Conviction of Steven Donziger, said one critic, “perfectly encapsulates how corporate power has twisted the U.S. justice system to protect corporate interests and punish their enemies.”
Environmental justice advocates and other progressives on Friday condemned a federal judge’s decision Friday to sentence human rights lawyer Steven Donziger to six months in prison—following more than two years of house arrest related to a lawsuit he filed decades ago against oil giant Chevron.
The sentence, delivered by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in New York City, represents “an international outrage,” tweeted journalist Emma Vigeland following its announcement.
Donziger’s sentence came a day after the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said it was “appalled” by the U.S. legal system’s treatment of the former environmental lawyer and demanded the U.S. government “remedy the situation of Mr. Steven Donziger without delay and bring it in conformity with the relevant international norms” by immediately releasing him.
Donziger represented a group of farmers and Indigenous people in the Lago Agrio region of Ecuador in the 1990s in a lawsuit against Texaco—since acquired by Chevron—in which the company was accused of contaminating soil and water with its “deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing waste into the Amazon.”
An Ecuadorian court awarded the plaintiffs a $9.5 billion judgment in 2011—a decision upheld by multiple courts in Ecuador—only to have a U.S. judge reject the ruling, accusing Donziger of bribery and evidence tampering. Chevron also countersued Donziger in 2011.
In 2019, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York—a former corporate lawyer with investments in Chevron—held Donziger in contempt of court after he refused to disclose privileged information about his clients to the fossil fuel industry. Kaplan placed Donziger under house arrest, where he has remained under strict court monitoring for 787 days.
In addition to Kaplan’s own connections to Chevron, the judge appointed private attorneys to prosecute the case, including one who had worked for a firm that represented the oil giant.
Preska, who found Donziger guilty of the contempt charges in July, is a leader of the right-wing Federalist Society, which counts Chevron among its financial backers.
“As I face sentencing on Day 787 of house arrest, never forget what this case is really about,” tweeted Donziger on Friday morning, as he awaited the sentencing. “Chevron caused a mass industrial poisoning in the Amazon that crushed the lives of Indigenous peoples. Six courts and 28 appellate judges found the company guilty.”
Donziger indicated Friday afternoon that he plans to appeal the sentence.
“Stay strong,” he tweeted along with a photo from a rally attended by his supporters Friday.
BREAKING: Flouting the U.N. decision ordering my release, Judge Preska sentenced me to 6 months in prison. Still on house arrest until the appeals court rules on my motion for release pending appeal. Picture is from rally this morning.
350.org co-founder and author Bill McKibben said on social media that Donziger “deserves our thanks and support” for “daring to point out that Big Oil had poisoned the rainforest.”Rick Claypool, research director for Public Citizen, tweeted that Donziger’s case “perfectly encapsulates how corporate power has twisted the U.S. justice system to protect corporate interests and punish their enemies”—noting that as Donziger is ordered to prison for six months, members of the Sackler family recently won immunity from opioid lawsuits targeting their private company, Purdue Pharma.
“This ruling was done to deter ANYONE from crossing corporate special interests,” said progressive former congressional candidate Jen Perelman.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“We continue to bankroll the very fossil fuel companies responsible for the climate crisis, then wonder why our planet is on fire.”
A new report released Wednesday identifies $86 billion worth of offshore tax loopholes that a dozen U.S.-based oil and gas companies exploit each year as part of a “tax bonanza,” a finding that comes as climate justice advocates push Congress to eliminate subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
“Our government cannot continue to bankroll climate destruction,” Friends of the Earth tweeted Wednesday.
NEW REPORT: Exxon Mobil currently relies on a tax loophole worth nearly one BILLION dollars. Enough is enough — time to gut all $121 billion in fossil fuel subsidies. Our government cannot continue to bankroll climate destruction.#EndFossilFuelSubsidieshttps://t.co/1gdN6oEgQt
The report (pdf), compiled by Friends of the Earth, Oxfam America, and BailoutWatch, reveals the consequences of “two esoteric provisions in the tax code worth tens of billions of dollars to Big Oil’s multinational majors,” including ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and other polluters most responsible for the climate emergency.
As a result of the GOP’s 2017 tax law, corporations that drill overseas benefit from special treatment under the Global Intangible Low-Tax (GILTI) framework, which covers Foreign Oil and Gas Extraction Income (FOGEI).
The Treasury Department estimates that repealing the Trump-era exemption for FOGEI would raise $84.8 billion in revenue from just 12 companies that are currently eligible for the carveout, the report notes.
“It is unfortunate but not surprising that the handful of companies benefitting from these loopholes are lobbying to protect their special treatment.” —Chrive Kuveke, BailoutWatch
Another corporate handout, the so-called dual capacity loophole, is “a longstanding gimmick” wherein fossil fuel giants “artificially inflat[e] their foreign tax bills” to evade U.S. taxes.
Although they are permitted to claim tax credits for taxes paid to foreign governments, U.S. companies are not allowed to do so for non-tax payments such as royalties.
