Artificial intelligence
fromThe Nation
1 day agoThe AI Boom Is a Climate Bust
AI is increasingly being used to spread climate change disinformation, complicating efforts to combat the climate crisis.
When lives are assigned a higher dollar value, stricter pollution standards tend to clear the 'economic efficiency' sniff test, resulting in cleaner air. But that improved air quality comes at the expense of America's industrial industries, which have to invest in pricey systems to reduce the amount of these pollutants they spew down to acceptable levels.
We created Earth in Action to provide a lens into what's happening on our planet, as it happens. Whether it's something typical, like the current air temperature, or an extreme event like a major dust storm, we wanted to provide an opportunity for people to see them.
Officials from the Department of Energy are meeting daily as the Iran war drives up the price of fuel. A public awareness campaign is urging citizens to 'save energy, save your pocket.'
In 2019, scientists found that balloons eaten by seabirds are more likely to kill them than other kinds of plastic yet they do not seem to have been earmarked in the same way as, for example, plastic straws.
'Our results show that the next 20 years are critical,' lead author Dr Rob Cooke told the Daily Mail. 'By around 2050, we reach a point where the choices we make on emissions and land use will largely determine whether Britain moves towards a much more degraded or a much more nature‑positive future.'
Covering Climate Now was formed in 2019 in response to the climate silence that then prevailed in much of the press, especially in the United States. Over the years that followed, hundreds of newsrooms joined our effort, and press coverage of the story began to reflect the scale of the crisis. Newsrooms beefed up their climate reporting teams; they confronted misinformation that sought to play down the problem; they thought creatively about how to find the climate connection on every beat.
There's no hand-waving about how 'We want to cooperate on climate,' " oil historian and S&P Global vice chairman Dan Yergin said in an interview. "It's, 'We're slamming the door on that issue.' " "We've gone from over-indexing it to zero-indexing it.
When the category-5 storm Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica in October, its path crossed communities that had varying levels of preparedness. Many with maintained coastal protections, upgraded drainage and reliable early-warning systems had power and water restored in days. Others were immobilized for weeks.
The world spends 30 times more money destroying nature than protecting it. That's according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that exposes a massive gulf between so-called "harmful investments" and financing that promotes nature preservation. The global environment agency's latest "State of Finance for Nature" (SNF) report is calling to phase out the US$7.3 trillion (6.2 trillion) in global investments that damage nature including into high-emissions energy infrastructure and manufacturing, for example.