Under present conditions, a huge loss of the planet’s glaciers will happen in the next 30 years
Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks
to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that
finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously
thought.
At least half of that loss will happen in the next 30 years.
Researchers found 49% of glaciers would disappear under the most optimistic
scenario of 1.5C of warming.
However, if global heating continued under the
current scenario of 2.7C of warming, losses would be more significant, with
68% of glaciers disappearing, according to the paper, published in Science.
There would be almost no glaciers left in central Europe, western Canada
and the US by the end of the next century if this happened.
This will significantly contribute to sea level rise, threaten the supply of water of
up to 2 billion people, and increase the risk of natural hazards such as
flooding. The study looked at all glacial land ice except for Greenland and
Antarctic ice sheets.
Guardian 5th Jan 2023
Writers protest against imprisonment of climate activists
Ben Okri, Simon Schama, Helen Pankhurst and AL Kennedy are among more than
100 writers who have signed a letter in solidarity with UK climate protest
prisoners.
“That the UK now has political prisoners, incarcerated for
defending sustainable life on Earth is yet another national disgrace,”
Kennedy said.
At least 13 environmental activists began the year behind
bars in UK jails, after a year of “civil resistance” against climate
policies led by the Just Stop Oil campaign. More than 100 spent time in
jail, either convicted or on remand, for environmental protest in 2022.
“We stand with all those who are trying to sound the alarm and to protect
our beautiful world,” said the letter, coordinated and published by the
group Writers Rebel.
Guardian 6th Jan 2023
Growing urgency and intensity — Weather extremes won’t be solved by nuclear power
Growing urgency and intensity — Beyond Nuclear International . By Antony Froggatt 1 Jan 2023, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/01/01/growing-urgency-and-intensity/
Urgent climate action is needed and nuclear power is not the answer
Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted Europe’s dangerous dependence on fossil fuels, increasingly frequent and intense climate-driven weather events are highlighting the death and destruction that fossil-fuel dependence has wrought.
Understandably, political and public pressure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, move away from insecure primary energy supplies, and develop new, reliable, secure, and affordable energy sources is at an all-time high.
But rather than rushing ahead, we need to consider carefully which options are most realistic, and how they will be deployed and operate in the real world.
Consider nuclear power. With many countries and companies now giving this option a second (or even a third) look, the 2022 World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) offers valuable insights into how the sector is faring.
While the last 12 months may be remembered as a turning point for the broader energy sector, it won’t be because of the nuclear industry. Nuclear energy’s share of global commercial gross electricity generation in 2021 dropped to 9.8%, which is its first dip below 10% in four decades, barely more than half its peak of 17.5% in 1996.
Meanwhile, wind and solar surpassed nuclear for the first time in 2021, accounting for 10.2% of gross power generation.
These diverging trajectories can be seen clearly across every indicator of investment, deployment, and output. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, operating reactors peaked in 2018, both in terms of their number (449) and total capacity (396.5 gigawatts). The IAEA reports that 437 reactors were “in operation” globally at the end of 2021, including 23 reactors that have not generated power for at least nine years, and which may never do so again.
In 2018, when installed nuclear power peaked below 400 GW, solar and wind capacity rose above 1,000 GW, on its way to reaching 1,660 GW by the end of 2021. In just three years, solar and wind added two-thirds more capacity than nuclear at its last peak. Even if nuclear plants usually generate more electricity per unit of installed capacity than wind and solar, the divergence in these numbers is staggering.
In 2021, total investments in non-hydro renewables hit a record $366 billion, adding an unprecedented 257 GW (on net) to electricity grids, whereas operating nuclear capacity decreased by 0.4 GW. Only six new reactors were connected to the grid that year, and half of these were in China. Then, in the first half of 2022, five new reactors went online, two of which were in China. But while China has the most reactors under construction (21, as of mid-2022), it is not building them abroad.
Until recently, that role was taken up by Russia, which is dominating the international market with 20 units under construction, including 17 in seven countries as of mid-2022. Sanctions and potential other geopolitical developments have cast doubt on many of these projects, with a Finnish consortium already canceling construction of a facility based on a Russian design.
Only 33 countries operate nuclear power plants today, and only three – Bangladesh, Egypt, and Turkey – are building reactors for the first time (all in partnership with the Russian nuclear industry). Twenty-six of the 53 construction projects around the world have suffered various delays, with at least 14 reporting increased delays, and two reporting new delays, just in the past year.
