The New Normal': Extreme Heat Imperils Millions Across Northern Hemisphere"Getting off fossil fuels is the only way to stop this crisis from getting worse," said one campaigner. Millions of people and ecosystems across the Northern Hemisphere continued to suffer Monday amid ongoing heatwaves exacerbated by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency. The "intolerable" conditions, some of which are detailed below, have reignited demands for far-reaching climate action. Meanwhile, many countries—including the wealthy ones most responsible for the greenhouse gas pollution causing increasingly common and severe extreme weather—are still permitting the increased production of planet-heating fossil fuels, ignoring the international scientific consensus and endangering societies and biodiversity around the globe.  But not all humans have played an equal role in creating or perpetuating the climate emergency. Since raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in 2022, oil and gas giants—which knowingly suppressed warnings about the climate crisis for decades—have reneged on their emission reduction targets and made clear they intend to expand drilling operations in the coming years. Policymakers have shown little willingness to stop them, as COP27 ended with no commitment to phase out fossil fuels. On Saturday, The Guardian columnist George Monbiot alluded to overlooked new research sounding the alarm about the growing risk of simultaneous crop losses in the world's major growing regions due to climate breakdown and argued forcefully that "the struggle to avert systemic failure is the struggle between democracy and plutocracy." "It always has been," he added, "but the stakes are now higher than ever."     https://www.commondreams.org/news/extreme-heat-northern-hemisphere-july-2023  

VATICAN CITY, May 25 (Reuters) - The world must rapidly ditch fossil fuels and end "the senseless war against creation", Pope Francis said on Thursday, in a fresh plea over climate change that called on people to repent for their "ecological sins". Francis has made the protection of the environment a cornerstone of his pontificate, noting in his landmark 2015 "Laudato Si" (Praised Be) encyclical that the planet was "beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth".    In a message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, he said a U.N. climate summit meeting in Dubai on Nov. 30-Dec.12 "must listen to science and institute a rapid and equitable transition to end the era of fossil fuel"."According to the commitments undertaken in the Paris Agreement to restrain global warming, it is absurd to permit the continued exploration and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructures," he added. "The unrestrained burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests are pushing temperatures higher and leading to massive droughts," Francis said, also criticising oil and gas fracking and "unchecked mega-mining projects".Francis, an Argentine who is the first pope to hail from the so-called Global South, denounced global inequalities and said that "consumerist greed, fuelled by selfish hearts, is disrupting the planet's water cycle".           https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/enough-with-fossil-fuels-pope-says-latest-climate-appeal-2023-05-25/   

 The floods that have left a third of the country’s provinces underwater in recent weeks have brought with them a new level of human misery – and a glimpse into the apocalyptic impact of the climate emergency in one of the countries least responsible for it. “I have seen many humanitarian disasters in the world, but I have never seen climate carnage on this scale,” said the UN general secretary, António Guterres, on a visit to Pakistan this week. “I have simply no words to describe what I have seen today.” The record monsoon that began in mid-June has devastated much of the country, with some areas receiving more than eight times their usual rainfall. Torrents of water tore through villages, sweeping away thousands of houses, schools, roads and bridges and destroying 18,000 sq km of agricultural land. In Sindh, the southernmost province of Pakistan, which produces half the country’s food, 90% of crops have been ruined, and an inland lake 60 miles (100km) wide stretches to the horizon after the Indus River burst its banks. The flood is estimated to have killed at least 1,400 people. Many tens of millions more have lost their homes and livelihoods and the country has incurred huge financial costs. Damages so far have been put at $30bn (£26bn). In the flood’s immediate aftermath, aid agencies report that innumerable children have been left hungry and dependent on contaminated drinking water for survival, while pregnant women and elderly people are crowded into makeshift relief camps and unable to access life-saving medicines. Hospitals in the worst-hit areas are overwhelmed. Medics in one district say malaria cases are rising so fast that they have run out of capacity to even test for the disease, let alone treat it. As the horrors mount, a traumatised population now faces food shortages, famine and disease. Few doubt t at the crisis engulfing the country will get much worse in the coming weeks and months. “The scale of this and what is still to come for the people of Pakistan is quite chilling, to be honest,” said Farhana Yamin, a former UN lawyer who was born in Pakistan and helped to draft the 2015 Paris climate agreement. “This is not a small country, it is the fifth most populous country in the world, and it has been devastated … It will take decades to recover.”       https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/17/drought-floods-pakistan-devastation-climate-crisis    

