Tag: european union
At COP 28, Nations Reach Historic Agreement To End Reliance On Fossil Fuels

At COP 28, Nations Reach Historic Agreement To End Reliance On Fossil Fuels

DUBAI, UAE -- Representatives from nearly 200 countries struck a deal at the COP28 climate summit on Wednesday to start reducing global consumption of fossil fuels to avoid the worst consequences of climate change -- envisaging the eventual end of the oil economy

After two weeks of hard-fought negotiations, the Dubai agreement sends an unmistakable message to political and business leaders that the world must quickly phase out fossil fuels, the planet's only hope to prevent a worldwide climate catastrophe.

COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber called the deal "historic" but added that its true success would be in its implementation.

"We are what we do, not what we say," he said. "We must take the steps necessary to turn this agreement into tangible actions."

“Humanity has finally done what is long, long, long overdue,” said the European Union’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra. “Thirty years we’ve spent to arrive at the beginning of the end of fossil fuels.”

While more than 100 countries had pushed for an agreement to "phase out" oil, gas and coal use, they encountered opposition from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Saudi Arabia-led oil-producing bloc, which insisted that the world can slash emissions without shunning fossil fuels.

That debate pushed the summit past its deadline, causing some delegate and observers to worry that the negotiations would end without an agreement.

"This is a moment where multilateralism has actually come together and people have taken individual interests and attempted to define the common good," said U.S. climate envoy and former Secretary of State John Kerry. The Danish minister for climate and energy Dan Jorgensen, who was seen embracing Kerry after the deal was approved, exulted: "We're standing here in an oil country, surrounded by oil countries, and we made the decision saying let's move away from oil and gas."


This Is All You Need To Know About The Odious Elon Musk

This Is All You Need To Know About The Odious Elon Musk

Twitter has stopped saving lives and is now actively engaged in helping to kill people. It took one year and nine months and the insane ego of one man: Elon Musk. He’s the difference between these two headlines from the Associated Press.

Dateline March 1, 2021: Twitter cracks down on COVID vaccine misinformation.

Dateline November 29, 2022: Twitter ends enforcement of COVID misinformation policy.

Lies are loose on Twitter about COVID, folks. Stuff like vaccines will kill you, the disease is a conspiracy against white people, wearing a mask is fascism. It was out there before, and it’s out there again, and people will die because of it.

As of this year, Twitter has nearly 400 million active users around the world, nearly 75 million of them in this country alone. What is Twitter? Well, it’s called a social networking app, one among many, including Facebook, Instagram, and yes, even Substack and Truth Social, the Trump-owned network that mimics Twitter, or tries to, anyway. It’s a way people connect with one another. It’s a way people share information and interests. It’s a platform that has been used by many to promote companies, political movements, ideas, conspiracies, and lies.

Is it essential? No. There are other ways to connect with people, other ways to obtain and share information. Is it powerful? Without a doubt. It’s fairly widely accepted that without his frequent tweets of lies and conspiracies and bragging and self-promotion, Donald Trump probably could not have been elected president in 2016. That’s power.

What the hell could have possessed the man who took sole ownership of Twitter about a month ago to have issued this order, that a social media platform reaching so many millions of people would throw out a policy that has actively sought to tamp down misinformation about a disease that has killed over six and a half million people around the world? Contrariness? Ego? Madness? A simple wish to join in the right-wing obsession with owning the libs?

Musk’s policy changes at Twitter, which have included re-enrolling people who were banned from the platform in the past for advocating violence, racism, sexism, and homophobia among a long list of other no-no’s of a rational, humanistic civilization, have not done much to help his investment. His abandonment of Twitter’s content moderation policies has made him lose half of the top 100 advertisers on the platform.

The list includes Chevrolet, Ford, Jeep, Merck, General Motors, Volkswagen, General Mills, and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. According to Media Matters for America, collectively the group of advertisers has spent more than $2 billion advertising on Twitter since 2020 and $750 million this year alone. Seven additional advertisers who spent at least $255 million on Twitter since 2020 have cut their ads to almost nothing.

All that money is gone. More of it will be gone very soon. The European Union warned Musk today that he faces an all-out ban unless Twitter abides by the EU’s strict rules on content moderation. EU industry chief Thierry Breton made the threat in a video conversation with Musk today, according to Reuters. “Breton told Musk he must adhere to a checklist of rules, including ditching an ‘arbitrary’ approach to reinstating banned users and agreeing to an 'extensive independent audit' of the platform by next year,” Reuters reported.

That’s tens, maybe more than 100 million Twitter users in the EU. Advertisers aren’t going to sit still for losing that many eyes.

The Intercept reported last week that Musk’s new anything-goes policy at Twitter allowed a clearly anti-Semitic cartoon on the platform that depicted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a grossly exaggerated nose. Zelensky is Jewish. The Tweet of the anti-Semitic cartoon originated from the Russian embassy in London.

