If you care about your website’s CO₂ emissions, but still eat meat, you have been greenwashed.
Datacenters already are one of the greenest industries (electricity-wise) and rapidly improving. AWS and Azure will be carbon neutral by 2025. GCP has been neutral for 6 years and will be carbon-free by 2030.
「 For example, skincare brand Nivea sells plastic bottles of body lotion packaged in cardboard boxes, even though a similar product from the same brand is available in just the plastic bottle. Similarly, Sensodyne toothpaste is commonly sold in plastic tubes that come inside additional paper packaging, although it can also be sold without the paper boxes 」
— @HarvardBiz
The Italian oil co. #Eni is facing country’s 1st #ClimateLawsuit, w/ environmental grps alleging company used “lobbying & #greenwashing” 2 push 4 more fossil fuels despite having known about risks its prdct posed since 1970. #Greenpeace#Italy & the #Italian advocacy group ReCommon aim 2 build on a similar case targeting Anglo-Dutch oil co. Royal Dutch Shell in the #Netherlands 2 force Eni 2 slash its #CarbonEmissions 45% by 2030.
Another thought for the Can't-Be-Bothered candidates in our #localelections2023, Skircoat Green Halifax is that whatever your respective Party Offices are churning out about Green Initiatives, my figures say that it just ain't true. Please tell me when this will be addressed and the hopefully fixed? #greenwashing#ClimateCrisis#powergeneration#fossilfuels
Die Stadt #Bochum rühmt sich dieses Jahr mit ihrer 30-jährigen Mitgliedschaft im #Klima-Bündnis, doch Fakt ist, dass der #Klimaschutz in Bochum grob ungenügend ist. Gegen dieses #Greenwashing gehen wir diesen Freitag um 16 Uhr vorm HBF auf die Straße! Kommt auch.🔥
Here's how the story goes: Capitalism removes the forests in search of profits, drills into the earth in search of profits, pollutes the air and water in search of profits... and now, what's left?
Oh, wait, say the capitalists, we haven't dug into the deep sea yet in search of profits, er, um, minerals. And guess what, we can pretend we're doing that for the sake of the climate and the environment!
Yeah, that's the idea. We need those minerals to make electric cars. So it's a win-win. We'll make billions more in profits, AND we'll make ourselves look good by promoting Green Growth! 😃
Monoculture tree plantations are not forests. They do not harbor biodiversity, and they are far more susceptible to drought, fire, and pest infestation than are actual, natural forests.
So when advocates for “Green Growth” promise we can keep the economy going by planting trees to capture carbon and maintain a healthy biosphere, do not believe them. It’s a lie. It’s a perpetuation of business as usual.
The best way of using trees to capture carbon is — don’t cut down forests!!
And the best way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere is — stop burning fossil fuels!!
I posted a version of the post below last year, shortly after I started on Mastodon. At the time I had maybe a couple of hundred followers. Now that I have more than that, I’d like people to see this who haven’t seen it before…
🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶 🚲 🚋 🚶
If the United States had made walkable and bike-friendly cities a priority beginning in the 1950s or 1960s, or even in the 1970s, and had used federal funding to heavily boost low-cost mass transit rather than spending 💵 billions 💵 on the interstate freeway system, then we could have had a much better world today. CO2 in the atmosphere might still be under 350 ppm instead of at 420 and climbing, and we would have a realistic chance of keeping climate change under control.
Of course, that would mean that the auto industry and the oil industry and the paving industry and the suburban building industry would not have made billions (trillions?) of dollars in profits for their owners, so who am I kidding... The capitalists always win.
Now, it's too late to make a meaningful difference in avoiding a dreadful future. Of course we'll still get lip service from politicians and their pet journalists about the great strides we're making in this direction, but at this point that's mostly just #greenwashing.
"Net-zero by 2050" is a scam promoted by the fossil fuel industry, their investors, and the politicians they own to prolong the run of business as usual.
In case you needed any more evidence of that...
"Banks with ‘Net-Zero’ Pledges are among the Top Funders of Fossil Fuels"
Fossil fuel projects require money — and that money is coming from the world’s top private banks, including many with net-zero climate pledges. That’s according to a new report from the Rainforest Action Network, which looked at the major financial institutions funding oil and gas infrastructure since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
According to the report, fossil fuel companies reaped $4 trillion in profits in 2022, with 60 of the world’s top banks providing $673 billion in financing. The top fossil fuel-lending bank of 2022 was Royal Bank of Canada, or RBC, which allegedly spent over $42 billion dollars funding fossil fuel projects. These included $4.8 billion related to tar sands and $7.4 billion connected to fracking. Also in 2022, RBC released a statement in which it promised to “align our lending activities with net-zero by 2050,” and “help our clients transition to net-zero.”
RBC was not the only major financial institution to make climate promises while still lending billions to fossil fuel companies. According to the report, 49 of the 60 banks — including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs — had net-zero commitments. JPMorgan Chase remains the world’s top funder of fossil fuel projects since the Paris Agreement, followed by Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.
