#superpolluting

[newscast1]

A look inside Andrew Tate's super-polluting luxury car collection that irked Greta Thunberg

A look inside Andrew Tate’s super-polluting luxury car collection that irked Greta Thunberg

After the verbal spat between Andrew Tate and Greta Thunberg on Twitter over the former’s collection of supercars with high emission levels, we look at his super-polluting luxury car collection and its emission potential. New Delhi,UPDATED: Jan 2, 2023 17:18 IST Greta Thunberg’s response garnered traction quickly, with 3.9 million likes on Twitter. It trended on the platform for two days. By…

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#Andrew #Andrew Tate #car #collection #Greta #Greta Thunberg #irked #luxury #luxury car #social media #super-polluting #superpolluting #Tates #Thunberg #twitter

[politedemon]

the duality of needing a dress i can actually afford for graduation and not wanting to give money to shein

#it will unfortunately have to be fast fashion of some sort bc i can't. afford custom made or designer or whatever #and afaik there aren't any sustainable brands that do formal dresses #but i do draw the line at shein/asos/their brand of superpolluting

[female-malice]

Late on Saturday, as members of Congress scrambled to strike a deal for legislation that would raise the nation’s debt ceiling, they agreed to a total non sequitur in the text they would release the next day. After a series of late-in-the-game interventions by lobbyists and energy executives, the draft bill declared the construction and operation of a natural gas pipeline to be “required in the national interest.” It wasn’t really germane to the debt ceiling, at least not in the literal sense. But then again, it wasn’t any ordinary pipeline.

Building the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile conduit to deliver fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia, has been a top priority for Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia since the project was announced in 2014. The problem, for him and the project’s other supporters, is that it has been fiercely opposed by grass-roots groups and landowners living in the project’s path for just as long. Construction on the project was recently stalled after federal judges found that regulatory agencies had repeatedly failed to comply with environmental laws.

By forcing through this pipeline, the Biden administration rounded out the ransom sought by Republicans holding the global economy hostage and paid off a debt of its own to Mr. Manchin for his crucial vote last year for the Inflation Reduction Act.

But if the Senate passes the bill the House passed on Wednesday, an insidious piece of misinformation will be enshrined in federal law: the claim that the pumping, piping and burning of more fossil fuels is — despite all scientific evidence and common sense to the contrary — a climate solution.

Natural gas is predominantly made up of methane, a climate-warming superpollutant that is responsible for about a third of the warming the world has experienced to date. If completed, the M.V.P. will be a very large and long-lived methane delivery device. At the wells that feed it and along the way, some of that methane will inevitably leak into the atmosphere, where each molecule will exert 86 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide over 20 years. At the end of the line, the methane will be burned in power plants and furnaces, producing carbon dioxide. Taken together, by one estimate, the M.V.P. would generate yearly emissions equivalent to what’s produced by 26 coal plants.

And yet the bill’s text asserts — in a brazen stroke of climate gaslighting — that the pipeline will “reduce carbon emissions and facilitate the energy transition.”

Businesses and governments have long claimed gas was a bridge to a clean energy future, a transition fuel that would tide us over until renewables were ready for prime time. But now that wind, solar and battery storage are indeed quite ready and, in many places, cheaper than gas, the jig is up. That makes the M.V.P. a project in search of a rationale: There are cheaper sources of gas available via existing pipelines, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that demand for gas in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions will continue to drop off in the years and decades ahead.

Though the assertions that the pipeline is necessary and good for the climate defy logic, the political calculus is clear enough. Congressional Democrats and President Biden want to reward Mr. Manchin, who is weighing whether to run in what is sure to be a tough re-election fight in 2024.

Mr. Manchin was also a supporter of another large gas pipeline that would have originated in his state: the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which I have been reporting on since 2019. The two pipelines were twins, announced on the same day in 2014 and approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the same day in 2017. They would have crossed similarly steep and landslide-prone Appalachian terrain. But the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was canceled in 2020 after years of tenacious grass-roots resistance and legal challenges.

Mr. Manchin seems determined to rescue the M.V.P. from this fate. And with it, his gas industry and power utility donors — whose lobbyists helped him in the final hours of debt ceiling deal making — will be able to further strengthen their hold on the energy system.