For the first time, the WNISR also assesses the risks of nuclear power and war. There has been significant international concern about Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been occupied by Russia forces since March 4, 2022. Owing to repeated shelling in and around the area, the plant has frequently lost external power, prompting warnings from the IAEA that the situation is “untenable.” Operating a nuclear facility requires motivated, rested, skilled staff; but Zaporizhzhia’s Ukrainian personnel are under severe stress.
The key challenge now is to maintain continuous cooling for the reactor core and the pool for spent fuel, even after the reactor is shut down. The failure to evacuate heat from residual decay would lead to a core meltdown within hours, or a spent-fuel fire within days or weeks, with potentially large releases of radioactivity.
World leaders should focus on the technologies that can be deployed rapidly and universally to replace fossil fuels. As consecutive editions of the WNISR have shown, nuclear power is too slow and too expensive to compete with energy-efficiency measures and renewable energy.
Antony Froggatt is a founding author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report.
Growing climate, nuclear risks spark doomsday fears
Past year has prompted warnings of armageddon amid war in Ukraine and concerns over higher rate of warming, but has also seen COVID pandemic recede and other positive signs
https://www.timesofisrael.com/growing-climate-nuclear-risks-spark-doomsday-fears/ By SHAUN TANDON 29 Dec 22, WASHINGTON (AFP) — For thousands of years, predictions of apocalypse have come and gone. But with dangers rising from nuclear war and climate change, does the planet need to at least begin contemplating the worst?
When the world rang in 2022, few would have expected the year to feature the US president speaking of the risk of doomsday, following Russia’s threats to go nuclear in its invasion of Ukraine.
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis” in 1962, Joe Biden said in October.
And on the year that humanity welcomed its eighth billion member, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the planet was on a “highway to climate hell.”
In extremes widely attributed to climate change, floods submerged one-third of Pakistan, China sweat under an unprecedented 70-day heatwave, and crops failed in the Horn of Africa — all while the world lagged behind on the UN-blessed goal of checking warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
Biggest risk yet of nuclear war?
The Global Challenges Foundation, a Swedish group that assesses catastrophic risks, warned in an annual report that the threat of nuclear weapons use was the greatest since 1945 when the United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in history’s only atomic attacks.
The report warned that an all-out exchange of nuclear weapons, besides causing an enormous loss of life, would trigger clouds of dust that would obscure the sun, reducing the capacity to grow food and ushering in “a period of chaos and violence, during which most of the surviving world population would die from hunger.”
Kennette Benedict, a lecturer at the University of Chicago who led the report’s nuclear section, said risks were even greater than during the Cuban Missile Crisis as Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared less restrained by advisors.
While any Russian nuclear strike would likely involve small “tactical” weapons, experts fear a quick escalation if the United States responds.
“Then we’re in a completely different ballgame,” said Benedict, a senior advisor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which in January will unveil its latest assessment of the “doomsday clock” set since 2021 at 100 seconds to midnight.
Amid the focus on Ukraine, US intelligence believes North Korea is ready for a seventh nuclear test, Biden has effectively declared dead a deal on Iran’s contested nuclear work and tensions between India and Pakistan have remained at a low boil.
Benedict also faulted the Biden administration’s nuclear posture review which reserved the right for the United States to use nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances.”
“I think there’s been a kind of steady erosion of the ability to manage nuclear weapons,” she said.
Charting worst-case climate risks
UN experts estimated ahead of November talks in Egypt that the world was on track to warming of 2.1 to 2.9 C — but some outside analysts put the figure well higher, with greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 again hitting a record despite pushes to renewable energy.
Luke Kemp, a Cambridge University expert on existential risks, said the possibility of higher warming was drawing insufficient attention, which he blamed on the consensus culture of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and scientists’ fears of being branded alarmist.
“There has been a strong incentive to err on the side of least drama,” he said.
“What we really need are more complex assessments of how risks would cascade around the world.”
Climate change could cause ripple effects on food, with multiple breadbasket regions failing, fueling hunger and eventually political unrest and conflict.
Kemp warned against extrapolating from a single year or event. But a research paper he co-authored noted that even a two-degree temperature rise would put the Earth in territory uncharted since the Ice Age.
Using a medium-high scenario on emissions and population growth, it found that two billion people by 2070 could live in areas with a mean temperature of 29 C (84.2 F), straining water resources — including between India and Pakistan.
