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World on 'thin ice' as UN climate report gives stark warning
Source: AP
BERLIN (AP) — Humanity still has a chance, close to the last one, to prevent the worst of climate change ’s future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists said Monday. But doing so requires quickly slashing carbon pollution and fossil fuel use by nearly two-thirds by 2035, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said.
The United Nations chief said it more bluntly, calling for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and rich countries quitting coal, oil and gas by 2040. Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”
Stepping up his pleas for action on fossil fuels, Guterres not only called for “no new coal” but also for eliminating its use in rich countries by 2030 and poor countries by 2040. He urged carbon-free electricity generation in the developed world by 2035, meaning no gas-fired power plants too.
That date is key because nations soon have to come up with goals for pollution reduction by 2035, according to the Paris climate agreement. After contentious debate, the U.N. science panel calculated and reported that to stay under the warming limit set in Paris the world needs to cut 60% of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, compared with 2019, adding a new target not previously mentioned in the six reports issued since 2018.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/un-climate-change-report-ipcc-guterres-science-30d8451c0f3fb7b8a857e3ed4fd01172
Link to tweet
IPCC
@IPCC_CH
·
Follow
PRESS RELEASE
There are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions & adapt to human-caused #climatechange available now, said scientists in the latest #IPCC #ClimateReport released today.
➡️ https://bit.ly/SYRPR23
Image
9:01 AM · Mar 20, 2023
@IPCC_CH
·
Follow
PRESS RELEASE
There are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions & adapt to human-caused #climatechange available now, said scientists in the latest #IPCC #ClimateReport released today.
➡️ https://bit.ly/SYRPR23
Image
9:01 AM · Mar 20, 2023
Press release is here (PDF).
Report here (there have been on and off issues with access to their servers) - https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/
14 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
is that a cancel would most likely be thrown out in court (there are already court halts to lease cancels including one that ignored the Appeals Court temp ruling allowing the "pause" and issuing a permanent injunction). However there are groups suing to get the pause policy/E.O. re-enabled - at least in Wyoming where a federal judge ruled the policy "legal".
What people need to do for climate change, is start taking care of what is in front of them right now in the "scary cities" and not focus so intently on something "still on the drawing board" at the moment -
CURBED
no drilling where we're living | Feb. 10, 2022
L.A. Just Banned Oil Drilling. Now Comes the Hard Part.
By Alissa Walker, a Curbed senior writer
Across Los Angeles, oil wells bob in yards, near schools, and at parks. Photo: Citizen of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
In a city aiming to be carbon-neutral by 2035, neighborhood oil wells have become an increasingly incongruous element of the Los Angeles landscape. About 600,000 Angelenos live within a half-mile of one of L.A.’s 1,000 active wells, where a recent study demonstrated that toxic particulates can travel up to two-and-a-half miles, blanketing local communities with chronic respiratory issues and higher cancer rates. Starting in 2013, the unusually broad coalition of groups known as Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling (STAND L.A.) began a campaign under the slogan “No drilling where we’re living.” And last week — nearly a decade after the campaign began — L.A. finally passed a motion to officially phase out oil and gas extraction. It’s a first step toward holding oil companies accountable for the damage they have inflicted upon L.A.’s most vulnerable neighborhoods for over a century. “It’s a vision beyond oil drilling,” says Eric Romann, an environmental-justice coordinator for Physicians for Social Responsibility and a co-leader of STAND L.A.’s campaign. “It’s the vision that communities that are overwhelmingly Black and Latino and working class who have borne the brunt should actively have a role in shaping what their future will look like.”
The oil companies won’t exactly quit drilling tomorrow. New drilling permits would likely stop being issued by the end of 2022, but oil companies may get up to a 20-year period to phase out everything that’s already siphoning fossil fuels out of the ground. That will mean not only properly plugging wells — including cleaning up 3,000 inactive drilling sites and another 1,000 abandoned wells located around the city — but also fully remediating the land. If the city can prove oil well operators have already recouped their initial investment, it may go faster. Neighboring Culver City recently conducted a similar study for its oil wells and is requiring full remediation by 2026.
