R Hallam
https://www.facebook.com/share/18yR6ZF6gG/


ADAPTION WITHOUT RESISTANCE IS COMPLICITY
and complicity is a crime against humanity.

Yet again we find that the biggest block to a realist strategy in response to the elite's death project on carbon emissions is the liberal media. It claims to be addressing our "concerns" in a progressive manner - and this framing acts as a cover to distract us into an exclusive focus on individual action and techno fixes - while there is total silence on what "the climate crisis" act concretely entails as we go over 2C in a decade's time - meaning economic collapse and mass starvation (remember the British insurance industry report predicts over 2 billion deaths if we pass 2C). This then dampens the ability to build a national social movement that will force the political revolution we need - to replace the corporate controlled political class with sortition based citizens assemblies, with the legal power and thus popular legitimacy to overcome the power of capital.

Our single biggest political task is to separate from the liberal class and build bottom up, people-based movements which refuse to be managed by these complicit criminals - and move to the revolution which is now absolutely justified and necessary.

Why is Britain running out of water? Because the political class is utterly corrupted and bought out by the rich .... obviously.

"Why is the UK running out of water?
The Environment Agency has estimated England’s public water supply could be short by 5bn litres a day by 2055 without urgent action to future-proof resources.

Water demand is going up as the population grows and new industrial demands from datacentres and energy infrastructure require more water. Plus, the water available to supply those needs is going down as the effects of the climate crisis kick in, and we have greater variability and unpredictability of rainfall and greater water demand during hotter, drier summers. There has also been a lack of investment over several decades in fixing leaks and building new reservoirs."

Halving The Earth's Population To 4 Billion Is The Best Way To Secure A "Pro-Human" Future
https://www.iflscience.com/halving-the-earths-population-to-4-billion-is-the-best-way-to-secure-a-pro-human-future-a-new-study-argues-84219



Achieve Sustainability by Easing Population to 4 Billionby 2200
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/sd.71358

Abstract
The past century of massive increases in human population and resource use has seen many undesirable environmental effects, ranging from biodiversity loss to climate change. But a research gap exists, as the ultimate causes are often not described with precision or mentioned at all. In this study, metrics of biodiversity, consumption, and pollution show extremely strong correlations when charted against human population size and its per capita impacts. We describe causal mechanisms for these correlations. Then, using available data, we show that slowing and gradually reversing population growth to ∼4 billion or less by 2200, while moderating per capita impacts, is the path toward sustainability. Among the benefits are habitat recovery and conservation of wild species, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, reduced conflict over resources, and the reduction of global poverty.


Halving Our Global Population to 4 Billion is a Pro-Human and Pro-Nature Choice: Peer-Review Science
https://youtu.be/yD4ARdVr7d8?si=heClqQAAqH5RvYbl

J Bendell
https://www.facebook.com/share/19QFBmpV7x/

The Guardian newspaper has traditionally been ecomodernist and therefore dismissive of the worth of discussing collapse. That aligns with its restrained way of critiquing power, and its habit of being unfair towards the people and ideas its editors deem too radical (Corbyn, Assange, 'doomers'). Which makes it remarkable that it has a positive interview with Sarah Wilson about her book on collapse. I wonder if other editors in the mainstream like NYT, BBC, NPR, and specialists like Open Democracy, New Internationalist, and The Ecologist, all of whom have either spiked stories on collapse, or published disparaging critiques, might be more sober about this topic in future.

Your worst fears about cultural collapse might be true – here’s what you can do about it | Well actually | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2026/jul/29/sarah-wilson-book-interview

Interesting interview with Earth scientist Bill McGuire.

One of the most concerning points he discusses is a new (as yet unreviewed) paper suggesting that current satellite observations aren't matching our understanding of Earth's energy imbalance. In other words, the planet appears to be warming faster than existing models can fully explain. As this paper has not yet been peer reviewed, these findings should be treated as provisional until they have undergone independent scientific scrutiny. If they do hold up, they suggest we could exceed 2°C of warming by around 2040, approach 3°C by around 2050, and continue rising thereafter, pushing Earth's climate towards temperatures not experienced for millions of years.

The video also explores the economic consequences of climate breakdown.

