Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer.
Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure
The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has
warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial
sector unable to operate. The world is fast approaching temperature levels
where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate
risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the
world’s biggest insurance companies.
He said that without insurance,
which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services
become unviable, from mortgages to investments. Global carbon emissions are
still rising and current policies will result in a rise in global
temperature between 2.2C and 3.4C above pre-industrial levels.
The damage at 3C will be so great that governments will be unable to provide financial
bailouts and it will be impossible to adapt to many climate impacts, said
Thallinger, who is also the chair of the German company’s investment
board and was previously CEO of Allianz Investment Management.
Guardian 3rd April 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/03/climate-crisis-on-track-to-destroy-capitalism-warns-allianz-insurer
Global warming is ‘exposing’ new coastlines and islands as Arctic glaciers shrink .
Retreating glaciers created 2,500km of “new” coastline and 35
“new” islands in the Arctic between 2000 and 2020, according to a new
study. The research uses satellite images of more than 1,700 glaciers in
Greenland, Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Russian Arctic, Iceland and
Svalbard.
The findings show that 85% of these glaciers retreated over
2000-20, revealing 123km of new coastline per year on average. The study,
published in Nature Climate Change, links the acceleration in glacier melt
to warmer ocean and air temperatures.
Carbon Brief 1st April 2025 https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-warming-is-exposing-new-coastlines-and-islands-as-arctic-glaciers-shrink/
Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House
Quakers 28th March 2025, https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quakers-condemn-police-raid-on-westminster-meeting-house
Police broke into a Quaker Meeting House last night (27 March) and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza.
Quakers in Britain strongly condemned the violation of their place of worship which they say is a direct result of stricter protest laws removing virtually all routes to challenge the status quo.
Just before 7.15pm more than 20 uniformed police, some equipped with tasers, forced their way into Westminster Meeting House.
They broke open the front door without warning or ringing the bell first, searching the whole building and arresting six women attending the meeting in a hired room.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 have criminalised many forms of protest and allow police to halt actions deemed too disruptive.
Meanwhile, changes in judicial procedures limit protesters’ ability to defend their actions in court. All this means that there are fewer and fewer ways to speak truth to power.
Quakers support the right to nonviolent public protest, acting themselves from a deep moral imperative to stand up against injustice and for our planet.
Many have taken nonviolent direct action over the centuries from the abolition of slavery to women’s suffrage and prison reform.
Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: “No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory.
“This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest.
“Freedom of speech, assembly, and fair trials are an essential part of free public debate which underpins democracy.”
No Virginia, NUCLEAR REACTORS DO RELEASE carbon into the atmosphere
Gordon Edwards, 23 Mar 25
The two most abundant releases of radioactive pollutants from nuclear power plants are (1) radioactive hydrogen (“tritium”) and (2) radioactive carbon (carbon-14).Tritium hangs around for a couple of centuries, while carbon-14 remains in the local environemnt for many millennia – longer than the span of recorded human history.Both of these radioactive materials are “activation products” for the most part, created outside the nuclear fuel and therefore much easier to escape into the environment. Even without any fuel damage, a lot of tritium and a lot of carbon-14 is created by stray neutrons striking non-radioactive atoms outside the fuel assemblies.
Below I mention one way in which carbon-14 is created — when a neutron strikes a nitrogen atom. Another mechanism which is important in CANDU reactors is the collision of a stray neutron with an oxygen-13 atom (which is much more abundant in heavy water compared with ordinary light water).
Technically, radioactive carbon-14 is produced from non-radioactive nitrogen-14, making up about 78 percent of the air we breathe. When a neutron hits a nitrogen atom, a proton is given off and the result in radioactive carbon-14. It is the only radioactive isotope of carbon, just as hydrogen-3 (tritium) is the only radioactive isotope of hydrogen.Carbon and hydrogen are the basic building blocks of all organic molecules.
