Extreme weather

The Gangster Socialists Of The Red State Beaches

October 13, 2022 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Educate! Capitalism, climate crisis, Environment, Extreme weather, Florida

Say what you want about the insurance industry — damn bloodsuckers constantly cranking up your bills — but you must admit that they understand risk. It is, at its heart, a simple business: Estimate with great precision how much you are likely to pay out in claims, and then charge customers more than that, so you make a profit. The success of insurance companies is closely wedded to their ability to analyze the real world with accuracy. Some businesses, like advertising, may run on delusion, but in insurance, that sort of thing is poison. So it poses a problem for a certain variety of right-wing free market fundamentalists when the insurance industry begins sending signals that climate change is very, very real — so real that it should be upending our way of life already.

100% Solar-Powered Town Left Virtually Unscathed After Hurricane

October 7, 2022 Kristina Zagame, EcoWatch. Create! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Florida, Solar Energy

Hurricane Ian caused mass destruction to Southwest Florida, taking dozens of lives and leaving millions without power. But in the midst of devastation, a small solar-powered community was left virtually unscathed — despite being just 12 miles northeast of hard-hit Fort Myers. Babcock Ranch is a solar-powered town with roughly 2,000 homes and more than 700,000 solar panels. Homes and businesses in Babcock are built to be energy efficient and weather resistant, many of them constructed with durable insulated panels meant to withstand Florida’s extreme weather. Many residents have additional solar panels and solar battery systems as an extra layer of protection from power outages. If Hurricane Ian was a test of the town’s resiliency, Babcock Ranch passed with flying colors.

Water Crises Portend Socialism Or Barbarism

October 2, 2022 Signý A., Left Voice. Create! Extreme weather, Floods, Infrastructure, Socialism

It’s 2022 and the climate has changed. Around the world, the new climate is making itself felt via droughts, heatwaves, floods, and storms. Many of these events are record breakers, and their effects go beyond local areas to affect global supply chains and the lives of millions of working-class people. These are more than just “natural” disasters, though: these multiple water crises are driven, sometimes even created, by a capitalist society organized to put short-term profit above long-term sustainability. Our untenable management of water illustrates the impossibility of addressing climate change under capitalism, and shows how only socialism can produce a sustainable and equitable civilization.

The Climate Movement Was Built For A World Before Climate Change

September 24, 2022 Cam Fenton, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Mutual Aid, Solidarity

We are past the point where “stopping” climate change is really possible. With global temperature rise already above 1 degree Celsius and the window on keeping warming below 1.5 degrees rapidly closing, the consequences of decades of political inaction and corporate malfeasance are already making themselves known. Every month it seems like another part of the world is being hammered by one catastrophic climate impact or another, from flooding in Puerto Rico and Pakistan to the extreme heat that melted asphalt in Europe this past summer to the wildfires raging across western North America. In the face of this new reality, climate organizing needs to evolve. For me, this reality really struck home last summer when extreme heat and wildfires ravaged the part of Canada that I call home.

We Will March, Even If We Have To Wade Through The Pakistani Floodwaters

September 9, 2022 Vijay Prashad, The Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Educate! Deforestation, Extreme weather, Flooding, Pakistan

Calamities are familiar to the people of Pakistan who have struggled through several catastrophic earthquakes, including those in 2005, 2013, and 2015 (to name the most damaging), as well as the horrendous floods of 2010. However, nothing could prepare the fifth most populated country in the world for this summer’s devastating events, which began with high temperatures and political chaos followed by unimaginable flooding. Cascading frustration with the Pakistani state defines the public mood. Taimur Rahman, the general secretary of the Mazdoor Kisan Party (‘Workers and Peasants Party’), told Peoples Dispatch that after the 2010 floods, there was ‘enormous outrage about the fact that the government had not done anything to ensure that… when there is an overflow of water, it can be controlled’.

Climate Change Causes Torrential Flooding In Pakistan

August 29, 2022 Molly Rosenzweig, Left Voice. Educate! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Flooding, Pakistan

Devastating floods are occurring across Pakistan due to monsoon rains. Since June, more than 1,000 people have been killed by floods, with thousands more being displaced and having to go without food. Capitalism makes these disasters the new normal, with workers, particularly those of the Global South, bearing the brunt. Just this weekend, tens of thousands of people have had to flee their homes in Northern Pakistan due to floods. There are many more that still need to be rescued. More than 33 million people have been affected over the past few weeks, millions of homes have been destroyed, and infrastructure such as roads and bridges have been damaged or destroyed along with millions of acres of farmland. This is not merely just one or a few bad storms.

One Out Of Seven Persons Affected By Floods; Pakistan Declares Emergency

August 28, 2022 Bharat Dogra, Popular Resistance. Educate! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Flood, Pakistan

30 to 33 million persons are reported to be seriously affected by floods in Pakistan, a country with a population of 220 million. Due to this a national emergency has been declared in Pakistan. The previous worst floods in Pakistan were recorded in 2010 when nearly 20 million people were affected, causing damages estimated at $10 billion. This was followed by a very serious flood situation next year in Sindh. What is more, there was some serious flood event or the other for the next five years. This year Sindh and Balochistan are reported to be the worst affected, although serious harm has been reported from elsewhere too. From mid-June to the last week of August, nearly 1000 persons have perished in floods and a higher number have faced injuries.