The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, the professionals who assess financial risk for banks, insurers and pension funds argue that many economic models are fundamentally underestimating climate risk. Their concern is that most financial institutions treat climate impacts as isolated events, rather than recognising that droughts, crop failures, floods, migration, conflict and supply chain disruption can cascade into one another, creating far greater economic damage than the sum of the individual parts.

Their warning is stark. Without immediate action to change course, severe climate impacts are not only plausible but could threaten future global prosperity.

To illustrate the scale of the disagreement, many mainstream economic models still rely on assumptions originating from a model published in 2000, which estimated climate change would reduce global GDP by only around 3% by 2100. By contrast, actuarial risk assessments, produced by people whose job is to price and underwrite multi billion dollar financial risks, warn of around a 15% reduction in global GDP by 2050, rising to as much as 50% by 2100. Some actuarial scenarios even suggest the possibility of widespread societal breakdown beginning around the 2040s, with catastrophic human consequences later this century.

It does make you wonder whether the old contrarian slogan, "We are the carbon they want to get rid of," has ended up applying in the opposite direction.

The Insurance Industry Predicts Mass Death: How Do We Live A Good Life?
https://youtu.be/9Q93ZE54yaE?is=q0M2JBIgKLEgw6ZZ&t=4m0

future is here

Beyond lithium: how sodium-ion batteries could change the world
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02150-y

The world's largest battery maker is about to mass-produce batteries made from sodium, a material more than 1,000 times as abundant as lithium in Earth's crust and up to 60,000 times as plentiful in the ocean. Chinese giant CATL starts production before the end of 2026 and has already signed deals with a car manufacturer and a grid-storage provider.

The price gap is striking: industrial-grade sodium carbonate cost $200–280 per tonne last month, against $20,000–25,000 per tonne for battery-grade lithium carbonate. Sodium cells also replace copper with cheap aluminium and graphite with easily made carbon materials, they are less flammable, and they keep working at −40 °C. CATL has spent nearly $1.4 billion on the technology since 2016.

The trade-off is capacity. CATL's sodium cell stores 175 watt-hours per kilogram, with 200 promised soon. That matches the cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate batteries now common in Chinese cars, but it is only two-thirds of what top lithium cells deliver, so long-range electric cars are staying on lithium for now.

Energy analyst Auke Hoekstra, whose bullish renewable-energy forecasts have often proved right, admits the speed caught him off guard: "I honestly did not expect it to go that fast — and I am usually the guy who is seen as an optimist." He calls sodium-ion "a game-changer" for the future of energy. Others are more cautious. CATL expects cost parity with the cheapest lithium batteries by the end of 2026; research firm Wood Mackenzie says 2035.

The clearest opening is grid storage for solar and wind power, where energy density matters little and lower fire risk means simpler, cheaper battery packs. Almost all manufacturing capacity sits in China and is expected to stay there until 2030, which has pushed the United States to fund a five-year, $50-million research programme of its own. Battery researcher Shirley Meng doubts sodium will replace lithium outright, describing it instead as insurance against lithium supply shocks: the world's energy transition is getting a second battery chemistry to lean on.

Nové plasty by mohly vznikat z oxidu uhličitého. Pracuje na tom česko-francouzský tým — ČT24 — Česká televize
https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/clanek/veda/nove-plasty-by-mohly-vznikat-z-oxidu-uhliciteho-pracuje-na-tom-cesko-francouzsky-tym-374946

NextGen – The future of carbon removal… today!
https://www.nextgencdr.com/

Proměnit problém na řešení je cílem rozsáhlé česko-francouzské spolupráce, která chce změnit nadbytek oxidu uhličitého na umělé hmoty. Jeho molekuly by měly nahradit při vzniku polymerů dnes používanou ropu.

„Oxid uhličitý obvykle vnímáme jako problém. My z něj chceme vytvořit užitečnou surovinu pro nové materiály. Vedle snižování emisí se ho musíme naučit také znovu využívat,“ uvedl Hynek Beneš, který projekt koordinuje. Podle Beneše se stal oxid uhličitý symbolem klimatických obav. I když je to plyn nezbytný pro udržení života na planetě, tak na druhou stranu patří do skupiny průmyslově produkovaných skleníkových plynů, které vedou ke globálnímu oteplování a neblahým klimatickým změnám.

