The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.
The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change.
https://www.facebook.com/PeaceloveIam/posts/10205775088127900…
ile intersections were reconfigured. So sweet was the resulting city air that weekend that environmental enthusiasm went sky high. It was a moment that would change the world.
Three months later Sweden, citing air and other pollution, asked the UN to hold the first-ever international environmental conference, initiating a process that would lead to a groundbreaking gathering in its capital in 5 June 1972, the 50th anniversary of which will be marked next week. This was the beginning of a long and slow struggle to find and agree global solutions to these newly understood global environment problem. Twenty years later, the Rio conference would follow in the same month, kicking off UN climate summits, the most recent of which was held in Glasgow last autumn.
Last year’s Cop26 summit in Glasgow achieved more than was expected, with governments giving themselves this year – until another summit, in Egypt in November – in which to do more. So far, not much has happened, but potential exists, not least to cut emissions of methane and similar pollutants, a hitherto neglected measure that could cut the rate of warming in half.
…
ostly university professors who were paid more for their teaching than for research, let alone for any particular subject of research. The most important greenhouse effect work in the entire half-century was done by a complete amateur, the engineer G.S. Callendar, in his spare time. National meteorological services like the United States Weather Bureau, driven especially by the needs of military and civilian aviation, did spend large and increasing sums to observe the atmosphere. But this treasury of data was compiled for daily forecasts and was seldom used for basic research. The few climatologists that national agencies supported were hired only to compile dull statistics of average weather conditions.Around midcentury some meteorologists began to call for a more vigorous research effort. In 1953, a government advisory committee reported that the entire Weather Bureau needed new, young blood. Modest research that a few outstanding individuals had undertaken before the war had suffered a "slow, almost lingering death." The committee warned that climatology, starved for funds, was scientifically moribund. Their report led to the appointment of a new climatology chief, Helmut Landsberg, who brought an improved "esprit de corps" and an important expansion. His group's main job, however, was still routine processing of data on past climates. Another report presented in 1957 complained that climate research remained a stepchild at the Bureau, inadequate in scope, with climatologists mostly "relegated to a mere housekeeping function. While climate studies languished at the Weather Bureau, however, a flood of new Federal money began to push the field forward in other institutions, even though their missions were remote from weather research.
.…
latkin, New Jersey’s attorney general, told the Guardian. “This study only increases our resolve to hold them accountable in court.”
A spokesman for Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, said the new research “confirms the need to hold defendants accountable for their deception”.
Several jurisdictions declined to comment on their ongoing cases against Exxon, including Delaware, New York City and Massachusetts, where the state’s supreme court last year dismissed a claim by the company that it was being pursued for political reasons and must face trial over accusations it broke consumer protection laws and deceived investors by covering up its knowledge of the climate crisis.
…
would take a look at Netfix's latest showing last evening, as a reminder of [IT]'s basic premise that methane was more of the cause of the problem which underlines the issue of climate change, that Carbon Dioxide.So having watched what to ALL intents and purposes was a valid proposal from the film, to "feed ourselves directly with products of the grain which we otherwise feed to cows" I was inclined to re-watch the TED talk "How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change" which I had originally found so inspiring at the outset to the launch of the Transition Towns initiative.
…