Big oil and climate change

Though oil and gas companies have known about global climate change for decades, they’ve deferred reducing crude and gas production until the second half of this century. But with global weather patterns in flux, activists have been demanding that energy companies set and commit to more rapid action on curbing oil and gas production in line with the Paris climate agreement.
New calls for action come amidst forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that, by 2014, demand for oil and gas could fall by almost 50 percent – but only if carbon emissions reduction targets are met. With this threat to profits, many ask if big oil companies are serious about addressing global climate change.

Facing an eventual drop in demand, energy companies delay caps on the production of carbon-emitting products.

Oil majors like Royal Dutch Shell has acknowledged that climate change will be a major challenge for years to come, but Total and others are still expecting strong demand for fossil fuels over the next few decades – and Exxon Mobil is under investigation over financial disclosures for climate change.
Anthony Hobley, CEO for the financial think-tank Carbon Tracker, told Counting the Cost that when it comes to profits and compliance with international carbon reduction agreements, big energy companies are sending mixed messages:
“I think they’ve been a bit schizophrenic. They are looking at climate risk and we’re now being deluged with disclosure and scenario analysis from the companies that are, effectively, stress testing their business models against a Paris compliant two degrees pathway. But then when they talk to investors they’re still talking up demand.” Read More

How the U.S. Helped Prevent North Korea and South Korea From Reaching Real Peace in the 1950s

 

Signing the Armistice ending three-year conflict in Korea, on July 30, 1953. Lt. Gen William K. Harrison, Jr (seated left), Chief UN Delegate and Gen Nam Il, (Seated right), Senior Communist Delegate, sign at Panmunjom. PhotoQuest/Getty Images

In the long history of Korea, nothing compares to the 20th century division of the peninsula or the war that followed. That war has not finished, and a peace treaty remains elusive. China, North Korea and South Korea all seek a peace treaty, but 11 U.S. presidents since 1953 have been unwilling to agree.

If President Trump turns out to be the exception, that shift could help put an end to more than a half-century of conflict — and the role of the United States in determining whether peace arrives is not a small one. Neither is it coincidental: in fact, the U.S. has played a key role in keeping the conflict going as long as it has.

The division of Korea is not what Franklin Delano Roosevelt intended as World War II ended. Read Morenorth,south

Smith Barcadere – Smith Cove, Grand Cayman

caymannature

by Ann Stafford

Historic area

People came from West Bay by boat to Smith Barcadere. They cut ‘tops’, the new, unopened leaves of the Silver Thatch Palms that were plentiful on the large estate of J. S. Webster.

180725 Smith Barcadere, Jul.25-18DID YOU KNOW THAT? 58 Tidbits of Cayman’s History….

By Captain Paul Hurlston

The first sea going vessel ever built in Grand Cayman was built at Smith’s Barcadere by a carpenter who was shipwrecked on Spotts Reef. He was the carpenter on the vessel that brought Rex Crighton’s ancestors to Cayman. Tidbit 36

Dolly Well    There was a well in South Sound called “Dolly Well” located in Webster’s Estate somewhere in the back of Lemuel Hurlston’s old house on Antoinette Avenue. It was round and not very deep and where all South Sounders got their water. It has since been filled in. Tidbit 13

180725 Smith Barcadere

Plants

Rare, Critically Endangered Trichilia trees (

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Using one occupation to legitimize another.

Miko Peled

https://www.mintpressnews.com/legitimizing-the-occupation-an-occupied-palestine-is-a-land-without-hope/245476/

One of the most important achievements of the war of 1967 was making the conquests of 1948 legitimate, and now it was about post-1948 Israel “giving back” or not “giving back” the territories it occupied in 1967. One clear example of that is the well known and totally ignored UN resolution 242, which was passed in November of 1967. It mentions “withdrawal of Israel Armed Forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;” in other words, the territories captured in 1948, in violation of prior UN resolutions regarding Palestine and regarding the status of Jerusalem, became irrelevant as a result of the 1967 conquests.

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The Warsaw Pact is dead

The Warsaw Pact is dead, so why is NATO still alive? — RT Op-ed

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has no defined purpose other than to continuously engage in conflict and antagonize Russia. With the Soviet Union a distant memory, the Western military bloc should be disbanded.

In the aftermath of the World War II, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed as a bulwark against Soviet expansion. In response, the Warsaw Pact was signed, aimed at giving equal protection to Soviet Russia and its allies against Western imperialism.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 it became apparent that the Warsaw Pact would no longer be necessary and was consequently declared ‘at an end’ in February of that year. In the spirit of buried hatchets and a return to normalized relations, dismantling NATO should have been the natural response.

Instead NATO was not only maintained, it was expanded.

The months and years that followed the fall of the Soviet Union were characterized by economic hardship for the smaller, resource-dependent nations that were once dependent on the Soviet Union for their survival. These struggling economies struck deals with Western nations in the hope of economic benefits that would extract them from the likely specter of severe economic breakdown.
Tragically, however, the aid packages came with hefty price tags and, in a bid to be welcomed into the now more prosperous Western fold, the former Warsaw Pact countries were lured into the membership of the US-led military bloc. The move was not only crass. In light of the difficulties faced by these small nations coming to terms with massive changes, it was a very blatant and hostile act towards a Russia that no longer posed a threat.
Hungary, Czech Republic and most notably Poland were the first to join NATO, soon followed by Estonia Latvia and Bulgaria some five years later. By 2009, NATO bases were all around Russia. Since then, NATO has been involved in a number of wars around Europe and the Middle East with devastating long term consequences for those bearing the brunt of its formidable bombing capabilities.

(https://www.rt.com/op-ed/324840-warsaw-pact-nato-us/

The well diggers of Bangalore – a craft in renaissance

Water harvesting infrastructure in India.

Harvesting Rainwater

Well digging has been the forte of the ‘Mannu Vaddar’ community in Bangalore. They are the people who work with earth for many centuries. They have dug the many lakes of Bangalore and also the many wells that dotted the landscape. Then their cousins the ‘Kallu Vaddars’ would take over and line the well with stones . The craft is at least 6000 years old in India.

Image

The stone lined wells of South Karnataka

Since the 1980 ‘s , especially during a period of 3 continuous years of bad rainfall, the construction of wells stopped and people shifted to the bore-wells. This rendered the well diggers jobless and they shifted to digging foundations for buildings as well as digging pits for toilets.

With the recent rainwater harvesting interest in the city and the coming in of the bye-law , wells are being dug again, only this time to recharge water…

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A manifesto to save Planet Earth (and ourselves)

 

Seen in this way, renewable energy for all takes on an importance beyond stopping climate breakdown; likewise free education and the internet for all has a significance beyond access to social media – as they empower women, which helps stabilise the population.

More energy and greater information availability appear to be the necessities for any new kind of society – although these changes alone could increase our environmental problems, as in the past. To usher in a new way of living today’s core dynamic of ever-greater production and consumption of goods and resources must also be broken, coupled with a societal focus on environmental repair.
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