Extreme weather

Phoenix Passes Ordinance Giving Workers Protection From Extreme Heat

April 2, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Create! Arizona, Extreme weather, Heat, Phoenix, Worker Rights and Jobs

A historic new law in Phoenix, Arizona, will provide thousands of outdoor workers in the hottest city in the country with protections from extreme heat. In a unanimous vote, the Phoenix City Council passed an ordinance requiring that workers have easy access to rest, potable water and shade, as well as training to recognize signs of heat stress, a press release from the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) said. Vehicles with enclosed cabs must also have access to air conditioning. “People who work outside and in hot indoor environments in Phoenix suffer unacceptably during our deadly summers, with too few protections,” said Katelyn Parady.

You Can’t Be Neutral In A Flooding House

March 27, 2024 Ankur Singh, In These Times. Resist! climate crisis, Environment, Extreme weather, Illinois, Infrastructure

Cicero, Illinois - A crowd swells outside an auditorium one summer evening in 2023, trying to enter a special town hall meeting. The air fills with chants: “Where’s our money?” and “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” (“The people, united, will never be defeated”). Soon, police inform the hundreds outside that no one else is allowed in. It felt apt: We wanted answers about why our city was so dysfunctional, and the city couldn’t even host a proper meeting. I’m a journalist and also a Cicero resident, and I was there because I, too, was angry. Howard Zinn famously said you can’t be neutral on a moving train; it’s also difficult in a flooded house.

WMO Issues ‘Red Alert’ As Climate Records Are Broken Worldwide

March 21, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Extreme weather, World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has issued a “red alert” as all major global climate records — greenhouse gas levels, near-surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, Antarctic sea ice cover, glacier retreat and sea level rise — were broken in 2023, a WMO press release said. Floods, swiftly intensifying tropical cyclones, heat waves, drought and wildfires impacted millions of people around the world and caused billions in economic losses, the WMO State of the Global Climate 2023 report said.

‘Fire Weather’: Big Oil’s Climate Conflagration

March 9, 2024 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Big Oil, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Fort McMurray Fire, Oil and Gas

Few places illustrate the destructive cycle of fossil fuel-driven climate change as well as Alberta, Canada. Home to the tar sands boom, the province’s remote north has also become a site of some of the worst climate disasters in recorded history—like the 2016 Fort McMurray Fire, which swallowed up 1.5 million acres and burned for three months. John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the Fort McMurray Fire, the tar sands industry responsible for the conditions that produced it, and the tinderbox world Big Oil has made in its all-consuming pursuit of profit.

What We Can Learn From One Florida Community About Climate Resilience

December 14, 2023 Danielle Arigoni, Next City. Create! Climate Change, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Florida, Housing, Resilience

The health and safety we enjoy as individuals and the opportunities for employment, education, and recreation available to us are shaped to a large degree by the built environment in which we live. For the past 70 years, the vast majority of new housing development has followed the example of Levittown, New York. The city now serves as the poster child for a seemingly endless wave of car-dependent greenfield suburban sprawl developments that not only helped to generate the carbon emissions that contribute to the climate crisis we now face but also modeled a form of growth that provided opportunity for wealth creation for some households and not others.

Hidden Toll Of Hurricane Katrina On The Mental Health Of Black Survivors

November 30, 2023 Maya Richard-Craven, Scalawag. Educate! Black America, Extreme weather, Health Care, Hurricane Katrina, mental health

When Hurricane Katrina touched down in New Orleans in late August 2005, nine-year-old Nia Burnett was too young to realize that her life would never be the same. Nia's family had chosen to stay in the city and wait out the storm. They all headed to a local hospital for safety. What they found were corpses lining the hallways. The whole building smelled like rotten flesh. Nia remembers later standing on the roof after the hospital started flooding, waiting to be rescued. Below her, she watched as all the neighborhoods she used to play in with her friends were swallowed up by the rising waters. Meanwhile, even more bodies floated around the hospital. It wasn't until 11 years after the storm that Nia was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Climate-Related Damage Costs $16 Million Per Hour On Average Globally

October 10, 2023 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Finance and the Economy, Socio-economic costs

Over the past 20 years, extreme weather events globally, like hurricanes, floods and heat waves, have cost an estimated $2.8 trillion, according to a new study. The study authors estimate the cost of the extreme weather damages from 2000 to 2019 to average around $143 billion, which breaks down to around $16.3 million per hour. The researchers analyzed studies that used a methodology known as Extreme Event Attribution (EEA), which connects human-related greenhouse gas emissions and changes in extreme weather events. They compared these analyses to socio-economic costs from extreme weather events to determine how much of the socio-economic costs of extreme weather events are linked to climate change.

NATO Destroyed Libya In 2011; Storm Daniel Came To Sweep Up The Remains

September 22, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Extreme weather, Failed State, Foreign Intervention, Libya, NATO, Wars and Militarism

Three days before the Abu Mansur and Al Bilad dams collapsed in Wadi Derna, Libya, on the night of September 10, the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi participated in a discussion at the Derna House of Culture about the neglect of basic infrastructure in his city. At the meeting, al-Trabelsi warned about the poor condition of the dams. As he wrote on Facebook that same day, over the past decade his beloved city has been ‘exposed to whipping and bombing, and then it was enclosed by a wall that had no door, leaving it shrouded in fear and depression’. Then, Storm Daniel picked up off the Mediterranean coast, dragged itself into Libya, and broke the dams. CCTV camera footage in the city’s Maghar neighbourhood showed the rapid advance of the floodwaters, powerful enough to destroy buildings and crush lives. A reported 70% of infrastructure and 95% of educational institutions have been damaged in the flood-affected areas. As of Wednesday 20 September, an estimated 4,000 to 11,000 people have died in the flood – among them the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi, whose warnings over the years went unheeded – and another 10,000 are missing.