The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years. The half-life of tritium is 12.3 years,
Very little if any radioactive carbon-14 comes from non-radioactive carbon directly.
Climate impacts may be starting to spiral, but a sub-1.5C world is ‘still possible’
Climate impacts may be starting to spiral, but a sub-1.5C world is ‘still
possible’. World Meteorological Organisation report shows CO2 in atmosphere
has reached its highest level in 800,000 years, but the world can still
avoid a climate catastrophe. Carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has
reached its highest level in 800,000 years, with temperature records being
shattered, polar ice melting at unprecedented rates, and ocean
acidification worsening.
Business Green 19th March 2025, https://www.businessgreen.com/news-analysis/4411077/climate-impacts-starting-spiral-sub-5c-world
More than 150 ‘unprecedented’ climate disasters struck world in 2024, says UN
The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024,
with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe,
according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. The WMO’s
report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction
from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged
vital crops.
More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the
highest yearly number since records began in 2008. The report lists 151
unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024, meaning they were worse than
any ever recorded in the region. Heatwaves in Japan left hundreds of
thousands of people struck down by heatstroke. Soaring temperatures during
heatwaves peaked at 49.9C at Carnarvon in Western Australia, 49.7C in the
city of Tabas in Iran, and 48.5C in a nationwide heatwave in Mali.
Guardian 19th March 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/19/unprecedented-climate-disasters-extreme-weather-un-report
‘Global weirding’: climate whiplash hitting world’s biggest cities, study reveals
Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world,
bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate
crisis intensifies, a report has revealed. Dozens more cities, including
Lucknow, Madrid and Riyadh have suffered a climate “flip” in the last
20 years, switching from dry to wet extremes, or vice versa.
The report analysed the 100 most populous cities, plus 12 selected ones, and found
that 95% of them showed a distinct trend towards wetter or drier weather.
The changing climate of cities can hit citizens with worsened floods and
droughts, destroy access to clean water, sanitation and food, displace
communities and spread disease. Cities where the water infrastructure is
already poor, such as Karachi and Khartoum, suffer the most.
Guardian 12th March 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/12/global-weirding-climate-whiplash-hitting-worlds-biggest-cities-study-reveals
Turbine, cooling: these unforeseen events that keep the Flamanville EPR at a standstill.
EDF is extending an unscheduled shutdown of the Flamanville EPR until the end of March in order to make adjustments to the turbine. During its first 100 days of operation, the nuclear reactor will have undergone 76 days of maintenance.
By Amélie Laurin, March 6, 2025
EDF had warned: the ramp-up of the Flamanville EPR, the first nuclear reactor to be commissioned in France in twenty-five years, would be very gradual. The public group has once again shut down, for a month and a half, its Normandy pressurized water reactor, which had been connected to the electricity grid on December 21, the first day of winter.
These maintenance operations were not planned and are the result of technical difficulties. They began on February 15 and are due to continue until March 30, after being extended three times.
Turbine heating
This work follows two initial suspensions of electricity production at Flamanville, between Christmas and mid-January, and at the turn of February. Two shutdowns that were, themselves, scheduled. In total, the reactor will have been immobilized for 76 days, during its first 100 days of operation.
The cause: various technical adjustments. In mid-February, the EPR stopped producing electrons due to an insufficient water flow in the seawater cooling circuit, which is only used “in exceptional situations”. This was followed by an intervention “on a temperature probe of the main circuit”, specifies a regulatory press release.
We’ve failed to stop climate change — this is what we need to do next.
While we can still limit warming by cutting emissions, we now face having to adapt to more extreme weather.
Ben Spencer, Science Editor, |Anna Dowell, Data Journalism Trainee, Thursday March 06 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/climate-change-adaptation-decarbonisation-times-earth-93jln78vd
here is a story that used to be told about the fight against climate change. It was a narrative of hope, of a battle to be fought and won.
“This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet,” Barack Obama told a crowd of 200,000 people in Berlin in 2008, the summer before he was elected president.