White House officials have said that the project would probably have secured the remaining federal permits regardless. But the provision authorizes all necessary permits and bars further judicial review of any of them — thus neutering an essential tool for ensuring that infrastructure projects comply with existing laws and regulations. It’s the legislative equivalent of overturning the Scrabble board in a fit of pique when you’re losing a game fair and square.

For many of those living in the project’s path, who watched as its construction has so far triggered over 500 recorded violations of water quality and other regulations, it’s a terrible betrayal. But it also sets a dangerous precedent. It is safe to assume this won’t be the last time this tactic is pursued to shield fossil fuel projects from judicial review or scientific scrutiny if they happen to be deemed by their developers and political allies to be in the national interest.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia has cited this risk in explaining his opposition to the M.V.P. provision. When Mr. Manchin succeeded in getting a similar carve-out attached to the continuing budget resolution to fund the government last September, Mr. Kaine refused to vote for it. “If the M.V.P. owners are unhappy with a court ruling, they should do what other litigants do and appeal,” he said. “Allowing them to fundamentally change federal law to achieve their goal would surely encourage other wealthy people and companies to try the same. I won’t participate in opening that door to abuse and even corruption.”

Mr. Kaine, along with other Democratic members of the Virginia congressional delegation, remains opposed; this week he said he’s against any debt-ceiling bill that exempts the M.V.P. from judicial review. Meanwhile one of the lead Republican negotiators told reporters this week the pipeline provision is a “huge win” for his party because it puts “Democrats on record supporting a conventional energy project that removes or ties the hands of the judiciary.”

Democratic leaders will surely bristle at the suggestion that they are helping the gas industry obstruct the transition to clean energy. After all, they passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history, and protected its raft of clean energy incentives from cuts in the debt ceiling deal. It’s clear that the deal makers regard themselves as the grown-ups in the room, making the tough trade-offs needed to avert financial catastrophe. But when the stakes are this large, one need not grant them that deference.

There’s always a political “crisis” gathering on the near horizon that will supersede concerns about the climate — that will cause us to look away from the dizzying rise of methane concentrations, currently spiking to levels not seen in over 800,000 years, a trend tracking with the worst-case climate scenarios.

This is what it looks like to shuffle along toward climate chaos, one misguided compromise at a time.

#cc

[xxxjarchiexxx]

there's a search for acceptable punching bags for misogyny in activist spaces and one of the ways of seeing who or what the punching bag is is looking at how much the harm done is centered in a discussion, how much of what she/it has done wrong is materially different from anyone else of their standing, and think about how it would be received if the subject was someone beloved by the space ur in but is equally capable of harm. like, brandon sanderson is equally as mormon as stephanie meyer and donates just as much money if not more to the mormon church. celine dion is beloved as an icon and has wayyy more co2 emissions than taylor swift, which is way less than elon musk, who we all stopped talking about as a superpolluter for some reason? all the booktok authors made fun of on here just happen to be women, while actively harmful books by men are ignored. etc etc. not to say any of these people AREN'T guilty of what they're proportedly scrutinized for-- but when the "criticism" is disproportionate and alongside comments about how Airheaded And Dumb And Boy Crazy etc the person is, it's still misogynistic. all women are victims of misogyny, not just the non-problematic ones (which sounds more dismissive of the ecological impact, racism, etc of the women mentioned than i mean to be).

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this Op-Ed from the New York Times:

The world has warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels, much of it occurring since 1950, and the pace continues. That’s why it was so important that more than 100 countries joined a coalition led by the United States and the European Union last week to cut global emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane by at least 30 percent by 2030.

But delegates meeting at a world climate conference in Glasgow have more to do: For the security of the planet, they need to act further and faster to limit near-term temperature increases.

The other element of that strategy is reducing emissions of the most pernicious of climate pollutants — those that, along with methane, supercharge warming over the short term. Short of geoengineering the climate, this is the fastest way to slow global warming.

These superpollutants, as we call them, have the potential to upend critical natural systems, accelerating the melting of reflective Arctic sea ice and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland and the thawing of permafrost in the world’s boreal regions. That thawing will be disastrous for the climate if it ends up unleashing the vast quantities of methane and other greenhouse gases within the frozen soil.