Cases for optimism
The year, however, was not all grim. While China ended the year with a surge of COVID-19 deaths, vaccinations helped much of the world turn the page on virus, which the World Health Organization estimated in May contributed to the deaths of 14.9 million people in 2020 and 2021.
Greenland’s glaciers are melting 100 times faster than estimated
Greenland’s glaciers are melting 100 times faster than estimated according
to a new model that takes into account the unique interaction between ice
and water at the island’s fjords.
Live Science 19th Dec 2022
Despite the hype, we shouldn’t bank on nuclear fusion to save the world from climate catastrophe
Robin McKie, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/17/dont-bank-on-nuclear-fusion-to-save-the-world-from-a-climate-catastrophe-i-have-seen-it-all-before
Last week’s experiment in the US is promising, but it’s not a magic bullet for our energy needs
“…….. For almost half a century, I have reported on scientific issues and no decade has been complete without two or three announcements by scientists claiming their work would soon allow science to recreate the processes that drive the sun. The end result would be the generation of clean, cheap nuclear fusion that would transform our lives.
Such announcements have been rare recently, so it gave me a warm glow to realise that standards may be returning to normal. By deploying a set of 192 lasers to bombard pellets of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, researchers at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California, were able to generate temperatures only found in stars and thermonuclear bombs. The isotopes then fused into helium, releasing excess energy, they reported.
It was a milestone event but not a major one, although this did not stop the US government and swaths of the world’s media indulging in a widespread hyping jamboree over the laboratory’s accomplishment. Researchers had “overcome a major barrier” to reaching fusion, the BBC gushed, while the Wall Street Journal described the achievement as a breakthrough that could herald an era of clean, cheap energy.
It is certainly true that nuclear fusion would have a beneficial impact on our planet by liberating vast amounts of energy without generating high levels of carbon emissions and would be an undoubted boost in the battle against climate change.
The trouble is that we have been presented with such visions many times before. In 1958, Sir John Cockcroft claimed his Zeta fusion project would supply the world with “an inexhaustible supply of fuel”. It didn’t. In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced they had achieved fusion using simple laboratory equipment, work that made global headlines but which has never been replicated.
To this list you can also add the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter), a huge facility being built in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance in Provence, France, that was supposed to achieve fusion by 2023 but which is over 10 years behind schedule and tens of billions of dollars over budget.
In each case, it was predicted that the construction of the first commercially viable nuclear fusion plants was only a decade or two away and would transform our lives. Those hopes never materialised and have led to a weary cynicism spreading among hacks and scientists. As they now joke: “Fusion is 30 years away – and always will be.”
It was odd for Jennifer Granholm, the US energy secretary, to argue that the NIF’s achievement was “one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century”. This is a hard claim to justify for a century that has already witnessed the discovery of the Higgs boson, the creation of Covid-19 vaccines, the launch of the James Webb telescope and the unravelling of the human genome. By comparison, the ignition event at the NIF is second-division stuff.
Most scientists have been careful in their responses to the over-hyping of the NIF “breakthrough”. They accept that a key step has been taking towards commercial fusion power but insist such plants remain distant goals. They should not be seen as likely saviours that will extract us from the desperate energy crisis we now face – despite all the claims that were made last week.
Humanity has brought itself to a point where its terrible dependence on fossil fuels threatens to trigger a 2C jump in global temperatures compared with our pre-industrial past. The consequences will include flooding, fires, worsening storms, rising sea levels, spreading diseases and melting ice caps.
Here, scientists are clear. Fusion power will not arrive in time to save the world. “We are still a way off commercial fusion and it cannot help us with the climate crisis now,” said Aneeqa Khan, a research fellow in nuclear fusion at Manchester University. This view was backed by Tony Roulstone, a nuclear energy researcher at Cambridge University. “This result from NIF is a success for science, but it is still a long way from providing useful, abundant clean energy.”
At present, there are two main routes to nuclear fusion. One involves confining searing hot plasma in a powerful magnetic field. The Iter reactor follows such an approach. The other – adopted at the NIF facility – uses lasers to blast deuterium-tritium pellets causing them to collapse and fuse into helium. In both cases, reactions occur at more than 100 million C and involve major technological headaches in controlling them.
Fusion therefore remains a long-term technology, although many new investors and entrepreneurs – including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos – have recently turned their attention to the field, raising hopes that a fresh commercial impetus could reinvigorate the development of commercial plants.
