Ryan Clark

Passionate about nature & the world around us. Advisor on circular economy, waste & a Climate Reality Leader. Retweets are for info, not necessarily endorsement

[Ryan Clark @discoveryanc]

It,s well past time to end such privileges and subsidies to Fossil Fuel Lobbyists and Major Polluters, like those sponsoring Labour Conference Events https://t.co/YLrwaCD6Lv via @DeSmog #ClimateCatastrophe #actonclimate

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

This mobile solar container unfolds and provides solar power, anytime, anywhere.

We have so many solutions. Implement them. #ActOnClimate

#climate #energy #renewables

[Dick Mackintosh🌹#StopTheWar @DickMackintosh]

A small taste of what you could have had with Jeremy Corbyn (plus a four-day week) if the right-wing of Labour had allowed it. Instead, they gave you tax cuts for billionaires with Murdoch and Johnson..

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

literally no problem at all can be solved if we don’t stop climate breakdown

[Ryan Clark @discoveryanc]

@HeftyIndividual @barrybhardin @TonyUlchar @DrJeffMasters On the 1st point the opposite is true, the 2nd is obvious and missing the point

[Ryan Clark @discoveryanc]

@elonmuskPOTUX @elonmusk Future generations will need to have survived the climate and biodiversity breakdown we are in the middle of. And good luck creating entire viable ecosystems on other planets...

[Ryan Clark @discoveryanc]

@elonmusk Billionaires screwing up the only inhabitable planet to live out their childhood space-man fantasies...
Just think of the problems that could have been fixed with the money splashed on SpaceX #ClimateEmergency

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

⚡️BREAKING⚡️ Brilliant news - the High Court has ruled against the Whitehaven coal mine!! Huge congrats to all who campaigned against it & to ⁦@friends_earth⁩ & ⁦@slacctt⁩ for bringing the case. The fossil fuel era is over. #KeepItInTheGround https://t.co/NApPhmk5fY

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

When people accuse climate activists of being hysterical, it’s totally hypocritical. We’ve all had 40 years of gently urgent warnings from thousands of scientists and the likes of NASA, Dr James Hansen, Carl Sagan, Margaret Thatcher, James Lovelock, Stephen Hawking, David Attenborough and more. What they really mean is stop reminding me and let me get back to ignoring it.
Scientists like these:

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

When leaders like Starmer blather on about “tough choices”, why is it *always* code for hitting some of the poorest hardest? Where’s the “tough choice” of a wealth tax on the super-rich? Why do shivering pensioners have to pay the price for “fixing the foundations”? #bbclaurak

[Scott Duncan @ScottDuncanWX]

Until this heatwave... Sweden 🇸🇪 and Norway 🇳🇴 had never hit > 30 °C in September. New national records have been set and by huge margin.

Extraordinary weather pattern in Europe right now.

THREAD

[Ed Hawkins @ed_hawkins]

Please remember the rule, folks:

Some summers are hotter than others, but every summer is now warmer than if the same weather patterns happened decades ago.

The summer of 2024 was still warmer than the vast majority of the summers of Julia's childhood.

[BusinessGreen @BusinessGreen]

'Hot house syndrome': Campaigners raise alarm over health impact of overheating homes https://t.co/xepIAYZPuF

[Ed Hawkins @ed_hawkins]

If you live in SE England, today is a hot summer day.
This type of hot summer day is about 4°C hotter than it was in the 1960s.
That's with about 1°C of global warming.

[Bob Brown Foundation @BobBrownFndn]

🦜From Tasmania to NSW, #SwiftParrot habitat is being destroyed by logging.
🔊 Hear more from our NSW Campaigner Doro about the destruction of Swift Parrot feed trees in the long-promised #GreatKoalaNationalPark ⬇️
Take action to #EndNativeforestlogging —https://t.co/PWsQS0R16h

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

"The 1.5-degree limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels.

Not reduce.

Not abate.

Phaseout."

@UN Secretary General @antonioguterres
| #ActOnClimate #climate #energy

[City of London @cityoflondon]

We're inviting tech firms to apply to participate in the AI Innovation Challenge.

