The UN released a "global stocktake" taking a hard look at the state of our planet

In short, we are still sleepwalking to a world we will increasingly not recognize

It has 17 key findings which I've tried to translate into non-UN speak

THREAD 1 We must not fool ourselves: we are nowhere near on track to keep warming below 2C, let alone 3C, and we must rapidly accelerate renewable energy deployment, electrifying everything and reversing deforestation to make proper progress by 2030

The G20 agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies in 2009, 14 years ago. They then said they're accelerating this at the Glasgow COP26 climate conference in 2021

Result: In an amazing act of self-harm, the IMF says we subsidized Big Oil with a record $7 TRILLION in 2022

THREAD In more acts of stupid self-harm:

> Total fossil fuel subsidies amounted to a humongous 7.1% of global GDP.
> Explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) were 18% of the total

2/6

France moves against the scourge of fast fashion: you'll get €6 to €25/ item to repair your shoes or your clothes, instead of throwing them

And society wins because of the cost to our health, water and environment from this horrible industry

🧵

tf1info.fr/conso/le-gouve… The textile industry is a social, environmental and a #HumanRights nightmare: of the 75 million garment workers worldwide, less than 2% make a living wage

That's just the tip of the iceberg

2/9

The number of oil trolls on my LinkedIn and Twitter feeds has seen a remarkable increase, some collecting 1,000+ replies

Top 10 Disinformation “Tag Lines” Peddled by Big Oil Trolls (courtesy of Big Oil + politicians, PR firms, lawyers and consultants on payroll)

THREAD 10 “We did this” or “we bought the oil” etc

The "Deflect-the-Blame" oil troll: It’s the consumer’s fault

Fact: Big Oil popularized the carbon calculator to create this narrative and backed this with over $2bn in propaganda-spending since 2004

science.thewire.in/environment/bi…

Top 10 Conservation Wins of 2023

(With so many of Earth's vital signs blinking red, I needed some positive news)

10. Population of kipunji monkey in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands is up 65%

news.mongabay.com/2023/07/meet-t… 9. A tiny earless dragon which experts thought was extinct has been spotted for the first time in over 50 years

euronews.com/green/2023/06/…

Our climate has gone haywire: so many of Earth’s vital signs are blinking red

But we're also in the midst of an unstoppable transformation of how we power everything: Renewables take over before 2030.

Nothing is more important than running faster: Speed is justice

THREAD The fossil fuel era is over

Fossil fuel demand in electricity has peaked, will plateau for a few years, and will fall by up to 30% by 2030

2/10

Earth vital signs, current checklist:

1. North Atlantic temperature: FAIL

"North Atlantic Ocean is way beyond record hot right now. The kind of heat that would only be found once in 10s or 100s of thousands of years in a climate before human-caused warming took hold"

THREAD 2. Global Ocean Temperatures: FAIL

"the heat [is] basically statistically impossible before human-caused warming existed. The black line below indicates this year’s sea surface temperature departure (about 4 standard deviations above normal) which is far above records"

2/9

Plastic bottles are, well, portable poison cancer super-spreaders. This has been hidden from us very well, but the secret is now out

THREAD The beverage industry buys more than 500 billion plastic bottles - better called crude oil bottles - every year to package its products (because they're essentially free to them, given that the plastic industry pollutes free of charge)

2/n

Every once a while, a momentous environmental law comes into force. That's the case of the EU Deforestation Regulation

This is the most consequential anti-deforestation law in history

THREAD #deforestation #climate #biodiversity The EU Deforestation Regulation mandates extensive due diligence for operators and traders dealing with products derived from

> Cattle
> Cocoa
> Coffee
> Oil palm
> Rubber
> Soya
> Wood

2/12

whitecase.com/insight-alert/…

The renewables revolution is unfolding live, fast and furiously.