That moment, of course, came and went. But there were more speeches, more moments of urgency. Al Gore tried, so did Leonardo DiCaprio. Sir David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg attempted to mobilise the masses; even the King has had a go.
Boris Johnson tried again in 2021 at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, urging world leaders to “keep alive” the hope of limiting global warming to 1.5C, enshrined in the Paris Agreement of 2015. He said: “Let’s keep moving forward and make this the moment we irrefutably turn the tide against climate change.”
There are only so many times, however, that the same stories can be told.
Laurie Laybourn, director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, said: “It’s only really now that the penny is dropping that we didn’t prevent a global-scale climate crisis. We’re now in a global-scale climate crisis.”
The wildfires in Los Angeles, flooding in Valencia, and the storms that have battered the British Isles this winter — Bert, Darragh and Éowyn — have confirmed what the scientists have long forecast. Climate change is no longer something that can be averted: it has arrived.
In January the Met Office announced that global average temperatures for 2024 had risen 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. One year’s weather records do not in themselves mean the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set out to limit global warming long-term, has failed. But the Met Office also warned that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is still rising, and is now “incompatible” with the modelled pathways that would keep warming below the totemic 1.5C.
“There is an adjustment that’s needed now to understand that that preventative project has not worked,” Laybourn said. “Emissions reductions were not tried at the scale that were needed — being confronted with that failure is actually quite difficult for people.”
After years of focusing on averting climate change, what climate scientists refer to as “mitigation”, experts are warning that we now need far greater focus on adaptation to cope with the new weather that comes with a warming world.
There is no doubt that in the UK we are not ready for climate change. Chris Stark, former chief executive of the climate change committee (CCC) and now a senior energy official, in 2022 described the government’s planning for global warming as “genuinely poor”, blaming a “wilful reluctance” to factor adaptation into policy.
This reluctance goes back years. In a speech at Chatham House in September, the former Labour politician David Miliband admitted that preparing for global warming had been something of a taboo. “When I was environment secretary in 2006-7, it felt as though talking about adapting to climate change meant admitting defeat on mitigating climate change.”
Climate change for the UK means hotter, drier summers and wetter winters with more frequent, more severe storms…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
It is not just the UK failing to prepare. The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) in November published its “adaptation gap” report, setting out how far the issue has been neglected. It found that annual global spending on climate adaptation is between $187 billion and $359 billion short of what it should be, “with adaptation planning slowing and implementation falling behind”.
Inger Andersen, Unep executive director, said in the foreword: “People and the natural systems upon which our livelihoods depend are increasingly in danger from the hell and high water that climate change is bringing. The world must get serious about adaptation, now.”
MARK PASSMORE/ALAMY
Laybourn stressed that while much more must be done to adapt to climate change, it does not mean that politicians should abandon decarbonisation. “You have to do both,” he said. “If you’re busy mopping the floor you mustn’t forget to turn off the tap.”
Part of the reluctance to push forwards with climate adaptation is finding ways to pay for it. Decarbonisation is a relatively easy sell: it is not difficult to persuade a developer to build a wind farm or install solar panels if they can then profit from the cheap power they generate.
Flood defences, on the other hand, do not generate a return, so central investment is needed.
But experts say a long view is required. Existing flood defences in Britain prevent £1.15 billion in damage each year. Laybourn thinks this approach is required for other sectors. “If the UK had a more nature-abundant, more balanced, sustainable farming system, for example, it would mean that the farming system was better able to handle shocks.”
A UK government spokesman insisted adaptation was being taken seriously………………………… https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/climate-change-adaptation-decarbonisation-times-earth-93jln78vd
UK’s richest can boost climate action but need to cut outsized emissions – study
Better-off Britons are well placed to accelerate the transition towards
low-carbon technologies, but only if they are prepared to curb their
excessive consumption to lower their outsized carbon footprints, a study
has found.