This input is to be welcomed but we should be emphatic: fusion will not arrive in time to save the planet from climate change. Electricity plants powered by renewable sources or nuclear fission offer the only short-term alternatives to those that burn fossil fuels. We need to pin our hopes on these power sources. Fusion may earn its place later in the century but it would be highly irresponsible to rely on an energy source that will take at least a further two decades to materialise – at best.
Climate change brings risk of flooding to the multi billion pound nuclear project Sizewell C.
UK sent nuclear warning as new £20bn site facing risk from increased flooding: ‘Alarming!’
Earlier this week, the UK Government confirmed that £700million of public money will be invested in the Sizewell C nuclear power plant.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1703570/energy-crisis-nuclear-edf-sizewell-c-increased-flooding-climate-change-suffolk By ANTONY ASHKENAZ Nov 30, 2022
Experts have issued a dire warning about the proposed Sizewell C nuclear power plant, as climate change induced flooding could mean that in future, the coastal nuclear site could turn into an island. Earlier this week, the Government confirmed that £700million of public money will be invested power plant, which once built will provide power to the equivalent of six million homes for more than 50 years. However, experts fear that the reactor, which will be built in Suffolk, could be at risk of climate change, as rising sea levels threaten to erode and swallow up the East coast of the UK, Express.co.uk was told.
Earlier this week, the UK’s former Chief Scientific Advisor Sir David King warned that the new £20billion power plant would be “very difficult to protect from flooding” due to rising sea levels on the Suffolk Coast.
Speaking to LBC, he said: “Part of the British coast that’s most at risk of rising sea level is the east coast and clearly this is very close to the oceans as is Sizewell B, and frankly that is the biggest risk.
“It would be very very useful if we could see published an analysis of sea level to the end of the lifespan of Sizewell C. It would take us to 2070 and beyond, possibly 2080.
“I do fear that it’s quite possible that we will have had a one-metre sea level rise by that time, by which time this would be very difficult to protect from flooding. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I would love to see the safety analysis on the basis of rising sea levels.”
Dr Paul Dorfman, an associate fellow from the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex told Express.co.uk: “In 2008, the pro-nuclear group of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers published a report, which says that UK nuclear coastal installations, which specify Sizewell, will be subject to storm surge, climate-induced sea level rise, flooding and potential nuclear islanding.
“Perhaps alarmingly, IME point out that these UK coastal nuclear sites will need considerable investment to protect them against rising sea levels, and even relocation or abandonment.
“Our knowledge about climate now is that rare events then, become the norm today, so basically there are questions of Sizewell being at significant risk. So quite literally, Sizewell is at the frontline of climate change, and not in a good way.”
He also noted that very “reasonable models” of climate change showed that Sizewell within two decades, would be surrounded by flood water once a year.
He said: “If construction goes ahead, clearly they will build in defences. But the idea of a nuclear power plant within a couple of decades being almost entirely cut off by water, and what does that mean for the future.
“Because it’s not just the reactors, it’s also the high-level spent fuel points, and the hot intermediate-level waste stores that are also at risk.”
As part of its energy strategy unveiled in April, which heavily focused on a number of policies that could help weaken Russia’s grip on UK energy prices, the Government set a target of significantly scaling up nuclear so that it will account for 25 percent of the country’s projected electricity demand by 2040.
The strategy noted that Sizewell C is critically important for helping the UK reach its nuclear targets, and it has been engaging in negotiations regarding the project’s construction since January 2021.
However, Dr Dorfman added: “The other thing is, BEIS, in a statement to Parliament, state that nuclear construction can take 13-17 years. If Sizewell C gets the go-ahead next year at the earliest, we’re looking at first generation by 2040.
“Firstly, that’s much too late to help with our climate and energy problems. But by the time it’s constructed, it’s likely to be a climate risk.”
Meanwhile, Alison Downes, from the campaign group Stop Sizewell C told Express.co.uk: ““Future flood risk maps show the Sizewell site as an island, and we’re deeply concerned that planning assessments were not conservative enough in considering the potential for coastal erosion in Sizewell Bay.
“EDF is being forced to plan sea defences the height of 3 double-decker buses, but since this site will carry radioactive material for well over a century, is it a safe and sustainable approach to protecting our children’s future to locate a nuclear power station here? We say no.
No country has the solution to nuclear waste. Nuclear is no preventer of global heating – in fact, it’s quite the reverse.
- uranium mining and
- milling,
- conversion of ore to uranium hexafluoride
- construction and
- decommissioning
- fuel reprocessing
- waste management
- rehabilitation of mining sites
- transport throughout all stages.