This is criminal (or should be). It's ecocide. So, do you expect these banks will be brought to justice? 😂
"European #utilities are pushing to build power plants that would burn natural #gas now and then be switched to burn clean #hydrogen down the road. But the technology they’re depending on wastes #energy and opens the door for accusations of #greenwashing."
This article points out all the flaws in this "plan".
It's almost as if .... they want to build gas plants and keep running them on fossil gas, amirite.
"We need to stop burning fossil fuels. Right now."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports are formidably researched and profoundly important, but they mostly reinforce what we already know: human-produced greenhouse gases are disastrously changing the planet, and unless we act now to rapidly taper off burning fossil fuels, a dire future awaits.
But “act now” means taking dramatic measures to change how we do most things, especially produce energy. The people who should be treating this like the colossal emergency it is keep finding ways to delay and dilute a meaningful response. Fossil fuel is hugely profitable to some of the most powerful individuals and institutions on Earth, and they influence and even control a lot of other people.
To say that is grim, but there’s also a kind of comedy in the ways they keep trying to come up with rationales to not do the one key thing that climate organizers, policy experts, activists and scientists have long told them they must do: stop funding fossil fuels, stop their extraction, stop their burning, and speed the transition away from their use.
Among the worst of the excuses for not doing the one thing we must do is carbon capture, which has absolutely not worked at any scale that means anything and shows no sign of so doing on a meaningful scale in the near future. But while it is dangled as a possibility, it creates a justification to keep burning fossil fuel.
The decision-makers here often seem like a patient who, when told by a doctor to stop doing something, tries to bargain. But all the excuses and delays and workarounds and nonexistent solutions won’t replace what the IPCC tells us: stop burning fossil fuel.
Move fast. Step it up. Now.
Which brings us back to something climate organizers have told us for a long time and the new report brings home. We know what to do, and we have the solutions to do it, so the biggest problems are political. They’re banks, politicians, financiers, and the fossil fuel industry itself. We don’t need any magic technology to defeat them, just massive civil society willpower set in motion.
I mean, even though they are polluting the atmosphere and wrecking the climate, they're also paying for "carbon offsets" like planting trees. And that's a good thing, right?
In the UK, over half a million recently planted trees have died beside a single 21-mile stretch of new highway. A government agency points to poor soil and extreme heat as the main causes.
Many tree experts say this is symptomatic of a focus on tree planting over tree care. Only growing trees capture carbon or improve habitat.
But, you know, who cares if all those young trees die? The important thing is that Big Oil gets their subsidies and write-offs plus a ton of great publicity for "going green." Right?
Im Namen der grüngewaschenen, digitalen Transformation des Kapitalismus sollen wohl bald schon die letzten, bis dahin weniger berührten Ökosysteme der Erde wirtschaftlich erschlossen und ausgebeutet werden.
"Der Drang nach immer neuen Rohstoffressourcen rückte in den letzten Jahren auch die Tiefsee in den Fokus der Wirtschaft. Konkret geht es um sogenannte “Manganknollen“, die neben Mangan auch Eisen, Kupfer, Nickel und Kobalt enthalten – Metalle, die vor allem für Batterien, Smartphones und Solarzellen, wichtig sind."
Over their lifetime, electric cars produce less carbon than gas powered cars, but it is still way too much. And there are not enough raw materials to convert all the cars to electric.
We have to move to a mature public transport system.
As we look forward to #COP28 later on this year in the UAE, anticipating another joyous fossil fuel bacchanalia, I'm sure we'll be hearing plenty from our masters about "Net Zero 2050." They'll remind us once again about all those delicious carbon offsets that are going to save the world for capitalism and consumerism, allowing endless growth forever and ever. No need to worry, they'll say, we've got everything under control! 😃
We cannot live sustainably within today’s economic system. Yet that is what we are constantly being told we can do.
We can buy sustainable cars, travel on sustainable motorways powered by sustainable petroleum. We can eat sustainable meat, and drink sustainable soft drinks out of sustainable plastic bottles. We can buy sustainable fast fashion and fly on sustainable airplanes using sustainable fuels. And, of course, we are going to meet our short- and long-term sustainable climate targets, too, without making the slightest effort.
“How?” you might ask. How can that be possible when we don’t yet have any technical solutions that can fix this crisis alone, and the option of stopping doing things is unacceptable from our current economic standpoint? What are we going to do?
Well, the answer is the same as always: we will cheat. We will use all the loopholes and all the creative accounting that we have conjured up in our climate frameworks since the very first conference of the parties, the 1995 COP1 in Berlin.
We will outsource our emissions along with our factories, we will use baseline manipulation and start counting our emissions reductions when it suits us best. We will burn trees, forests, and biomass, as those have been excluded from the official statistics. We will lock decades of emissions into fossil gas infrastructure and call it 'green' natural gas. And then we will offset the rest with vague afforestation projects – trees that might be lost to disease or fire – while we simultaneously cut down the last of our old-growth forests at a much higher speed.