Hear from Haydn Brooks, CEO and Co-founder of @RiskLedger, about how their involvement provided facetime with potential buyers who could give practical advice.

Read more: https://t.co/pNGT9aoFM8

[Ryan Clark @discoveryanc]

@EFxScout1League @algore Ian Pilmer has made a 'career' of spouting this same rubbish for decades. Literally the opposite of what he said has come true, worse than predicted, & clearly evident. Climate model predictions have collectively been incredibly accurate. He is straight out lying.

[Al Gore @algore]

COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure. The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared. It is “Of the Petrostates, By the Petrostates and For the Petrostates.” It is deeply offensive to all who have taken this process seriously. There are 24 hours left to show whose side the world is on: the side that wants to protect humanity’s future by kickstarting the orderly phase out of fossil fuels or the side of the petrostates and the leaders of the oil and gas companies that are fueling the historic climate catastrophe. In order to prevent COP28 from being the most embarrassing and dismal failure in 28 years of international climate negotiations, the final text must include clear language on phasing out fossil fuels. Anything else is a massive step backwards from where the world needs to be to truly address the climate crisis and make sure the 1.5°C goal doesn’t die in Dubai.

[Rupert Read 🌍 🔥 @GreenRupertRead]

So the size of it is that it has only taken delegates 28 years to actually mention the source and scale of the problem. 
Well whoop-y-doop. At that rate, by 2051 maybe they will agree a (non-binding) pledge to phase out fossil fuels…
@billmckibben famously says that winning slowly on climate is the same as losing. Well, this sure is the quintessence of SLOWLY!

What that is concrete, that actually means something, has come out of this CoP? Nothing. Only a few more unbelievable, unenforceable voluntary pledges. (There was that early success on loss and damage - but even that achievement melts almost into thin air when one actually scrutinises it. The fund is tiny, and not parameterised in any of the ways that the affected countries wanted.)

Should I be kinder to this agreement? After all, there is, famously, some reasonably decent novel language in the agreement they managed to reach at CoP28, language that speaks of “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”. Good. But look closer: “in energy systems”. Why did they add that phrase? Why not just say “transitioning away from fossil fuel”, full stop? What do they mean by the (in this context) slightly odd, rarely used phrase, “energy systems”? The most plausible interpretation - the one that will certainly be in the minds of the likes of Sultan Jaber - is that they mean power (I.e. power-stations) and heat (as in for instance combined heat-and-power plants, or in home-heating). I.e. “Energy systems” mean the generation (and transmission) of electricity (and of heating). So let’s be clear: CoP28 did NOT even actually ‘call on’ countries to transition away from fossil fuels. They only called on countries to transition away from fossil fuels in the generation of electricity (and of heat for heating purposes).
CoP28 simply did not ‘call on’ countries to transition away from fossil fuels in their use in transportation, or in heavy industry (eg chemicals or steel production), or in the food system. Only in the production and transmission of ‘energy’: I.e. basically electricity (plus heating).
This is the real significance of the failure to call for the phasing out of fossil fuels, at CoP28.

Let us put the matter bluntly and clearly. This just is not the breakthrough that some are inadvisedly and rather desperately trying to convince themselves (and the less will-informed) that it is. It is a loophole- ridden, merely rhetorical advance, without teeth.
CoP in anything like its present form has, inevitably, categorically failed us and is never going to effectively deal with this more-than-emergency. 
The most powerful, transformative thing that CoP delegates could do as they leave Dubai and trail home is to admit - to proclaim - exactly this.
They need to do so, to counter the impression that the CoP PR machine is giving: that this is summit has somehow been a success that has put the world on the path to salvation. On the contrary. This is yet another power-less sticking plaster. A mere rhetorical flourish.
The CoP system is moribund. It needs to end.

What is actually needed is smaller, nimbler, bolder coalitions of the willing, collaborations of countries (and businesses, and other entities) willing to go much further toward what actually needs to be done, if we are to have a future.