What’s going on with this guy Musk? Story after story this week and last reported on tweets put out by Musk that featured right-wing conspiracy theories and other far-out nonsense. On Thanksgiving Day, Musk retweeted something from a white supremacist equating pedophilia and Antifa, a decentralized movement that has declared itself as specifically anti-fascist. The tweet came from Paul Ray Ramsey, who has called women’s suffrage a “cancer” and is a known Holocaust denier, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Musk responded to another tweet calling “woke propaganda” a “Trojan horse” intended to “attack kid’s brains.” “Exactly,” tweeted Musk.

Elon Musk has cut loose the loons on Twitter, and they’re moving back into the platform for all they’re worth. Why he’s doing this is anybody’s guess. It’s not going to last. Regulators are not going to stand for the spread of COVID lies in the European Union. They’ll shut down Twitter in Europe before they allow Musk and his minions to cause deaths over there. There is no sane equivalent regulatory body in this country.

Is Elon Musk the Sam Bankman-Fried of the internet? Is Twitter on its way to becoming FTX, the crypto exchange that was worth tens of billions until overnight it was worth nothing?

Imitating the impulsive adolescent behavior of Donald Trump is no way to run a business, son. Even the dean of Faber University knew that much.

Exclusive: US And EU Seek Global Deal To Slash Planet-Warming Methane

Exclusive: US And EU Seek Global Deal To Slash Planet-Warming Methane

By Kate Abnett and Valerie Volcovici

BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States and the European Union have agreed to aim to cut emissions of the planet-warming gas methane by around a third by the end of this decade and are pushing other major economies to join them, according to documents seen by Reuters.

Their pact comes as Washington and Brussels seek to galvanize other major economies ahead of a world summit to address climate change in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, and could have a significant impact on the energy, agriculture and waste industries responsible for the bulk of methane emissions.

The greenhouse gas methane, the biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide (CO2), is facing more scrutiny as governments seek solutions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, a goal of the Paris climate agreement.

In an attempt to jumpstart the action, the United States and the EU later this week will make a joint pledge to reduce human-caused methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030, compared with 2020 levels, according to a draft of the Global Methane Pledge seen by Reuters.

"The short atmospheric lifetime of methane means that taking action now can rapidly reduce the rate of global warming," the draft said.

A separate document listed over two dozen countries that the United States and the EU will target to join the pledge. They include major emitters such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia, as well as others including Norway, Qatar, Britain, New Zealand, and South Africa.

The State Department declined to comment and the European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the documents.

The agreement would likely be unveiled on Friday at a meeting of major emitting economies intended to rally support ahead of the COP26 Glasgow summit.

World leaders are under pressure from scientists, environmental advocates and growing popular sentiment to commit to more ambitious action to curb climate change in Glasgow.

Methane has a higher heat-trapping potential than CO2 but it breaks down in the atmosphere faster, so "strong, rapid and sustained reductions" in methane emissions in addition to slashing CO2 emissions can have a climate impact quickly, a fact emphasized by a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last month.

Experts say the fossil fuel sector has the biggest potential to cut methane emissions this decade by mending leaky pipelines or gas storage facilities, and many of those fixes can be done at a low cost.

Yet satellite images and infrared footage have in recent years revealed methane emissions spewing out of oil and gas sites in countries including the EU, Mexico, and the United States.

The United States and EU are both due to propose laws this year to restrict methane emissions.

The U.S.-EU pledge would cover key sources of methane emissions, including leaky oil and gas infrastructure, old coal mines, agriculture and waste such as landfills, the draft said.

Countries that join the pledge would commit to take domestic action to collectively achieve the target methane cut, "focusing on standards to achieve all feasible reductions in the energy and waste sectors" and reducing agricultural emissions through "technology innovation as well as incentives and partnerships with farmers," it said.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Leslie Adler, and Sonya Hepinstall)

President Biden, right, and French President Emmanuel Macron

Praising Biden, Macron Agrees That 'America Is Back’

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday declared to reporters that President Joe Biden definitely" convinced allies that "America is back" following their meeting at the Group of Seven (G7) summit.

Speaking to the press, Macron lauded Biden's leadership as he admitted that he believes the president is prepared to resume the United States' role as a collaborative ally on the global stage, reports The Hill.

According to Macron, Biden's willingness to cooperate and co-exist will give leaders the ability to work toward developing effective resolutions to global obstacles such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the impacts of climate change.

"For all these issues, what we need is cooperation, and I think it's great to have the U.S. president part of the club and willing to cooperate. And I think that what you demonstrate is that leadership is partnership," Macron said.

Biden echoed similar sentiments as he reiterated that the United States "is back."

"The United States, I've said before, we're back, the U.S. is back," Biden replied. "We feel very, very strongly about the cohesion of NATO and I, for one, think that the European Union is an incredibly strong and vibrant entity that has a lot to do with the ability of western Europe to not only handle its economic issues but provide the backbone and support for NATO."

When Biden was asked whether or not he'd convinced global leaders of America's return, he opted not to answer the question but instead, welcomed Macron to answer the question himself.

He responded saying, "Definitely."

Macron's praise of Biden is a distinct contrast in comparison to his previous interactions with former President Donald Trump. Back in 2019, Macron and Trump clashed over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) amid the former president's "America first" policy as well as his stance on trade and other global issues.