Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

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China has pledged for the first time to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms, committing to reduce economy-wide net emissions by 7–10% from peak levels by 2035, “striving to do better.” President Xi Jinping announced the target in a video address to a high-level climate summit in New York convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres during the General Assembly.

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Experts welcomed the structural shift to an absolute cut but judged the ambition insufficient for a 1.5°C pathway. “Anything less than 30% is not aligned with 1.5 degrees,” said Lauri Myllyvirta of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). Greenpeace East Asia’s Yao Zhe said the plan “still falls short,” even for tempered expectations. Belinda Schäpe, a China policy analyst at CREA, framed the pledge as politically cautious and argued China’s clean-energy boom could still deliver reductions of 30% or more by 2035 if current trends hold. In her words, today’s announcement should be viewed as the floor, not the ceiling.

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We have breached 7 out of 9 Planetary Boundaries.

A massive banking collapse is coming — and the cause isn't speculation this time. It's climate change.

Uninsurable homes mean worthless mortgages, and worthless mortgages mean broken banks. Unless governments act now with public banking and sustainable cost accounting, society itself is at risk.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/38626464

The annual assessment by the Net Zero Tracker (NZT)—which reviews both the quantity and quality of global climate commitments—finds that 77% of global GDP is still covered by national net zero commitments.

Net Zero Stocktake 2025 assesses progress in setting and strengthening whole-economy net zero targets, and evaluates more than 4,000 entities on integrity criteria — essentially, whether plans and strategies contain the key components for deep decarbonisation.

The fifth annual report also examines how companies are integrating nature into their climate commitments.

Download Net Zero Stocktake 2025 (pdf - 2.7 MB)

Key findings:

• Of the 198 countries, 712 regions, 1,186 cities, and 1,987 publicly listed companies tracked, at least 1,935 now have net zero targets:

• 137 countries (up from 124 in 2020)

• 216 states and regions (up from 73)

• 337 cities (up from 115)

• 1,245 companies (up from 417).

• More than 50 countries, most of them lower-income, still have not expressed a public intention to achieve net zero, alongside nearly half of the 3,885 subnational governments and companies

• Among companies, more than 400 of the world’s largest publicly listed companies remain without any mitigation targets — concentrated in the US (30%) and China (42%). More than half of the 100 private companies tracked by the initiative still do not have a net zero target.

• Globally, more than two thirds (860 out of 1,245) of Forbes Global 2000 companies with net zero targets back their commitments up with plans.

Integrity of targets remains low across all entities: Only 7% of companies, 6.5% of regions, and 4% of cities meet all minimum procedural and substantive integrity requirements (the 'starting line') — though company and city progress has climbed modestly in the past year.

Many companies are turning to nature-based solutions such as such as reforestation or peatland restoration, yet only 4% have set dedicated targets, raising concerns about over-reliance on land-based approach.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27938587

Fossil fuel burning is not just damaging the world’s climate; it is also threatening the health of at least 1.6 billion people through the toxic pollutants it produces, data shows.

A serious lack of effective early warning systems is leaving countries vulnerable to climate-induced hunger, according to new research published by one of the world’s leading think tanks.

Early warning systems are key to responding to disasters – including, for example, via text message or radio alert – as well as planning. With climate change driving ever more extreme weather events, these systems are expected to play an ever more important role.

The new research by Chatham House finds that food security is not being sufficiently factored into these systems, posing a major threat to vulnerable communities across the world.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42785623

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China is positioning itself as the world’s champion for renewable energy and has been heavily investing in the sector for the last 20 years. On the other hand, in order to support its renewables sector and consolidate the supply chain, it has also been financing mega-projects that exploit natural resources such as coal and oil — particularly in Africa.

Between development, dependence, and the energy transition, some environmentalists worry that China is playing a double game that is harming Africa in its fight against environmental injustice.

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Some scholars have raised concerns that under the current model, large loans from China are further increasing its debt and putting some African countries in impossible financial positions.

