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Climate Change

Climate Denial Will Kill Us

January 12, 2018 By Paul Street, Truthdig.com , ,
The Trump administration’s recent move to permit oil and gas drilling in 90 percent of the federal government’s offshore land presents an opportunity. With vast protected areas of the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic under threat, now is a good time to challenge some of the myths working against Americans’ willingness and ability to stem the ruinous warming of the planet that is resulting from humanity’s excessive burning of fossil fuels. Let’s start with the wild winter weather that has struck the eastern United States. Led by Trump, climate-change deniers clucked as a hurricane-strength blizzard pulverized the Northeast, followed by subzero wind chills. This came after the great winter “bomb cyclone” hit the Southeast, bringing coastal Georgia its first “mix of snow and palm trees” since the late 1980s.

Cuba: 100-Year Plan To Protect Itself From Climate Change

January 12, 2018 By Richard Stone, Sciencemag.org , ,
On its deadly run through the Caribbean last September, Hurricane Irma lashed northern Cuba, inundating coastal settlements and scouring away vegetation. The powerful storm dealt Havana only a glancing blow; even so, 10-meter waves pummeled El Malecón, the city’s seaside promenade, and ravaged stately but decrepit buildings in the capital’s historic district. “There was great destruction,” says Dalia Salabarría Fernández, a marine biologist here at the National Center for Protected Areas (CNAP). As the flood waters receded, she says, “Cuba learned a very important lesson.” With thousands of kilometers of low-lying coast and a location right in the path of Caribbean hurricanes, which many believe are intensifying because of climate change, the island nation must act fast to gird against future disasters.

New York City Sues Oil Companies Over Climate Change

January 12, 2018 Nicholas Kusnetz, Insideclimatenews.org , , , ,
New York City is suing five of the largest oil companies over the billions of dollars it spends protecting the city from the effects of climate change, and it plans to divest its pension funds' $5 billion in assets involving fossil fuel producers, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday. As head of the nation's largest city, de Blasio is throwing significant weight behind a movement by local governments to directly target fossil fuel companies for the role their products play in fueling global warming. "They are the first ones responsible for this crisis, and they should not get away with it anymore," de Blasio said at a news conference held in a building that flooded when Hurricane Sandy hit the city in 2012. "It's time for them to start paying for the damage they've done."

2017: $306 Billion In Damages From Climate-Linked Disasters

January 10, 2018 Alexander C. Kaufman, Huffingtonpost.com , ,
The nation’s third-hottest year on record is now officially its costliest for billion-dollar natural disasters.  Sixteen major climate- and weather-related catastrophes caused a record $306.2 billion in damages and killed at least 362 people in 2017 as the United States suffered its worst wildfire and hurricane seasons in modern history, according to a report released Monday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hurricanes created the most damage, totaling $265 billion as Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma racked up a respective $125 billion, $90 billion and $50 billion. Wildfires caused $18 billion in losses, tripling previous annual records. The new tally shattered the previous 2005 record of $215 billion, driven mostly by Hurricanes Katrina, Wilma and Rita.

Activists At Washington State Capitol Launch “Climate Countdown”

January 9, 2018 By Andrea Germanos, Commondreams.org , , ,
Demanding "bold action" from lawmakers in Washington state on Monday, activists and indigenous leaders rang in the start of the 2018 legislative session Monday with the launch of an initiative to urgently tackle the climate crisis. "On the Peninsula, we're already seeing signs of a future we won't be able to live with—winter floods, summer droughts, wildfires, coastal devastation, acidifying seas, poisonous algal blooms," said Ed Chadd, a member of Olympic Climate Action. "If we don't act now, our orcas and salmon are goners...and then we will be. Climate change is not going to wait for us to get our act together." "We're showing up in Olympia today to demand that the legislature acknowledge not just the reality but the unthinkable urgency of climate change."

Scientists Warn Of Permanent Drought For 25% Of Earth By 2050

January 4, 2018 By Jake Johnson, Commondreams.org , ,
In a new study that adds to the lengthy and ever-growing list of potential consequences of global climate inaction, scientists warn that around a quarter of the Earth could end up in a permanent state of drought if the planet warms by two degrees Celsius by 2050. "Our research predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20-30 percent of the world's land surface by the time the global mean temperature change reaches 2ºC," said Manoj Joshi, one of lead researchers of the study, which was published on Monday in the journal Nature. Scientists have for years linked widespread and more intense droughts to human-caused climate change. The only way to avoid these conditions is to limit global warming to 1.5ºC, Joshi concluded. "The world has already warmed by 1ºC," added Dr. Su-Jong Jeong, a researcher from China's Southern University of Science and Technology.

Stress Test: Democracy Confronts Climate Change

January 3, 2018 By Gus Speth, Thenextsystem.org , , ,
Many climate scientists and others have reached the conclusion that, because we have dithered so long, we now face the prospect of either extreme rates of emission reduction or extreme impacts from global warming and ocean acidification. I fear that we could experience both of these great disruptions, despite all the technological progress now underway and despite the climate action commitments we see outside of Washington. Major climate impacts are now inevitable. Global temperature has already increased by 1˚C, with huge consequences. Another 0.5˚C is essentially baked in. I think we will easily exceed 2˚C global average warming in this century, and quite possibly more.