***

Forget burying or capturing carbon. The EU-funded VIVALDI project is doing something much more innovative, taking CO₂ emissions from bio-based industries and transforming them into useful, earth-friendly chemicals - in this case, high-value organic acids.

From CO₂ to Cash: Turning pollution into next gen products - Environment
https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/co2-cash-turning-pollution-next-gen-products-2025-10-24_en

Europeans should learn to love the air-conditioner
https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/06/18/europeans-should-learn-to-love-the-air-conditioner

❝ Americans and Europeans differ loudly on many issues, from health-care policy to gun-carrying etiquette. But a quieter division appears every summer when they visit each other’s continents. Europeans touring America complain that shops and restaurants are so frigidly air-conditioned as to require a jacket; step outside again and your glasses fog over. Yanks holidaying in Europe expect cool comfort, and grow surly on finding that many old-world buildings require them to sweat and bear it.

The divide is rooted in both climate and culture. Long before General Electric began cooling using circulating chemicals, southern Europe was built to handle heat. In traditional houses, white paint and shaded courtyards keep things cool. Windows are thrown open and rooms aired in the mornings. Shutters keep out the midday sun, and siestas allow one to skip the hours when it is too hot to do much anyway. Europe’s southerners think coddled Americans don’t know how to cope with heat naturally. Northern Europe, meanwhile, is mostly spared the problem: June days can be cold enough for a Scandinavian knitted sweater. Flinty northern Protestants regard buying an air-conditioner for the year’s few scorchers as an expensive environmental sin.

These days, climate change is putting such attitudes to the test. Europe is expecting a broiling summer, in part thanks to the El Niño weather event. As it is, heat contributes to around 175,000 deaths a year on the continent, the UN reckons. Yet Europeans who think first-world lifestyles are largely to blame for global warming may feel pangs of carbon guilt about equipping their houses with air-conditioning, or using it if they have it. They needn’t. The impressive build-out of renewable energy in Europe’s hottest places means that judiciously dialling down the temperature will not do much to melt the glaciers.

Take Spain, where solar capacity has grown nearly tenfold in the past decade. Readers sweating it out in Seville can head to app.electricitymaps.com to reassure themselves: on June 10th a kilowatt-hour of Spanish electricity produced just 86 grams of CO2 equivalent. In the American state of Georgia the figure was 442. On a sunny summer day at noon, only about 10% of Spain’s electricity comes from fossil fuels; around half comes from solar. Portugal does just as well, and France better still, thanks to its dozens of nuclear reactors. Italy is a laggard, getting 30-40%of its electricity from gas. But its 224g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour is positively verdant next to much of America.

Not all of Europe can congratulate itself. Poland remains heavily reliant on coal, making its electricity mix about as bad as America’s. Germany’s rash decision in 2011 to eliminate nuclear power left it dependent on coal and gas, producing three times as much CO2 per watt-hour as Spain. Britain, depending on the weather, falls between Italy and Iberia. There are also unexpected bright spots like Albania, which sometimes gets 100% of its electricity from hydroelectric dams. Latvia is the greenest of the Baltics, thanks to more solar power than you might expect.

Climate morality aside, many on the old continent fret about how to pay for cranking up the aircon dial. Americans are roughly a third richer than Europeans, and to add insult to injury their household electricity costs about half as much. Even middle-class Europeans worry about a sudden bump in energy prices owing to an unexpected geopolitical crisis—say, a war in Iran.

Yet European homes are smaller than American ones, and use about a third as much electricity on average. Moreover, the solar boom means that power is not just greener but cheaper on hot, sunny afternoons. Setting the dishwasher to run overnight (prices are generally highest around 9pm) can free up room in one’s budget to cool off the home before going to bed. Smart meters make this sort of demand-shifting easier. And astute governments offer funding to make old houses energy-efficient, which can pay for itself (provided they do not make the mistake of Italy’s “Superbonus” programme: failing to check that the renovations take place).