Since 1892, L.A. has been dotted with oil wells, which lined up along beaches and sprouted out of backyards. But whereas drilling sites in wealthier neighborhoods have largely shut down over the last 25 years — a few continue to operate, cleverly camouflaged and with improved safety measures in place — many of the sites in lower-income communities have persisted. The city’s new ordinance would start to chip away at L.A.’s many land-use inequities, from its freeways to its port, says Romann: “We have an economy based not only on the extraction but the production and consumption of fossil fuels, and in order for that to function, we have placed this in the neighborhoods where the people with the least power live.”
That’s a start, but there’s a lot of petroleum infrastructure left in L.A. County, and that means the hardest part comes next. The region is home to multiple refineries that pollute the same neighborhoods affected by oil drilling. Remember that one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history was a gas leak at a storage facility in Aliso Canyon. Six years later, residents are still experiencing health issues, yet officials recently voted to expand the facility anyway. Reforms at the county and state level are helping, like new rules governing setback requirements around schools and parks. (The state also continues to issue new fracking permits but says it wants to phase out oil extraction by 2045.) There’s assistance coming from the Biden administration as well: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited L.A. in December and promised federal funds to clean up drill sites.
(snip)
https://www.curbed.com/2022/02/los-angeles-ends-oil-drilling-stand.html
no drilling where we're living | Feb. 10, 2022
L.A. Just Banned Oil Drilling. Now Comes the Hard Part.
By Alissa Walker, a Curbed senior writer
Across Los Angeles, oil wells bob in yards, near schools, and at parks. Photo: Citizen of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
In a city aiming to be carbon-neutral by 2035, neighborhood oil wells have become an increasingly incongruous element of the Los Angeles landscape. About 600,000 Angelenos live within a half-mile of one of L.A.’s 1,000 active wells, where a recent study demonstrated that toxic particulates can travel up to two-and-a-half miles, blanketing local communities with chronic respiratory issues and higher cancer rates. Starting in 2013, the unusually broad coalition of groups known as Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling (STAND L.A.) began a campaign under the slogan “No drilling where we’re living.” And last week — nearly a decade after the campaign began — L.A. finally passed a motion to officially phase out oil and gas extraction. It’s a first step toward holding oil companies accountable for the damage they have inflicted upon L.A.’s most vulnerable neighborhoods for over a century. “It’s a vision beyond oil drilling,” says Eric Romann, an environmental-justice coordinator for Physicians for Social Responsibility and a co-leader of STAND L.A.’s campaign. “It’s the vision that communities that are overwhelmingly Black and Latino and working class who have borne the brunt should actively have a role in shaping what their future will look like.”
The oil companies won’t exactly quit drilling tomorrow. New drilling permits would likely stop being issued by the end of 2022, but oil companies may get up to a 20-year period to phase out everything that’s already siphoning fossil fuels out of the ground. That will mean not only properly plugging wells — including cleaning up 3,000 inactive drilling sites and another 1,000 abandoned wells located around the city — but also fully remediating the land. If the city can prove oil well operators have already recouped their initial investment, it may go faster. Neighboring Culver City recently conducted a similar study for its oil wells and is requiring full remediation by 2026.
Since 1892, L.A. has been dotted with oil wells, which lined up along beaches and sprouted out of backyards. But whereas drilling sites in wealthier neighborhoods have largely shut down over the last 25 years — a few continue to operate, cleverly camouflaged and with improved safety measures in place — many of the sites in lower-income communities have persisted. The city’s new ordinance would start to chip away at L.A.’s many land-use inequities, from its freeways to its port, says Romann: “We have an economy based not only on the extraction but the production and consumption of fossil fuels, and in order for that to function, we have placed this in the neighborhoods where the people with the least power live.”
That’s a start, but there’s a lot of petroleum infrastructure left in L.A. County, and that means the hardest part comes next. The region is home to multiple refineries that pollute the same neighborhoods affected by oil drilling. Remember that one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history was a gas leak at a storage facility in Aliso Canyon. Six years later, residents are still experiencing health issues, yet officials recently voted to expand the facility anyway. Reforms at the county and state level are helping, like new rules governing setback requirements around schools and parks. (The state also continues to issue new fracking permits but says it wants to phase out oil extraction by 2045.) There’s assistance coming from the Biden administration as well: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited L.A. in December and promised federal funds to clean up drill sites.
(snip)
https://www.curbed.com/2022/02/los-angeles-ends-oil-drilling-stand.html
and here in Philly -
Green
How to Tear Down an Oil Refinery in the Middle of Philadelphia
There are some 130 aging oil refineries in the U.S., most of which will need to be decommissioned if the country is to meet its climate goals.
