Dilip Simeon's blog

The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In China, more than a dozen cities issued the “highest possible heat warning” this weekend with over 900 million people in China enduring a scorching heat wave along with severe flooding and landslides across large swathes of southern China. Dozens of people have died. Millions of Chinese have been displaced. Economic losses run into the billions of yuan. Droughts, which have destroyed crops, killed livestock and forced many to flee their homes, are creating a potential famine in the Horn of Africa. More than 100 million people in the United States are under heat alerts in more than two dozen states from temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s and low 100s. Wildfires have destroyed thousands of acres in California . More than 73 p...

In case you hadn’t been paying attention, it’s hot on this planet. I mean, really hot. And I’m not just thinking about Europe’s worst heat wave in at least 200 years . There, fires in Spain, Portugal, and France rage , barely checked. Nor do I have in mind the devastating repeated spring heat waves in South Asia or the disastrous drought in the Horn of Africa . It’s burning right here! Scarcely noticed in the rest of the country (or in national news coverage), the American Southwest and parts of the West are in a megadrought of historic proportions. And parts of New Mexico, as naturalist and TomDispatch regular William deBuys describes so vividly today, have been burning in jaw-dropping fashion. (As a poor state, its fires don’t get the attention that those in wealthier southern California might.) And yet, right now in what Noam Chomsky recently suggested could be “the last stage in human history,” the question is: When it comes to climate change, who’s really paying att...

The last time there was open war between major European powers was in 1945. The last time the Northern Hemisphere was this hot was probably 125,000 years ago. Yet the FTSE 100 is worth more than ever, corporate profits are higher than ever, there are more British billionaires than ever. And oil companies are richer than ever. If we took climate change seriously, the petroleum industry would be bankrupt. These firms borrow billions against the future value of reserves they are yet to drill, but atmospheric physics demands we can’t burn that carbon if we wish civilisation to survive. If our modern societies are to continue to exist in recognisable form, oil companies’ assets are worthless. And if we aren’t, they are still worthless... https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/heatwave-climate-crisis-nhs-fossil-fuel-capitalism-hunger/ Banks are incentivised to fund climate chaos. Here’s how to change that The world’s largest banks are investing billions into heavily polluting industries, ...

When I began work as an environmental journalist in 1985, I knew I would struggle against people with a financial interest in destructive practices. But I never imagined that we would one day confront what appears to be an ideological commitment to destroying life on Earth. The UK government and the US supreme court look as if they are willing the destruction of our life support systems. It feels like the end game. In the US last week, the third perverse and highly partisan supreme court decision in a few days made American efforts to prevent climate breakdown almost impossible. Ruling in favour of the state of West Virginia , the court decided that the Environmental Protection Agency is not entitled to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from power stations. The day before, in the UK, the government’s climate change committee reported a “shocking” failure by Boris Johnson’s administration to meet its climate targets. So stupid and perverse are its policies on issues such as energy sav...

Young victims of the climate crisis will on Tuesday launch legal action at Europe’s top human rights court against an energy treaty that protects fossil fuel investors. Five people, aged between 17 and 31, who have experienced devastating floods, forest fires and hurricanes are bringing a case to the European court of human rights, where they will argue that their governments’ membership of the little-known energy charter treaty (ECT) is a dangerous obstacle to action on the climate crisis. It is the first time that the Strasbourg court will be asked to consider the treaty, a secretive investor court system that enables fossil fuel companies to sue governments for lost profits. “It just can’t be that the fossil fuel industry is still more protected than our human rights,” said Julia, a 17-year-old high school student from Germany, who said she was joining the legal challenge after catastrophic lethal floods came to her home region, the Ahr valley , last July. https://www.theguardi...

Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira  have been killed  in an undeclared global war against nature and the people who defend it. Their work mattered because our planet, the threats to it and the activities of those who threaten it matter. That work must be continued. The frontlines of this war are the Earth’s remaining biodiverse regions – the forests, wetlands and oceans that are essential for the stability of our climate and planetary life-support system. The integrity of these systems is under attack from organised crime and criminal governments who want to exploit timber, water and minerals for short-term, often illegal profits. In many regions, the only thing standing in their way is  Indigenous communities  and other traditional forest dwellers, supported by civil society organisations, conservation groups and academics. My friend Dom knew how important this story was. It is why he took a year off to  research a book , How to Save the Amazon, and it is why h...

