2021-11-15: News Headlines

Staff (2021-11-15). Headlines for November 15, 2021. democracynow.org COP26 Final Agreement Waters Down Coal Pledges, Leaves World on Track for Climate Disaster, NYT: U.S. Covered Up 2019 Syria Airstrikes That Killed 70 Women and Children, Austria Enacts Lockdown for the Unvaccinated as Europe Becomes Pandemic's Epicenter Again, COVID Cases Rising in Over Half of U.S. States; OK Nat'l Guard Defies Pentagon's Vaccine Mandate, Sudanese Military Kills Eight People During Latest Anti-Coup Protests, Detains Al Jazeera Bureau Head, Eight Refugees Found Dead, Dozens Others Rescued on Boat Near Canary Islands, U.S. Journalist Danny Fenster Freed from Burmese Prison, Journalist and Minority…

Binoy Kampmark (2021-11-15). Gasbagging in Glasgow: COP26 and Phasing Down Coal. dissidentvoice.org Words can provide sharp traps, fettering language and caging definitions. They can also speak to freedom of action and permissiveness. At COP26, that permissiveness was all the more present in the haggling ahead of what would become the Glasgow Climate Pact. COP26, or the UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021, had a mission of "Uniting …

_____ (2021-11-15). Is Sabotage Needed To Save The Earth? popularresistance.org Imagine you are a climate-change campaigner. You've studied research findings and know that unless greenhouse gas emissions are greatly reduced very soon, future generations will likely suffer catastrophic impacts. You've protested for years, yet governments and companies continue to invest in fossil fuels, and emissions keep going up. You are especially annoyed at those who are rich and privileged and who seem not to care that with their SUVs and international flights they are causing more damage to the climate than thousands of ordinary people in Bangladesh or Burundi. You don't want to give in to desperation.

_____ (2021-11-15). Researchers Urge World Leaders At COP26 To Act On Science. popularresistance.org Glasgow, Scotland – As COP26 delegates went into overtime Friday night, shaping the language of their final climate communiques into something all 197 countries could agree on, scientists from around the world issued their latest, and perhaps starkest warning. | "We, climate scientists, stress that immediate, strong, rapid, sustained and large-scale actions are necessary to hold global warming to well below 2 ∞C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 ∞C," they wrote in a Nov. 11 letter to the conference. | More than 200 scientists from every continent signed the letter to remind delegates at the confer…

George Monbiot (2021-11-15). After the failure of Cop26, there's only one last hope for our survival. zcomm.org It's too late for incremental change. By mobilising just 25% of people, we can flip social attitudes towards the climate…

Barry Sheppard (2021-11-15). COP26: The climate cost of war. greenleft.org.au Military carbon emissions have largely been exempted from international climate treaties, dating back to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, reports Barry Sheppard.

Staff (2021-11-15). Glasgow Pact Slammed for Betraying the Global Poor Who Suffer Most from the Climate Emergency. democracynow.org The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, ended Saturday with over 190 nations agreeing to the Glasgow Climate Pact, which calls on governments to return next year in Egypt with stronger plans to curb their emissions and urges wealthy nations to provide more funds to vulnerable countries in the Global South. It also pushes countries to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and reduce the use of coal, but activists say the final language of the agreement is too weak to meaningfully reduce emissions and limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists say is needed in order to avoid the most catastrophic…

Staff (2021-11-15). Indigenous Amazonian Leader: We Must End Fossil Fuel Extraction to Protect the "Lungs of the Earth" democracynow.org Among the unprecedented moments for Indigenous participation in the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow were the protests to protect the Amazon rainforest, the largest remaining rainforest on the planet, that activists argue is on the brink of ecological collapse. "We cannot win the battle against climate unless we protect the world's remaining rainforests," Atossa Soltani, founder and president of Amazon Watch, tells Democracy Now! We also speak with Uyunkar Domingo Peas Nampichkai, Indigenous Achuar Nation leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon, who is demanding an end to logging, mining and oil drilling. "We don't want…

Tina Landis (2021-11-14). Capitalist leaders at COP26: "Full steam ahead to climate catastrophe!" liberationnews.org The people have the knowledge and skills to reverse climate change and these changes are already happening on a small scale around the globe, but the economic system of capitalism acts as a barrier to the wide scale shift that is needed.

