The legislature of the Canadian province of Alberta invoked the controversial Alberta Sovereignty Act on Nov. 27 in response to new federal environmental policies. The provincial legislature passed a resolution resolving to "urge the Government to use all legal means necessary to oppose the implementation and enforcement of the Federal Initiative in Alberta." The initiative refered to is Canada's proposed Clean Energy Regulations, which the resolution says mandate "a set of emissions standards and timelines that are unattainable within the context of Alberta's electricity industry and available energy resource," and would have "an extreme chilling effect on investment in Alberta's electricity generation industry." 

For the first time, the UN's annual climate change conference is putting a spotlight on the overlap between conflict and the climate crisis, and on the pressing need to address its neglected humanitarian consequences.

As COP28 begins in Dubai, the urgency for more climate financing to be directed to conflict settings—and the challenges of getting that money into the hands of the people who need it most—are on full display in opposition-held northwest Syria. A years-long drought is compounding the suffering caused by ongoing conflict, earthquakes that struck the region earlier this year, and the longer-term effects of 12-and-a-half years of civil war.

A comprehensive US government report released Nov. 21 confirmed that extreme weather linked to climate change is worsening despite drops in US greenhouse gas emissions. The report urges further action to mitigate potentially catastrophic consequences across the country.

El Niño will drive global food aid needs even higher in the coming months, a new analysis warns. The prediction comes as food aid agencies are already making ration cuts amid a budget squeeze. In July, meteorologists declared the onset of El Niño, a periodic climate phenomenon that usually brings drought to large stretches of the globe and wetter weather elsewhere. The analysis by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network says that humanitarian groups must prepare for "high food assistance needs." Another climate phenomenon, the Indian Ocean Dipole, could amplify El Niño's effects—with both compounded by the climate crisis. This September was the hottest ever recorded. "The temperature anomalies are enormous—far bigger than anything we have ever seen in the past," Petteri Taalas, head of the UN's meteorological agency, WMO, said in a press release. ACAPS, the Geneva-based analysis outfit, says Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mozambique, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, and Sudan may be the countries at the highest risk.

The sixth mass extinction, primarily driven by human activities, is more dire than previously anticipated, with entire branches on the tree of life now disappearing, finds a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sept. 18. Researchers from Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, led by Gerardo Ceballos and Paul Ehrlich, assessed 5,400 genera of terrestrial vertebrates, including 34,600 species. The staggering results: 73 genera have become extinct since 1500 AD. This rate of extinction surpasses the last million years by 35 times. In other words, in just five centuries, human actions have triggered a surge of genus extinctions that would have otherwise taken 18,000 years. The researchers refer to this as a "biological annihilation." (Earth.com)

The Tuaregs of Niger and Buryat of Siberia, like the Navajo of the US Southwest, have had their territories usurped and destroyed by uranium mining for the nuclear-industrial complex, and it makes little difference from their perspective whether the extractivist bosses were French, Russian or American. While the Great Powers wage a neo-colonial game for control of this strategic resource, the indigenous peoples on the ground pay with their lands and lives—and are fighting back for autonomy or outright independence, and ecological and cultural survival. Bill Weinberg breaks it down in Episode 192 of the CounterVortex podcast.

In Episode 185 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg reviews the Oppenheimer movie, and discusses the legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 78 years after Hiroshima. Manhattan Project dissidents like Leo Szilard petitioned to stop the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. But such sentiment was overruled by Harry Truman's geopolitical imperatives—and what Freeman Dyson called the "technical arrogance" of Oppenheimer and his circle. Now, as open Russian nuclear threats continue to mount in Europe, we are poised at the brink of unparalleled catastrophe. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

The United Nations should update its 70-year-old refugee convention to address the growing number of people displaced across borders by the climate crisis, according to the UN's special rapporteur on climate change. Speaking at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 27, Ian Fry said there's an "urgent need" to protect the rights of the displaced as the climate crisis builds. While few argue with the need to address climate-related displacement, how to go about it is a sticky subject. Many legal experts—and the UN's two main agencies for displacement, the UNHCR and IOM—shun the term "climate refugees," saying that it's misleading and could even undermine existing protection law.