbyists at the meeting. “One that rejects ecocidal, neocolonial false solutions that will widen the emissions gap, burn Africa and sink small island states, and further entrench environmental racism and climate injustice!”

Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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IPCC Scientist Warns India-Pakistan Record Temps ‘Testing Limits of Human Survivability’

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Republished from the Common Dreams

“Fossil fuels did this,” said one climate justice campaigner. “Unless we ditch fossil fuels immediately in favor of a just, renewable-energy based system, heatwaves like this one will continue to become more intense and more frequent.”

KENNY STANCILMay 2, 2022

As record-breaking temperatures continue to pummel the Indian subcontinent—endangering the lives of millions of people and scorching crops amid a global food crisis—climate scientists and activists are warning that deadly public health crises of this sort will only grow worse as long as societies keep burning fossil fuels.

“Governments can no longer approve fossil fuel projects, and financial institutions can no longer fund them, without our suffering on their hands.”

“This heatwave is definitely unprecedented,” Chandni Singh, senior researcher at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements and a lead author at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told CNN on Monday. “We have seen a change in its intensity, its arrival time, and duration.”

Although heatwaves are common in India, especially in May and June, overpowering temperatures arrived several weeks earlier than usual this year—a clear manifestation of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, according to Clare Nullis, an official at the World Meteorological Organization.

As CNN reported:

The average maximum temperature for northwest and central India in April was the highest since records began 122 years ago, reaching 35.9º and 37.78ºC (96.62º and 100ºF) respectively, according to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD).

Last month, New Delhi saw seven consecutive days over 40ºC (104ºF), three degrees above the average temperature for the month of April, according to CNN meteorologists. In some states, the heat closed schools, damaged crops, and put pressure on energy supplies, as officials warned residents to remain indoors and keep hydrated.

The heatwave has also been felt by India’s neighbor Pakistan, where the cities of Jacobabad and Sibi in the country’s southeastern Sindh province recorded highs of 47ºC (116.6ºF) on Friday, according to data shared with CNN by Pakistan’s Meteorological Department (PMD). According to the PMD, this was the highest temperature recorded in any city in the Northern Hemisphere on that day.

“This is the first time in decades that Pakistan is experiencing what many call a ‘spring-less year,” Pakistan’s Minister of Climate Change, Sherry Rehman said in a statement.

April’s record-shattering temperatures came on the heels of India’s hottest March in more than a century and one of its driest. Meanwhile, the region’s annual monsoon season is still weeks away.

“This is what climate experts predicted and it will have cascading impacts on health,” said Singh. “This heatwave is testing the limits of human survivability.”

In a statement released late last week, Shibaya Raha, a senior digital organizer with 350.org South Asia, said that “we cannot deny this climate crisis any longer. We are experiencing heatwaves in spring.”

“The heat is unbearable and people are suffering,” Raha continued. “Many in heavily populated areas do not have access to air conditioning, and workers with outdoor jobs are unable to carry out their work in this extreme heat, impacting sources of income.”

Land surface temperatures—a measure of how hot the Earth’s surface would feel to the touch in a particular location—exceeded 60ºC or 140ºF in parts of northwest India on Saturday, according to satellite imagery.

In addition to putting the lives of millions of farmers at risk, extreme heat is wreaking havoc on wheat fields. Gurvinder Singh, director of agriculture in the northern state of Punjab, known as “India’s breadbasket,” told CNN that the April heatwave reduced yields by 500 kilograms per hectare.

“The IPCC report predicts significant increases in heatwaves globally, but we are the human faces of that science,” said Raha. “It looks daunting on paper but is even more devastating in reality and we demand immediate climate action.”

Namrata Chowdhary, chief of public engagement at 350.org, stressed that “the truth behind these heatwaves is searingly clear: fossil fuels did this.”

“While these temperatures are quite literally shocking, they come as no real surprise to communities that have long since lived on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” Chowdhary continued. “This is the latest spike in a rapidly worsening disaster, one that was foretold by climate activists the world over.”

“The IPCC report had already predicted that this densely populated region, where the vulnerabilities of over a billion people are compounded by power outages and lack of access to water, will be one of the worst affected by climate impacts,” said Chowdhary.

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and previous IPCC contributor, pointed out last week that the current heatwave is occurring in the context of 1ºC and 1.2ºC of warming in India and Pakistan, respectively.