“In practice, however, the categories often are commingled—particularly when companies make a single combined payment including both taxes and fees,” the report explains. “A foreign country may even try to disguise non-tax payments as a tax, knowing that in many cases a multinational company may receive a foreign tax credit from its home country. Existing regulation gives dual capacity taxpayers vast latitude to assert what portions of their payments are taxes eligible to offset U.S. tax bills.”
Eliminating the dual capacity loophole would raise at least an additional $1.4 billion, according to the Biden administration, while the Joint Committee on Taxation puts the figure somewhere between $5.6 billion and $13.1 billion. The report points out that “the estimates vary so widely in part because we have precious little visibility into Big Oil’s payments to governments—and that’s just how the companies want it.”
“As Democrats propose closing loopholes to help cover the cost of their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package,” the report states, “these obscure subsidies present a rare chance to act on climate, fund infrastructure, and promote tax fairness in a single stroke.”
While the House Ways and Means Committee’s markup of the Build Back Better Act includes a tax reform proposal that would reverse the FOGEI carveout and the dual capacity loophole, it would leave intact at least $35 billion in federal subsidies for domestic fossil fuel production—despite President Joe Biden’s call to phase out polluter giveaways over a decade.
House Democrats’ failure to stop showering Big Oil with public money—a move supported by a majority of people in the U.S. and many, though not all, Democratic lawmakers—has drawn progressives’ ire.
“The House bill made a decent start by targeting Big Oil’s international tax loopholes, but it went nowhere near far enough,” Lukas Ross, Climate and Energy Justice program manager at Friends of the Earth, said Wednesday in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “needs to lead on climate and ensure that all $121 billion in fossil fuel subsidies are repealed in the final package,” Ross added.
According to Daniel Mulé, policy lead for Oxfam’s Extractive Industries Tax and Transparency project, “U.S. Big Oil companies like Exxon and Chevron have fought tooth and nail to keep the payments they make to governments around the world a secret, while paying lip service to the global movement for payment transparency.”
“This secrecy,” said Mulé, “has a potential tax impact in the U.S. as well, as it makes it all the more difficult to discern if U.S. oil and gas companies are illegitimately inflating their foreign tax credits.”
The report draws attention to several legislative proposals that would do away with subsidies for domestic fossil fuel production as well as tax exemptions for foreign extraction, including:
The No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act from Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas);
The Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act from Sens. Van Hollen, Sanders, Whitehouse, Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Reps. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) and Jan Schakowski (D-Ill.);
The End Oil and Gas Tax Subsidies Act from Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Sean Casten (D-Ill.), Donald McEachin (D-Va.), and Katie Porter (D-Calif.).
The report was released the same day members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus urged House leaders to include a repeal of domestic fossil fuel subsidies in the Democrats’ Build Back Better Act.
“Instead of creating jobs,” the progressive lawmakers wrote, the subsidies “widen the profit margin of fossil fuel companies.”
We continue to bankroll the very fossil fuel companies responsible for the climate crisis, then wonder why our planet is on fire.
Thank you to the reps calling for an end to Big Oil’s $86 billion in offshore tax loopholes — as well as their $35 billion in domestic handouts! pic.twitter.com/hY0EVsOMK4
The report emphasizes that fossil fuel champions—including the Exxon lobbyist who was caught on camera discussing how the company benefits from offshore tax loopholes and intends to further undermine climate action—are fighting hard to preserve billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded handouts.
“Big Oil isn’t going quietly,” said Chrive Kuveke, an analyst at BailoutWatch. “Since Biden became president, it is unfortunate but not surprising that the handful of companies benefitting from these loopholes are lobbying to protect their special treatment.”
Photo by Extinction Rebellion NYC / Twitter @XR_NYC
At least 40 climate activists were arrested Friday at the New York City offices of JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and Bank of America, organizers said, as campaigners across the United States demanded financial institutions stop supporting the destruction of the planet.
“People are in denial about the mess we’re in,” said Kerith Creo of Extinction Rebellion (XR) NYC. “We’re sending a message loud and clear that the little action that politicians and greenwashing CEOs have taken so far does not begin to deal with the magnitude of this crisis.”
The protest actions included delivering 150,000 petition signatures as part of the Stop the Money Pipeline (STMP) coalition‘s “Deadline Glasgow: Defund Climate Chaos” campaign to pressure banks ahead of COP 26, a United Nations summit set to start on October 31.
Despite financial institutions’ net-zero emissions by 2050 pledges, the petition highlights, “they are providing loans, insurance, and billions in investment capital to corporations expanding the fossil fuel industry and deforesting the Amazon and other tropical forests―companies that are guilty of human rights abuses and violations of Indigenous sovereignty.”
The petition calls out some specific projects—such as Line 3—and urges banks, insurers, asset managers, and the Biden administration to “end their support for companies engaged in climate destruction and human rights abuses” before the two-week U.N. summit in Scotland.
@XR_NYC is staging a boat outside @Chase HQ, who is the biggest fossil fuel funder in the world.