In an analysis published in November 2023, Jana de Kluiver, a researcher specializing in Africa at the Institute for Security Studies, warned of growing concerns about Chinese loans in Africa: Research by AidData has shown that Chinese public lenders, motivated by profit, often include conditions in their loan agreements that can put a strain on already fragile African economies. These include bans on collective restructuring and strict confidentiality clauses. Such conditions can limit the ability of borrowing countries to make independent and sovereign financial decisions.

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The numerous projects implemented with Chinese support have enormous consequences and local impacts. Massive population displacements benefit Chinese companies that set up shop to carry out projects. Deforestation and environmental degradation are detrimental to the livelihoods of local and vulnerable communities. Between inequalities and responsibilities, climate injustice is becoming increasingly glaring.

The FILIMBI citizen movement, a Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)-based pro democracy movement, spoke out against this dynamic in November 2024. According to an article by Projet AfriqueChine, the movement points the finger at Chinese illegal gold miners in the region for polluting the Arwini River in the northeast of the country.

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Between promises of a greener Africa and the continued exploitation and use of carbon, coupled with the vulnerability of populations who, in addition to suffering the consequences of climate change, face social damage such as famine and lack of housing, the continent finds itself caught in the middle of conflicting interests.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27883133

More than 60,000 people died from heat in Europe during last year's record-breaking summer, a benchmark study said Monday, in the latest warning of the massive toll climate change is having on the continent.

Our probabilistic model shows global warming is likely to reach 2.3 C as soon as 2040. Geoeconomic security concerns are taking precedence over long-term sustainability goals; while powering the growth of new technologies like AI, and doing so affordably, remains a priority for most countries, especially in emerging markets

Once a haven for flamingos, sturgeon and thousands of seals, fast-receding waters are turning the northern coast of the Caspian Sea into barren stretches of dry sand. In some places, the sea has retreated more than 50km. Wetlands are becoming deserts, fishing ports are being left high and dry, and oil companies are dredging ever-longer channels to reach their offshore installations.

Climate change is driving this dramatic decline in the world’s largest landlocked sea. Found at the boundary between Europe and central Asia, the Caspian Sea is surrounded by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, and sustains around 15 million people.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42722173

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Countries around the globe condemned China’s hypocritical plans for a nature preserve on Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, where Beijing has wreaked environmental havoc with its artificial island-building as it seeks control over maritime territory to which it has no legal claim.

The Philippines faces constant coercion from China near the shoal and elsewhere inside its internationally recognized exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Beijing, which illegally claims most of the South China Sea, deploys coast guard, navy and maritime militia vessels to harass Philippine fishing, humanitarian missions, and routine military and law enforcement patrols. The aggression has continued even after an international tribunal’s 2016 ruling that invalidated China’s arbitrary claims to the South China Sea and found that Beijing violated Philippine rights to Scarborough Shoal.

Manila quickly denounced China’s declaration of an “island nature reserve” on the shoal. The move “is less about protecting the environment and more about justifying [China’s] control over a maritime feature that is part of the territory of the Philippines,” stated National Security Advisor Eduardo Año. “It is a clear pretext toward eventual occupation.”

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Australia and Japan joined Indo-Pacific partners in calling for China to comply with the tribunal ruling, while the United Kingdom opposed “any unilateral activity that changes the facts on the ground and raises tensions in the South China Sea.”

Experts called China’s actions an example of lawfare — purposely misinterpreting the law to change the status quo — and pointed to Beijing’s history of causing environmental damage in the South China Sea.

“This isn’t environmental protection — it’s environmental lawfare,” Ray Powell, director of the SeaLight Project at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, told the U.S. Naval Institute News. He cited “highly destructive methods” used by Chinese fishing crews and reports that Beijing has destroyed more than 1,800 hectares of coral reef in the South China Sea with its artificial island-building. The international tribunal also found that China harmed coral reefs and inflicted “irreparable damage to the marine environment.”