 From the Time of Aristotle, Mankind has been plagued by 'The Tragedy of the Commons......is a phenomenon described in economics and ecology in which common resources, to which access is not regulated by formal rules or fees/taxes levied based on individual use, tend to become depleted.^[1][2] If users of such resources act to maximise their self-interest and do not coordinate with others to maximise the overall common good, exhaustion and even permanent destruction of the resource may result, if the number of the users and the amount they demand exceeds what is available.^[3]The concept of unrestricted-access resources becoming spent, where personal use does not incur personal expense, has been discussed for millennia. Aristotle wrote that "That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common."^[4] The foundation for scholarly discussion of the topic however came in an 1833 essay by British economist William Forster Lloyd.^[5] Lloyd supposed that, should common land parcels shared between cattle herders in Great Britain and Ireland (known as "the commons" in Anglo-Saxon Law) come to ruin, this should be attributed to those herders that allowed more than their allocated quota of cattle to graze on them.^[6][7] While it may appear economically rational to an individual to over-consume in this context as doing so bears no immediate personal cost, such common land became barren and even permanently ruined where sufficient numbers of herders engaged in such activity.^[6] Although provided as a hypothetical example, according to critical scholars the commons’ destruction came about from landholders of the commons who claimed and enclosed these lands, preventing common use    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons             .......and.......        If we keep abusing nature, it will collapse taking us with it. We need a new mindset.....At Cop meetings in Egypt and Canada, humanity faces two doors. Door one leads to untold misery. We have no choice but to take door two  by Christiana Figueres   Over the last 50 years, an ill-fated paradigm has shaped western thought and action: the “tragedy of the commons”. This is a situation in which everyone operates according to their own self-interest and ultimately depletes our shared resources. Ever since the term was first coined in 1968, we have been acting it out to its fullest with devastating consequences for our land, water and atmosphere. The climate and biodiversity crises have made it abundantly clear that we need to correct this fallacy and take care of the global commons. We all need clean air, fertile soil, thriving biodiversity and healthy oceans to survive and prosper. The temperature limits set by the Paris agreement will not be achieved without halting the conversion of intact ecosystems now, and regenerating what’s already been depleted.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Much of nature is on the brink of collapse because of rising CO2 emissions, industrial farming and pollution. That’s why this year at the twin Cops – the climate Cop in Egypt, and the biodiversity Copin Canada – we need an ambitious, joined-up action that delivers on promises to cut emissions and commits to stopping and reversing catastrophic biodiversity loss and species extinction. It’s time to halt the tragedy, and focus on the necessity of the commons. Every drop of water we drink, every molecule of oxygen we breathe and every morsel of food we eat comes from nature. The evolution of the human race shows thatwe need nature much more than she needs us!! The major challenge in front of us is not technical or financial. What’s needed is a mindset shift. Yet changing mindsets is not mentioned in many of the excellent climate action and nature conservation roadmaps that leaders consult. It’s time we called that out. Sticking with the idea that the self-serving use of common resources is inevitable or irreversible, at a time in which deep, systemic collaboration is called for, will not deliver good results. For us to achieve a decarbonised economy in which people and nature thrive, we need action at both the local and global levels. One company or one government alone cannot make the kind of difference we need; the transformations must be systemic and exponential, and delivered with justice in mind. It’s only by changing the way we think, from competitive towards collaborative, that we will be able to work together and accelerate these efforts. This radical mindset shift would open up our horizons and allow us to seek others in our sectors, cities, neighbourhoods and regions who we can collaborate with.                       https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/02/nature-climate-crisis-new-mindset