They poured $317 billion poured into fossil fuels since the 2015 Paris Agreement. Who pays the price for Hurricane Ida? We do.https://t.co/1pZUyDyRLD
The upcoming negotiations in Glasgow “are the most important international climate talks since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015,” STMP said in a statement Friday. “It is also supposed to be ‘the climate finance COP.'”
In New York City, climate activists set up a boat outside the office of JPMorgan Chase, urging the bank to “stop the greenwashing,” and draped a banner that read “#1 Funder of Climate Death” over the building’s entrance.
At Bank of America’s Manhattan office, “half a dozen women blockaded the entrance and a seventh woman sat in a hammock supported by a large tripod on the sidewalk,” according to XR. Outside Citibank’s building, “activists set up a camp on the lawn near the entrance and put up a tripod to which they locked themselves down.”
And thank you to these activists at @Citibank HQ this morning for also risking arrest to bring attention to the SECOND worst fossil fuel funder @XR_NYChttps://t.co/4bLjmuPgff
“We’ve reached the breaking point,” said Christina See of XR NYC. “We need our government leaders to take action immediately. The New York City area saw over 40 deaths due to record breaking floods just a few weeks ago. The climate crisis is here, now.”
The remnants of Hurricane Ida—which initially made landfall in Louisiana on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—caused fatal flooding across the Northeast, sparking warnings from not only climate activists but also political leaders about what the future holds.
While touring damage in New York and New Jersey, President Joe Biden said that “we got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red; the nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”
Climate campaigners responded to Biden’s comments by urging him to declare a national climate emergency and stop all fossil fuel projects, highlighting his refusal to block the Line 3 tar sands pipeline opposed by Indigenous leaders and environmentalists in Minnesota.
The protests came as the U.S. president held a climate meeting with leaders of major economies and confirmed a new global pledge to reduce methane pollution at least 30% by 2030. Biden’s event followed his leadership summit in April, during which he pledged to cut the nation’s overall planet-heating emissions in half within this decade.
Activists on Friday “shut down 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle, and disrupted business at the Canadian Consulate, Chase, and Bank of America,” according to the Washington city’s arm of 350.org.
STMP explained that “they’re targeting the world’s biggest financers of climate chaos, as well as the Canadian government, who bought the troubled Trans Mountain oil pipeline in 2018.”
The demonstrations in New York City, Seattle, and beyond came as a new U.N. analysis revealed that recent emissions reduction pledges governments have made in anticipation of COP 26 are nowhere near ambitious enough to meet the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C target.
According the new report, the world is on track for 2.7°C or warming by 2100—a revelation that prompted U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to warn that a failure to meet the Paris temperature goal “will be measured in the massive loss of lives and livelihoods.”
“The climate crisis has not disappeared,” said Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. “It’s the opposite—it’s even more urgent now than it was before.”
Young people by the hundreds of thousands took to the streets across the globe on Friday to deliver a resounding message to world leaders: The climate crisis is getting worse, and only radical action will be enough to avert catastrophe and secure a just, sustainable future for all.
“As emissions and inequalities increase, we rise up and demand climate justice.”
From Pakistan to Italy to Germany to the Philippines, the worldwide “Uproot the System” actions marked the largest climate demonstrations since the coronavirus pandemic forced campaigners to take their protests online last year. Climate activists in developing countries—where access to vaccines is limited due to artificial supply constraints and hoarding by rich nations—were still forced to limit the size of their demonstrations Friday as a public health precaution.
“Last time it was digital and nobody was paying attention to us,” Yusuf Baluch, a 17-year-old activist from the Pakistani province of Balochistan, toldReuters. “In the global north, people are getting vaccinated so they might be out in huge quantities. But in the global south, we are still limited.”
The Global Climate Strike continues! Balochistan is predominantly agriculture-based. They have been affected by drought due to climate change and the problems faced by people are increasing alarmingly.
Above: Photo Collage / Great Thunberg – via Instagram / Lynxotic
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, whose solitary sit-down strike outside her home country’s parliament in 2018 helped spark the global Fridays for Future movement, said that “it has been a very strange year and a half with this pandemic.”
“But of course, the climate crisis has not disappeared. It’s the opposite—it’s even more urgent now than it was before,” said Thunberg, who on Friday joined a large demonstration in Berlin, which was hammered by massive, climate-linked floods in July.
Watch Thunberg’s full speech in front of the Reichstag building:
Organizers said that more than 1400 climate strikes are set to take place in at least 70 countries Friday, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend demonstrations in Germany alone.
“As emissions and inequalities increase, we rise up and demand climate justice,” saidBerlin-based climate activist Luisa Neubauer.
The latest youth-led global action kicked off just weeks ahead of the pivotal COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, which many civil society organizations want to be postponed over fears that inequities in coronavirus vaccine access could prevent delegates from developing nations—those most vulnerable to the climate crisis—from attending.