Researchers found people from the richest 10% in the UK were
more likely to invest in electric vehicles, heat pumps and other clean
energy alternatives, and were more likely to support green policies. But
they also found wealthier people used far more energy at home, were more
likely to fly for leisure, were more reluctant to sacrifice luxuries, and
were likely to underestimate the carbon impact of their own behaviour.
As a result, many wealthy people were caught in a contradiction: vocally
supporting climate action and, in many cases, making climate-conscious
consumer choices, while at the same time materially exacerbating climate
breakdown.
Guardian 5th March 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/05/uks-richest-can-boost-climate-action-but-need-to-cut-outsized-emissions-study
First Trump threatened to nuke hurricanes. Now he’s waging war on weather forecasters
Some politicians go whichever way the wind blows. Not, however, the US’s
esteemed leader, Donald Trump. He is such a force of nature that he can
dictate the direction of the wind. During his first term, he suggested
“nuking hurricanes” to stop them from hitting the country. A few weeks
after that, Trump seemed to think he could alter the course of Hurricane
Dorian with a black marker, scribbling over an official map to change its
anticipated trajectory in an incident now known as Sharpiegate. Weirdly,
Dorian did not end up following Trump’s orders. Hurricanes can be
uncooperative like that. Six weeks into Trump’s second term, the
president hasn’t bombed any hurricanes, but he has nuked the US’s
weather-forecasting capabilities. Last week, hundreds of workers at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s
pre-eminent climate research agency, were abruptly fired.
Guardian 4th March 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/04/trump-waging-war-weather-forecasters-nuke-hurricanes
Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from 36 fossil fuel firms, study shows
Half of the world’s climate-heating carbon emissions come from the
fossil fuels produced by just 36 companies, analysis has revealed.
The researchers said the 2023 data strengthened the case for holding fossil
fuel companies to account for their contribution to global heating.
Previous versions of the annual report have been used in legal cases
against companies and investors.
The report found that the 36 major fossil
fuel companies, including Saudi Aramco, Coal India, ExxonMobil, Shell and
numerous Chinese companies, produced coal, oil and gas responsible for more
than 20bn tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2023. If Saudi Aramco was a country,
it would be the fourth biggest polluter in the world after China, the US
and India, while ExxonMobil is responsible for about the same emissions as
Germany, the world’s ninth biggest polluter, according to the data.
Guardian 5th March 2025,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/05/half-of-worlds-co2-emissions-come-from-36-fossil-fuel-firms-study-shows
Earth’s strongest ocean current could slow down by 20% by 2050 in a high emissions future
In a high emissions future, the world’s strongest ocean current could
slow down by 20% by 2050, further accelerating Antarctic ice sheet melting
and sea level rise, an Australian-led study has found. The Antarctic
Circumpolar Current – a clockwise current more than four times stronger
than the Gulf Stream that links the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans –
plays a critical role in the climate system by influencing the uptake of
heat and carbon dioxide in the ocean and preventing warmer waters from
reaching Antarctica.
Guardian 3rd March 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/03/antarctic-circumpolar-current-slow-down-ice-melting-climate
Ageing nuclear plant in Florida at risk from climate crisis, advocates warn
we also have to consider the risks of climate on the plants. “We have to be clear-eyed about those risks, and we have to be elevating, fortifying, preparing these plants for storms, for floods, for sea level rise, for drought, and for heat.”
Guardian, Richard Luscombe , 2 Mar 25
Regulators extended the life of two of the oldest US reactors in Miami. Millions of people in the area are now vulnerable
A decision by regulators to extend the life of two of the oldest reactors in the US decades beyond their original permits has elevated the risk of a nuclear disaster in heavily populated south Florida, environmental groups are warning.
The Miami Waterkeeper says the ageing Turkey Point facility in south Miami-Dade county, which was built in 1967 and generates power for a metropolitan area covering about 3 million people, is especially vulnerable to flooding and excessive heat from the climate emergency, in part because of its low-lying position and coastal exposure to a major hurricane.
