September ’20

• World fails to meet a single one of the UN’s 2010 Aichi biodiversity targets to put the brakes on global ecocide. Not a single fucking one. Report here.

• Northern Hemisphere’s 2020 summer hottest in recorded history.

• Global wildlife populations down by 68% since 1970. Two thirds down, one to go.

August ’20

• Greenland Ice Sheet has passed Point of No Return. Already the largest single contributor to rising sea levels. Now there’s no Off switch.

• Rising temperatures on track to kill as many people as all current infectious diseases combined. Original paywalled study here.

July ’20 and earlier

• Forget future development; emissions resulting from projects already committed/underway mean we can kiss 1.5°C goodbye as an attainable target.

• Covid Means Fewer Children!. Even better, the fertility decline preferentially affects those with the biggest carbon bootprints (i.e., urbanites in rich countries).

• 2020: the worst year ever for the fossil fuel industry. “We’re still in for a long and ugly fight”, they admit. Still.

• Virtual extinction of Polar bears within eighty years due to climate change. But it’s not all bad. A few straggly survivors may be all Coca Cola needs to keep its advertising campaign within the bounds of good taste.

• Green power beats fossil fuels for first time in Europe. Still less than half, and pandemic-temporary. But something. Also when there’s a renewables surplus they pay you to consume electricity.

• Unsuitable for ‘human life to flourish’: Up to 3B will live in extreme heat by 2070.

• Record-breaking Siberian winter keeps 2020 on track to be hottest year in recorded history. Covid Pause? What Covid pause?

• It hit 80F in the Arctic this week. Not to mention the zombie fires.

• 2019: the Hottest Year in Europe’s Recorded History.

• Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies.

• Amazon could switch from carbon sink to carbon source within twenty years.. “Decades ahead of even the most pessimistic climate models.”

• The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its third mass-bleaching event in five years.. Hey, just because nobody’s talking about it doesn’t mean it’s stopped happening.

• E.P.A., Citing Coronavirus, Drastically Relaxes Rules for Polluters. But it’s okay, because they’re also asking companies to “act responsibly”.

• Australian Bushfires destroyed over a fifth of the continent’s temperate broadleaf forests. This year alone. Who knows what next year might bring?

• Global carbon emissions fall 2%. It’s pathetic progress and utterly insufficient, but I’ll take what I can get.

• Australia’s Bushfires Completely Blasted Through the Models. They weren’t supposed to get this bad for another eighty years.

• A quarter of climate-change tweets are from bots. The vast majority of them denialist.

• January 2019 warmest in recorded history.

• Good news for a change: Global emissions didn’t increase in 2019.

• Climate change displaced 17.2 million from their homes in 2019.

• Atmospheric triflouromethane—a greenhouse gas 12,000x worse than CO 2 — reaches record levels.

• We’re currently adding 5 Hiroshima bombs worth of heat per second to the world’s oceans. And climbing.

• Climate threats now dominate long-term risks. Global leaders finally admit risks outweigh those from cyberattacks, pandemics, geopolitical conflict and weapons of mass destruction. Well, duh.

• Earth just had its hottest decade on record. NASA’s Gavin Schmidt admits 1.5C goal unattainable.

• 2019 UN Emissions Gap Report (global emissions have to drop by 7.6% annually starting now or we’re even more fucked).

• 3.2C unless emission-control efforts tripled.

• Greenhouse gases accelerated to new peak in 2018.

• Nature: Predicted extent of global flooding is triple previous estimates.