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These Cities Are Depaving For A Cooler Future

It all started because a man named Arif Khan wanted a garden. In 2007, he had recently moved into a house in Portland, Oregon, whose backyard was covered in asphalt. Some friends helped him tear up the impervious surface, and soon after, they won a small grant to carry out a similar project in front of a local cafe. “It was a one-off,” said Ted Labbe, co-founder of Depave, an urban greening movement. “But it was so successful that the next year we got solicited to do three projects, and then five the year after that. It just kept escalating.” In the 15 years since breaking ground on Khan’s backyard, Depave has completed 75 projects in schoolyards, churches and other community spaces across Portland.

The Climate Crisis Will End When Capitalism Ends

The March to End Fossil Fuels will take place in New York City on September 17, days before the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit . Considering that July 2023 was the hottest month ever recorded on earth, the role of fossil fuel production in the climate crisis surely needs public attention and action. But there is something highly problematic about marches and meetings that don’t address two large elephants in the room: capitalism and militarism. The United States military is the world’s biggest emitter of fossil fuels, having emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere since 2001.

In A New Climate Reality, Community May Be A Farmer’s Greatest Resource

The 10th of July had been a typical day at work for Caroline Hauser until she received an urgent email from the Intervale Center and its farms. They were calling for volunteers. The Intervale Center, a nonprofit farming cooperative in Burlington, Vermont, was bracing for intense rains and flooding forecasted to hit in the next 24 hours. It needed all hands on deck to harvest everything they could before disaster struck. Hauser messaged her manager to say she needed the day off. Hauser has been a Burlington resident since 2015 and a regular volunteer at the Intervale Center since 2019. She and her husband are summer and winter CSA members—she estimates that 80 to 90 percent of their food comes directly from the Intervale’s seven organic farms.

First Nations Say They’re Not Wildfire Evacuees, But Climate Refugees

Indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by wildfire evacuations and thousands of these evacuees have been displaced for the long term, like Michell and his family. Indigenous peoples make up five per cent of Canada’s population but experience 42 per cent of wildfire evacuation events, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. This year, 25,000 people from 79 First Nations have had to leave home because of wildfires, Indigenous Services Canada told The Breach by email. In the past decade, 70,824 First Nations people have been evacuated from their communities because of wildfires, the department’s data shows.

Two Degrees Of Warming Could Cause One Billion Deaths Over Next Century

A new study by Joshua Pearce of London’s Western University and Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz in Austria has found that, if global heating reaches or surpasses two degrees Celsius by the year 2100, there is a high probability that over the next century humans, mostly the wealthiest, will be responsible for the deaths of approximately one billion mostly poorer humans. Many of the most powerful and profitable businesses on the planet are part of the oil and gas industry, which is both indirectly and directly responsible for over 40 percent of carbon emissions, which impact billions of lives in some of the world’s most remote communities that have the least resources, reported Western News.

Extreme Heat On The Job: Workers Need Protections Now

The dangers of heat stress for both indoor and outdoor workers is only increasing as our planet continues to warm. In the food system, farmworkers, warehouse workers, restaurant workers and street vendors are some of the most impacted, but this is a hazard for workers across all sectors, like construction workers and delivery drivers. Incarcerated people are also extremely vulnerable to the dangers of heat stress. Yet, federal OSHA has no standard to protect workers from the dangers of heat exposure. A small number of states have created their own standards: California, Minnesota, Washington, and last year, Oregon and Colorado.

UN Strengthens Children’s Rights To Fight Climate Change In Court

The United Nations Child Rights Committee has published new guidance on the rights of children in relation to the environment with a particular emphasis on climate change. The UN’s direction on the matter sets forth specific administrative measures nation-states should implement in order to tackle how climate change and humans’ degradation of the environment are affecting children’s rights of enjoyment, as well as to ensure a clean and sustainable planet for current and future generations, a press release from the UN said. The UN Committee adopted its guidance, officially General Comment No. 26, following consultation with national human rights institutions, nations, international organizations, experts, civil society and children.

Why Cities Are Opening Their Rivers And Lakes To Swimming

As recently as the 1940s, New Yorkers swam in floating pools in the Hudson and East Rivers. A safer alternative to swimming directly in the river, the municipal baths kept residents cool in hot summer months until they were closed over sanitation concerns. Now, as the city contends with life-threatening heat, can New Yorkers once again turn to the rivers to stay cool? The team behind +Pool, an initiative to bring a floating swimming pool to the East River, is betting on it. The organization’s proposed cross-shaped, Olympic-size pool would differ from its historic predecessors in one significant way: filtration.