The war in Iran has driven up fossil-fuel prices, but in parts of Europe (notably France and Spain) electricity bills have risen much less. That reflects smart policies. After the war in Ukraine many Europeans not only throttled their use of Russian gas, but reduced reliance on it in general. The countries that decarbonised fastest have reaped the greatest benefits. Voters might consider taking the revolutionary step of rewarding politicians who made good decisions. They are probably best equipped to bring Europe the vast expansion of power capacity it needs for the future.

A chilling realisation

To be sure, Europe faces an energy crunch. It must electrify industries to compete with China and expand its data centres, dwarfed by America’s, lest the artificial-intelligence revolution render it a vassal. That means better-connected electricity markets; France should let its reactors compete with Spanish solar farms. It means accelerating the build-up of battery storage, upgrading grids, and adding vastly more renewable energy. In this equation a bit more domestic air-conditioning is little more than a rounding error.

For green politicians buffeted in recent years by falling support, a call to chill out in front of the AC may sound like surrender. That, however, is a script that ought to be flipped. It is precisely because climate-conscious governments have prodded Europe to quit fossil fuels that the continent’s electricity is becoming less harmful to the planet—and less expensive. As the world warms, Europe is heating up faster than any other region. Europeans poor and rich will be using more air conditioning, both to make lives more pleasant and in extreme cases to save them. Those who prefer to tough out the summer are free to do so. But the goal should be to make cheap, clean air-conditioning available to everyone. ❞

make future great again

Tony Blair tells Starmer and rivals: abandon net zero and move closer to Trump | Labour | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/26/tony-blair-labour-abandon-net-zero-support-donald-trump

Blair argued for the government to crack down on welfare spending, abandon restrictions on oil and gas and smooth relations with Donald Trump.

The Labour Party Is Playing With Fire Over Its Future and the Future of the Country
https://institute.global/insights/politics-and-governance/the-labour-party-is-playing-with-fire-over-its-future-and-the-future-of-the-country

J Pecho
https://www.facebook.com/share/1LNpw9aWiZ/

Predstavte si 540 miliónov rokov klímy strednej Európy v jednej obrazovej sérii — od najstarších prvohôr až po to, ako môže naša krajina vyzerať o pár generácií.

Začneme v plytkom tropickom mori s trilobitmi (pred 520 mil. rokov). Pokračujeme do hustého uhoľného pralesa pri rovníku s 35-metrovými šupinatými stromami a vážkami s rozpätím krídel 70 cm (pred 310 mil. rokov). Stáda "raných" dinosaurov v polopúšti superkontinentu Pangea (pred 220 mil. rokov). Pravták Archaeopteryx krúžiaci nad tropickou bavorskou lagúnou (pred 150 mil. rokov).

V eocéne — pred 48 miliónmi rokov — bolo Nemecko ako Indonézia: palmy, krokodíly, prví primáti v korunách stromov. Bolo o 12 °C teplejšie ako dnes.

Potom dlhé ochladzovanie. Posledná doba ľadová pred 21 000 rokmi: mamutia step naprieč strednou Európou, stáda sobov a vlnatých nosorožcov, na fronte alpského ľadovca naši priami predkovia v kožiach. Pred 125 000 rokmi naopak medziľadová doba — teplejšie ako dnes, v Temži sa kúpali hrochy.

Po roztopení ľadovcov prví roľníci s drevenými dlhými domami ako ostrovy v mori hlbokých lesov. Stredoveké teplé obdobie okolo roku 1100 — anglické vinice, kvitnúce kláštory. Malá doba ľadová v 17. storočí — zamrznuté rieky, trhy priamo "na ľade".

A potom budúcnosť: +2 °C, +4 °C, +10 °C.

Najsilnejšia myšlienka? Posledný obraz série — Zem o 10 °C teplejšia okolo roku 2300 — stredná Európy vyzerá takmer identicky ako tá eocénna džungľa pred 48 miliónmi rokov. Palmy, tie isté krokodíly v rieke. More o 60 metrov vyššie. Panónska kotlina pod morom. A civilizácia? It´s gone (I suppose).

Paleoklimatológia nie je len o minulosti. Je to atlas našej budúcnosti — mapa, ktorú už raz Zem nakreslila. Stačí ju vedieť čítať.
---------------------------------------
Obr. generované AI (Claude, gpt, ...)

