end times for the lulz

Trump receives shiny trophy as he’s named ‘Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal’ by mining executives at White House | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-clean-coal-white-house-meeting-b2918708.html

"Climate hushing"—the quiet trend undermining global climate action
https://www.talkingclimate.ca/p/climate-hushingthe-quiet-trend-undermining?

As political winds have shifted in the United States and elsewhere over the past year, “climate hushing” has become a real thing: and that’s bad news. “When leaders don’t talk about something, enthusiasm falls among voters,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island writes here. “In politics, you can often make your own wind, or you can make your own doldrums.”

Unfortunately, climate hushing is going global. This year, when world leaders spoke at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in January, nearly every single one of them avoided the topic—even Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. Why is this? “In today’s deeply polarizing U.S. political stance, climate discussion has come to feel so radioactive that many leaders would rather avoid it,” sustainable business professor Anjali Chaudhry writes.

The only major leader to break the silence was Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who used his speech to press for collaborative climate action. ”We invite enterprises from all over the world to embrace the opportunities from the green and low-carbon transition, and work closely with China in such areas as green infrastructure, green energy, green minerals and green finance,” he said.

The organization We Don’t Have Time hosted an alternative WEF speech, held on a pile of snow and featuring several of my colleagues and leading systems thinkers, including Dr. Johan Rockström, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, and former Unilever CEO Paul Polman, who said,

“We know what needs to be done [about climate change]. It is not a failure of resources. Global capital has never been more abundant. It is a failure of collaboration and collective action. A failure of governments to align around shared interests rather than narrow advantage; of businesses to act as system-shapers rather than short-term competitors; and of leaders across sectors to share risk, and act in service of a common good.”

TADEAS:




Europe drove decarbonization of power supply but did not drive electrification. They're on the top left-hand side above the Americans, but not on the top right-hand side where the Chinese are to be found.

- The Germans and Italians shut down nuclear as an essential part of their politics of green modernization, but they agonizingly extended the protection for the coal sectors.
- They created a market for power supply through feed-in tariffs, then surrendered that market to the Chinese, and then slapped on protectionism anyway.
- They introduced the carbon pricing mechanism but took almost fifteen years to make it work. It now does work—carbon prices in Europe are at very significant levels, sometimes above one hundred euros per ton—but they were unprepared for the shock of delivering that particular price signal.
- Rather than focusing on new energy models, European politics and interest groups converged on the diesel, and the European car industry was milked as a source of dividends for its oligarchic investors. And they now complain about Chinese competition and demand protectionism.
- The Europeans were clearly at odds with both Russia and the US, and yet did nothing to develop strategic autonomy with regard to either of them.






On the left-hand side, the ramp-up you see: the formation period of this new synthesis of green governance in Europe through to the maximum level of investment in 2011 at $131 billion. And then you see, in the wake of the Eurozone crisis—which of course dramatically affected southern Europe, where unsurprisingly the investment in solar was particularly dramatic—as that crisis hits under the sign of austerity, the European push collapses. And this is the moment of China's overtaking.

TADEAS: aneb naznaky klimatickeho povstani, pro mainstream levicova anarchie.


We can no longer afford the rich.
We can initiate the end of the imperial lifestyle.
We can stop the plundering of the Earth.
In the greed for energy, the Earth is being drained, sucked dry, burned, abused, razed, raped, and destroyed. Entire regions are rendered uninhabitable by the heat. They simply burn up. Or habitats disappear beneath the waves during floods or due to rising sea levels.
Shutting down fossil fuel power plants is a task that can be accomplished by hand. Have courage.
We know we must interrupt this destruction. We know we are not alone. Don't give up hope for a world where life has space, not the greed for money, power, and destruction.

...