We know from measurements of air trapped in Antarctic ice that the amount of methane in the air has reached its highest level in at least 800,000 years. And since emissions of methane can be more than 80 times as potent in warming the planet over 20 years as carbon dioxide, methane cuts have a special role in limiting near-term temperature increases. Two other short-lived climate pollutants are also particularly potent: hydrofluorocarbons, primarily used in refrigeration and air-conditioning, and black carbon soot, caused by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood and organic waste, like yard and farm scraps.

Reductions in these pollutants are possible with existing technology and could further limit temperature increases over the next couple of decades, avoiding three times as much warming by 2050 as strategies targeting carbon dioxide alone.

In 2016, 197 countries agreed to reduce hydrofluorocarbon use by more than 80 percent over the next 30 years, with the potential to avoid nearly half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century. Those countries need to speed up that schedule and provide additional financial support to help some low-income countries comply.

In California, clean air rules have reduced black soot carbon emissions by 90 percent since the 1960s. This can be replicated elsewhere. In particular, the world needs to focus on black carbon emissions from oil and gas production in the Arctic. These particles darken the snow and ice, reducing the reflection of solar radiation in a region that is warming at three times the global rate, with the potential to influence global weather patterns. Reducing these emissions should be a global priority.

#methane #superpollutants #greenhouse gas emissions #climate change #hydrofluorocarbons #black carbon soot

[freyjaofthenorth]

That article wasn't actually the original one I was looking for, but it was kinda the same concept.

But yeah, also you thrown in higher energy consumption than your houses uses in a year, and the whole concept is just... mind melting elitism

Imagine being that entitled...

and all of that for a png of a doodle? more money than all the money i’ve had in my life combined for a png of a doodle by some guy i’ve never heard of?? with superpollution methmoney that probably uses more electricity than your avarage village around here??? for a receipt and a png for a doodle which they destroy????

what????????? why are you like this, rich people???????????

and the article called the destruction “iconoclasm”? maybe i’m just a poor peasant fattighjon but i don’t really give a hoot about them destroying a doodle by some guy i’ve never heard of, i’m to busy being baffled by this entire thing?? and the article talks as this is completely normal for every other aspect than the destruction??? selling a png for more money than i’ve had in my life combined payed with virtual superpollution methmoney is completely normal to these weirdos??????

#i'm just so unbelievably baffled

[hell-yeahfilm]

MELTDOWN

Outraged to learn that a mining company planned to dynamite three glaciers to reach the gold underneath, Taillant, founder of the Center for Human Rights and Environment, became a “cryoactivist,” a word that hadn’t been invented but that finds meaning in these pages. Though not a scientist, the author is “a career environmental policy expert,” and he is dedicated to the preservation of Earth’s glaciers, a critical factor in fighting against accelerating climate changes. Taillant begins with an avalanche of statistics. The most familiar—namely, that our planet is 2/3 water and 1/3 land—is misleading. The reality, notes the author, is that it is 71% water, 19% land, and 10% ice. A minuscule 2% of the water is fresh, and 75% of that is bound in polar icecaps or high in mountains where it forms a critical part of our ecosystem. Mostly, Taillant describes what glaciers do. They provide perhaps 85% of “the water humans need,” from drinking to agriculture. They keep us cool. Ice is white, so it reflects most of the sun’s rays. When it disappears, brown earth or blue ocean absorb these rays and grow warmer. Ocean levels will rise by 200 feet if all the ice melts. They’re predicted to rise two to seven feet during the 21st century, and Louisiana and south Florida are already visibly suffering the effects. In the final chapters, the author outlines possible solutions. Some engineers are creating “artificial glaciers” or reviving old ones. Laws to protect glaciers should be a no-brainer, but, except in Argentina, all have failed. Of course, the author insists, this must change. Slowing global warning by eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning is essential. It’s not likely to happen in the coming decades, but in the short term, we can easily eliminate superpollutants such as methane and refrigerants and see immediate improvements.

from Kirkus Reviews https://ift.tt/3mz4TBQ

[mizelaneus]

[shu-lucario]

After four years of inaction, the EPA is finally regulating this superpollutant

submitted by /u/craftcorners [link] [comments]

from environment https://ift.tt/3h15PfV

[female-malice]

Research in economics and psychology suggests humans are willing to behave altruistically — but only when they believe everyone is being asked to contribute. People “stop cooperating when they see that some are not doing their part,” as the cognitive scientists Nicolas Baumard and Coralie Chevallier wrote last year in Le Monde.