Zdroje, z ktorých vychádza vizualizačná séria klímy strednej Európy:

Prvohory–druhohory
• Inglis G.N. et al. (2020). Global mean surface temperature and climate sensitivity of the early Eocene Climatic Optimum, PETM, and latest Paleocene. Climate of the Past 16, 1953. (doi:10.5194/cp-16-1953-2020)
• Burke K.D. et al. (2018). Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates. PNAS 115, 13288. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1809600115)
• Scotese C.R. (PALEOMAP Project) — paleogeografické rekonštrukcie kontinentov pre celé fanerozoikum

Pleistocén a doba ľadová
• Petit J.R. et al. (1999). Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core. Nature 399, 429.
• Lüthi D. et al. (2008). High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000–800,000 years before present. Nature 453, 379.
• Annan J.D., Hargreaves J.C. (2013). A new global reconstruction of temperature changes at the Last Glacial Maximum. Climate of the Past 9, 367. (doi:10.5194/cp-9-367-2013)
• Kindler P. et al. (2014). Temperature reconstruction from 10 to 120 kyr b2k from the NGRIP ice core. Climate of the Past 10, 887. (doi:10.5194/cp-10-887-2014)
• Clark P.U. et al. (2012). Global climate evolution during the last deglaciation. PNAS 109, E1134.
• Lambert F. et al. (2008). Dust-climate couplings over the past 800,000 years from the EPICA Dome C ice core. Nature 452, 616.
• Batchelor C.L. et al. (2019). The configuration of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets through the Quaternary. Nature Communications 10, 3713.
• Leger T.P.M. et al. (2026). First Alps-wide reconstruction of LGM glacial sediment transport. Earth Surface Dynamics 14, 361. (doi:10.5194/esurf-14-361-2026) — GPU-modelovanie alpského ľadu pre vizualizáciu LGM.

Súčasná klíma a budúce scenáre
• IPCC AR6 WG1 (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge University Press. (ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1)
• Zemp M. et al. (2015). Historically unprecedented global glacier decline in the early 21st century. Journal of Glaciology 61, 745.
• EURO-CORDEX projekt — regionálne klimatické projekcie pre Európu (euro-cordex.net)
• CH2018 — Swiss Climate Change Scenarios — adaptačné scenáre pre Alpy

Referenčné monografie
• Gornitz V. (ed.) (2009). Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments. Springer.
• Ruddiman W.F. (2014). Earth's Climate: Past and Future (3rd ed.). W.H. Freeman.
• Anderson D.E., Goudie A.S., Parker A.G. (2013). Global Environments through the Quaternary. Oxford University Press.
• Burroughs W.J. (2005). Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos. Cambridge UP.

Globálna teplota a CO₂
• Westerhold T. et al. (2020). An astronomically dated record of Earth's climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years. Science 369, 1383. (doi:10.1126/science.aba6853)
• Foster G.L., Royer D.L., Lunt D.J. (2017). Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years. Nature Communications 8, 14845. (doi:10.1038/ncomms14845)
• Hansen J. et al. (2013). Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 371, 20120294. (doi:10.1098/rsta.2012.0294)

Meanwhile in US :) to je takovej punkovej kapitalismus. Regulerne no future

...

Georgia residents are showing what happened to their water after Meta began building a massive data center

AOC brought two jars of murky brown water to Congress.

People living near Stanton Springs now buy bottled water even for showering, while water bills have jumped by 33%. Residents say the problems started after forest clearing and explosive blasting began.

Meta denies responsibility, saying an independent report found the water safe.

AOC is now demanding an EPA investigation.

https://x.com/i/status/2057550528075473325

“The study suggests that warming is proceeding 5,000 times faster than rice has ever evolved.

This means rice may be reaching its "thermal limit," the point at which it can't easily adapt to rising temperatures. Although people can breed more heat-resistant strains or move rice cultivation into new regions, future warming is likely to cause serious disruption for the billion people who depend on rice cultivation for their livelihoods, said study first author Nicolas Gauthier, an anthropologist and geographer at the Florida Museum of Natural History.”