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Beijing has long used encroachment in an attempt to exert control over its neighbors’ territory. Analysts say such gray-zone tactics — sometimes called salami slicing — are small enough to avoid a military response but accumulate to China’s benefit. Examples include:

• China’s aggressive interference with Philippine resupply missions to its military outpost on Second Thomas Shoal, which Beijing wants Manila to abandon.
• Beijing’s artificial island-building in the contested Paracel and Spratly chains. By militarizing the features, China hopes to establish de facto authority over economically important stretches of sea.
• Regular China Coast Guard intrusions near the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, an effort to challenge Tokyo’s control over the resource-rich territory.
• Fish farms and marine platforms that Beijing built without permission where its EEZ overlaps with the Republic of Korea’s in the Yellow Sea.
• Military harassment of self-governed Taiwan, which China claims as its territory and threatens to annex by force.
• Infrastructure projects Beijing has built along its de facto border with India and Chinese patrols into disputed territory, all aimed at asserting authority and upending the status quo.

A small town in rural Arizona sinks almost 3 inches each year — and the ground will likely only continue to collapse as locals and corporate mega-farms battle over access to clean water.

Residents of Wenden, an unincorporated community of less than 1,000 people about 75 miles southeast of the Colorado River, have been forced to dig deep underground just to access water, NBC News reported.

“It’s a train wreck waiting to happen,” Gary Saiter, who leads Wendon’s water district, told NBC.

“In the last 15 years, Wendon itself has sunk into a subsidence bowl. We sink at another 2.2 inches per year,” Saiter said.

Think Bill Gates is fixing the climate crisis? Not if you follow the money. While he funds green innovation and talks about cutting emissions, Gates also invests in dirty industries such as coal, oil and private jets. In this episode, Neelam Tailor exposes how one of the world’s most powerful climate voices is betting on both sides of the crisis – and making a lot of money in the process

Earth’s water cycle is becoming harder to predict as the climate changes, UN scientists have warned.

Last year was the sixth in a row to show an erratic cycle and the third where all glacier regions reported ice loss, according to the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) state of global water resources report for 2024, released on Thursday.

They found that around 60% of rivers globally showed either too much or too little water compared to the average flow per year.

While the world has natural cycles of climate variability from year to year, long-term trends outlined in the report indicate the water cycle, at a global scale, is accelerating.

Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO director of hydrology in the water and cryosphere division, said scientists feel it is “increasingly difficult to predict”.

“It’s more erratic – so either too much or too low on average flow per year,” he said.

As global warming drives higher global temperatures, the atmosphere can hold more water, leading either to longer dry periods or more intense rainfall.

But Mackay Mayor Greg Williamson said while it's worth fighting the rising sea for now, it's a battle the community will eventually lose.

"At some stage in the future, when all of the seabed walls, rock walls and bag walls don't work, retreat is going to be the only answer," he said

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42471244

Farmers in Zambia have filed an $80bn (£58.5bn) lawsuit against two Chinese-linked firms, blaming them for an "ecological catastrophe" caused by the collapse of a dam that stored waste from copper mining.

Million of litres of highly acidic material spilled into waterways in February, leading to "mass fatalities" among fish, making water undrinkable and destroying crops, the farmers said in court papers.

This is one of the biggest environmental lawsuits in Zambia's history, with the farmers saying the spillage affects about 300,000 households in the copper-mining region.

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of theClimate Desk collaboration.

In the wake of the Trump administration’s announcement that it will overturn the rule which underpins virtually all US climate regulations, a Senate committee has launched an investigation into a suspected lobbying push that led to the move.

On Tuesday, the Senate environment and public works committee sent letters to two dozen corporations, including oil giants, think tanks, law firms, and trade associations. The missives request each company to turn over documents regarding the 2009 declaration, known as the endangerment finding, which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said in July that it will unmake.

The finding enshrined that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases harm the health of Americans. “Rescinding the endangerment finding at the behest of industry is irresponsible, legally dubious, and deeply out of step with the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, and the American public deserves to understand your role in advancing EPA’s dangerous decision,” wrote Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I,), the ranking member of the committee. “I am concerned about the role that fossil fuel companies, certain manufacturers, trade associations, polluter-backed groups, and others with much to benefit from the repeal of the endangerment finding—including your organization—played in drafting, preparing, promoting, and lobbying on the proposal.”

