A Climate Change Solution Does Exist

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
William John Montague ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Plastic Pollution ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Simple Technology ◽  
Fuel Industry

If anyone cares to stop the fossil fuel industry producing countries from destroying the ability of the Earth to support human life, now is the time to demand an alternative. Inaction on eliminating carbon emissions and plastic pollution have all but sealed the fate of our planet. These efforts should have been well underway more than twenty years ago. It is not too late if we act now. I have found a simple technology which can provide a viable solution. This means it is within the means of every nation on Earth to have and implement a simple ‘public domain’ technology.

scholarly journals Climate and wartalk: Metaphors, imagination, transformation

Elem Sci Anth ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rupinder Mangat ◽  
Simon Dalby
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
National Security ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Sustainable Society ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
War Metaphor ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Change Problem

Fossil fuel divestment activists re-imagine how the war metaphor can be used in climate change action to transform thinking around what will lead to a sustainable society. Through the naming of a clear enemy and an end goal, the overused war metaphor is renewed. By casting the fossil fuel industry in the role of enemy, fossil fuel divestment activists move to a re-imagining of the climate change problem as one that is located in the here and now with known villains who must be challenged and defeated. In this scenario, climate activists move away from the climate and national security framing to a climate and human security way of thinking.

Climate Justice: Holding Governments and Business Accountable for the Climate Crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 197-201
Author(s):  
Kristin Casper
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

People around the world are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, and their human rights are under threat. Greenpeace's Climate Justice and Liability Campaign is collaborating with a growing number of communities to reclaim their rights through strategic climate litigation. Three themes run throughout these efforts. First, the climate breakdown is a human rights crisis. Second, political and business leaders must take immediate action or risk being sued. Third, there is mounting evidence that the fossil fuel industry is significantly responsible for the climate crisis and will ultimately be held accountable. Before exploring these themes, it is useful to understand the origins of Greenpeace International's climate justice efforts.

scholarly journals Climate change and fossil fuel: An examination of risks for the energy industry and producer states

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Krane
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Gas ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Coal Industry ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Developed World

ABSTRACTThis article compiles and categorizes the various forms of climate risk facing the fossil fuel industry. The type and intensity of risk differs greatly among the three forms of fossil fuels, as well as between countries in the developing and developed world. The paper finds heightened risk for the coal industry and reduced risk for oil businesses, due to its lack of substitutes.Burning coal, oil, and natural gas is the source of two-thirds of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases. Sales of these fuels also represent the economic underpinning of resource-rich countries and the world’s largest firms. As such, steps taken to abate emissions undermine commercial opportunities to monetize fossil fuel reserves. Risks to the industry correlate with progress on climate goals.This article analyzes recent literature on climate action strategy and finds that a new or intensified set of risks has arisen for the fossil fuel industry. These include government policies and legislation, financial restrictions among lenders and insurers, hostile legal and shareholder actions, changes in demand and geopolitics, as well as the onset of new competitive forces among states and technologies.The exposure of carbon-based businesses to these risks and the potential for loss is neither distributed uniformly across the sector, nor adheres to a uniform time scale. Shareholder-owned firms in the developed world will be incentivized to react sooner than large state-owned resource owners in developing countries. The fates of the three fossil fuels also appear likely to play out differently. Demand for oil appears insulated by its lack of viable substitutes, while coal businesses are already undergoing climate-related action, pushed by decreasing social acceptance and constraining financial regulation. At the other end of the spectrum, climate action has improved the medium-term viability of low-carbon natural gas. What appears clear is that, as effects of climate change grow more pronounced, the industry faces a future that is less accepting of current practices.

scholarly journals Visualizing the Paris Climate Talks on Twitter: Media and Climate Stakeholder Visual Social Media During COP21

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511878268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill E. Hopke ◽  
Luis E. Hestres
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
News Media ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Trade Association ◽  
Visual Framing ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Movement Organizations ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Domestic Support

In 2015, meeting in Paris for the Conference of the Parties (COP21), representatives of 195 nations set an ambitious goal to reach net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by mid-century. This research uses the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Paris during 30 November to 11 December 2015, as a case study of Twitter coverage of the talks by mainstream and alternative media outlets and other climate stakeholders, including activists and fossil fuel industry groups. It compares the British Guardian with other media and climate stakeholders’ visual framing of climate change on Twitter during COP21, because the publication had launched an advocacy campaign in March 2015 promoting fossil fuel divestment in the lead-up to COP21. Findings show that individual activists and movement organizations functioned similarly in climate change visual framing in Twitter posts, as did individual and organizational multinational representatives and scientific experts. The news media categories varied by type of news organization. The major outliers were the fossil fuel industry and trade association accounts. Industry stakeholders largely focused on former US President Barack Obama’s climate policy, promoting the perception of a lack of domestic support for his climate policies in their visual Twitter postings.

scholarly journals The Environment, A Bipartisan Issue?: Partisanship Polarization and Climate Change Policies in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-506
Author(s):  
Valentina Dotto ◽  
Anne Richardson Oakes
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Climate Change Policies ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry

Abstract Responding to climate change presents significant challenges on both international and domestic fronts. The current U.S. federal government disclaims a connection between climate change, and human activity, and embraces an environmental program that includes withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement at international level and retrenchment from regulation domestically. This Article comments on the rollback of Obama-era environmental regulations now taking place at federal level and locates these policies in the context of the domestic polarization and partisanship that now characterizes U.S. politics. It notes that environmental regulation divides the Republican and Democratic Parties but that the response of individual party members may be more nuanced, particularly amongst younger voters. The Article comments on state level initiatives to counteract the effects of climate change that have gathered bipartisan support but are now subject to partisan actions by the federal government designed to limit their effectiveness. The Article concludes with the observation that as the combination of an aging demographic and alignment with a declining fossil fuel industry shrinks the GOP traditional constituency, it is to be hoped that far-sighted politicians from both parties will embrace credibility on this issue as a key component of enhancing their own as well as the planet’s survival.

scholarly journals Regulatory Chill in a Warming World: The Threat to Climate Policy Posed by Investor-State Dispute Settlement

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyla Tienhaara
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
The Public ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Warming World ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Investment Agreements ◽  
Trade And Investment

AbstractThe system of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) found in over 3,000 bilateral investment treaties and numerous regional trade agreements has been criticized for interfering with the rights of sovereign states to regulate investment in the public interest, for example, to protect the environment and public health. This article argues that while much of the public debate around ISDS has focused on a small number of cases that have arisen over the regulation of tobacco packaging, there is a far greater threat posed by the potential use of ISDS by the fossil fuel industry to stall action on climate change. It is hypothesized that fossil fuel corporations will emulate a tactic employed by the tobacco industry – that of using ISDS to induce cross-border regulatory chill: the delay in policy uptake in jurisdictions outside the jurisdiction in which the ISDS claim is brought. Importantly, fossil fuel corporations do not have to win any ISDS cases for this strategy to be effective; they only have to be willing to launch them. The article concludes with three options to reform trade and investment agreements to better align them with climate change mitigation efforts: (i) exclude ISDS provisions; (ii) prohibit fossil fuel industries from accessing ISDS; or (iii) carve out all government measures taken in pursuit of international obligations (for example, under the Paris Agreement on climate change) from challenge under ISDS.

Carbon Geoengineering and the Metabolic Rift: Solution or Social Reproduction?

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1233-1249
Author(s):  
Diana Stuart ◽  
Ryan Gunderson ◽  
Brian Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Emissions ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry

Using the concepts of metabolism and metabolic rift as a framework, this paper examines carbon geoengineering technologies as a solution to climate change and explores if it is possible to mend an ecological metabolic rift without fundamental changes in the social metabolic order. Carbon geoengineering technologies have become a key component of scenarios to limit the extent of global warming and are being discussed as a means to sequester carbon and, therefore, mend the carbon cycle. However, most applications of carbon geoengineering thus far do not result in net negative emissions. Strategies to make operations profitable result in neutral or positive, rather than negative, emissions. While these strategies have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations, the current social order constrains their use and effectiveness. Instead of being applied as part of the solution to climate change, carbon geoengineering is being strategically promoted by the fossil fuel industry in ways that serve to reproduce and maintain the current social order.

scholarly journals Drilling for the future: Gendered justifications of the Arctic fossil fuel industry

Polar Record ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sohvi Kangasluoma
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Public Marketing ◽  
Oil And Gas Fields ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Gas Fields ◽  
Opening Up

Abstract Despite the global alarm caused by accelerating climate change, hydrocarbon companies are exploring and opening up new oil and gas fields all over the world, including the Arctic. With increasing attention on the Arctic, companies address the growing global environmental pressure in their public marketing in various ways. This article examines the webpages of Norwegian Equinor and Russian Gazprom & Gazprom Neft. Building on feminist discussions, I analyse the different justification strategies these fossil fuel companies working in the Arctic utilise in order to support their ongoing operations. This article concludes that in order to justify their operations in the Arctic, the Norwegian and Russian companies emphasise values based on discourses that have historically and culturally been associated with masculine practices, such as the control of nature enabled by technology. These justifications are thus reinforcing the narrative of the Arctic as a territory to be conquered and mastered. Even though the companies operate in different sociopolitical contexts, the grounds of justification are rather similar. Their biggest differences occur in their visual presentations of gender, which I argue is part of the justification. Approaching the fossil fuel industry from a feminist perspective allows questioning the dominant conceptualisations, which the justifications of Arctic hydrocarbon companies are based on.

scholarly journals Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement: Effects on Finance, Policy and Public Discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Bergman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Grey Literature ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Student Groups ◽  
Finance Industry ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

The fossil fuel divestment movement campaigns for removing investments from fossil fuel companies as a strategy to combat climate change. It is a bottom-up movement, largely based in university student groups, although it has rapidly spread to other institutions. Divestment has been criticised for its naiveté and hard-line stance and dismissed as having little impact on fossil fuel finance. I analyse the impact of divestment through reviewing academic and grey literature, complemented by interviews with activists and financial actors, using a theoretical framework that draws on social movement theory. While the direct impacts of divestment are small, the indirect impacts, in terms of public discourse shift, are significant. Divestment has put questions of finance and climate change on the agenda and played a part in changing discourse around the legitimacy, reputation and viability of the fossil fuel industry. This cultural impact contributed to changes in the finance industry through new demands by shareholders and investors and to changes in political discourse, such as rethinking the notion of ‘fiduciary duty.’ Finally, divestment had significant impact on its participants in terms of empowerment and played a part in the revitalisation of the environmental movement in the UK and elsewhere.

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