Libya’s Disastrous Flooding… Causes And Hope?

September 21, 2023 Essam Elkorghli, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Extreme weather, Floods, Libya, NATO, US Imperialism, US Sanctions

On the 11th of September, small towns and cities in eastern Libya (Sousa, Baida, and Batta) experienced heavy rains and flooding, leading to some infrastructural and material damage. However, the big catastrophe was in the city of Darna which houses more than 100,000 inhabitants and is located by a valley leading directly from the mountains. The two dams that control the flow of the water that seeps through the city’s valley collapsed at around 2:00 a.m., leading to a complete blackout and mass flooding. Cars, 10-story apartments, and houses were washed away with their residents, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe with more than 10,000 dead and 11,000 missing.

France: Stellantis Workers Walk Out To Demand Breaks Amid Heat Wave

September 17, 2023 Dorian Maffei, Left Voice. Resist! Auto Workers, Extreme weather, France, Walk Outs, Worker Rights and Jobs

Last week, France was blanketed by a dome of heat, resulting in exceptionally warm temperatures. It even broke the previous record set in 1949, making September 4 the hottest day ever recorded in France during the month of September. The French national meteorological service, Météo-France, points to a remarkably long and intense heat wave which has lasted late into the season, clearly pointing to the impact of climate change, which tends to extend summer heatwaves. At the Stellantis plant in Hordain, France, where Peugeot and Citroën vehicles are assembled, outside temperatures exceeded a scorching 30°C (86°F) every afternoon from September 5 to 10.

The National Flood Insurance Program Is Broken

September 17, 2023 Krista Egger, Next City. Create! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Floods, Insurance

The most expensive type of disaster in the United States is flooding. Hurricanes, a major source of flooding, make up seven of the 10 costliest disasters in United States history, from Katrina in 2005 to Ian in 2022. Together, these storms alone have cost $800 billion, adjusted for inflation. Half a century ago—before any of these storms occurred—the federal government created the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a public sector alternative to fill in the gaps in higher-risk areas where commercial insurance is unavailable. But as the frequency and severity of flooding events have increased—and as insurers continue to add to the list of states they refuse to insure—the NFIP has become massively oversubscribed, amassing more than $20 billion in debt on behalf of its five million policyholders.

Six Of Nine Planetary Boundaries Have Now Been Exceeded

September 16, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Human Rights, Sustainability

A new study by an international team of 29 scientists from eight countries provides the third update to the planetary boundaries framework. The update shows how human activities are increasingly impacting our planet, thus augmenting the risk of triggering drastic changes in Earth’s overall conditions. The nine planetary boundaries represent the limits within which humans can continue to thrive and develop. “The planetary boundaries framework draws upon Earth system science,” the study said. “It identifies nine processes that are critical for maintaining the stability and resilience of Earth system as a whole. All are presently heavily perturbed by human activities.

US Sets Record For Billion-Dollar Disasters In A Single Year

September 14, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Disasters, Extreme weather

With nearly four months still to go in 2023, the U.S. has already set a record for the most natural disasters that have cost $1 billion or more in a single year. Since 1980, there have been 371 climate– and weather-related disaster events in the U.S. with costs and damages reaching or exceeding $1 billion, a press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) said. The estimated costs include a consumer price index adjustment. Altogether these disasters cost more than $2.6 trillion. This year, there have been 23 confirmed climate and weather-related disasters in the U.S. that killed a total of 253 people and resulted in losses of more than $1 billion each.

Private Equity Profits From Climate Disaster Clean-Up

September 9, 2023 Nina Lakhani, The Guardian. Educate! Capitalism, Disasters, Extreme weather, Fossil Fuels, Recovery

Private equity firms are increasingly profiting from cleaning up climate disasters in the US, while failing to better protect workers and often also investing in the fossil fuels that are causing the climate emergency, new research has found. The demand for skilled disaster restoration or resilience workers, who are mostly immigrants and refugees from Latin America and Asia, is soaring as greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels heat the planet, provoking more destructive storms, floods and wildfires. As the disaster industry has become more profitable, at least 72 companies that specialize in disaster cleanups and restoration have been acquired by private equity firms since 2020.

Disaster Relief Often Leaves Disabled People Behind

September 7, 2023 Bianca Gonzalez, Next City. Create! climate crisis, Disability Rights, Disaster Recovery, Extreme weather

When disaster strikes, disabled people and low-income communities are hit the hardest and face higher mortality rates. They also take longer to recover. Germán Parodi and Shaylin Sluzalis were protesting in Washington, D.C., for disability rights as they found out Hurricane Maria was on its way to Puerto Rico in 2017. Now the co-directors of The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, they were deployed as part of a disabled first responder team. Parodi, who was born and raised on the island, lives with a mobility disability, while Sluzalis lives with an invisible disability. “Being culturally aware of the dynamics of the island … and knowing how to interact with people with different types of disabilities opened doors that we were being told wouldn’t open in some neighborhoods,” says Parodi.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 »

Daily movement news and resources