Equalizing global vaccine distribution is one of the six demands that climate campaigners are aiming to put before world leaders during Friday’s mass demonstrations. The full list is as follows:
The Global North needs to cut emissions drastically by divesting from fossil fuels and ending its extraction, burning, and use. We need concrete plans and detailed annual carbon budgets with roadmaps and milestones to ensure we get to net-zero with justice and equity in the time needed to address climate change.
The colonizers of the north have a climate debt to pay for their disproportionate amount of historic emissions and that starts with the increase of climate finance to implement anti-racist climate reparations, the cancellation of debts especially for damage caused by extreme weather events, and providing adaptation funds that serve the communities.
Work towards a genuinely global recovery from Covid-19 by ensuring equitable vaccine distribution worldwide and suspending intellectual property restrictions on Covid-19 technologies. This is an essential step towards a global, green, and just recovery.
Recognize the tangibility of the climate crisis as a risk to human safety and secure the rights of climate refugees in international law.
Recognize the invaluable impact of biodiversity on indigenous communities’ lives and culture, and commit to make ecocide an international punishable crime.
Stop the violence and criminalization against indigenous peoples, small farmers, small fisherfolk, and other environmental and land defenders. Support the work they do. Respect and listen to our defenders.
The worldwide demonstrations came a week after the United Nations warned that even if the 191 parties to the Paris Agreement meet their current climate targets, global greenhouse gas emissions will still rise 16% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. The U.N. also estimated that the planet is on track for 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, a level of heating that experts say would be cataclysmic—particularly for developing nations.
At the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week, the leaders of vulnerable countries pushed wealthy nations—the largest contributors to the climate emergency—to stop shirking their responsibilities to confront the planetary crisis.
“We simply have no higher ground to cede,” Marshall Islands President David Kabua said Wednesday. “The world simply cannot delay climate ambition any further.”
Participants in Friday’s global action pointedly amplified that message. Valentina Ruas, a Brazilian activist, toldThe Guardian that “the global north should be developing climate policies that have at their core climate justice and accountability to the most affected people and areas.”
“Instead,” she added, “they continue to exploit vulnerable communities and recklessly extract fossil fuel, while bragging about their insignificant emission reduction plans.”
International survey reveals ‘shocking’ rise of eco-anxiety and hopelessness. “If this isn’t a wake up call for world leaders, what is?”
Amidst a sharp increase in deadly wildfires and flooding, increasingly violent storms, and extreme heat, new research published Tuesday found that refusal by governments to act on the climate emergency is causing a widespread sense of hopelessness and eco-anxiety in teenagers and young adults worldwide.
The global advocacy group Avaaz joined researchers at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom and five other universities to survey 10,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 25—the first large-scale eco-anxiety survey of its kind—and discovered that majorities of the respondents were fearful for the lives and livelihoods of their families and the future of the planet.
“If this isn’t a wake up call for world leaders, what is?” —AvaazAs Luisa Neubauer, a 25-year-old leader of the global Fridays for Future movement in Germany, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, while the climate extremes caused by the planetary emergency are frightening, inaction by world leaders “is too much to handle, too much to accept.””Government is pushing us in front of a bus,” Neubauer told the outlet.
The mental health professionals who conducted the study spoke with young people in 10 countries including Nigeria, the Philippines, India, the U.K., and the U.S., finding that respondents in both wealthy countries and the Global South are facing “feelings of anger, fear, and powerlessness” as the climate crisis directly causes at least one famine, deadly flash flooding, and wildfires in multiple regions.
Nearly half of respondents said their worries about the climate crisis negatively affect their daily life and their ability to function, and more than half told the experts they feel humanity is “doomed.”
Four in 10 said they would hesitate to have children in the future due to the state of the planet, while three-quarters of respondents described their futures as “frightening.”
Avaaz reported that one of the most “shocking” findings was how respondents described their feelings about government inaction, including more than half who said they feel policymakers “are betraying them.”
A shocking 58% of the children and young people surveyed say that governments are betraying them. If this isn’t a wake up call for world leaders, what is? #WeFeelThisToopic.twitter.com/D1EPwjaHEJ
Young people in the cyclone-ravages Philippines and Brazil, where deforestation—driven by President Jair Bolsonaro’s government—has become increasingly destructive in recent years, showed the most anxiety of the countries surveyed. More than nine in 10 respondents said they were frightened about the future.
Caroline Hickman, lead author of the study, which was published in The Lanceton Tuesday, cautioned adults against telling young people it is up to them to save the future of the planet.”Thinking the way to cure eco-anxiety is eco-action isn’t right,” Hickman toldThomson Reuters, adding that what will solve the climate crisis is decisive action by world governments.
The survey “shows eco-anxiety is not just for environmental destruction alone, but inextricably linked to government inaction on climate change. The young feel abandoned and betrayed by governments,” Hickman told the BBC. “Governments need to listen to the science and not pathologize young people who feel anxious.”
The survey results were released less than two months ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26), where policymakers will meet in Glasgow to discuss commitments to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, provide climate mitigation support for frontline communities across the globe, and rapidly transition to an emissions-free energy system.