One of the major risks, the group told a packed public meeting in Miami this week, is contamination of drinking water in the Biscayne Aquifer on which the plant and its two nuclear units sit.
Consultants said last month that the plant’s owners, Florida Power & Light (FPL), will not meet a crucial deadline to clean up a toxic hyper-salinated water plume produced in the reactors’ network of cooling canals that has been creeping closer to freshwater wells.
More generally, the activists fear the potential consequences of an unprecedented decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to extend Turkey Point’s operating license to 2053, a reversal of its earlier refusal.
They point out that the Florida plant’s two nuclear power reactors are already among the oldest of 94 currently operating in the US, and beyond the age of both the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania that suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 in the country’s worst nuclear accident and radiation leak; and Ukraine’s Chornobyl plant, site of the 1986 catastrophe.
Turkey Point is also the same age as the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which is similarly located on a coastline exposed to severe weather events, and where a 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster.
“Nobody needs to be reminded what a worst-case scenario looks like, but I will say this plant is within 30 miles of millions of people,” said Rachel Silverstein, the chief executive of Miami Waterkeeper, which has worked with Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council on legislation to try to block the license extension.
“Turkey Point was the first reactor in the country to apply to run for a total of 80 years, and no one in the world has ever run a nuclear power plant for 80 years. They all came online in the early 1970s and have gone through their first license extensions into the 2030s, more or less.
“Now, because the world is looking for low-carbon energy sources, we’re looking into extending the operating license of all of these plants into the coming decades. Our position is not anti-nuclear, but if we’re going to rely on nuclear in the coming decades as a primary source of energy that’s going to help us address climate risks, we also have to consider the risks of climate on the plants.
“We have to be clear-eyed about those risks, and we have to be elevating, fortifying, preparing these plants for storms, for floods, for sea level rise, for drought, and for heat.”
Silverstein’s group has partnered with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, whose ancestral homelands cover much of south Florida, to appeal the NRC’s decision allowing Turkey Point to become the first to test the outer limits of its “80-year rule” for license extensions for nuclear power reactors.
They argue that the regulators failed to properly acknowledge a critical report from the Government Accountability Office published last year that stated climate change “was expected to exacerbate natural hazards that pose risks” to Turkey Point.
The report also noted that, instead of issuing a citation or fines, the regulators’ response to FPL’s breach of the maximum allowable cooling water temperature of 100F (38C) during an incident in 2014 was to raise the acceptable figure to 104F, the amount of the overage.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, insist the true operational lifespan of nuclear power generating facilities is far below the NRC’s eight-decade guideline, and point to data showing that among US plants built before 1973, half were decommissioned within 40 years.
According to the New Hampshire-based Seacoast Anti-Pollution League: “In most cases the plants simply wore out, broke down, or never functioned properly.”…………………………………… https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/01/nuclear-power-plants-miami-florida?fbclid=IwY2xjawIweO1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWBZlpSR5NRSL4LqL1lZ0b75I0XzH-D6EPnvsLdoGDbj9-XZOy6MV4–YQ_aem_3Qx31WNB3HCZKhro973QUQ
‘The climate crisis is the biggest security threat of them all’: Anneliese Dodds quits government over aid budget cuts
Michael Holder, 28 February 2025
Anneliese Dodds has today quit the Cabinet over plans to raid the
international aid budget to boost defence spending, warning in her
resignation letter the decision risks damaging the UK’s interests and
undermining efforts to tackle a climate crisis that “is the biggest
security threat of them all”.
Dodds, who resigned as Minister of State for
both International Development and Women and Equalities, said while she
fully supported the government’s decision to increase defence spending, she
disagreed that the UK overseas development budget should “absorb the entire
burden”.
Business Green 28th Feb 2025,
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4410216/climate-crisis-biggest-security-threat-anneliese-dodds-quits-government-aid-budget-cuts
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