The firm’s approach to accelerating climate transition is focused on those areas where Goldman Sachs can have a material impact, including working with clients to decarbonize their businesses and help drive progress towards net zero ambitions, engaging partners and broader stakeholders for impactful innovation and collaboration, and managing the firm’s own climate related risks.
Congressional investigation asap on weather modification. #ConusOWSWeaponizedWeather
Shaw air force base in Lyndsey grahams state of south carolina is the south conus ows weaponized weather control center. Offit airforce base near Omaha nebraska is the global Conus OWS weaponized weather control center. Scott air force base in bellview illinois is the ows weaponized weather control center for the North and north east all the way from the usa to the north pole. Weapons of mass destruction #ConusOWSWeaponizedWeather List of Weather Modification Companies
Seeding Operations and Atmospheric Research (SOAR) old website
The Edwards Aquifer
Colorado River Municipal Water District – Engineering WXMOD
Trans Pecos Weather Modification Association
Military
USAF Reserve – Aerial Spray Unit – Youngstown AFB
NASIC/DEKA – US Air Force Wright-Patterson AFB
Other
Aquiess / Drake International – Global Rain Project
Meteo Systems – Weathertec
Austrailian Rain Technologies – ATLANT
Ionogenics – ELAT
Evergreen Aviation: Supertanker
Kansas Water Office
Future of Weather Control
A Plan for the next phase in Weather Modification Science and Technology Developement – Raytheon addressing the Weather Modification Association 2005 | Link
Air Force Aims for Weather Control | Link
The work involves using plasma an ionized gas to reconfigure the ionosphere. MIRAGE would employ a microwave transmitter on the ground and a small rocket that shoots chaff into the air to produce about a liter of plasma at 60–100 km. (36– 60 mi.) in altitude, changing the number of electrons in a select area of the ionosphere to create a virtual barrier. Ionosphere reconfiguration offers two major applications of interest to the military: bouncing radars off the ionosphere, also known as over-the-horizon radar, and the ability to jam signals from the Global Positioning Satellite system, according to John Kline, the lead investigator for MIRAGE (Microwave Ionosphere Reconfiguration Ground based Emitter). | Link
Vision 2020 – US Air Force Space Command | Link
Over the past several decades, space power has primarily supported land, sea, and air operations–strategically and operationally. During the early portion of the 21st century, space power will also evolve into a separate and equal medium of warfare. Likewise, space forces will emerge to protect military and commercial national interests and investment in the space medium due to their increasing importance.
Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025 – US Air Force | Link
An Operational Analysis for Air Force 2025: An Application of Value-Focused Thinking to Future Air and Space Capabilities – US Air Force | Link
Last month, the cities of Barcelona, San Diego, Boston, and Nottingham all officially declared climate emergencies. They kick off a year that is likely to explode with similar civic pronouncements as cities grapple with responding to and mitigating the consequences of a warming world.
“We can no longer afford to say we need to act on
climate for our kids and our grandkids. The effects are happening now,” Boston
city councillor Matt O’Malley told Quartz. O’Malley put forward the climate
emergency resolution passed by the city in January.
Globally, 1,330 governments have passed a binding
motion declaring a climate emergency, according to Cedamia. The
populations of those areas total more than 814 million, meaning nearly one in
ten people live in a community that has made the statement.
While the first climate emergency was
declared in 2016 by Darebin, Australia, 98% of subsequent statements were made
in 2019. The places range from small locales to entire countries.
There is no shared definition of a climate
emergency. For some it is a legal acknowledgement of an immediate disaster and
a way to access money for combatting the effects; for some it signifies a
commitment to measures meant to reduce the impact of climate change; and for
others it is an official recognition of an existential threat.
In a public health context, emergency declarations
have a specific meaning: imminent hazard to health. It can be a crucial step to
allow local officials, or national agencies, to take immediate action.
“Climate has become the new emergency… It’s new
ground for public health,” says Thomas A. Burke, director of the Johns Hopkins
Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute. He says climate change is very
different than a more classic public health emergency like the novel
coronavirus discovered in Wuhan, China. “There can be catastrophic impacts but
they’re very uncertain, very hard to model. But, the acknowledgement by
declaring an emergency says we gotta do something and we gotta do it now.”
Some declarations are more symbolic. O’Malley says
the purpose of Boston’s resolution was to underscore the importance of the
problem and “set the tone and the lens for how we address issues on climate.”
According to Burke, such symbolic statements are an
important part of addressing climate change: “Let’s face it—declaring an
emergency is the polar opposite of declaring climate change a hoax.”
Communities in 25 countries have acknowledged the
emergency, as of Jan. 28. The world’s most populous nations, however, have yet
to get on board. Forty percent of the world lives in China or India. No
municipalities in either have declared a climate emergency.
That doesn’t mean those areas aren’t feeling the
effects. The lack of declarations is likely a symptom of politics. Some
governments don’t want to make any strong public statements, others deny the
problem altogether.
In the United States, the topic is particularly
polarizing.