Last year, the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere rose to 423.9 parts per million, a value that surpasses all previous records. At the same time, climate scientists agree that the massive transatlantic ocean currents will collapse sooner or later due to global warming. This collapse of ocean currents, which has so far afforded the North a mild climate, is only one part of the catastrophe that awaits us. The extent of this devastation is simply ignored, abstracted, and discussed at global climate conferences until the scale of the destruction disappears into tables and declarations of intent.
But the insatiable hunger for energy is eating its way through the Earth's crust and our lives, among other things to feed artificial intelligence, which then spouts stereotypes and absurdities, confusing, disorienting, and/or manipulating us. Meanwhile, with each new "learning" of the AI ​​using previous data, language, expression, and vitality are increasingly reduced, mutilated, and limited.

...

We don't claim to know the way out. But we do know we must stop this destruction. Hedonism can no longer hold us captive once we've tasted the sweat of fear that spreads when there's no way out. No going forward, no going back. Only the horror of where we, as humanity, have ended up. When the question falls back on us, what did you actually do to prevent what was coming? You saw it coming, the survivors, the next generations, ask us. Please don't bring up the political parties. Please don't bring up the brown-shirted alternatives in pinstriped suits and dresses. And not the Greens or the Left either. Don't bring up the economy, whose free market will supposedly solve the problem. Economics and politics deal with death every day. With dictatorships and butchers. Their concerns vanish into thin air when it comes to satisfying our energy needs, for example. Russia is still supplying gas to Europe via Nord Stream 1. And the US wants Venezuela's oil. That's why military attacks are now taking place. And fracked gas arrives by ship from all over the world. Currently, 79% comes from the USA! Fracking is extremely environmentally damaging in its production. Even during extraction, a methane loss of 6 to 10 percent is assumed, which further warms the atmosphere.

95% of the gas burned in Germany is imported. At climate summits, only tactical lip service is forthcoming because the oil-producing countries are not interested in climate protection but in money. Because the major cities base their policies on money and growth, lobbyists in Europe are being handed the end of the combustion engine phase-out.

For example, the German Minister of Economic Affairs, Katharina Reiche, was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport, a lobbyist for the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKM), and a manager at the E.ON subsidiary Westenergie. Minister Reiche presents herself as a supporter of hydrogen but primarily relies on natural gas. She intends to issue tenders for additional gas-fired power plants with a capacity of 10 gigawatts, which are to be connected to the grid by 2031, corresponding to approximately 25 new power plants. 20 billion euros are earmarked for these new gas-fired power plants.

Reiche would prefer to postpone Germany's climate neutrality target from 2045 to 2050 anyway.

The main culprits behind human-induced climate destruction are not those who suffer the most, those who pay with their health and their lives. The people of the Global South are already paying the highest price. The countries of the Global North, and soon China among others, are deciding the fate of everyone. China, as a communist, racist, and patriarchal dictatorship, can use "rare earth elements" to blackmail countries that don't toe the line, gradually weaving countries, cultures, and political systems into the cocoon of this new dictatorial world power. Over 85% of the world's refined "rare earth elements" come from China. And it is the rich who are the problem. It is the super-rich who are setting the world ablaze. In the East, in the West, in the South, and in the North. Sixty percent of the super-rich's investments worldwide go into gas and oil. And around 300 super-rich countries emit more CO₂ than the 110 poorest countries in the world. These criminals know it. They don't care. Their greed for even more wealth and power sets the standard by which everyone else follows

#odemceno
USA parizske zavazky sabotuji, evropa preslapuje a cina co2 politiku zachranuje levnou produkci, ktera snizuje emise v rozvojovych zemich...

A Flood of Green Tech From China Is Upending Global Climate Politics
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/climate/cop30-belem-climate-energy-technology-china.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0E8.sjQJ.kEnuEjoTDebM&smid=nytcore-android-share

Tory shadow energy minister claims 2050 net zero goal ‘not based on science’ | Conservatives | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/may/13/tory-shadow-energy-minister-claims-2050-net-zero-goal-not-based-on-science


The Conservative party’s energy spokesperson has attacked leading climate scientists as biased and claimed Kemi Badenoch could take the UK out of the Paris climate agreement.

Andrew Bowie, the acting shadow secretary for energy, told the Guardian that the target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – passed into law by Theresa May – was “arbitrary” and “not based on science”.

