Private planes, mansions and superyachts: What gives billionaires like Musk and Abramovich such a massive carbon footprint. Altogether, the world’s billionaires saw their wealth surge over $1.9 trillion in 2020, according to Forbes. Those are astronomical numbers, and it’s hard to get one’s head around them without some context. As anthropologists who study energy and consumer culture, we wanted to examine how all that wealth translated into consumption and the resulting carbon footprint.We found that billionaires have carbon footprints that can be thousands of times higher than those of average Americans. The wealthy own yachts, planes and multiple mansions, all of which contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. For example, a superyacht with a permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools emits about 7,020 tons of CO2 a year, according to our calculations, making it by far the worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint. Transportation and real estate make up the lion’s share of most people’s carbon footprint, so we focused on calculating those categories for each billionaire. We started with 20 well-known billionaires whose possessions we were able to ascertain, while trying to include some diversity in gender and geography. We have submitted our paper for peer review but plan to continue adding to our list. We then used a wide range of sources, such as the U.S. Energy Information Administration and Carbon Footprint, to estimate the annual CO2 emissions of each house, aircraft, vehicle and yacht.  We did not try to calculate each asset’s “embodied carbon” emissions – that is, how much CO2 is burned throughout the supply chain in making the product – or the emissions produced by their family, household employees or entourage. In other words, these are all likely conservative estimates of how much they emit. We started with 20 well-known billionaires whose possessions we were able to ascertain, while trying to include some diversity in gender and geography. We have submitted our paper for peer review but plan to continue adding to our list. We then used a wide range of sources, such as the U.S. Energy Information AdministrationandCarbon Footprint, to estimate the annual CO2 emissions of each house, aircraft, vehicle and yacht. In some cases we had to estimate the size of houses from satellite images or photos and the use of private aircraft and yachts by searching the popular pressanddrawing on other studies. Our results are based on analyzing typical use of each asset given its size and everything else we could learn. We did not try to calculate each asset’s “embodied carbon” emissions – that is, how much CO2 is burned throughout the supply chain in making the product – or the emissions produced by their family, household employees or entourage. We also didn’t include the emissions of companies of which they own part or all, because that would have added another significant degree of complexity. For example, we didn’t calculate the emissions of Tesla or Amazon when calculating Musk’s or Bezos’ footprints. In other words, these are all likely conservative estimates of how much they emit. To get a sense of perspective, let’s start with the carbon footprint of the average person. Residents of the U.S., including billionaires, emitted about 15 tons of CO2 per person in 2018. The global average footprint is smaller, at just about 5 tons per person. In contrast, the 20 people in our sample contributed an average of about 8,190 tons of CO2 in 2018. But some produced far more greenhouse gases than others.....and much more!       https://theconversation.com/private-planes-mansions-and-superyachts-what-gives-billionaires-like-musk-and-abramovich-such-a-massive-carbon-footprint-152514

 In the early 2000s, a new field of climate-science research emerged that began to explore the human fingerprint on extreme weather, such as floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms. Known as “extreme event attribution”, the field has gained momentum, not only in the science world, but also in the media and public imagination. These studies have the power to link the seemingly abstract concept of climate change with personal and tangible experiences of the weather. Scientists have published more than 400 peer-reviewed studies looking at weather extremes around the world, from wildfires in the US and heatwaves in India and Pakistan to typhoons in Asia and record-breaking rainfall in the UK. The result is mounting evidence that human activity is raising the risk of some types of extreme weather, especially those linked to heat. To track how the evidence on this fast-moving topic is stacking up, Carbon Brief has mapped – to the best of our knowledge – every extreme-weather attribution study published to date. Carbon Brief’s analysis reveals-   71% of the 504 extreme weather events and trends included in the map were found to be made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change........9% of events or trends were made less likely or less severe by climate change, meaning 80% of all events experienced some human impact. The remaining 20% of events and trends showed no discernible human influence or were inconclusive.......Of the 152 extreme heat events that have been assessed by scientists, 93% found that climate change made the event or trend more likely or more severe........For the 126 rainfall or flooding events studied, 56% found human activity had made the event more likely or more severe. For the 81 drought events studied, it’s 68%.                                                                                            First published in July 2017, this article is the fifth annual update (see endnote) to incorporate new studies. The aim is that it serves as a tracker for the evolving field of “extreme event attribution”. The map in the article shows 504 extreme weather events and trends across the globe for which scientists have carried out attribution studies. The different symbols show the type of extreme weather; for example, a heatwave, flood or drought. The colours indicate whether the attribution study found a link to human-caused climate change (red), no link (blue) or was inconclusive (grey).....and more              https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world/

Clean Energy 101: Reducing Climate Pollution from the Plastics Industry. Decarbonizing plastic production and disposal is essential for a safer climate future. Plastics are flying under the radar as a major contributor to climate change. While the negative environmental impacts of solid pollutants like ocean plastics have entered mainstream awareness, the general public and industry alike struggle to understand the outsize impact plastic has on climate. When considering the emissions related to plastic production, we must remember that this material is made from oil and gas. In fact, about 12 percent of global oil supply each year is used to create plastic — accounting for 3.4 percent of global carbon pollution. Decarbonizing plastic production and disposal is essential for a safer climate future. Fortunately, there are options currently available to manage plastics’ climate risks.