The United Nations warned last year that even if governments around the world fulfill their current greenhouse gas-reduction pledges—few of which are backed by legislation or dedicated funding—the planet is whirling toward a “catastrophic” global temperature rise of 2.7ºC by 2100.

Based on the world’s current emissions trajectory, India and Pakistan are expected to experience 3.5ºC of warming by century’s end, according to country-level projections from researchers at Berkeley Earth.

“Unless we ditch fossil fuels immediately in favor of a just, renewable-energy based system,” said Chowdhary, “heatwaves like this one will continue to become more intense and more frequent.”

Raha added that “governments can no longer approve fossil fuel projects, and financial institutions can no longer fund them, without our suffering on their hands.”


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Continue ReadingIPCC Scientist Warns India-Pakistan Record Temps ‘Testing Limits of Human Survivability’

‘Civil Disobedience Is Our Duty’: Swiss Climate Campaigners Occupy Zürich Financial Center

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Republished from https://www.commondreams.org/ under a Creative Commons licence

Climate justice activists occupied the center of Zürich’s financial district on August 2, 2021 to demand that the two biggest banks in Switzerland divest from oil, gas, and coal. (Photo: Rise Up for Change/flickr/cc)

“We have no other choice. Either phase out fossil fuels or face forest fires, famines, droughts, and floods.”

KENNY STANCILAugust 2, 2021

Climate justice campaigners occupied the center of Zürich’s financial district Monday to demand that the two biggest banks in Switzerland divest from oil, gas, and coal.

Dozens of “singing and chanting activists” blocked entrances to the headquarters of Credit Suisse and a UBS office building on Paradeplatz square, Reuters reported. Police officers arrested about 30 people who refused to disperse during the peaceful demonstration.

Frida Kohlmann, spokesperson for the Rise Up for Change group, said in a statement that Credit Suisse and UBS have failed to respond appropriately to the climate emergency. 

“That is why the climate justice movement is occupying the Credit Suisse headquarters and the nearby UBS office today to draw attention to the consequences of the Swiss financial institutions’ inaction,” Kohlmann said.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/08/02/civil-disobedience-our-duty-swiss-climate-campaigners-occupy-zurich-financial-center?utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email

“Civil disobedience is our duty,” tweeted Collectif BreakFree Suisse, part of the movement to stop financial actors from continuing to fund dirty energy projects that are fueling extreme weather-related disasters. “Either phase out fossil fuels or face forest fires, famines, droughts, and floods.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/08/02/civil-disobedience-our-duty-swiss-climate-campaigners-occupy-zurich-financial-center?utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email

In response to the protest, UBS said in a statement: “Climate protection is a top priority at UBS… We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions across our business to net zero by 2050, with science-based interim targets for 2025, 2030, and 2035.”

Despite having “decreased fossil fuel financing by 73%, from $7.7 billion in 2016 to $2.1 billion in 2020,” UBS continues to invest money in “thermal coal mining, oil refining, shale gas drilling,” and more, according to a recent analysis by CNBC.

Credit Suisse asserted that it “is committed to climate protection and achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement,” referring to the 2015 international treaty that seeks to reduce carbon pollution and limit global temperature rise to below 1.5°C.

On its “DisCreditSuisse” campaign website, Collectif BreakFree Suisse said that while “Credit Suisse claims to align itself with the objectives of the Paris Agreement… it is one of the banks that is fueling the climate catastrophe the most.” According to a recent analysis (pdf) of the world’s largest asset managers, the bank ranks 72 out of 75 in terms of responsible investing.

“Although Credit Suisse officially supports the objectives of the Paris climate agreement, it has been financing companies in the coal, oil, and gas sectors since 2015 with billions of dollars for the exploration, production, and processing of fossil fuels,” the group said. “Between 2016 and 2019, Credit Suisse invested (pdf) a total of $74.3 billion in fossil fuels. In particular, the bank provided almost $23 billion in financial support for global firms actively expanding their fossil fuels businesses.”

“The existing instruments and guidelines do not appear to have led to any changes in the bank’s decision-making processes,” the group added. “The bank’s loan and investment portfolios are simply not being decarbonized at a pace commensurate with IPCC recommendations and the climate crisis. The bank is thus discrediting itself.”

Republished from https://www.commondreams.org/ under a Creative Commons licence

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