In that sense, superpolluting yachts and jets don’t just worsen climate change, they lessen the chance that we will work together to fix it. Why bother, when the luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault is cruising around on the Symphony, a $150 million, 333-foot superyacht?

“If some people are allowed to emit 10 times as much carbon for their comfort,” Mr. Baumard and Ms. Chevallier asked, “then why restrict your meat consumption, turn down your thermostat or limit your purchases of new products?”

Whether we’re talking about voluntary changes (insulating our attics and taking public transit) or mandated ones (tolerating a wind farm on the horizon or saying goodbye to a lush lawn), the climate fight hinges to some extent on our willingness to participate. When the ultrarich are given a free pass, we lose faith in the value of that sacrifice.

Taxes aimed at superyachts and private jets would take some of the sting out of these conversations, helping to improve everybody’s climate morale,” a term coined by Georgetown Law professor Brian Galle. But making these overgrown toys a bit more costly isn’t likely to change the behavior of the billionaires who buy them. Instead, we can impose new social costs through good, old-fashioned shaming.

#cc

[buradabiliyorum]

#Science #Plastics Plants Are Poised to Be the Next Big Carbon Superpolluters #BB

#Science #Plastics Plants Are Poised to Be the Next Big Carbon Superpolluters #BB

“Plastics Plants Are Poised to Be the Next Big Carbon Superpolluters “

The Sunshine Project, a gargantuan petrochemical complex planned on 2,500 acres along the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge, La., will be one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in America when it becomes fully operational in 2029.

Earlier this month, Louisiana regulators approved an air quality permit that will allow…

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[2whatcom-blog]