High-Profile Paper On ‘Catastrophic’ Climate Impacts

August 11, 2022 David Spratt, Resilience. Educate! Adaptation, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Sustainability

So what does this new paper say? Well, in essence, some very similar things to our report What Lies Beneath: The underestimation of existential climate risks, written with my Breakthrough colleague Ian Dunlop. When that report was first published in 2017, and then expanded in 2018 with a foreword by Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, it had a significant impact, especially in Europe, with German and Slovenian translations, and a front-cover interview with the German energy magazine, Energiewende Magazin (translation here). It was a key document in the successful campaign to have the Club of Rome adopt a climate emergency position, and its subsequent advocacy which morphed into its Planetary Emergency campaign.

The Dawn Of The Apocalypse

July 26, 2022 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Chris Hedges, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Ruling Class

The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In China, more than a dozen cities issued the “highest possible heat warning” this weekend with over 900 million people in China enduring a scorching heat wave along with severe flooding and landslides across large swathes of southern China. Dozens of people have died. Millions of Chinese have been displaced. Economic losses run into the billions of yuan. Droughts, which have destroyed crops, killed livestock and forced many to flee their homes, are creating a potential famine in the Horn of Africa.

Extinction Rebellion Break Glass At News UK On Hottest Day On Record

July 19, 2022 Extinction Rebellion. Resist! climate crisis, Extinction Rebellion, Extreme weather, United Kingdom (UK)

At 6:30am this morning, 2 people from Extinction Rebellion carefully cracked 2 windows at the entrance of the News UK building at London Bridge. At the same time, 4 others – including a scientist – chalk sprayed “TELL THE TRUTH” and “40 DEGREES = DEATH” on the front of the building, and pasted recent copies of The Sun headlines about the heatwave onto windows. Special care was taken to ensure no one was hurt when the windows were cracked. The action comes just two days after six healthcare professionals, including two GPs, were arrested for breaking windows at JP Morgan’s Canary Wharf HQ. This act of nonviolent civil disobedience comes as a response to the media’s coverage of the current heatwave. On Saturday, the British Government declared the nation’s first ever level 4 national emergency heat red alert.

We Need To Stop Pretending We Can Limit Global Warming To 1.5°C

July 11, 2022 James Dyke, Byline Times. Educate! Climate Change, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Global Warming

We are not going to limit global warming to 1.5°C. This means we will soon be entering a much warmer and more dangerous world. The threshold of 1.5°C was the highest ambition of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. It was arrived at by a realisation that warming beyond this temperature would produce intolerable suffering to those most exposed to global warming. So what can we make of politicians who continue to argue that ‘1.5°C is still alive’? Are they misinformed or are they simply lying?

In The Centre Of Global Warming

June 5, 2022 Bharat Dogra, Popular Resistance. Educate! climate crisis, Extreme weather, India, Water

May 15 this year came as a timely warning that India is in the center of the global warming crisis. On this day the maximum temperature crossed the 47 degrees Celsius limit in about 20 cities, mostly in northwest and central parts of the country. These cities also figured in the table of the hottest cities at world level on this day. Most of these cities and the surrounding countryside have been figuring prominently also in the longer heat waves which have been experienced since early April. Six of these cities are located in the Thar desert or the area close to it. These include Jaisalmer, Phalodi, Pilani, Churu, Bikaner and Ganganagar. Four other cities are concentrated in a region of 13 districts known as Bundelkhand in Central India which saw temperature reaching 49 degrees C in Banda.

Grim 2022 Drought Outlook For Western US

May 22, 2022 Imtiaz Rangwala, Consortium News. Educate! climate crisis, Droughts, Environment, Extreme weather

Much of the western U.S. has been in the grip of an unrelenting drought since early 2020. The dryness has coincided with record-breaking wildfires, intense and long-lasting heat waves, low stream flows and dwindling water supplies in reservoirs that millions of people across the region rely on. Heading into summer, the outlook is pretty grim. The National Weather Service’s latest seasonal outlook, issued May 19, 2022, described drought persisting across most of the West and parts of the Great Plains. One driver of the Western drought has been persistent La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific since the summer of 2020. During La Niña, cooler tropical Pacific waters help nudge the jet stream northward.

Politicians Continue To Fail On Climate; We Must Fight For A Livable Future

May 9, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Asia, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Sea level rise

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its sixth report in three phases beginning in August, 2021 and concluding in April 2022. The first report declared that the climate crisis is unquestionably due to human activity and called the situation a 'Code Red for Humanity.' The second and third parts indicated that not enough action is being taken not just to mitigate the crisis but also to adapt to it. Clearing the FOG speaks with Professor Benjamin Horton of the Earth Observatory of Singapore about the gravity of the crisis, including that some impacts such as sea level rise are irreversible for the foreseeable future, the importance of activism by scientists to inform the public and push policy makers and how to keep fighting for a more livable future.

South African KwaZulu-Natal Province Imperiled By Flooding

April 28, 2022 Abayomi Azikiwe, Popular Resistance. Educate! Africa, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Western imperialism

Another climate disaster in the Southern Africa region has taken place over the last two weeks in the KwaZulu-Natal Province (KZN), where the important port city of Durban is located. Official reports from the South African government says that several hundred people have been killed due to the flooding while tens of thousands of others have been dislocated and in drastic need of humanitarian assistance. The government of President Cyril Ramaphosa and the parliament has declared a state of disaster in response to the flooding. The South African National Defense Forces (SANDF) has announced that it is deploying up to 10,000 troops to assist in the relief and rescue operations. These floods come in the aftermath of a series of other weather events which have been attributed to climate change.

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