[GWSG] Final IPCC report; LA gas; Alaskan oil; wild CH4; Jealous and Gore

[Tilley, Al]

1. The IPCC has delivered its synthesis of the Sixth Assessment Report. It boils down to the warning that we have left ourselves little time to act. We can still avoid the worst consequences of our burning of fossil fuels, but we will need to act before the next report is generated six or seven years from now. In that sense it is the IPCC’s final report unless the next can confirm that catastrophe was averted. UN Secretary General Guterres: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c

2. Five terminals for commercial methane are being constructed on 632 acres of the Louisiana coast. Though the time has passed for such projects, eight more are approved, and another eight are proposed. “The Gulf Coast offers the friendliest regulatory environment” for what we might view as the American version of WW II’s gas ovens, with the distinctions that the camp now covers the earth, and that the motive is greed, not hatred of the Other. I suppose that a kind of self-hatred may be at work. The delta land is subsiding, in part from the extraction of fossil fuels; may the methane plants sink speedily. “Tyson Slocum, the director of energy for Public Citizen, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization, says that under federal law, gas can only be exported if it has a net benefit to the public. Slocum argues there is no benefit.”  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ukraine-is-a-false-justification-americas-destructive-new-rush-for-natural-gas

3. Vermont Law’s Patrick Parenteau was interviewed for Living on Earth in an analysis of the environmental, legal, and political implications of Biden’s approval of the Willow oil project in Alaska. It is another project we know to be disastrous.  https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=23-P13-00011&segmentID=1

4. In this century methane emissions from wetlands are exceeding even extreme projections. Newly inundated wetlands in Africa are producing especially high levels. The unexpected emissions are attributed to feedbacks from the effects of the climate crisis. The Global Methane Pledge to cut human emissions 30% by 2030 may need to be augmented by a methane removal program. (I imagine a ban on the use of commercial methane might help.)  https://www.carbonbrief.org/exceptional-surge-in-methane-emissions-from-wetlands-worries-scientists/?utm_source=cbnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-03-21&utm_campaign=Daily+Briefing+-+21+03+2023

5. Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, interviews Al Gore on the climate crisis. The former Vice President finds hope in the new administrations in Brazil and Australia, in Biden’s programs, and in activists, especially among the young. Gore’s Climate Reality Project has now trained 50,000 leaders and is training more.  https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/conversation-al-gore?suppress=true&utm_source=greenlife&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

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