Fossil fuel companies and their allies are threatened by the endangerment finding because it confirms in law that carbon dioxide, which their products produce, are dangerous, Whitehouse told the Guardian. It also gives the EPA the authority to regulate those emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The letter, which asks for all relevant private communications between the day Trump was re-elected in November to the day the EPA announced plans to rescind the endangerment finding in July, was sent to oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, as well as coal producers, a rail giant, and two auto manufacturers whose business plans rely on fossil fuels.

“The only interests that benefit from undoing the endangerment finding are polluter interests, and specifically fossil fuel polluter interests,” Whitehouse said.

“The fossil fuel industry owns and controls the Trump administration on all matters that relate to their industry.”

The letter was also sent to trade associations and law firms representing big oil and auto companies. And it was sent to far-right, pro-fossil fuel think tanks Competitive Enterprise Institute, New Civil Liberties Alliance, the Heartland Institute, America First Policy Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, each of which challenge the authority of federal agencies, and some of which have directly praised the proposed endangerment finding rollback.

The Guardian has contacted each recipient for comment.

Because Republicans control the Senate, Democrats on the environment and public works committee lack the power to subpoena the documents. But the Senate committee still expects the companies to comply with their request.

The letter could send a signal to polluting sectors and right-wing firms that they are being watched and could set the stage for continued investigation if Democrats win back a congressional chamber in next November’s midterm elections.

Fossil fuel interests pushed back on the endangerment finding when it was first written, yet little is known about more recent advocacy to overturn it. Immediately following the EPA’s announcement of the rollback, the New York Times reported that groups have not “been clamoring in recent years for its reversal.” But Whitehouse believes that has changed since Trump was re-elected in November.

When Joe Biden was president and Democrats controlled at least one chamber of Congress, Whitehouse said “a request to rescind the endangerment finding would have just looked like useless, pointless, madness.”

“But now that they can actually do it in their desperation and with the mask of moderation pulled off, I think it’s very clear that they were directing this happen,” he said.

Under Trump, former lobbyists and lawyers for polluting industries such as oil, gas and petrochemicals have entered leadership positions at the EPA. “The fossil fuel industry owns and controls the Trump administration on all matters that relate to their industry, and they have subservient Republicans controlling both the House and the Senate,” said Whitehouse. “The change in power has allowed a change in tactics and attitude.”

Two environmental nonprofits have sued the Trump administration for “secretly” convening a group of climate contrarians to bolster its effort to topple the endangerment finding.

The EPA’s proposed undoing of the crucial legal conclusion comes as part of a larger war on the environment by the Trump administration, which has killed dozens of climate rules since re-entering the White House in January.

“The motive is to help fossil fuels survive,” said Whitehouse.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27623809

Human-made global heating caused two in every three heat deaths in Europe during this year’s scorching summer, an early analysis of mortality in 854 big cities has found.

Archived

Chinese miners are illegally extracting Congolese gold on a vast scale, according to a new report from the nonprofit PAX, which also accuses the Democratic Republic of the Congo of weak and ineffective governance.

The report, published Wednesday by the Netherlands-based peace advocacy group, said that semi-industrial gold mining operations have devastated at least 155 miles of rivers and streams in Haut-Uélé, a province where poverty is widespread and where armed conflict and violence have roiled the population for decades.

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Asked about whether Chinese nationals are engaged in illegal, semi-industrial gold mining in northeastern DRC, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a written statement: “I’m not aware of the specifics you mentioned. Please refer to the competent authorities for further comments.”

He added: “As a principle, the Chinese government consistently requires Chinese nationals abroad to abide by local laws and regulations and to refrain from any illegal activities.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said virtually the same thing in January when asked about similar illegal gold mining operations in a different DRC region, Kivu.

A surge in illegal gold mining in Haut-Uélé began in 2020, with Congolese mining enterprises presented as small-scale, artisanal “cooperatives” using Chinese financial and technical backing, the report said. Congolese law allows artisanal mining cooperatives of Congolese nationals to operate in certain areas if licensed.