In the US, 76 governments have declared some sort
of climate emergency. Compare that to 417 in the United Kingdom, and 491 in
Canada. Only 8% of Americans live in an area that has made the statement.
“I think many other countries, particularly
European countries, are ahead of the United States in not only accepting the
fact that climate change is real and man-made and reaching catastrophic levels
of impact, but also putting policies together to address it,” says O’Malley.
“We are severely, and I mean severely, hindered by the fact that we have a
climate-change denier in the White House.”
“There’s a political divide,” agrees Burke. “There
shouldn’t be. The science is not partisan.”
The New York Times
recently found that attempts by Republican states to get funding for
climate-related disasters have required them to perform ‘linguistic acrobatics”
in order to avoid mentioning climate change. And it appears the same is
happening with climate emergency declarations.
Eighty-seven percent of American cities that have
made an emergency declaration are in states Donald Trump lost in the 2016
presidential election.
That’s not a coincidence. “[Conservative states]
are working toward adaption, they are clearly applying for disaster relief, but
the word climate is not there,” Burke says. “If it’s seen as a major
acknowledgement of climate change and a demand of the current administration to
fund climate-related work, it’s probably dead on arrival.”
The Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy nonprofit, launched the Center for Climate-Aligned Finance on Thursday with financial backing from JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs.
With the goal of cutting carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, the center aims to collaborate with banks to design guidance for working with carbon-heavy sectors such as steel or utilities, and to help banks determine which climate benchmarks and data to follow.
Banks are increasingly seeing the value — not just in optics but in revenue — of environmentally responsible investment.
Dive Insight:
About 130 banks committed last year to align their business with the goals of the U.N.’s Paris Agreement on Climate Change, as well as its Sustainable Development Goals.
In the past year, Goldman Sachs laid out a 10-year goal to commit $750 billion in loans, underwriting, advisory services and investments toward companies and projects focused on renewable energy, sustainable transportation and affordable education.
Citi pledged in April to stop providing financial services to thermal coal-mining companies by 2030.
Wells Fargo has increased its investment in solar energy.
And banks have found there are consequences for not doing so. Climate change-related policy shifts such as a carbon tax could cost the financial industry up to $1 trillion, a February study by management consulting firm Oliver Wyman found.
The global responsible loans market increased 40% between July 2018 and July 2019, an S&P Global Ratings report found.
Alex Liftman, Bank of America’s global environmental executive, told American Banker the bank has committed to using only renewable energy and incorporating climate impacts into its risk management.
“But decarbonizing a whole economy is enormously complex and really challenging,” she said. “As ambitious as all of the work is … we recognize that no one player can drive progress alone.”
Paul Bodnar, chair of the center and managing director of the institute, said the Poseidon Principles, which encourage financing of more environmentally friendly shipping vehicles, influenced the center’s creation.
“One sector provides the lifeblood that powers all the others, and that is finance,” he told American Banker.
Climate activists indicated the center is an initiative to watch.
“It could drive real steps toward banks aligning with 1.5°C,” Jason Opeña Disterhoft, senior climate and energy campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, said in a statement emailed to Banking Dive, referring to a goal of limiting global temperature increase. “But it could also be used as an excuse for banks to keep supporting the world’s worst climate polluters.
“The four founding partner banks include three of the top four fossil banks in the world, and together are responsible for more than $700 billion in fossil financing since Paris,” he added. “The four of them bank a clear majority of the companies doing the most to expand oil, gas and coal.”
The Rocky Mountain Institute did not disclose how much financial support the banks provided.
WASHINGTON— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) unveiled a concurrent resolution today to declare the climate crisis an emergency warranting a “massive-scale mobilization to halt, reverse and address” its consequences.
“With an unhinged climate denier in the White House, it’s on Congress to steer us away from climate suicide,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This resolution is a sane recognition that science says we need a massive transition away from the production and consumption of dirty fossil fuels.”
The resolution follows the world’s hottest June on record and comes a day after Trump’s speech touting his environmental policies — a speech that entirely neglected to mention the climate crisis.
Months before the 116th Congress opened, a series of scientific reports warned of the dire consequences of inaction on the climate emergency.
In October the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that policymakers must take “unprecedented action” to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. In November the Fourth National Climate Assessment reported that the United States is already feeling the health and economic costs of climate change and that those harms will intensify without “immediate and substantial” cuts to greenhouse gas pollution.
The resolution notes that a federal, large-scale mobilization has ample precedent in the nation’s history, pointing to accomplishments like the Interstate Highway System, the Apollo 11 Moon landing and the New Deal.
“Mounting a World War II style mobilization against the climate emergency will have lifesaving and economic benefits that far exceed its costs,” Snape said. “Responding to the climate crisis with any less urgency would spell disaster for current and future Americans, and for the planet.”
Some plan to CUT greenhouse gas emissions down to zero by 2030.