In the words of Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace Germany, “not a single country can claim that it has the solution to manage the most dangerous radioactive wastes.”
Several storage facilities, the NGO argues, are on the verge of saturation, and spent fuel sitting in the power plants is at risk of overheating, sometimes without emergency generators for cooling. Deep geological disposal is not a credible option for Greenpeace.
The World Nuclear Waste Report agrees that, apart from the current construction of a permanent repository in Finland (see box), there is still no real solution for the waste. It points out that it is even difficult to quantify global nuclear waste, as various countries apply different definitions.
But waste is not the only objection of some experts to this new “nuclear gold rush.” Although electricity production itself does not emit GHGs, the rest of the associated processes do. According to the list compiled by sustainability expert Manfred Lenzen of the University of Sydney, GHGs are emitted in all the stages of the nuclear power cycle: uranium mining and
milling, conversion of ore to uranium hexafluoride, enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor construction and decommissioning, fuel reprocessing, waste management, rehabilitation of mining sites, and transport throughout all stages.
Other experts point to an additional risk caused by climate change itself. According to energy expert Paul Dorfman of University College London, two out of five power plants operate on the coast because of the need for cooling water, and at least a hundred are only a few metres above sea level. As the oceans rise due to global warming, their safety could be compromised; although the Fukushima disaster was caused by an
earthquake, it was a good illustration of what happens when a nuclear power plant is flooded.
Inland power plants are also at risk, in this case because of the opposite, the risk of drought in the watercourses that provide cooling water. Perhaps science and technology will eventually solve the major hurdles of nuclear power (see box), but they will hardly put an end to a controversy that continues to rage.
Open Mind 15th Nov 2022
Why small modular reactors are a climate liability, not a solution, (but good for nuclear weapons development)
Touted as a solution to global heating – small nuclear reactors have zero usefulness
Beyond Nuclear International, By Linda Pentz Gunter, 27 Nov 22
“……………………………………………………. SMRs will be needed in their hundreds if not thousands, requiring up front investment in factories and a known source of readily available fuel. None of this is in place. The typical timeframe for even a known reactor design is more than a decade — sometimes several decades. We don’t have that kind of time.
.
Small modular reactors would deliver electricity that is more expensive than that provided by traditional large reactors today
SMRs will actually produce more radioactive waste per unit of electricity generated than today’s reactors, waste for which there is still no safe and permanent solution.
Every dollar sunk into new small modular reactor plans could have reduced more carbon faster if invested instead in renewable energy and energy efficiency. It’s a no-brainer simple equation that an elementary school kid could work out. But not, apparently, our leaders. Why not?
See above (follow the money) and then there’s the weapons link.
“A strong domestic supply chain is needed to provide for nuclear Navy requirements,” said the Energy Futures Initiative in its report — The U.S. Nuclear Energy Enterprise: A Key National Security Enabler. “This supply chain has an inherent and very strong overlap with the commercial nuclear energy sector and has a strong presence in states with commercial nuclear power plants.”
SMRs would keep that supply chain — and the civil nuclear sector — alive. A 2019 Atlantic Council report — The Value of the US Nuclear Power Complex to US National Security — agrees. “Civil nuclear underpins military nuclear,” it said. “The lack of a civilian nuclear sector would present an immediate and significant economic shock (and impact on the labor force) — which, in turn, would have immediate and longer-term budgetary implications for the US government.”
At least two of the companies striving to develop SMRs in the US have direct links to the nuclear weapons sector. Bill Gates’s TerraPower — whose reactor can be modified to “dual purpose” for weapons and power — has research and development partnerships with Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex, both of which design and test nuclear weapons. NuScale is majority owned by Fluor Corporation, which operates the U.S. Pantex and Y-12 nuclear weapons complexes.
Furthermore, SMRs are largely destined for export, and hardly for any domestic use at all. That hands proliferation-friendly materials, technology and know-how to countries not presently in possession of this relatively straightforward pathway to nuclear weapons.
If we are to understand the blind obsession with SMRs, the weapons connection offers one of the only plausible explanations. The stranglehold in the halls of power is the other — sound science, economics and our future be damned.
Only we can change this. Please use this latest edition of our Talking Points [Our newest edition — Unfounded Promises: Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) solve none of the challenges of nuclear power and make climate change and proliferation worse ] to contribute to a tsunami of our own — decrying the reckless waste of precious time and taxpayer money that would favor an elusive SMR program. These funds must urgently be directed to renewable energy, an industry that is here now, growing fast and one that can both reduce carbon emissions and provide good, long-term jobs into the future.