By Josh Saul
September 30, 2021
After part of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery exploded into flames one night in 2019, its owners filed for bankruptcy and put the 1,300-acre site up for sale. Hilco Global, a company with a track record of transforming fossil-fuel infrastructure like coal-fired power plants, bought the South Philadelphia facility out of bankruptcy with a grand new vision that includes logistics facilities and research labs.
But first the company has a daunting task: safely dismantling over 100 buildings, 3,000 tanks and 950 miles of dirty pipeline.
The Problem
Oil refining has taken place on the banks of the Schuylkill River since just after the Civil War. By the time the explosion scattered debris across the site and even over the river, the PES Oil Refinery was turning 330,000 barrels of crude day into gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products such as heating oil and jet fuel.
Right now, some parts of the PES Oil Refinery have the feel of a ghost town. Weeds sprout head-high among the pipelines, Canada geese strut down empty roads and small herds of deer bound past a silent railyard. But other parts are bustling with workers and big, yellow excavators as Hilco enters the second year of taking apart equipment and preparing the site for construction. The first tenants are supposed to move into the site in 2023.
(snip)
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-decommissioned-philadelphia-oil-refinery/
Justice
A Vast Refinery Site in Philadelphia Is Being Redeveloped and Called ‘The Bellwether District.’ But for Black Residents Nearby, Justice Awaits
Three years after a fire and explosion shuttered what was once the East Coast’s largest refinery, toxic benzene continued leaking well into the cleanup.
By Victoria St. Martin
July 4, 2022
One minute, the 3-year-old was playing tag in the grass—her braided hair bouncing with each step—while the hulking remains of a 150-year-old oil refinery loomed nearby. Then, suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Many residents here in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia live with asthma and other chronic health conditions that they, advocates and even some medical experts attribute to the close proximity of the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery, which was destroyed in an explosion in June 2019 and closed shortly afterward.
Now, at a recent gathering of her neighbors and environmentalists in a local park to celebrate the refinery’s closure, the toddler was experiencing an asthma attack. When an inhaler offered no relief, family members rushed her to a nearby hospital where she was treated, released and made a full recovery.
“Look at all the damage that’s been done,” the toddler’s grandmother, Sheryl Russell, 45, said of the health ailments that many residents trace to the refinery. “And it’s, like, where do they pay? They need to pay for that.”
The closure of the 1,300-acre refinery here—once the largest on the East Coast—had been cheered as a major victory for those working at the intersection of equity, social justice and environmentalism. Yet in the three years since the refinery closed, the kind of sustained change sought by residents and environmental activists has proved elusive.
(snip)
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04072022/philadelphia-refinery-health-black-residents/
A Vast Refinery Site in Philadelphia Is Being Redeveloped and Called ‘The Bellwether District.’ But for Black Residents Nearby, Justice Awaits
Three years after a fire and explosion shuttered what was once the East Coast’s largest refinery, toxic benzene continued leaking well into the cleanup.
By Victoria St. Martin
July 4, 2022
One minute, the 3-year-old was playing tag in the grass—her braided hair bouncing with each step—while the hulking remains of a 150-year-old oil refinery loomed nearby. Then, suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Many residents here in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia live with asthma and other chronic health conditions that they, advocates and even some medical experts attribute to the close proximity of the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery, which was destroyed in an explosion in June 2019 and closed shortly afterward.
Now, at a recent gathering of her neighbors and environmentalists in a local park to celebrate the refinery’s closure, the toddler was experiencing an asthma attack. When an inhaler offered no relief, family members rushed her to a nearby hospital where she was treated, released and made a full recovery.
“Look at all the damage that’s been done,” the toddler’s grandmother, Sheryl Russell, 45, said of the health ailments that many residents trace to the refinery. “And it’s, like, where do they pay? They need to pay for that.”
The closure of the 1,300-acre refinery here—once the largest on the East Coast—had been cheered as a major victory for those working at the intersection of equity, social justice and environmentalism. Yet in the three years since the refinery closed, the kind of sustained change sought by residents and environmental activists has proved elusive.
(snip)
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04072022/philadelphia-refinery-health-black-residents/
(sorry to dump as a reply to you...
) 