How Did We Get Here? Plastics are flying under the radar as a major contributor to climate change. While the negative environmental impacts of solid pollutants like ocean plastics have entered mainstream awareness, the general public and industry alike struggle to understand the outsize impact plastic has on climate. When considering the emissions related to plastic production, we must remember that this material is made from oil and gas. In fact, about 12 percent of global oil supply each year is used to create plastic — accounting for 3.4 percent of global carbon pollution. Decarbonizing plastic production and disposal is essential for a safer climate future. Fortunately, there are options currently available to manage plastics’ climate risks. Plastics are made from carbon-based polymers. The plastics we think of today are derived from fossil fuels, but the first plastic was made from natural polymer cellulose in 1862. Demand for materials with properties not found in nature grew and in 1907 the first fossil-fuel based plastic, “Bakelite,” was invented. After Bakelite, the discovery of fossil-based plastics exploded. Polystyrene, polyester, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polyethylene were all commercially produced before 1940. Cheap to produce and versatile, plastic demand skyrocketed. As plastics became the dominant material used for packaging and many everyday items, petrochemical production growth accelerated in parallel.The Good News is we can Manage Plastics’ Climate Risk....read on https://rmi.org/clean-energy-101-reducing-climate-pollution-from-the-plastics-industry/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=spark&utm_content=spark-a&utm_campaign=2023_02_23&utm_term=chart-button

Imagining a World Without Fossil Fuels. Mark Stoll’s new book “Profit” describes how capitalism and its spawn, consumerism, fuel climate change and environmental degradation. “The environment,” he writes, “can no longer bear the cost.” Thecommercial, from 2021, starts with a typical prelude to a 21st-century first date. There’s a young woman, with pink-streaked hair and a teal smartphone, swiping on dating profiles as upbeat music plays in the background. She fixes her hair, puts contacts in her eyes and applies lipstick in the backseat of a car on her way to the restaurant to meet her date. The date, a guy in glasses, appears in front of his bathroom mirror, smearing gel in his hair.  “That connection was brought to you by petroleum products,” the commercial’s narrator informs us. “But what if we lived in a world without oil and natural gas?” “Better luck next time,” he says to the guy, who looks unhappy. In this petrochemical-free universe, the date doesn’t work out. The screen fills with the blue logo of Energy Transfer, a Texas-based company that builds natural gas and propane pipelines.  I thought about this commercial—which I’ve seen multiple times on TV in the last few weeks—as I read Mark Stoll’s new book about the environmental history of capitalism,“Profit.” Stoll’s book offers the opportunity to better understand how the world depicted in the commercial came to be. From the smartphone to the car, the sneakers, contacts and hair gel, to the commercial itself and the televisions it’s playing on, Energy Transfer’s 59-second ad is like a primer for tracing the ways that capitalism fuels climate change and environmental degradation—and why it seems so intractable in contemporary life. Stoll’s book gives historical context for the ubiquity of plastics and disposable products, the rise of fossil fuels, the concept of planned obsolescence and corporations’ powerful tools of propaganda.                                                                                                  “Profit” begins in the ancient past, with humanity’s earliest impacts on the environment. Mining, we learn, dates back more than a million years, to the first-known flint quarry, in Morocco. The presence of human beings affected populations of large animals, introduced new species into ecosystems and altered the land with fire. Even thousands of years ago, the ingredients of capitalism, from the manipulation of resources to trade, consumption and competition, were already in place around the world. “Humans had carried fundamental elements of modern capitalism to the ends of the inhabitable earth,” Stoll writes. Eight thousand years ago, agriculture, herding and deforestation led to mild global warming, Stoll writes. Chopped trees released carbon dioxide and cattle and rice crops released methane, “derailing the natural climate cycle that would have turned colder and taken the world into another Ice Age.” Farming and cattle herding are also at the root of the inequality and conflict that persist to this day. “Agricultural surplus fueled war and unfree labor,” Stoll writes. Capitalism and its antecedents created wealth disparities and fostered brutality and injustice.  Stoll takes readers through a tour of transformative inventions that led to the birth and then the flourishing of capitalism: money, writing (which originally evolved from Sumerian accounting symbols), plantations, steam engines, steel, the assembly line, advertising. Each would have consequences for the environment. Innovation and resource exploitation spurred population growth, meaning that more resources and more innovation were needed to sustain society. This is a cycle that we haven’t yet escaped. “The population grows and then people come up with some clever way to support more people,” Stoll said, in an interview. “That requires us getting more out of a given set of resources. This goes back to the beginning of the species.” As capitalism destroyed ever-larger swaths of the natural world, conservationists like George Perkins Marsh and activists like Rachel Carson fought to protect plants, animals and people from the excesses of industry......read more         https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11022023/warming-trends-world-without-fossil-fuels/