Young people are “doing everything we can” to push for climate action, Neubauer told Thomson Reuters, “but that won’t be enough.”
“We won’t fix it” through the Fridays for Future movement, she added. “We need everyone there.”
New Orleans, Lake Tahoe, NYC – that’s just this week and just in the US… and a drought in the west that is a serious growing threat
The warnings are coming hard and heavy after multiple previous and eerily similar catastrophes, only they just keep getting more severe. Each one is a unique event and each has a litany and list of records that smash all prior statistics since record keeping began.
“Hottest month ever”, “most rainfall in an hour ever recorded”, “worst flood in NY history”, these hyperbolic sounding statements are not hyperbole at all, just facts, but since they are becoming a nearly constant refrain, the entire situation appears surreal.
Journalists use words like “dystopian” and twitter users compare photos and general panic to the climate disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow” and note that the current reality is already scarier than what the movie was able to convey.
Underneath the shock is a layer of manufactured apathy
Even as the signs of an expanding and accelerating worldwide disaster are more obvious, season by season, month by month and even day by day, there is, nevertheless, a kind of paralysis surrounding the fear.
Fossil fuel subsidies continue to be handed out, so many half-measures and excuses are bandied about, and personal, individual responsibility is used as a bludgeon to guilt the populous into a state of inaction.
It’s called a climate emergency because it is an emergency, so act like it, to paraphrase Greta Thunberg. Unfortunately, dire emergencies are not scarce at the moment, and the situation is likely to get worse, meanwhile it is a valid question; what would be done if the climate crisis were actually treated like an emergency?
New York Floods, Ida aftermath, September 2021
Above: Photo: Lyxotic / Adobe Stock
The remnants of Hurricane Ida resulted in extreme dumping of historic levels of rainfall, with Central Park in N.Y.C. receiving 3.15 inches of rain in just one hour. Newark Airport was shut down and many flooded streets in the five boroughs and surrounding areas of New Jersey and Pennsylvania were transformed into virtual rivers. Subway entrances and basement dwellings quickly filled until they overflowed.
The national Weather Service issued its first ever “flash flood emergency” for the area as well as both NY and NJ leaders issuing states of emergency.
The death toll quickly rose to at least 50 people. Reports of those that were killed mostly died as a result of being flooded in basement living spaces or overtaken by water both inside and outside their vehicles.
The Climate Crisis is not a movie and a majority has to demand action of Government and Industry: the individual is not to blame
In a way the problem inherently contains the seeds to its own resolution. The current state of climate emergency could have been partially averted, or at least slowed down, had government and, in particular, the fossil fuel industrial complex done more than talk and come up with tricks like greenwashing and propaganda to distract and delay the obvious need to stop carbon (CO2) pollution. The signs were evident for many decades, and some alternative solutions were known for over a century, while the fossil fuel behemoth just kept expanding.
Now, with the crisis getting more extreme and deadly, seemingly by the hour, it will take an equally extreme change in the response – a literal washing away of the status quo that created the problem. That may look like a system wide collapse, bringing down the structure that props up the suicidal stupidity of the current system, or something equally extreme, if real solutions are to have time to have any chance of having an impact.
Hurricane Ida made landfall as a Category 4 Sunday morning (August 30, 2021) also marking the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Ida had maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, just shy of making it a Category 5 (winds greater than 155 mph). Radar approximates that up to about 17 inches of rainfall were recorded just west of New Orleans.
Over a million customers lost power in Louisiana, making it the 2nd largest power outage in the state since 2000. The outage could leave residents without power for up to six weeks, rendering them helpless for electricity during increasingly hot late summer weather. Numerous streets need power lines raised that were brought down or snapped by Ida’s winds.
Cantrell, the New Orleans major spoke of voluntary evacuations, particularly for residents that have special needs, seniors or those vulnerable to the heat.
Extreme weather, ocean temps, rising sea levels with melting ice caps, all connected and all increasingly menacing
It has appeared, unfortunately, for nearly decades as if the predictions of ocean temperature increase and sea level rise would have to continue until multiple major cities are fully submerged before any real steps would begin to combat the causes.
Is that still the case after the four “disaster stories” this week? Was the tragedy and destruction enough to have people begin to actually realize that there are no decades left to “wait and see”?
Caldor / Lake Tahoe Fire
The Caldor Fire has burned around 213,270 acres covering 2 California counties (El Dorado and Amador) and currently only 32% contained (as of September 3rd). The fires have been active for 19 days according to Cal Fire. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate. The looming threat of the fires reaching the popular tourist location of South Lake Tahoe are safe for now, however, and flames have been averted.
The fire created widespread haze and smoke, resulting in extremely hazardous air quality.
The total number of structures destroyed by the fire is 857 as of Sept 3rd, marking it as the 20th most destructive fire in recorded history for California.
Water levels from the largest reservoir on the Colorado River and Lake Mead, which supply drinking and irrigation water to Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, California and Mexico have reached record low levels.