The Changing Climate Of Class Struggle

Two very different developments in the last year, each affecting the lives of workers in the United States, bring home the degree to which the impacts of climate change are redefining the nature of the class struggle. The implications that flow from this development are well worth considering. Last August, an article in the New York Times took up the question of how intensifying heat waves were leading to deteriorating working conditions and increased health and safety risks for UPS drivers and other workers. It pointed out that since 2015 hundreds of UPS and US Postal Service, FedEx, and other delivery company drivers had suffered the ill effects of heat exposure, and several drivers had died.

Portland City Government Privately Compromised With Oil Industry

In the summer of 2022, it seemed that the days of an oil-by-rail facility in Portland, Oregon, were numbered. The previous year, the city had rejected a land use permit for a company called Zenith Energy, which receives crude oil shipped by rail from as far away as North Dakota. Zenith had appealed the decision, but had already suffered a string of defeats in the state.  Climate activists and community associations, who were concerned about the risks associated with oil-by-rail shipments, counted the city’s rejection of the permit as a major victory, and were tantalizingly close to prevailing over the company.

Europe’s Climate Movement Is Fractured And Stuck

For people like me, who are among the least affected by the unfolding climate crisis, and are in the privileged position of being paid to figure out a way to address it, there are times that make the reality and urgency of rising global average temperatures come alive. The last month has been one of those times, and a trigger for some deep reflection. I have scrolled and scrolled through Italian social media accounts taking in the many shocking videos and images of thunderstorms in Veneto (hammered by hailstones the size of apples), tornados in Milan, wildfires raging across the entire map of Sicily

Protest: Federal Reserve Ignoring Systemic Climate Financial Risks

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City hosted its 45th annual Economic Policy Symposium titled “Structural Shifts in the Global Economy” in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, starting on Thursday, August 24, 2023. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell addressed the symposium on Friday and over 100 other central bankers, federal reserve officials, academics, media, financial organizations, international counterparts, and government regulators were also in attendance. One notable major topic has been omitted from the materials released so far: addressing systemic climate financial risk. Compared to global peers, Chair Powell and the Federal Reserve have been laggards in addressing systemic climate financial risks, putting workers, businesses, and the economy at risk.

Montana Youth Turned The Tables And Won An Unprecedented Climate Victory

Over the first eight months of 2023, the catastrophic impacts from climate change have become tangible for millions of people. From massive Canadian wildfires to 100-degree ocean waters off Florida, to a rare hurricane hitting California, the signs of an overheating globe are everywhere. Amid such devastation, youth climate activists in Montana have scored a precedent-setting victory: for the first time in U.S. history a court has ruled young people have the right to a livable climate. In Held v. State of Montana, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled the state must safeguard 16 young plaintiffs’ right to a ​“clean and healthful environment,” which is protected by Montana’s constitution.

The Media’s Role In Criminalizing Climate Protest

Before you can criminalize protest, you have to vilify the protesters. And to do that effectively, you need the media's help. Evlondo Cooper at Media Matters reviewed media coverage of climate protests in the U. S. from May 30th, 2022 to July 31st, 2023 for a new study. He documented a trend that we've been seeing too. Not only has the U. S. media perpetuated the idea that climate protesters are uniquely disruptive, and radical, but their general failure to cover anything about climate protest other than the disruption that they cause, further perpetuates this thinking. Evlondo's research found that while multiple national outlets have run stories about climate protesters being annoying and destructive, not a single broadcaster has run even one story on the fact that nearly half of the states in the U. S. have now passed laws criminalizing protest.

The Climate Culprits Hiding Their Role In California’s Extreme Weather

One of the nation’s most important climate fights is currently playing out under the radar in California, where state residents are weathering an unprecedented tropical storm. Oil and industry lobbying groups are spending millions in a last-ditch attempt to block first-of-its-kind legislation that would require thousands of large companies doing business in the state to fully disclose their carbon emissions, a move that would effectively set national policy. In the final weeks of California’s legislative session, which ends in mid-September, Assembly members are expected to vote on the climate transparency bill.
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