He also indicated that the UK’s participation in the 2015 Paris climate agreement was up for reconsideration in the party’s ongoing review of key policies. The only other country to have withdrawn from the agreement is the US, twice, under Donald Trump.

Bowie said: “We are not climate deniers and while we believe in getting to net zero, what we shouldn’t do is be hamstrung by arbitrary targets such as a date of 2050, which was concocted simply because it was a good end point as a date. There’s no scientific rationale for choosing 2050 as the point to which we should reach net zero.”

Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund Cuts Off a Key Nonprofit Monitoring Corporate Climate Efforts – Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/jeff-bezo-earth-fund-ends-support-nonprofit-science-based-targets-initiative-sbti-corporate-climate-efforts-paris/

The Bezos Earth Fund has stopped its support for the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), an international body that assesses if companies are decarbonizing in line with the Paris agreement. Earth Fund had been one of two core funders of the SBTi, with the Ikea Foundation: The two accounted for 61 percent of its total funding last year. Earth Fund’s decision was first reported by the Financial Times.

Spokespeople for Earth Fund and SBTi said the $18 million grant had been a three-year commitment that expired as previously agreed, and Earth Fund had not made a final decision on future support. But researchers familiar with the SBTi, as well as advisers at the organization, raised concerns that the vanishing support was part of a broader trend of wealthy individuals moving away from funding causes that the US president—who has previously called climate change a hoax—did not agree with

TADEAS:

Factcheck: Kemi Badenoch’s claim that net zero is ‘impossible’ by 2050 | Kemi Badenoch | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/19/factcheck-kemi-badenoch-conservative-leader-claim-that-net-zero-is-impossible-by-2050

The Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, officially ditched net zero by 2050 as a Tory policy this week. The target was signed into law in June 2019 by her predecessor Theresa May, the then prime minister. So what arguments did Badenoch make for reversing?

Analysis by the London School of Economics has found that, though reaching net zero by 2050 initially costs between 1% and 2% of GDP a year, it will save money by about 2040. To put that into context, the UK spends about 11% of GDP on healthcare, and 10% on social security including pensions. The money spent on reaching net zero is also an investment, according to the most recent carbon budget; for example, upgrading the electricity grid or updating homes.

A former minister made this point in parliament in 2022: “Our latest estimates put the costs of net zero at under 2% of GDP – broadly similar to when we legislated for it two years ago – with scope for costs of low-carbon technologies to fall faster than expected.” Wise words from Badenoch herself.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has analysed the Climate Change Committee’s plans and found: “From 2040 onwards, net operating savings are projected to outweigh investment costs. And by 2050, the CCC projects a £19bn annual saving relative to its baseline emissions scenario.” If similar savings of the same size continued in the years beyond 2050, investment costs would be completely offset by 2070. The same report found “unmitigated climate change would ultimately have catastrophic economic and fiscal consequences for the UK”.

Coming soon:

Apocalyptic Authoritarianism
Climate Crisis, Media, and Power
Hanna E. Morris
Journalism and Political Communication Unbound

Analyzes the complex intersection of climate journalism and politics in an age of increasing polarization, nationalism, and social unease
Introduces a theory of "apocalyptic authoritarianism" to explain the ideological roots of the reactionary turn against the so-called "new" New Left and progressive climate justice activists
Offers a robust and empirically grounded account of the shortcomings of and potential opportunities for climate journalism today

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/apocalyptic-authoritarianism-9780197807668?cc=sk&lang=en

TADEAS: Jeste jsem necetl, nicmene odkladam si na tema

Long before the current AI power panic, there was another panic about a new technology with an insatiable thirst for electricity: the internet.

In 1999, Peter Huber and Mark Mills wrote an article for Forbes Magazine titled “Dig more coal -- the PCs are coming.” Reading that story today is eery in its similarities to the current moment. In the opening paragraph, the authors write, “Somewhere in America, a lump of coal is burned every time a book is ordered on-line.” They go on to cite statistics about the staggering growth of the internet: “Traffic on the Web has indeed been doubling every three months.” And then they make a prediction: “It’s now reasonable to project that half of the electric grid will be powering the digital-Internet economy within the next decade.”