Regulators now have to make crucial steps to protect another crucial water source, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the water system that helps to provide 2/3 of CA population, irrigation for agricultural industry as well as state’s norther border with Oregon.
California residents could be facing future water restriction, however according to Gov. Gavin Newsom it is not likely to be in force until the end of September (the delay could be his attempt to avoid any unpopular mandates before the Sept 14. Recall Election).
Some drastic measures have been taken so far at National State parks in order to help conserve water including closing bathrooms and showers and shutting off water faucets/fountains.
Four stories just from this week: is this a turning point and a wake up call that we desperately need?
Does New York City, or Miami, or Mumbai have to be permanently flooded or fully submerged before we “notice” and demand action? Or, is now the time to mark the date – September 2021 as the moment that the climate emergency was finally “real”? Will it be seen, understood as imminent, and acted on as an emergency of the magnitude that it already is?
Extreme Weather Accelerates in Frequency and Destructive Power
Ida hit Louisiana with extreme force, causing damage and mayhem, and leaving hundreds of thousands without power earlier this week. The remnants of that destruction have now moved Northeast. Next, Hurricane Larry is expected to become a major storm by Friday according to the National Hurricane Center.
Effects of Hurricane Ida unloaded in the New York City metro area, creating, unprecedented extreme rainfall. So much so that for the first time ever, a “flash flood emergency” was initiated and both New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy declared states of emergency starting late Wednesday.
“This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!,” the National Weather Service wrote. And example of the extreme nature of the deluge comes via the stat that Central Park got more rain in one hour than it normally would in the entire month of September. More than 2.5 times the previous highest count even, which was tallied just recently.
Parts of New York City and the Tri-State, covering a population of where near 9 million people reside have been affected. Roads flooded, transforming the paths to looks more like raging rivers and rendering subways, cars, and basements of homes useless.
At least 9 people have been reported dead as a result of storm.
Images posted throughout social media overnight showed the insane amount of watering surging over roads as public transportations attempt to navigate and cars get stuck in the water. Even a frightening video of tornado happening in real time in Mullica Hill, New Jersey.
All too familiar the Elephant in the room needs acknowledgment
Although barely mentioned in the midst of chaos and people desperately trying to get to work on Thursday, climate change is giving a kind of early warning signal via extreme weather evens like this, as well as influencing the severity of the massive drought worsening daily in the west, immense wildfires and natural disasters that are being seen with unprecedented frequency and intensity.
If there was ever a wake up call to change and respond with speed and action, this is it.
On twitter there was a thread that likened the photos and videos to the prescient sci-fi film “The Day After Tomorrow” which depicted an ice-age occurring as a result of climate change, and also had scenes of massive flooding (due to the sea level rising which is currently happening, day by day).
The comparison is a stark one, with the Hollywood generated special effects stills not nearly as chilling as the current reality showed in photos being shared and tweeted.
There’s an all too familiar thread building here – larger more intense and devastating events that many keep saying are a coincidence or “random”. I think any child can see (@gretathunberg ?) that there is zero chance anymore that coincidence plays any more that a minuscule role in these tragedies growing, expanding and increasing exponentially.
Unfortunately, we can expect more of the same, no only here in this country, as mentioned above with Larry queuing up of shore, but around the world with extreme and dangerous droughts, heatwaves, polar vortex episodes, floods, deadly wildfires and more becoming the “norm”.
The time to recognize the origin of these mounting calamities has passed, but any proactive, powerful response by governments and industry has barely begun. Perhaps the images and tragedies now being documented and shared (such as below) can help to harden our resolve to see that a change, toward the drastic measures required to combat this climate emergency will finally begin in earnest.
Queens Boulevard in Maspeth/Corona is a literal river at the moment. Bus fully flooded driving through, multiple cars stuck in the water. Absolutely insane. pic.twitter.com/LuSL9uWCEl
The Caldor Fire had burned 204,390 acres and 20%-contained
The raging Caldor Fire that has already forced thousands of people to evacuate, is now becoming a critical threat to the popular tourist location, South Lake Tahoe. Reports of more than 34,000 structures are at risk.
There are approximately 4,000 firefighters and 1,000 California National Guard members that are helping to fight off the growing fires.
A spokesperson for California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services told CNN that over 53,000 people have been placed under evacuation orders.
The fire has already burned more than 300 square miles and destroyed hundred of residential structures. The city is facing wind gusts blowing at 35 miles per hour and stronger which continues to help the fire spread further down into the Tahoe basin.
Devastating Wildfires – continued reminders of the Climate Crisis
Greta Thunberg, the vocal climate crisis activist retweeted the below the video of the fires in California. There is so much confusion over the question of exactly which of the many, many “extreme weather events” as they are now called, are directly attributable to climate change, global warming and Co2 in the atmosphere.
This is, for Greta Thunberg and anyone reading this with an ounce of sense, a moot point. The larger overarching point is that the threat of total world destruction as a result of buying fossil fuel and other human impacts on the environment has been long settled as a very dangerous and rapidly worsening reality.