"It's exponential, global, and this decade": look at the data and do the math

THREAD Building block #1: Mineral extraction for a renewable system (43 mt/y) is 360 times less than for fossil fuels (over 15,000 mt/y)

After 27 years of UN climate talks, Big Oil finally succeeded in completing its hijacking of the annual meeting of 198 countries to act on climate

@UNFCCC should be going nuts about it and acting (fat chance, probably)

Top 10 reasons why the hijacking is complete:

🧵 #COP28 1 For the first time ever, an oil chief - and in this case no less than the CEO of a major oil company - is appointed president of the COP28 climate summit

politico.eu/article/cop28-…

Saudi Aramco just posted $161b in "profits" and is going to "increase production capacity to 13m barrels/day"

Its scope 3 emissions, however, are 1,600m tons of CO2. Its charge for this environmental destruction should have been, at $100/ton, $160b, wiping out its profits

1/n That's before ANY charge for environmental destruction other than emissions, of which they have an enormous amount

2/n

Some context around the $200 billion in net profits just 5 oil companies made in 2022

$200bn isn't just obscene, it's also wrong: these companies all lost money. We just can't "see it" because they don't pay for their wanton destruction of the environment

THREAD Big Oil profits exist because environmental destruction isn't quantified or accounted for. Today, destroying the environment and polluting free of charge are simply a disclosure and reporting issue: Big Oil executives and shareholders are recompensated for destruction

2/n

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero is a complete joke and provides cover to banks frying the planet while pretending to go "net zero"

A new report published by 13 NGOs comprehensively proves the point

THREAD The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero presents itself as "a global coalition of leading financial institutions committed to accelerating the decarbonization of the economy" blah bah blah

As a matter of fact, they appear committed to exactly the opposite aim

2/n

My animal of the year (including humans): Insects, which we are in the process of wiping out

If you drive, have you noticed that many fewer insects crash into your windshield compared to a few years ago? Sadly, this has a name: the ‘windshield phenomenon’

🧵 This should be front-page headline news every day. We like to think we run the world, but we are not the world’s ultimate controllers. The ultimate controllers, the tiny things that enforce our world order, are insects

Yet we are in the midst of a massive insect apocalypse

2/n

Luxury cruises are punctured garbage bins on water
>47 cruise ships emit 10 times more sulphur dioxide in European waters (2017 data) than all of Europe’s 260m cars combined
>That's just 1 of 3 air pollutants discharged from the ships’ smokestacks

And it gets worse

THREAD

https://twitter.com/heidistephens/status/1588553834636668930

The industry also uses the dirtiest possible fuel to power its ships, one that is 100 times more polluting than road diesel
>Bunker fuel is waste from the oil refining process and it is an environmental nightmare

2/n

Bangladesh is at front lines of #ClimateCrisis, ravaged by floods and sea level rise. Yet, in act of collective suicide, it suppresses climate activism while administering a coup de grace to its own prospects by powering its economy with gas, a key driver of worsening heating Here's Bangladesh suppressing environmental dissent

"We demanded an environmentally friendly plant that will benefit the community and not hurt the environment, and I was arrested under Digital Security Act and had to go to jail for 80 days”

aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/4… #climate

The energy revolution is unfolding live, much faster than most people realize. A thread based on the insurgent view of the energy transition of @RockyMtnInst and @KingsmillBond

In short: The fight against climate change is accelerating - look at the data and do the math

🧵 First, the building blocks of the energy revolution

>Solar as a primary energy source is 250% more efficient than coal
>A heat pump is 300% more efficient than a gas boiler
>An electric vehicle is 400% more efficient than an ICE

2/n

Alarming "Landscape of Climate Finance in Africa" published by @climatepolicy

In short: Africa is being nearly completely ignored in terms of climate finance, yet it's at the front lines of suffering from climate change and hardly contributes to global carbon emissions

🧵 Africa will need USD 2.8 trillion between 2020-2030 to implement its Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement

It's not even on track for 11% of that amount: annual climate finance flows are $29b v $277b needed

2/n

I've been following the development of the "Global Registry of Fossil Fuels" (1st database of emissions from production and reserves)

It's now here and it's awesome: we can transparently hold fossil fuel powers accountable for their contribution to fueling the #ClimateCrisis

🧵 It shows that Big Oil want to fry us all: their oil & gas reserves - all of which they want to extract and sell- would yield 3.5 trillion tons of emissions, over 7 times the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C and more than all emissions produced since the industrial revolution

2/n

US congressional hearing released 226 pages of e-mails and documents from Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP - and deserves so much more airtime: they are full of gems showing how they're pretending they're in an energy transition while in fact they want to sell more & gas forever

🧵 BP's internal documents show how carbon capture and storage (CCS) is, for them, a PR tool to “enable the full use of fossil fuels across the energy transition and beyond”

2/n