A thought-provoking article published in Nature asserts that: "Equality is essential for sustainability. The science is clear — people in more-equal societies are more trusting and more likely to protect the environment than are those in unequal, consumer-driven ones."

Here is a short excerpt...
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As environmental, social and humanitarian crises escalate, the world can no longer afford two things: first, the costs of economic inequality; and second, the rich.

Between 2020 and 2022, the world’s most affluent 1% of people captured nearly twice as much of the new global wealth created as did the other 99% of individuals put together, and in 2019 they emitted as much carbon dioxide as the poorest two-thirds of humanity.

Evidence gathered by social epidemiologists, including us, shows that large differences in income are a powerful social stressor that is increasingly rendering societies dysfunctional. For example, bigger gaps between rich and poor are accompanied by higher rates of homicide and imprisonment. They also correspond to more infant mortality, obesity, drug abuse and COVID-19 deaths, as well as higher rates of teenage pregnancy and lower levels of child well-being, social mobility, and public trust. The homicide rate in the United States — the most unequal Western democracy — is more than 11 times that in Norway. Imprisonment rates are ten times as high, and infant mortality and obesity rates twice as high.

Many commentators have drawn attention to the environmental need to limit economic growth and instead prioritize sustainability and well-being. We argue that tackling inequality is the foremost task of that transformation. Greater equality will reduce unhealthy and excess consumption, and will increase the solidarity and cohesion that are needed to make societies more adaptable in the face of climate and other emergencies.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00723-3

#Economics #Inequality #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

Taking Earth’s temperature from space

Video: 00:14:13

Climate change exacerbates droughts by making them more frequent, longer, and more severe. This can have a wide range of impacts on the environment, agriculture, ecosystems and communities including water scarcity, crop failure and food shortages.

The upcoming Copernicus Land Surface Temperature Monitoring, LSTM, mission will improve sustainable agricultural productivity in a world of increasing water scarcity and variability.

The mission will carry a high spatial-temporal resolution thermal infrared sensor to provide observations of land-surface temperature.

These data are key to understand and respond to climate variability, manage water resources for agricultural production, predict droughts and also to address land degradation.

LSTM is one of six Copernicus Sentinel Expansion missions that ESA is developing on behalf of the EU. The missions will expand the current capabilities of the Copernicus Space Component – the world’s biggest supplier of Earth observation data.

This video features interviews with Ana Bolea Alamanac, LSTM Mission Project Manager, Ilias Manolis, LSTM Mission Payload Manager and Itziar Barat, LSTM Mission System and Operations Manager.

Access all "Unpacking Sentinels" videos.

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

Here is a somewhat comical but also highly indignant commentary about the folly of “Net Zero by 2050”…
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We insiders — by which I mean anyone paying attention — know that the plan to mitigate the climate catastrophe with Net Zero by 2050 is complete bullshit. But maybe you’ve absorbed that knowledge without really understanding why. So let’s talk about it.

What does Net Zero actually mean? Net Zero is the point at which the CO2 burden in the atmosphere is no longer increasing. We’re still putting some up, but we’re also taking just as much out.

This definition immediately tips off two major problems.

The “still putting some up” part is a major issue because the fossil fuels industrial/political complex hears that and stops listening. The “still putting some up” part is their job, and somebody else can do the “take just as much out” part.

In other words, it's Business As Usual for fossil fuels, including continuing growth. Someone else can do the preserving-life-and-the-climate part.

The second obvious problem with Net Zero is the very idea of “taking just as much CO2 out of the atmosphere each year as the fossil fuel industry is adding to it each year.” We know of only two ways to reduce the CO2 load of the atmosphere. One is time. But CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years, so time is not on our side.

The other way to reduce CO2 is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Carbon is “captured” from the atmosphere using a chemical solvent that absorbs CO2, after which it can be buried in the ground where the CO2 will stay safely out of the atmosphere virtually forever.

CCS technology both does and does not exist.

CCS does exist in that there are many ingenious systems for doing it, including several pilot programs demonstrating direct air capture, the holy grail of CCS. Many fossil fuelled electricity generation plants have been removing CO2 from their smokestack emissions for decades. Unfortunately, much of the currently captured CO2 is being injected into played-out oil wells, forcing more of the remaining oil to be recoverable, to burn as fuel. Totally self-defeating, as far as reducing the CO2 load in the atmosphere.

But CCS also does NOT exist in terms of a significant contributor to Net Zero. They remove so little CO2 from the atmosphere, and at such a cost, as to make them completely impractical. To make a dent in carbon emissions, hundreds of thousands of CCS plants are needed, if not millions. The cost is prohibitive. Not to mention the carbon costs of manufacturing all those plants.

But surely CCS technology will improve over the next decade or two. Maybe someone will even find a miraculous breakthrough that will make it truly practical?

Sorry, but no. It’s not that there hasn’t been enough research into CCS. It has been heavily researched and the science is known. It’s actually some pretty simple chemistry. We can tweak around the efficiency edges, but there are no breakthroughs waiting in the wings to be discovered.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://lannierose.medium.com/net-zero-by-2050-get-the-joke-946c2d0c0530

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual
#CO2 #Emissions