Desertec 3.0 – grüner Wasserstoff in kolonialer Tradition
"Die Krisen, mit denen wir uns aktuell konfrontiert sehen, sind die logische Konsequenz eines Systems, das auf Wachstum basiert. Die Politik gibt zwar vor, die Ursachen davon bekämpfen zu wollen, doch tatsächlich verwaltet sie diese bloß und sorgt durch das Beschleunigen von Modernisierungsprozessen in der Wirtschaft dafür, dass gesellschaftliche Umbrüche nicht die Stabilität der bestehenden Machtverhältnisse gefährden. Nichts zeigt dies deutlicher als Maßnahmen, welche zur Abwehr der Klimakatastrophe propagiert werden.
Dabei bleibt nicht nur die Logik des permanenten Wachstums unangetastet, sondern werden auch globale Machtasymmetrien und Abhängigkeiten zwischen der Nord- und Südhalbkugel durch neokoloniale Großprojekte mit grünem Anstrich weiter zementiert und ausgebaut. Beispielhaft dafür ist Desertec 3.0, bei dem Deutschland eine Vorreiterrolle spielt...."
Da die grüngewaschene digitale Transformation des Kapitalismus mit ihrer wachsenden Gier nach neuen Ressourcen, die Ausbeutung von Menschen und Natur weiter verschärft und teils offen mit neokolonialistischer Machtpolitik im globalen Süden umgesetzt werden soll, erscheint es fast schon aufrichtig, dass sich deren deutsche Hauptvertreter*innen inzwischen wie Kolonialherren aufführen und inszenieren lassen:
"Der Ausbau und die Nutzung erneuerbarer Energien gelten als vermeintlich progressiver Ausweg aus den #Krisen der Gegenwart. Sie sollen Versorgungslücken schließen und den menschengemachten #Klimawandel aufhalten. Manchen träumen sogar von einem „Green New Deal“, der in eine ökologische und sozial gerechte Zukunft führt.
Jedoch auch unter grünen Vorzeichen entfalten sich destruktive Dynamiken, wo Wachstumsideologien, Interessenspolitik und Profitstreben aufeinandertreffen. Im Namen einer vermeintlich nachhaltigen Energieproduktion und zur Gewinnung benötigter Rohstoffe werden gerade in Ländern des globalen Südens ganze Landstriche durch kapitalistische Landnahme und den Raubbau an natürlichen Ressourcen verwüstest. Die negativen Folgen tragen die Umwelt und die Menschen vor allem in den Regionen, kolonial gewachsene Ungleichheits- und Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse reproduzieren sich."
#intro post: Hey! I'm Kate, staff writer at Grist, reporting on how we think about and talk about climate change. Follow for #culture coverage, think-y pieces on #climate, reporting on #greenwashing. I like nuance, word games, and vegetarian cooking, and am desperate to be a cat owner someday
Man kann dieses Interview nicht oft genug empfehlen;
Gewalt, Gewaltlosigkeit, Vielfalt der Taktiken
-Weltanschauungen und Aufstands-bekämpfung in ökologischen Be-wegungen im Zuge der kapitalistischen Mobilisierung für den Erhalt des Systems-
Ein Interview mit Peter Gelderloos
".....So werden die Regierungen, die dafür gesorgt haben, dass der Ökozid weitergeht, plötzlich diejenigen sein, die die Umwelt schützen; oder die Unternehmen, die Milliarden mit der Ausbeutung der Menschen, der Ausbeutung anderer Lebewesen und der Ausbeutung des Planeten als lebendes System verdienen, werden plötzlich anfangen, Produkte herzustellen, die den Planeten schützen.
Das ist absurd; jeder vernünftige Mensch kann sehen, dass das absurd ist. Aber wir alle haben ein großes emotionales Interesse daran, die Absurdität nicht zu erkennen, weil es sonst bedeutet, dass es auf uns ankommt. Andernfalls bedeutet es, dass wir die wirklich harte Arbeit machen und die sehr großen Risiken eingehen müssen, um dies zu ändern, um diese Ökozid-Maschine zu stoppen...."
Violence, non-violence, diversity of tactics
-Worldviews and #counterinsurgency in ecological movements in the course of capitalist mobilization for the preservation of the system-
An interview with @PeterGelderloos
".....So the governments that have made sure that ecocide continues will suddenly be the ones protecting the environment; or the companies that make billions exploiting people, exploiting other living things, and exploiting the planet as a living system will suddenly start making products that protect the planet.
This is absurd; any reasonable person can see that this is absurd. But we all have a great emotional interest in not recognizing the absurdity, because otherwise it means it's on us. Otherwise, it means we have to do the really hard work and take the very big risks to change this, to stop this ecocide machine...."