Local climate policies that are already on the books in the US are poised to cut down greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels), according to a December report from Bloomberg Philanthropies. When South Portland, Maine adopted a resolution declaring a climate emergency in October, it included a vow to cut its greenhouse gas emissions down to zero by 2030.
Sixty-eight cities, towns, and counties have issued their own emergencies in the US. Sixty of those were made in 2019, and include major cities like Miami and Austin.
2019 was the year of ‘climate emergency’ declarations – The Verge
A rapidly changing climate drovehundreds of governments around the world to declare states of emergencyin 2019. While the declarations are largely symbolic gestures, they have in some cases become jumping-off points for real action. It’s the culmination of coordinated efforts by activists pushing governments to take action that is as dramatic as the threats posed by the climate crisis.
“The Climate Emergency movement reached a tipping point”
“This year, the Climate Emergency movement reached a tipping point, and thousands of average people began getting involved in climate politics and advocating for change,” Laura Berry, director of research and publications at The Climate Mobilization wrote toThe Vergein an email. Her Brooklyn-based advocacy group has been behind a campaign to push for emergency declarations across the globe. Berry’s organization has worked alongside grassroots groups to push for local declarations and has lobbied Congress, too. She says the global climate emergency movement has exploded in growth this year as campaigns from both her group and other efforts have taken hold.
In the final year ofthe hottest decade on record, climate emergency declarations have grown in scale from individual cities to an entire continent sounding the alarm.In May 2019, the UK became the first national government to declare a climate emergency, days after similar declarations from Scotland and Wales.”By November, the European Parliament had done the same. That month, more than11,000 scientistsjointly declared that Earth is “clearly and unequivocally” facing a climate emergency, too. Oxford Dictionaries made “climate emergency” itsword of the year.
Today,about800 million peoplelive in places that have declared global warming an emergency— that’s one in ten of all people on the planet. It’s a big change in the three years since Darebin, Australia declared the first local emergency in 2016. On January 1st, 2019, The Climate Mobilization recorded just 233 declarations worldwide compared to the 1,288 today. For the most part, those declarations aren’t binding and rarely include any specific changes in policy, but in some cases,they have bolstered more concrete efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
800 million people live in places that have declared global warming an emergency
New York City became the world’slargest city to declareclimate emergency in June 2019. That declaration “calls for an immediate emergency mobilization to restore a safe climate” without much detail on how it would do that. But it came on the heels of the city council passing a package of climate bills it dubbedits own Green New Deal,which most notablycommits the city to making its buildings more energy-efficient in order to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
“If we want to stop climate catastrophe, we have to tell the truth,” Ash Sanders, a member of the environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion, said in astatementwhen New York City made its declaration.“We have ten years to transform our consumer behavior, our economy, and our culture to preserve life on earth.By declaring a climate emergency, the city is taking a major step in that process,” Sanders said.
These declarations can also give municipalities a way to declare their priorities especially when their preferences clash with policy decisions made at higher levels. In the US — the second biggest greenhouse gas polluter in the world — cities, counties, and states have stepped up their efforts on climate change while President Trump has rolled back environmental protections.Local climate policies that are already on the books in the US are poised to cut down greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels), according to aDecember reportfrom Bloomberg Philanthropies. When South Portland, Maine adopted aresolution declaring a climate emergency in October, it included a vow to cut its greenhouse gas emissions down to zero by 2030.
Sixty-eightcities, towns, and counties have issued their own emergencies in the US. Sixty of those were made in 2019, and include major cities like Miami and Austin.
Though the movement started with smaller governments, it’s caught on with bigger stakeholders, too.Nine nations — including Portugal, Argentina, Bangladesh, and Canada — also decided that the threat of climate change warranted an emergency declaration.
The EU became the biggest bloc yet to declare an emergency
WhentheEU became the biggest bloc yetto declare an emergency, it put pressure on leaders to raise the bar on their climate commitments.“We can take that resolution from the European Parliament and say ‘Look, you said this was an emergency, so now act like it’s an emergency,’” Jonathan Gaventa, a senior associate and board member of the environmental think tank E3G, toldThe Verge.Soon after the declaration, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen proposed theEU’s Green Deal, which puts the EU on the path to eliminate its greenhouse gases by 2050.
Meeting that 2050 goal globally is what scientists believe is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. It’s a tall order that would require a near complete transition away from the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.Without doing so, nearly all of the world’s coral reefs are expected to die off, an additional 61 million people will deal with extreme droughts across the world’s cities, and 70 percent of the world’s coastlines will shrink under rising sea levels.
2020 could be a big year for climate emergencies, too
With so much on the line, 2020 could be a big year for climate emergencies,too. Democratic presidential candidates in the US have put declaring a national climate emergency on their agenda as they hit the campaign trail for elections next year. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT)introduced a resolutionon it in July. Billionaire environmental philanthropist Tom Steyer has also said that he would make the declaration on the first day of his presidency if elected.
“This problem can’t really be solved in the real world without it being prioritized and telling the world we’re doing it right now on an expedited, urgent basis,” Steyer toldThe Vergeinan interview.
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