Splitting hairs by constantly questioning alternative origins for extreme events, that clearly are increasing in their number and severity, is a kind of “climate denial-lite” that is as ridiculous as it is dangerous. Ultimately it is the perspective of those like Greta, that must be adopted and understood by the millions (billions), before it is too late. Only then, when the threat is faced head on, is there a chance we might prevent a rapid slide into oblivion.
Thunberg tweeted this week “Wildfires, floods, droughts, heatwaves and other (un)natural disasters rage all over the world. Many now ask “What will it take for people in power to act?”. Well, it will many things, but above all it will take: massive pressure from media and massive pressure from the public.”
One of the country’s most important sources of fresh water is in peril, the latest victim of the accelerating climate crisis.
On a 110-degree day several years ago, surrounded by piles of sand and rock in the desert outside of Las Vegas, I stepped into a yellow cage large enough to fit three standing adults and was lowered 600 feet through a black hole into the ground. There, at the bottom, amid pooling water and dripping rock, was an enormous machine driving a cone-shaped drill bit into the earth. The machine was carving a cavernous, 3-mile tunnel beneath the bottom of the nation’s largest freshwater reservoir, Lake Mead.
Lake Mead, a reservoir formed by the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, is one of the most important pieces of infrastructure on the Colorado River, supplying fresh water to Nevada, California, Arizona and Mexico. The reservoir hasn’t been full since 1983. In 2000, it began a steady decline caused by epochal drought. On my visit in 2015, the lake was just about 40% full. A chalky ring on the surrounding cliffs marked where the waterline once reached, like the residue on an empty bathtub. The tunnel far below represented Nevada’s latest salvo in a simmering water war: the construction of a $1.4 billion drainage hole to ensure that if the lake ever ran dry, Las Vegas could get the very last drop.
For years, experts in the American West have predicted that, unless the steady overuse of water was brought under control, the Colorado River would no longer be able to support all of the 40 million people who depend on it. Over the past two decades, Western states took incremental steps to save water, signed agreements to share what was left and then, like Las Vegas, did what they could to protect themselves. But they believed the tipping point was still a long way off.
Like the record-breaking heat waves and the ceaseless mega-fires, the decline of the Colorado River has been faster than expected. This year, even though rainfall and snowpack high up in the Rocky Mountains were at near-normal levels, the parched soils and plants stricken by intense heat absorbed much of the water, and inflows to Lake Powell were around one-fourth of their usual amount. The Colorado’s flow has already declined by nearly 20%, on average, from its flow throughout the 1900s, and if the current rate of warming continues, the loss could well be 50% by the end of this century.
Earlier this month, federal officials declared an emergency water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time. The shortage declaration forces reductions in water deliveries to specific states, beginning with the abrupt cutoff of nearly one-fifth of Arizona’s supply from the river, and modest cuts for Nevada and Mexico, with more negotiations and cuts to follow. But it also sounded an alarm: one of the country’s most important sources of fresh water is in peril, another victim of the accelerating climate crisis.
Americans are about to face all sorts of difficult choices about how and where to live as the climate continues to heat up. States will be forced to choose which coastlines to abandon as sea levels rise, which wildfire-prone suburbs to retreat from and which small towns cannot afford new infrastructure to protect against floods or heat. What to do in the parts of the country that are losing their essential supply of water may turn out to be the first among those choices.
The Colorado River’s enormous significance extends well beyond the American West. In addition to providing water for the people of seven states, 29 federally recognized tribes and northern Mexico, its water is used to grow everything from the carrots stacked on supermarket shelves in New Jersey to the beef in a hamburger served at a Massachusetts diner. The power generated by its two biggest dams — the Hoover and Glen Canyon — is marketed across an electricity grid that reaches from Arizona to Wyoming.
The formal declaration of the water crisis arrived days after the Census Bureau released numbers showing that, even as the drought worsened over recent decades, hundreds of thousands more people have moved to the regions that depend on the Colorado.
Phoenix expanded more over the past 10 years than any other large American city, while smaller urban areas across Arizona, Nevada, Utah and California each ranked among the fastest-growing places in the country. The river’s water supports roughly 15 million more people today than it did when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992. These statistics suggest that the climate crisis and explosive development in the West are on a collision course. And it raises the question: What happens next?
Since about 70% of water delivered from the Colorado River goes to growing crops, not to people in cities, the next step will likely be to demand large-scale reductions for farmers and ranchers across millions of acres of land, forcing wrenching choices about which crops to grow and for whom — an omen that many of America’s food-generating regions might ultimately have to shift someplace else as the climate warms.
California, so far shielded from major cuts, has already agreed to reductions that will take effect if the drought worsens. But it may be asked to do more. Its enormous share of the river, which it uses to irrigate crops across the Imperial Valley and for Los Angeles and other cities, will be in the crosshairs when negotiations over a diminished Colorado begin again. The Imperial Irrigation District there is the largest single water rights holder from the entire basin and has been especially resistant to compromise over the river. It did not sign the drought contingency plan laying out cuts that other big players on the Colorado system agreed to in 2019.