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/global-warming-is-accelerating-5-000-times-faster-than-rice-can-evolve

kind of related, strip mining beyond earth

Can helium-3 create a ‘gold rush’ on the moon? | Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-helium-3-create-a-gold-rush-on-the-moon/

A kilogram of helium-3 costs roughly $20 million on Earth, where the entire planet produces only a few kilograms of it per year — almost all through the radioactive decay of tritium, a hydrogen isotope used to boost thermonuclear weapons. Scientists estimate that around a billion kilograms of the rare isotope lie embedded in the lunar surface, deposited over billions of years by the solar wind. That gap between terrestrial scarcity and lunar abundance is now driving serious commercial interest in moon mining, with Seattle-based Interlune among the companies positioning themselves to extract it.

The appeal is not speculative. Helium-3 is a superlative coolant that enables quantum computers to reach their operating temperatures — fractions of a degree above absolute zero — and is also essential for advanced medical imaging, for detecting smuggled nuclear material, and holds promise as a fuel for future fusion reactors. Writing in Scientific American, Robin George Andrews quotes Clive Neal, a lunar geoscientist at the University of Notre Dame, who draws a sharp distinction between helium-3 and other touted lunar resources such as water ice: "Helium-3 is where the money is".

The reason so much accumulates on the moon comes down to exposure and mineralogy. Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field deflect the solar wind; the airless moon has no such protection. Sara Russell, a planetary scientist at London's Natural History Museum, describes the result as helium-3 being "spray-painted across the whole of the lunar surface". Much of it is retained by ilmenite, a mineral composed of iron, titanium, and oxygen, which Neal describes as "a sponge" for solar-wind gases. The richest deposits are expected in mare regions — the dark, ancient lava plains — particularly in near-equatorial areas and, more often than not, on the lunar far side, where solar-wind exposure tends to be strongest.

Extracting the gas is considerably harder than locating it. "It's like trying to mine spray paint from a wall", Russell says. Interlune, founded in 2020, has developed a prototype extractor with industrial partner Vermeer Corporation capable of processing 100 metric tonnes of lunar regolith per hour. NASA awarded the company a $6.9-million contract earlier this month to advance its hydrogen- and helium-capturing technology. The company's robotic Prospect Moon mission, planned for as early as 2028, will carry a robotic arm, a mass spectrometer, and three different extraction devices. "That's what we need to demonstrate our business case for full-scale operations on the moon", says co-founder and CEO Rob Meyerson.

Not everyone is persuaded the enterprise is either viable or desirable. Russell raises environmental concerns about unregulated strip-mining leaving mechanical scars potentially visible from Earth. "The moon belongs to everybody, surely", she says. Meyerson counters that Interlune plans to dig to around three metres, leaving behind no waste or pollutants, describing the aim as "leaving the site looking like a tilled agricultural field" — though the article notes this is an optimistic projection that no one can yet verify in practice. Even NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has expressed scepticism, recently suggesting that asteroid mining may offer a greater return than lunar helium-3.

There are also open scientific questions with industry-defining stakes. If the solar wind replenishes the moon's helium-3 supply quickly, it could function as something approaching a renewable resource. If regeneration takes centuries or more, reserves may not keep pace with surging demand from quantum computing and other applications. "If helium-3 is a renewable resource, then you've got long-term prosperity", Neal says. Robotic prospecting missions — including NASA's VIPER rover, expected by next year, and the joint Japan-India LUPEX mission planned for 2028 — should begin to answer that question. "We're going to hit the mother lode", Neal ventures. "If it's proven, it could change everything."

MARASAN: jj viz. [TADEAS @ Klimaticka zmena / Destroying the Future Is the Most Cost-Effective]

‘The damage is done’: global oil crisis has changed fossil fuel industry for ever, IEA chief says | Oil | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/24/global-oil-crisis-changed-fossil-fuel-industry-for-ever-iea-chief-fatih-birol

The oil crisis triggered by the Iran war has changed the fossil fuel industry for ever, turning countries away from fossil fuels to secure energy supplies, the world’s leading energy economist said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), also said that, despite pressure, the UK should forgo much of its potential North Sea expansion.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Birol said a key effect of the US-Israel war on Iran was that countries would lose trust in fossil fuels and demand for them would reduce.