Huber and Mills were, of course, right in their prediction about the ubiquity and importance of the internet. The technology changed nearly everything about our society, economy, and politics. They were correct in predicting that internet traffic, adoption, and infrastructure would explode. And yet, their forecast for how much electricity demand would ensue was fantastically wrong.

The Hidden Risks of Overestimating AI's Power Needs
https://www.distilled.earth/p/the-hidden-risks-of-overestimating

⚖️ Scientists prize neutrality – that doesn’t cut it any more. In 2025, they must fully back the climate movement
https://rogerhallam.com/scientists-prize-neutrality-that-doesnt-cut-it-any-more-in-2025-they-must-fully-back-the-climate-movement-2/

There are nearly 9 million scientists in the world, making up a tribe that is one of the most trusted groups on the planet. Imagine the noise they could make if they spoke with one voice; think of the impetus it would give climate activism. The UK courts have tried to silence climate scientists in the past few years, by keeping their expert testimony out of court cases. As we start out on the second quarter of the 21st century, let’s show them what we can really do.

Inevitably, there are those who demand impartiality from scientists, but being impartial doesn’t mean not telling the truth; it doesn’t mean playing down threats; and it certainly doesn’t mean keeping silent at a time of global emergency. Wanting to remain apolitical no longer cuts it. It is naive at the best of times, but this is now a matter of survival, not politics. So, throw your weight behind those groups and organisations fighting to tackle climate breakdown, work to bring colleagues on board, and use your influence in the best way you can to drive serious action. As we have said before, there are no grant-awarding committees on a dead planet, so it is time to choose which side of history you are on.

The Arctic – “the icy region at the top of the world” – is no longer a carbon sink. It’s now a carbon source. The overheating planet is melting regions of permafrost, which are releasing CO2. We have entered uncharted territory.

But that’s not all. The federal agency that released the concerning news in its annual Arctic Report Card, might never issue another one again. That’s because the agency – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – is under threat of being dismantled. The leading choice for new budget director has called NOAA “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”

Marianne gives us a startling look at this new climate peril and an incisive analysis of the politics that stand in the way of solutions.

Arctic Tundra Shifts to Source of Climate Pollution, According to New Report Card - Inside Climate News
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11122024/noaa-arctic-report-card-tundra-climate-pollution/

Starsi dokument BBC Climate Wars... Narazil jsem nahodou, prej stoji za to

Worth watching indeed. I’d recommend anyone and everyone to watch this series. It’s basic enough for someone with little to no knowledge of this issue, yet presented in such a compelling way that the most experienced climate scientist wouldn’t get bored.

One of the film’s major strong points was simply the way it was organized. Dr Stewart traced the history of both the science and the politics around climate change, splitting it into three parts:

Part one: Scientists had known for decades that anthropogenic greenhouse gases could cause warming of the Earth, but now, following thirty years of aerosol-induced cooling, global warming was starting to show; almost every year was record-breaking. James Hansen was the first to “stick his neck out” – testifying to Congress that he believed anthropogenic climate change was underway. He later claimed that he had weighed the risks of being wrong and looking stupid, versus doing nothing and not telling the world about such a huge potential threat. Sort of like an early Greg Craven, I suppose. I found this part to be the least interesting of the three. It also began strangely – Stewart mentioned a letter to the US president, signed by top scientists, which warned of an impending ice age. I’d never heard about this before. Does anyone else know more about this letter?

Part two: The skeptics fought back as strongly as they could, questioning absolutely every scientific claim regarding global warming. I found this to be absolutely fascinating; it solidifed a lot of issues in my mind and helped to unify my knowledge on the topic. Stewart went through the research which showed that the Earth was warming as a result of human activities – and showed how all the yelling from skeptics helped to make the theory even stronger. He also “infiltrated the walls” of the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, which I found to be absolutely hilarious. They had a comedian making bad jokes about how New York could handle some global warming, Monckton and Singer making their usual accusations of fraud (Stewart remarked that “when these become the talking points, then I know that the scientific debate is really over”), and Patrick Michaels publicly admitting “Yes, the second half of the century did show some warming, and it was the result of human activities…..and now you all hate me for saying that…….” Dr Iain Stewart explained that, even though the controversy doesn’t really exist anymore in the scientific literature, the claims of skeptics still live on in the popular media and on the Internet. Instead of fighting a scientific battle, they’re now doing public relations.