Ensuring Justice In The Era Of Transformation

January 1, 2018 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, popularesistance.org     , , ,
In our last article, we predicted that the 2020’s will be an era of transformation. We focused on the development of the movement since the “Take-Off” phase of the 2011 Occupy encampments, followed by Black Lives Matter, Fight for $15, Idle No More, carbon infrastructure protests, debt resistance, immigration protests and more. The 2020s will be a decade when the impacts of years of mismanagement of crisis situations, such as climate change, inequality and US militarism, become unavoidable requiring major transformations. What we do now to prepare will help determine the result.

Organizing On A Sinking Ship: Future Of Climate Justice Movement

December 30, 2017 Kevin Buckland, Roarmag.org ,
Climate change rarely comes up at the top of the list when people are asked about issues that concern them most. While this is not surprising, it is nonetheless disturbing considering the gravity of the climate crisis. Yet the key problem of our collective negligence of the climate crisis is reflected in the question itself, rather than the answer. Let us be clear: climate change is not an “issue.” Rather, it is now the entirety of the biophysical world of which we are part. It is the physical battleground in which every “issue” is played out — and it is crumbling. The global justice movement is one of the many actors trying to maneuver on this battlefield, and the direction it is headed in is reshaping the narratives, tactics and structures that comprise it, hinting at the future of social movement organizing on a radically transformed planet.

Overcoming Contradictions Of Climate Change In Short Time We Have

December 29, 2017 Andreas Malm, Roarmag.org , , ,
Our best hope now is an immediate return to the flow. CO2 emissions have to be brought close to zero: some sources of energy that do not produce any emissions bathe the Earth in an untapped glow. The sun strikes the planet with more energy in a single hour than humans consume in a year. Put differently, the rate at which the Earth intercepts sunlight is nearly 10,000 times greater than the entire energy flux humans currently muster — a purely theoretical potential, of course, but even if unsuitable locations are excluded, there remains a flow of solar energy a thousand times larger than the annual consumption of the stock of fossil fuels. The flow of wind alone can also power the world.

Sea Level Rise Is Creeping Into Coastal Cities.

December 29, 2017 Nicholas Kusnetz, Insideclimatenews.org , ,
To get a sense of how much it will cost the nation to save itself from rising seas over the next 50 years, consider Norfolk, Virginia. In November, the Army Corps released a proposal for protecting the city from coastal flooding that would cost $1.8 billion. Some experts consider the estimate low. And it doesn't include the Navy's largest base, which lies within city limits and likely needs at least another $1 billion in construction. Then consider the costs to protect Boston, New York, Baltimore, Miami, Tampa, New Orleans, Houston and the more than 3,000 miles of coastline in between. Rising seas driven by climate change are flooding the nation's coasts now. The problem will get worse over the next 50 years, but the United States has barely begun to consider what's needed and hasn't grappled with the costs or who will pay.

When Companies Deny Climate Science, Their Workers Pay

December 29, 2017 By Carla Santos Skandier, Otherwords.org , , ,
After decades spreading misinformation about greenhouse gas emissions’ role as a driver of climate change, the deceptive tactics of the fossil fuel industry are slowly beginning to backfire. In December, for instance, General Electric announced major cuts to its fossil-fuel-heavy power department — and the pain of this unplanned transition is already being felt by the people least responsible for the company’s decisions: its workers. In the last two years, many stories have surfaced on the knowledge major fossil fuel companies like Exxon-Mobil had about the climate impacts of their activities, and the many tactics these same companies employed to deceive the public about these impacts. But they may have also managed to deceive themselves.

Climate Change Is Happening Faster Than Expected

December 28, 2017 Bob Berwyn, Insideclimatenews.org , ,
Some of the strongest warnings in the Royal Society update came from health researchers, who said there hasn't been nearly enough done to protect millions of vulnerable people worldwide from the expected increase in heat waves. "It's a deadly tragedy in the making, all the worse because the same experts are saying such heat waves are eminently survivable with adequate resources to protect people," said climate researcher Eric Wolff, lead author of the Royal Society update. Atmospheric scientist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said climate science has progressed in all directions since the IPCC report was published in 2014. He works with a group of scientists trying to update the IPCC reporting process to make it more fluid and meaningful in real time.

Polar Ice Is Disappearing, Setting Off Climate Alarms

December 28, 2017 Sabrina Shankman and Bob Berwyn, Insideclimatenews.org , ,
Turns out, when you heat up ice, it melts. And with 2017 likely going down as one of the warmest years on record worldwide, this year's climate change signal was amplified at the Earth's poles. There, decades-old predictions of intense warming have been coming true. The ice-covered poles, both north and south, continue to change at a breathtaking pace, with profound long-term consequences, according to the scientists who study them closely. And the consequences are destined to spill over into other parts of the globe, through changing atmospheric patterns, sea currents and feedback loops of ever intensifying melting. The past year may not have broken annual records, but it provided ample evidence of where long-term trends are heading.

Issues that Drive the Coming Transformation

December 27, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, clearingthefogradio.org , , ,
The year 2017 has been another active year for people fighting on a wide range of fronts. The Trump administration has brought many issues that have existed for years out into the open where they are more difficult to deny – racism, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy and the crises they create. There will be a backlash against overreach by the power holders on a number of issues, including wealth inequality, health care, Internet freedom, militarization at home and abroad, mass incarceration, climate change and human rights abuses. This backlash provides an opportunity to organize a broader movement of movements and clarify our demands so that we are well-positioned to demand transformative policies.
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