Note: In the interest of brevity, the Talking Points do not include footnotes. However, the sources and references used for the SMR Talking Points can be found in a separate document here. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2022/11/27/no-use-in-the-climate-crisis/
It’s high time to defuse the military carbon bomb
We cannot tackle climate change, and save our collective future, while increasing military spending.
the richest countries spent $9.45 trillion on their militaries between 2013 and 2021 compared with an estimated $234bn on climate finance – in other words, they have spent 30 times as much on the military as climate finance.
- https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/11/25/military-carbon-bomb Nick Buxton, Researcher at the Transnational Institute, 25 Nov 202225 Nov 2022,
The annual United Nations climate talks, known as the Conference of Parties (COP), have traditionally promised much but delivered little. This year’s COP27 was no different, with most observers noting that it even backtracked on commitments made at COP26 in Glasgow.
What was less observed was that the summit faced a major additional obstacle in 2022. This year, the climate crisis was overshadowed by the war in Ukraine which has been the foreign policy priority of the United States and the European Union since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February.
The difference between the way the world’s richest countries responded to the Ukraine war and the carbon war on our whole planet is undoubtedly stark.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, the US and its NATO allies provided Ukraine with military assistance worth more than $25bn, welcomed nearly seven million refugees, and willingly absorbed severe economic shocks caused by energy price increases triggered by the war.
Despite a global recession looming on the horizon, these countries did not hesitate to increase their military expenditure. Germany allocated 100 billion euros ($104bn) of its 2022 budget for the armed forces, for example, and the US House of Representatives approved a record $840bn military spending.
Yet at COP27, these same wealthiest nations were not even able to deliver the $100bn in climate finance that had been promised as far back as 2009 to the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries. A recent report co-published by the organisation I work for, the Transnational Institute, found that the richest countries spent $9.45 trillion on their militaries between 2013 and 2021 compared with an estimated $234bn on climate finance – in other words, they have spent 30 times as much on the military as climate finance.
After many years of pressure, at COP27, nations finally agreed to create a loss and damage mechanism to provide funds to impoverished countries suffering severe climate impacts, but it is so far just an empty pot. The accelerated arms race that has emerged since the Russian invasion and rising US-China tensions signal that filling that pot will not be a priority for most wealthy nations in the near future.
These spending choices matter not just because they are diverting resources from urgently needed climate action, but also because every dollar spent on the military is worsening the climate crisis. Most militaries consume significant amounts of fossil fuels. One estimate calculates that military emissions may make up 5.5 percent of global emissions. If the global military were a country, it would be the fourth biggest emitter in the world, ahead of Russia.
Furthermore, most of the world’s military spending goes towards the purchase of equipment and vehicles that are among the worst offenders when it comes to carbon emissions. In 2022 alone, for example, 475 new F-35 fighter jets, which use a whopping 5,600 litres (1,480 gallons) of oil per hour of flight, have been ordered. These fuel-guzzling planes could be flying for the next 30 years.
The emissions increase even further when war breaks out. The Ukrainian government at COP27 presented research showing that the first eight months of war had already led to 33 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to adding 16 million cars to the United Kingdom’s roads for two years.
US and UK military chiefs argue that they are committed to reducing military emissions, but their plans so far remain undetailed, opaque and unconvincing. Adding solar panels to a military base is easy to do, but does nothing to tackle the main challenge, which is fossil fuel consumption by military jets, ships and tanks. For now, there is no alternative, green fuel that can be produced at the scale needed and without triggering unacceptable social and environmental consequences, such as increased deforestation and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples.
The uncomfortable truth is that there is no way of ensuring that our planet remains habitable in the long term while continuing to increase military spending. In the midst of an intense and brutal war in Ukraine, this fact is too easily lost as governments are able to justify any increases in military spending to deal with the new immediate “threats”.
Moreover, the military spending of many rich countries is already way out of proportion to any real or perceived threat. NATO member states, for example, already spend 17 times as much on the military as Russia. The US spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined.
Meanwhile, the world has an ever smaller window to tackle climate change – the most pressing threat to our collective future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world must cut emissions by 45 percent by 2030 to have any chance at keeping global average temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). When every month counts, embarking on an accelerated arms race is the worst path the world’s most powerful nations can take. It diverts money and attention from urgent climate action, it increases emissions and it fuels conflicts at a time of increased climate instability.