States Goal Potent Greenhouse Gases in Absence of Federal Motion

States are stepping up efforts to manage a bunch of potent greenhouse gases utilized in air conditioners, fridges and insulating foams. The push to limit use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, taking part in out in state capitals throughout the nation represents one of many clearest examples of interstate coordination on local weather coverage. It follows two years of inaction on the White Home, the place President Trump has not submitted a 2017 worldwide treaty proscribing HFCs to the Senate for ratification, and a federal court docket determination flattening an Obama-era rule to section out the chemical substances nationally. The state measures are modeled after the Obama EPA effort and are available because the Trump administration has proposed scaling again a rule geared toward stopping HFC leaks (Greenwire, Sept. 20, 2018). "This is in line with our work to look at the federal actions that are happening and to push back where anti-climate rollbacks are occuring," stated Reed Schuler, a local weather adviser to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D). "The EPA under President Trump is not moving to confront the issue of HFCs. We know HFCs are growing in Washington and across the country and are increasing share of national emissions." California handed a regulation to restrict HFCs final yr. Washington lawmakers seem poised to observe swimsuit. A invoice calling for a discount in HFCs has handed the state Home and is now into consideration within the state Senate. Regulators in Connecticut, Maryland and New York are weighing comparable guidelines. Extra states could quickly observe. The difficulty has emerged as a focus for the U.S. Local weather Alliance, a coalition of 22 states and Puerto Rico dedicated to the Paris local weather accord. "If you have widespread adoption across alliance states, which is not where we are, you're talking about half the population using alternatives" to HFCs, stated Julie Cerqueira, the alliance's government director. "It certainly is a significant opportunity." States have struggled to move significant carbon discount insurance policies within the two years since Trump initiated America's withdrawal from the Paris Settlement, regardless of pledges to redouble their local weather efforts. That has begun to alter this yr. New Mexico not too long ago handed a regulation to inexperienced its electrical energy provide, and several other different states could quickly observe. Washington lawmakers are advancing a set of payments geared toward slashing emissions from electrical energy, transportation and buildings. Oregon appears to be like like it'll be a part of California's cap-and-trade program. And a group of Northeastern states are engaged on their very own cap-and-trade program for transportation. HFCs nonetheless symbolize a novel alternative for states to make a significant contribution to local weather coverage. Not like car emission requirements, federal regulation doesn't preempt states from regulating HFCs. The pollution, generally used as a coolant in air conditioners and fridges, are additionally one thing of a rarity amongst greenhouse gases. Not solely are they uncommonly highly effective at trapping warmth within the Earth's ambiance, however there may be widespread settlement that their use needs to be restricted. In 2016, 197 international locations agreed to amend the Montreal Protocol to cut back their use (Climatewire, Oct. 17, 2016). The deal reached in Kigali, Rwanda, requires a 40% discount in HFCs by 2024 and finally envisions use of the superpollutant falling to 15% of 2011-2013 ranges by 2036. Corporations like Honeywell Worldwide Inc., Chemours Co., Service Corp. and the industry's major commerce group, the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI), have argued the settlement may very well be a boon for American corporations via the manufacture of HFC alternate options and next-generation air conditioners and refrigerants (Climatewire, Jan. 7). An industry-backed examine estimated ratification of the Kigali Modification would end result within the creation of 1,400 jobs and $1 billion in capital funding. "We've made it clear to the administration that the economic benefits of this transition, of an HFC phasedown, are significant domestically, and what it will let us do to capture a global market," stated Kevin Fay, who represents the Alliance for Accountable Atmospheric Coverage, an industry group in favor of Kigali ratification. A White Home spokesman declined to remark. Environmentalists assist the restriction of HFCs on local weather grounds. Some HFCs have a worldwide warming potential a number of thousand occasions better than carbon dioxide over their lifetime within the ambiance. Full implementation of the Kigali Modification is projected to restrict practically a half-degree Celsius of further planetary warming. That will be a serious increase to efforts to maintain a worldwide rise in temperatures under 2 C. Greens say state motion is necessary as a result of not all firms are on board with the timetable for lowering HFC use. Two HFC producers, Mexichem Fluor Inc. and Arkema SA, sued EPA over its 2015 plan to cut back the chemical substances. The U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dominated in favor of the businesses, saying the company had exceeded its authority underneath the Clear Air Act (Greenwire, Aug. 8, 2017). "The goal of the state actions is to keep American industry on the transition pathway and to have the U.S. do its part in the reduction of HFCs," stated David Doniger, senior strategic adviser for the Pure Sources Protection Council's local weather and clear vitality program. "You could get there by having 50 states adopting state rules, but you don't have to if half a dozen or more large states send a signal that keeps the de facto national trend moving forward." Trade representatives have expressed unease on the state efforts, elevating considerations in regards to the creation of a regulatory patchwork and states' means to implement the foundations. "Letting us devolve to a number of state programs will significantly scale down the economic benefits that are possible," Fay stated. AHRI additionally strongly prefers a federal normal to state ones, stated Francis Dietz, a spokesman for the commerce group. "But we're sympathetic to states being concerned that the federal government isn't moving as quickly as we'd like," he stated. "We're working with them to make sure that at very least they harmonize their own phasedown plans." Environmentalists and state officers acknowledge these considerations. They, too, specific a desire for a federal normal. To deal with industry's worries, state officers have routed their efforts via the Local weather Alliance in an effort to standardize their guidelines. Maryland Environmental Secretary Ben Grumbles stated in an announcement that alliance members are planning conferences later this yr to "promote consistency among states on HFC regulations." Maryland is engaged on a draft rule now and is aiming to finalize an ordinary by 2020. New York officers stated they're now accepting casual suggestions and anticipate releasing a draft regulation later this yr. Additionally they famous they'd think about adjustments to synchronize the foundations to these in California and Washington. Read the full article

#2what.com #climate #hfcs #state #states

[freyjaofthenorth]

ah Viv @vanquishedvaliant has informed me of a detail that i got wrong in my interpretation, so let me restate it with my new knowledge

ahem

selling the url to a png of a doodle for more money than i’ve had in my life combined payed with virtual superpollution methmoney is completely normal to these weirdos?????? but they draw the line at destroying the doodle afterwards?????????