OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #197, SEPTEMBER 23, 2024.

 OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #197, SEPTEMBER 23, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett

RESISTANCE TO CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
Land Institute, Climate Week NYC .
Journal: Climate and Capitalism.  Global Heating, Methane, etc.

 

The Land Institute will host and  participate in a series of events at Climate Week NYC from September 23rd - September 27th, 2024. Follow along or join us as we advocate for perennial grains to become a foundational part of a climate-resilient agricultural future. Events that are open to the public are noted or have livestream links. impact@landinstitute.org!
US Nature4Climate, a coalition of organizations pursuing natural climate solutions, of which The Land Institute is a member, discusses how Kernza production is emerging as a natural climate solution with the potential to reduce agricultural emissions and provide environmental co-benefits like clean water and healthy soil.    2440 E Water Well Rd, Salina, Kansas 67401

I am now receiving Climate & Capitalism (“Ecosocialism or Barbarism, There Is No Third Way”).  C&C offers a rich source of scholarly reports and analysis on climate. In this number of CMM, I include one of the articles and one of the books cited from the August and September numbers of C&C.  If you value reading for understanding and resisting the climate catastrophe, I suggest you subscribe to Climate & Capitalism. 

Global Heating

“Methane emissions rising faster than ever.”  Climate & Capitalism Ed. by Ian Angus.  September 10, 2024.  [This is an excellent thumbnail sketch of the methane situation.  –D]

Atmospheric concentrations of methane are now the highest they’ve been for at least 800,000 years

The Global Methane Budget 2024 shows a 20 per cent increase in methane emissions from human activities in the past two decades.

Methane is one of three core greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. It lasts in the atmosphere for just a few decades, less than carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, but has the highest short-term global warming potential because it holds more heat in the atmosphere. . . .

The budget, produced by the Global Carbon Project, covers 17 natural and anthropogenic (human-induced) sources. It shows that methane has increased by 61 million metric tonnes per year.

“We have seen higher growth rates for methane over the past three years, from 2020-2022, with a record high in 2021,” says Pep Canadell, a director of the Global Carbon Project. “This increase means methane concentrations in the atmosphere are 2.6 times higher than its pre-industrial (1750) levels,”  “Human activities are responsible for at least two-thirds of global methane emissions, adding about 0.5°C to global warming that has occurred to date.”

The report concludes that agriculture contributes 40 per cent of anthropogenic global methane emissions. The fossil fuel sector produces 34 per cent, solid waste and wastewater 19 per cent, and biomass and biofuel burning 7 per cent.

The top five country emitters in 2020 were China (16 per cent), India (9 per cent), USA (7 per cent), Brazil (6 per cent), and Russia (5 per cent).

The European Union and Australasia have reduced their anthropogenic methane emissions over the past two decades. However, global trends clearly jeopardize international commitments to reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.

For net-zero emission pathways consistent with the Paris Agreement objective of a maximum 2°C temperature increase from pre-industrial levels, anthropogenic methane emissions need to decline by 45 per cent by 2050, relative to 2019 levels.

Share:

Related posts… (auto-generated)  [September 2024]

·  What the new IPCC report says about climate change and land

·  Greenland melting is faster than ever … and it is speeding up

·  State of the Climate: Hotter than ever, and getting hotter faster than ever

·  Emissions rising much faster than IPCC forecasts

Related posts… (auto-generated)  [August 2024)

·  Andreas Malm: Revolutionary Strategy in a Warming World

·  The liberal attack on Naomi Klein and ‘This Changes Everything’

·  The origin of Rosa Luxemburg’s slogan ‘socialism or barbarism’

Books & Reports • Climate Change • Earth System • Food and Farming • Greenwash • Marxist theory • Nuclear • water

Corey Ross Douglas Greene Ferris Jabr Ian Angus Jisung Park Jordan B. Kinder Julie Guthman M.V. Ramana Rob Jackson
Other recent articles ...   Capitalism’s New Age of Plagues,    Part 8: Deadly Heat Capitalism’s New Age of Plagues. Part 7: Wildlife farms and wet markets   Carbon offsets are undermining real climate action. 
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, July 2024

“Ecosocialist Bookshelf, September 2024.”  September 2, 2024. 

Ecosocialist Bookshelf is a monthly column, hosted by Ian Angus. Books described here may be reviewed at length in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that C&C agrees with everything (or even anything!) it says. Climate & Capitalism has received review copies of some of these books, but we do not receive any payment for reviews or for reader purchases.

[13 books are very briefly noted; here’s one.  –Dick]

Jisung Park.  SLOW BURN: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World.  Princeton UP.
Much writing focuses on the future results of global heating. Park focuses less on the possibility of mass climate extinction, and more on the everyday implications of climate change here and now.