“Their perception of risk and reliability will change. Governments will review their energy strategies. There will be a significant boost to renewables and nuclear power and a further shift towards a more electrified future,” he said. “And this will cut into the main markets for oil.”

‘We can’t wait’: Venice already seeking floods plan B five years after barriers’ launch | Venice | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/venice-flood-barrier-plan-b-rising-sea-level

An alarming acceleration in sea level rise – an estimated extra metre by the end of the century – represents a “death knell for the city”, says Andrea Rinaldo, the head of the scientific committee of the newly appointed Lagoon Authority, the organisation that manages the Mose and is now also charged with working out what could succeed it.

“With a metre more, you would have to close the Mose barriers on average 200 times a year, which means it’s practically always closed,” Rinaldo says. “When this happens, the lagoon loses its nature of being a transitional environment. It would become a filthy pond.”

The tides create a natural exchange of water and sediment between the Venice lagoon and the Adriatic. The raised flood barriers block the flow of water, which encourages an excess growth of algae. When the algae die, they decompose, sucking out all the oxygen in the water and killing off fish and other marine flora.

Rinaldo insists the Mose is not poorly designed. It was envisioned as a project for the future, but that future came far sooner than its engineers expected. He is urging immediate action. “You won’t have a lagoon. You won’t have a city. And all of this could happen in a timeframe that is comparable with the time that we had to design and build the Mose. We can’t wait.”

The Blueprint for System Change | Ash Sarkar Meets Extinction Rebellion Founder Roger Hallam
https://youtu.be/UC2VT3RkiYo?si=WR7F32DXf_pg2Zb9


This week on Downstream, Ash Sarkar is joined by one of the most controversial political figures on the Left: Roger Hallam. Whether you like or loathe his tactics, it’s hard to deny the disruptive impact he has had through the activist organisations he has led; Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.

He joins us fresh from his latest stint in a prison cell, where he wrote a treatise for Your Party called ‘Grasping the Enormity of the Moment’. It’s a blueprint for a radical change, in which he sets out his vision for an emancipated future, and strategies for how to get there. Does Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s party still have potential? What is the point of sending activists to prison? And what role will Zoom calls play in the coming revolution?

00:00​ Intro
02:40​ Your Party’s Moment
05:18​ The Revolutionary Potential of Zoom Calls
11:18​ Creating Networks Through Door Knocking
14:50​ Drawing Inspiration From the Belgian Workers’ Party
17:58​ What Motivates People: Emotion Versus Reason
26:09​ The Problem With the Censorious Left
34:11​ What’s the Point of Political Prisoners?
44:09​ The Demographics of JSO and XR
52:47​ On Sortition
1:04:42​ Building Relationships of Solidarity
1:11:40​ Zack Polanski and the Green Party
1:14:22​ Talking, Listening, Action

Reduced economic activity caused by the current Iran war has not been sufficient to offset the surge in CO₂ emissionsgenerated by the conflict. While economic slowdowns typically lead to modest declines in emissions, the scale of disruption in this case has been relatively limited on a global level.

At the same time, the war has produced a sharp and concentrated spike in emissions from infrastructure destruction, fires, and intensified military operations, resulting in a clear net increase in CO₂ output. A key reason is that war-related emissions are largely additive rather than substitutive. Military fuel use, explosions, and the burning of oil and buildings introduce new emissions on top of ongoing civilian and industrial activity, rather than replacing it. Moreover, the destruction of infrastructure creates a pipeline of future emissions, as rebuilding cities, roads, and energy systems requires large amounts of carbon-intensive materials like cement and steel. These delayed emissions often outweigh any short-term reductions from decreased economic activity.

In addition, the war is triggering indirect effects that further raise emissions, such as shifts toward dirtier energy sources, increased fossil fuel investment for energy security, and longer transportation routes due to regional instability. Historical patterns from other conflicts show that even when emissions dip briefly during periods of disruption, they tend to rebound and exceed prior levels during recovery and reconstruction. Overall, the evidence indicates that the Iran war is contributing to a net increase in emissions both immediately and over the longer term, rather than being offset by reduced economic output.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AiasFSuCW/