Part three: Scientists knew that humans were causing global warming, but how bad would it be? After the brilliance of the second part, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the last segment quite as much…….but I was proven very, very wrong. It both terrified and fascinated me. Terrified because it discussed the Younger Dryas, something I hadn’t really heard of before, where it warmed about 5 C in just a few years. So far beyond anything I thought was possible. When this research was released, the idea that the climate was steady and slow-moving could no longer be embraced.

Dailymotion
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2w2rb4

How a carbon central bank can turn Europe into a CO2 “eater” — Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/how-a-carbon-central-bank-can-turn-europe-into-a-co2-201ceater201d

Edenhofer proposes so-called clean-up certificates as a core instrument. They give the right to emit one tonne of CO2 in combination with the obligation to take back one tonne of CO2 at a specific future date. So far, the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) only offers simple emission rights, which are reduced year by year and, according to current legislation, will fall to zero in 2039. Adding clean-up certificates makes the climate transition cheaper and more flexible: CO2 emissions would not have to be avoided at all costs, even as permits become scarcer, if it is more cost-effective to emit now and remove later. The price of these certificates would reflect expected future cost reductions in carbon removal technologies. The financial risk of the climate transition would then be borne not by the state, but by the economy, which is, after all, obliged to make the removals.

...

To ensure that the idea does not fail due to physical inadequacies or corporate tricks, Edenhofer argues that it should be implemented by a strong and credible institution, and makes the case for a future “European Carbon Central Bank”. By issuing the certificates, it could oversee the quantity control of net emissions, keeping this matter out of day-to-day party politics – just as the European Central Bank does with interest rates. This important new EU authority could also correctly reflect the economic value of non-permanent removals, such as afforestation or storing CO2 in building materials, in the clean-up certificates. And to ensure that companies do not undermine their carbon removal obligation through strategic bankruptcy, they would have to deposit financial collateral with the Carbon Central Bank.

MINER: Stav klimatu, lidi, technologie, knowhow, stav pracovniho trhu, aneb realny zdroje. Ale ono je to samozrejme zjednodusujici, i ty penize jsou v MMT problem, ale jinak a vyrazne min nez to podava mainstream ekonomicka teorie.

Klicovy je, ze bezny chapani toho "musime si nejdriv nasetrit, abysme meli penize na zachranu klimatu" nedava smysl. Protoze podle MMT v modernich ekonomikach vznik penez je politicko-ekonomickym aktem a principialne je mozny jich vytvorit neomezeny mnozstvi.

Samozrejme, pokud jich vytvorich moc, tak tu mas znehodnoceni meny = inflaci. Vtip je ale v tom, ze MMT si vsima, ze inflace neni definovana pouze mnozstvim penez, ale celou radou dalsich faktoru - treba efektivitou nebo celou radou uzkejch hrdel ekonomiky - a nebo treba klimatickou krizi, ktera zveda naklady na celou radu veci. Pokud tedy nove vytvoreny penize jsou pouzity na reseni problemu, ktery zvysujou inflacni tlaky, tak vysledek muze byt klidne takovy, ze "tisknuti penez" inflaci snizi - treba kdyz zafinancujes masivni program zateplovani budov, tka najednou budes mit daleko mensi narocnost na chlazeni a vytapeni = snizeni inflacnich tlaku.

Naopak zase austerity politics a setreni muze nakonec inflaci zvysovat, protoze mas sice nizsi objem penez v ekonomice, ale neni resenej zasadni problem, ktery tu mas a ktery bude zvysovat naklady na produkci (napr. klimaticka zmena a problemy v zemedelstvi).