Climate change can teach us a critical lesson about security. Carbon emissions do not recognise borders. It is not possible for any nation to shield itself from the effects of climate change using tanks or fighter jets. The only way to tackle the climate emergency is through global cooperation. Demilitarisation and peace are the best and perhaps the only ways to ensure that humanity has the capacity and resilience to respond to this crisis.
Only if the world’s leaders recognise that uniting to confront the threat of global heating is more important than any imperialist strategy or narrow economic interest, may we have a chance to avoid climate catastrophe. A secure nation in the end depends on a secure planet.
Take it from the soup throwers, COP’s a cop-out
Holding the next climate conference in the oil-rich UAE shows how wealthy nations hide behind smug green nimbyism
If you’re enjoying the many hypocrisies flushed to the surface by the
World Cup in Qatar, then allow me to go one better. Next year’s United
Nations Climate Change Conference is to be held in Dubai. Yep, lovely,
green Dubai. A place so committed to environmental stewardship that I once
heard a resident describe the slick, viscous sea between the fronds of the
man-made Palm peninsula as “a bit athlete’s foot-ish”.
The same Dubai that, despite having little oil of its own, is also found within the UAE,
the world’s seventh-largest oil producer and third-largest per capita.
Forget the UAE, though, and come back to Britain. Probably, like me,
you’ve been fuming at environmental protesters these past months, as
they’ve thrown food over artworks, shut down roads and had annoying
names, like “Indigo”. Yet perhaps you’ve also had a latent sense of
guilt nagging at the back of your mind. On a global level, inaction is
still what we get.
Egypt’s Cop27, which finished this weekend, made zero
progress towards keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5C, despite
basically every country on the planet agreeing that we’re in trouble if
we don’t. Instead, discussions focused on the extent to which the richer,
more developed world should be paying “loss and damage” compensation to
the places that climate change affects the most.
Protesters talk often about the grim impacts of warming on “the global south”, and they’re
right. Recent floods in Pakistan, for example, displaced millions of people
and cost the country so many billions of pounds that they might as well
have had Liz Truss as PM for six weeks. Yet it’s also true that the same
poorer countries have the most to lose from future rises too. In effect,
they’re blackmailing the richer world by pointing a gun at their own
heads.
From Dubai onwards, this raises the prospect of Cop becoming a forum
that exists not to prevent climate change but rather to argue over who pays
for the damage while it rampages on. This, even while virtually every
individual government that is a part of it has a commitment to keeping the
rise down. Which, in the end, can only lead to a sort of environmental
nimbyism.
As in, you sort out your own backyard, if you can afford it,
while also not quite thinking about the effect your consumption or your
exports might have elsewhere. Much like the UAE. Much like us. If this
seems hopeless, that’s because it is. Sorry, but you know it, I know it
and the pink-haired soup-throwers know it too. Indeed, over the past couple
of months I’ve often worried that our swift rage at the imbecility of
Jocasta and Moonstar sticking themselves to a flyover, or whatever, is a
form of very basic displacement activity. It’s so much easier for us all
to condemn them for everything they’re doing wrong than it is for us to
grapple with the big thing they’re entirely right about. Which is that
the governments of the world are bodging this.
Times 22nd Nov 2022
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/take-it-from-the-soup-throwers-cops-a-cop-out-j5026mxsw
Fears that oil exporters will control the next COP climate summit
Fears are growing among climate experts and campaigners over the influence
of fossil fuel producers on global climate talks, as a key Gulf petro-state
gears up to take control of the negotiations. The United Arab Emirates, one
of the world’s biggest oil exporters, will hold the presidency of Cop28,
the next round of UN climate talks that will begin in late November next
year. Decisions taken at the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt, which finished
on Sunday, showed the clear imprint of fossil fuel influence, according to
people inside the negotiations. They said Saudi Arabia – an ally of Egypt
outside the talks – played a key role in preventing a strong commitment
to limiting temperature increases to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Many
countries, including the UK and the EU, were bitterly disappointed. Alok
Sharma, the UK president of last year’s Cop26 summit, said in visible
anger at the conclusion of Cop27 on Sunday morning: “Those of us who came
to Egypt to keep 1.5C alive, and to respect what every single one of us
agreed to in Glasgow, have had to fight relentlessly to hold the line.”
Guardian 22nd Nov 2022
At the close of COP27 Summit, some progress on climate justice.
