The turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with climate change was finally exposed

 

 

Jeffrey St. Clair>>

+ A new study in Nature estimates that even under an optimistic scenario “the global North would overshoot its share of the 1.5 °C carbon budget by a factor of three, appropriating half of the global South’s share in the process.”

+ The melting of Greenland’s ice sheet is accelerating rapidly. A new study published in Nature estimates that Greenland is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour–20% more than was previously thought. The torrents of freshwater flushing into the Atlantic are expected to speed the collapse of the ocean currents called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc), the consequences of which will be dire.

+ Since 1970, the Greenland ice sheet has lost over 6 trillion metric tons of ice, which is more than 700 tonnes lost per person for every person on the planet today.

+ A piece in the Financial Times predicts that the countries in the global south expected to experience the most extreme climate disasters “face a massive financing gap: they need $4.3 trillion by 2030 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

+ A new report says that climate change, not El Niño, was the main driver of the Amazon drought in 2023. The study concluded that climate change made the agricultural Amazon drought 30 times more likely from June to November. In Amazonas state, 59 out of 62 municipalities are facing drought and 15 of them are in an emergency situation, according to the Amazon Working Group. Rivers in some regions have fallen to their lowest levels in more than 120 years. The drought has increased the spread of wildfire and caused mass die-offs of fish and dolphins.

 

 

+ Officials in southern Portugal’s Algarve region are planning to cut the water allocation for agricultural use by 70% and for households by 15% this year. But the region’s reservoirs are still likely to run dry by summer. An official said, “The situation is becoming catastrophic"

+ James Hansen: “When our children and grandchildren look back at the history of human-made climate change, this year and next will be seen as the turning point at which the futility of governments in dealing with climate change was finally exposed.”