The music industry’s intangible and less-noticed tangible contributions to the climate crisis—like the emissions used by streaming services and the environmental impact of touring—as well as the obstacles that hinder the mitigation of those contributions exemplify the issues faced by nearly every industry around the world.
Powered by intense opposition to a law that would require Dutch farmers to severely cut their nitrogen emissions, the populist Farmer’s Citizens Movement has suddenly become the most popular party in the Netherlands. It’s a taste of things to come as democracies seek to enact measures to protect the environment.
While many governments around the world promote green growth as a way of combatting the climate crisis, some have started to doubt whether this will be enough. Could degrowth, an alternative way of organizing society beyond economic growth, be the way to achieve rapid emissions reductions and a more equitable world?
The U.S. and Europe are poorly positioned compared to China to engage in diplomacy to bridge the Middle East’s security divides. But there is a diplomatic initiative they could pursue that would reassert their relevance and address a key issue that is in desperate need of attention in the region: the threat of climate change.
The U.N.’s annual climate change conferences continue to play a key role in tackling the climate crisis. Not only do the COPs bring together stakeholders with an interest in reining in global warming, they also push the climate crisis to the very top of the world’s news agenda. The problem is, they are no longer fit for purpose.