The COP27 Climate Summit closed early on Sunday morning with the adoption
of an historic new accord that for the first time commits countries to
providing funding to the most vulnerable nations to help them cope with the
loss and damage inflicted by escalating climate impacts.
But the final accord failed to deliver much progress on global efforts to curb greenhouse
gas emissions, with those countries seeking a more ambitious deal accusing
a number of petrostates and their allies of seeking to backslide on
previous agreements.
The deal came after 48 hours of round the clock
negotiations as countries sought to finalise an agreement that built on
last year’s Glasgow Climate Pact by delivering a boost to flows of climate
finance and further action to accelerate decarbonisation efforts worldwide.
On Saturday afternoon, the Egyptian hosts confirmed that after several days
of deadlock the negotiations appeared to have secured a major breakthrough
following an agreement between the EU and the G77 group of developing
economies, including China, which saw them back plans for a new Loss and
Damage financing mechanism that could be operationalised at next year’s
COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai.
Business Green 20th Nov 2022
‘On The Highway To Climate Hell’ – The Climate Crisis, Activism And Broken Politics
Scientists are now admitting more often that they are ‘scared’ about
the climate crisis. Record high temperatures this summer in the UK alone
prompted Professor Hannah Cloke, from Reading University, to say: ‘This
sort of thing is really scary. It’s just one statistic amongst an
avalanche of extreme weather events that used to be known as “natural
disasters”.’
Aaron Theirry, co-founder of Scientists for Extinction
Rebellion, recently pointed out that: ‘The world’s largest oil and gas
companies are set to invest $930 billion over this decade in new fossil
fuel projects. Whilst the largest investment banks such as J.P. Morgan,
Citigroup, etc. have continued to pour hundreds of billions into the sector
since the Paris agreement.’
He added: ‘It was recently calculated that
fossil fuel companies already own seven times more reserves than can be
burned if we are to stay below 1.5C of global warming – yet they continue
to explore for more, with government backing!
Mark Campanale, CEO of Carbon
Tracker points out that if we look at current investment strategies then
“we are heading way beyond 3C degrees”. In other words, the global
political and financial elites are still marching us towards
catastrophe.’
In a recent interview with Aaron Bastani of Novara Media,
wildlife television presenter and conservationist Chris Packham made highly
articulate comments about the climate crisis, grassroots protest and the
destructive nature of the private media.
It is well worth quoting him at
length. As Bastani noted, Packham is a genuine national treasure, highly
regarded by much of the British public for his knowledge and passion about
the natural world and the environment, and for his keen ability to
communicate these issues effectively. Bastani asked him: ‘Do you think
politics in this country is capable of addressing the climate crisis?’
Packham answered: ‘No. No, I think the people will have to force our
politicians to address it. That’s why I continue to support those
activists [referring to Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil] who are
making a noise about this, and trying to bring it to the forefront of
public attention, and express and articulate the urgency [of the situation]
that we now find ourselves in. ‘It’s not only that I don’t trust them
[politicians], it’s that even if they were trustworthy people, I don’t
think the system’s there to make it work.’
Media Lens 14th Nov 2022
“Everywhere you look at Egypt’s COP27 you can see and hear the influence of the fossil fuel industry” – Greenpeace .
Yeb Saño, Executive Director, Greenpeace Southeast Asia and Head of the
Greenpeace delegation attending the COP said: “While this is merely a
skeleton of the Egyptian Presidency’s draft of a COP cover note
Greenpeace is shocked that it has no backbone. It is scarcely credible that
they have forgotten all about fossil fuels especially with the level of
carbon cartel capture present here in Sharm el-Sheikh.”
“Everywhere you
look in Sharm el-Sheikh you can see and hear the influence of the fossil
fuel industry. They have shown up in record numbers to try and decouple
climate action from a fossil fuel phase out.”
“India clearly put all
fossil fuels on the phase down negotiating table. The EU could not have
been simpler in calling for a phase out. And, Tuvalu powerfully connected
transitioning away from fossil fuels with staying below 1.5C as a human
right. T
The ever present COP chroniclers of the Egyptian Presidency somehow
seem to have failed to record any of it.” The cover note must make it
clear that limiting temperature rise to 1.5C by 2100 is the only acceptable
interpretation of the Paris Agreement and acknowledge the 1.5°C aligned
global phase out dates for the production and consumption of coal, gas and
oil.”
Greenpeace International 15th Nov 2022
1 This Month
22 June – Virtual Event –Climate Change: New Data, New Debate
Monday, June 22, 2026 2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. CT
YouTube. Register here
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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