The primary vote both for the conservative Liberal party and the shapeshifting, slightly self-embarrassed Labor party was down. Both parties were hurt in this case because leaders parachuted candidates into plum seats over the intentions of locals. They were heavily punished for it. The voters also wanted more movement on climate change now that individual Australians know the exorbitant impact fire, drought, flood and ocean surges have had on our huge continent. \Scott Morrison, our prime minister, was going to fool around with coal and gas and carbon capture , and uttered the normal “let the market look after climate” phrases in true neoliberal fashion. The Australians woke up to him, and not only moved the goalposts but dragged them off the paddock. They chose the idea of depending not on gas and coal and carbon capture but voted for a swifter transition. Though a fairly conservative people, they could nonetheless read the signs in the sky.... https://www.theguardian.com/austra...

Apocalypse is an alarming idea, commonly taken to denote catastrophic destruction foreshadowing the end of the world. But in the original Greek, apokálypsis means a revelation or an uncovering. One vernacular definition is “to take the lid off something”.  That latter feat is exactly what Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, achieved last week, possibly inadvertently, when he suggested Britain was facing “apocalyptic” levels of food price inflation. Tory ministers fumed over what they saw as implied criticism of the government’s masterly economic management. In fact, Bailey was talking as much about the drastic impact of Ukraine-war-related rises in food costs and food shortages on people in poorer countries. “There’s a major worry for the developing world as well ... Sorry for being apocalyptic for a moment, but that is a major concern,” he said ....   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/21/apocalypse-now-the-alarming-effects-of-the-global-food-crisis ...

Australia's new leaders are yet to be sworn in following the  Labor Party's victory Saturday , but the nation is already dissecting what seems to be a seismic shift in its politics. After almost a decade of conservative leadership, voters turned their back on the ruling coalition, instead backing those who campaigned for more action on climate change, greater gender equality and political integrity. For much of its history, Australian politics has been dominated by the two major parties: the Liberals on the center-right and Labor on the center-left. But this election threw all the balls up in the air, tossing more than a few to minor parties and Independents who were fed-up with the two-party system. Election results showed a strong swing towards Independents who campaigned on issues relating to the climate. Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “Meanwhile in China” Newsletter.Bottom of Form The candidates - many first-time entrants to politics - were seeking cuts to emis...

The African continent is responsible for only 2–3% of the world’s  carbon dioxide emissions  from energy and industrial sources. But it’s alarmingly suffering from the effects of the climate crisis, as  reports  from the UN and  others  show. On the positive side, Africa has a huge potential for climate mitigation, especially thanks to its tropical rainforests. The  Congo Basin’s  rainforests in central Africa are sometimes called Earth’s  second lungs  (after the Amazon) because of its ability to store carbon. In addition to the forest trees, the basin has  the world’s largest tropical peatlands , discovered in 2017. Scientists estimate that these peatlands store carbon worth  about 20 years  of the fossil fuel emissions of the US. The Congo Basin is also rich in biodiversity and in minerals. As long as this strategically important and rich region is not destroyed, Africa can help  fight global climate change . T...

Around the world, many countries are  becoming less democratic . This backsliding on democracy and “ creeping authoritarianism ,” as the U.S. State Department puts it, is often supported by the same industries that are escalating climate change. In my new book, “ Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis ,” I lay out connections between these industries and the politicians who are both stalling action on climate change and diminishing democracy. It’s a dangerous shift, both for representative government and for the future climate. Corporate capture of environmental politics:  In democratic systems, elected leaders are expected to  protect the public’s interests , including from exploitation by corporations. They do this primarily through policies designed to secure public goods, such as clean air and unpolluted water, or to protect human welfare, such as good working conditions and minimum wages. But in recent decades, this core democratic principle th...

Global heating is causing such a drastic change to the world’s oceans that it risks a mass extinction event of marine species that rivals anything that’s happened in the Earth’s history over tens of millions of years, new research has warned. Accelerating climate change is causing a “profound” impact upon ocean ecosystems that is “driving extinction risk higher and marine biological richness lower than has been seen in Earth’s history for the past tens of millions of years”, according to the study. The world’s seawater is  steadily climbing in temperature  due to the extra heat produced from the burning of fossil fuels, while oxygen levels in the ocean are plunging and the water is acidifying from the soaking up of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This means the oceans are overheated, increasingly  gasping for breath  – the volume of ocean waters completely depleted of oxygen has  quadrupled since the 1960s  – and becoming more hostile to life. Aquatic...