Nadda Osman (2021-11-14). Earthquakes, floods, wildfires and a scorpion plague: The Middle East's weekend of climate chaos. middleeasteye.net Earthquakes, floods, wildfires and a scorpion plague: The Middle East's weekend of climate chaos | Region hit by extreme conditions, as scorpions wash up in people's homes and cars are covered in ash
| Sun, 11/14/2021 – 15: 03 | Wildfires rage across Lebanon's Beit Meri, a village close to the country's capital, on 15 November 2021 (Screengrab/Twitter) | People in several Middle Eastern countries wer…

_____ (2021-11-14). 2.4 Degrees Is A Disaster — But COP Won't Stop It. popularresistance.org Regardless of the outcome of COP26, one inevitability is that the rich and powerful celebrate whatever the conference produces as vital progress. Only a disaster on the level of COP15 in Copenhagen might put a stop to the self-congratulatory triumphalism. Already, though, most observing the negotiations with a critical eye are highlighting how inadequate their product will be. Ed Miliband has said we're 'miles from where we need to be' and Greta Thunberg declared COP26 to be a 'failure'. | These condemnations are backed up by analysis from Climate Action Tracker (CAT), assessing governments' short-term commitment…

_____ (2021-11-14). After COP26, US President Under Fire For 'Failing To Act On Fossil Fuels'. popularresistance.org "We're in a five-alarm fire, but Biden refuses to use a firehose," Su said in a statement. "President Biden can use his unique set of executive powers to stop fossil fuel project approvals and declare a climate emergency, but he isn't. Failing to act on fossil fuels is beyond climate denial, it's climate atrocity."

_____ (2021-11-14). Biden's Farm Methane Plan Could Worsen Consolidation And Pollution. popularresistance.org Reducing methane emissions took center stage at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow ending Friday. More than 100 countries pledged to reduce their methane emissions by 30% over the next decade. Methane is a significantly more potent yet shorter-lived greenhouse gas, making it a target to prevent near-term warming as societies hurtle towards the 1.5 degrees of warming deemed disastrous for life on Earth. | In tandem with this global commitment, the Biden administration released its plan to bring down U.S. methane emissions. While this plan would set new limits on methane emissions coming off oi…

Indigenous Action (2021-11-14). Against the "Colonizer's Burden": Climate Justice Means Anti-Colonial and Anti-Capitalist Struggle. itsgoingdown.org New editorial from Indigenous Action on the need to confront root ideologies and structures of colonialism and capitalism. Global warming is a direct consequence of war against Mother Earth. Unless the root ideologies and structures that precipitate this crisis are confronted and done away with, we condemn ourselves and future generations to non-existence. 
"Big Green"…

Dean Baker (2021-11-14). Imagine if Stopping Climate Change Was More Important than Making Climate Change Billionaires. cepr.net We are still getting through a worldwide pandemic that has taken tens of millions of lives. While we did develop effective vaccines, they were not produced and distributed quickly enough to prevent enormous loss of life. This is a tragedy that should force us to ask how we could have done better. On the other …

Ashley Curtin (2021-11-14). The gap between climate rhetoric and reality: The Fossil Fuelled 5. nationofchange.org Among those five wealthy countries analyzed, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway and Australia, all plan to approve and subsidize new fossil fuel projects despite their claims of leading in the climate fight, the report concluded.

_____ (2021-11-14). After COP26, Biden Under Fire For 'Failing To Act On Fossil Fuels'. popularresistance.org As climate campaigners worldwide on Saturday slammed the United Nations summit in Scotland and its resulting Glasgow Climate Pact as betrayals of the Global South by rich countries that have polluted the planet, U.S. President Joe Biden faced growing pressure to improve both his national and global policies. | The fresh demands built on previous comments and calls throughout COP26—such as a Friday statement Food & Water Watch, whose policy director Mitch Jones said that "this White House should fulfill its campaign promise to stop oil and gas drilling on public lands, put an end to oil and gas exports,…

George Monbiot (2021-11-14). Make extreme wealth extinct: it's the only way to avoid climate breakdown. zcomm.org Why do we tolerate the massive environmental impacts of the very rich?>

Dusan Pajovic (2021-11-14). How to fix climate activism. zcomm.org Interview on tactics, messaging, and how to bring the working class into climate activism — who have so far been excluded…

Asad Rehman (2021-11-14). Civil Society Holds People's Plenary & Leaves Climate Summit. zcomm.org As the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow concludes, activists staged a walkout Friday in response to late decisions made by negotiators to severely weaken commitments in the final agreement…

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