New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — states in the river’s Upper Basin — will most likely also face pressure to use less water. Should that happen, places like Utah that hoped to one day support faster development and economic growth with their share of the river may have to surrender their ambition.
The negotiations that led to the region being even minimally prepared for this latest shortage were agonizing, but they were merely a warm-up for the pain-inflicting cuts and sacrifices that almost certainly will be required if the water shortages persist over the coming decades. The region’s leaders, for all their efforts to compromise, have long avoided these more difficult conversations. One way or another, farms will have to surrender their water, and cities will have to live with less of it. Time has run out for other options.
Western states arrived at this crucible in large part because of their own doing. The original multistate compact that governs the use of the Colorado, which was signed in 1922, was exuberantly optimistic: The states agreed to divide up an estimated total amount of water that turned out to be much more than what would actually flow. Nevertheless, with the building of the Hoover Dam to collect and store river water, and the development of the Colorado’s plumbing system of canals and pipelines to deliver it, the West was able to open a savings account to fund its extraordinary economic growth. Over the years since, those states have overdrawn the river’s average deposits. It should be no surprise that even without the pressures of climate change, such a plan would lead to bankruptcy.
Making a bad situation worse, leaders in Western states have allowed wasteful practices to continue that add to the material threat facing the region. A majority of the water used by farms — and thus much of the river — goes to growing nonessential crops like alfalfa and other grasses that feed cattle for meat production. Much of those grasses are also exported to feed animals in the Middle East and Asia. Short of regulating which types of crops are allowed, which state authorities may not even have the authority to do, it may fall to consumers to drive change. Water usage data suggests that if Americans avoid meat one day each week they could save an amount of water equivalent to the entire flow of the Colorado each year, more than enough water to alleviate the region’s shortages.
Water is also being wasted because of flaws in the laws. The rights to take water from the river are generally distributed — like deeds to property — based on seniority. It is very difficult to take rights away from existing stakeholders, whether cities or individual ranchers, so long as they use the water allocated to them. That system creates a perverse incentive: Across the basin, ranchers often take their maximum allocation each year, even if just to spill it on the ground, for fear that, if they don’t, they could lose the right to take that water in the future. Changes in the laws that remove the threat of penalties for not exercising water rights, or that expand rewards for ranchers who conserve water, could be an easy remedy.
A breathtaking amount of the water from the Colorado — about 10% of the river’s recent total flow — simply evaporates off the sprawling surfaces of large reservoirs as they bake in the sun. Last year, evaporative losses from Lake Mead and Lake Powell alone added up to almost a million acre feet of water — or nearly twice what Arizona will be forced to give up now as a result of this month’s shortage declaration. These losses are increasing as the climate warms. Yet federal officials have so far discounted technological fixes — like covering the water surface to reduce the losses — and they continue to maintain both reservoirs, even though both of them are only around a third full. If the two were combined, some experts argue, much of those losses could be avoided.
For all the hard-won progress made at the negotiating table, it remains to be seen whether the stakeholders can tackle the looming challenges that come next. Over the years, Western states and tribes have agreed on voluntary cuts, which defused much of the political chaos that would otherwise have resulted from this month’s shortage declaration, but they remain disparate and self-interested parties hoping they can miraculously agree on a way to manage the river without truly changing their ways. For all their wishful thinking, climate science suggests there is no future in the region that does not include serious disruptions to its economy, growth trajectory and perhaps even quality of life.
The uncomfortable truth is that difficult and unpopular decisions are now unavoidable. Prohibiting some water uses as unacceptable — long eschewed as antithetical to personal freedoms and the rules of capitalism — is now what’s needed most.
The laws that determine who gets water in the West, and how much of it, are based on the principle of “beneficial use” — generally the idea that resources should further economic advancement. But whose economic advancement? Do we support the farmers in Arizona who grow alfalfa to feed cows in the United Arab Emirates? Or do we ensure the survival of the Colorado River, which supports some 8% of the nation’s GDP?
Earlier this month, the Bureau of Reclamation released lesser-noticed projections for water levels, and they are sobering. The figures include an estimate for what the bureau calls “minimum probable in flow” — or the low end of expectations. Water levels in Lake Mead could drop by another 40 vertical feet by the middle 2023, ultimately reaching just 1,026 feet above sea level — an elevation that further threatens Lake Mead’s hydroelectric power generation for about 1.3 million people in Arizona, California and Nevada. At 895 feet, the reservoir would become what’s called a “dead pool”; water would no longer be able to flow downstream.
The bureau’s projections mean we are close to uncharted territory. The current shortage agreement, negotiated between the states in 2007, only addresses shortages down to a lake elevation of 1,025 feet. After that, the rules become murky, and there is greater potential for fraught legal conflicts. Northern states in the region, for example, are likely to ask why the vast evaporation losses from Lake Mead, which stores water for the southern states, have never been counted as a part of the water those southern states use. Fantastical and expensive solutions that have previously been dismissed by the federal government — like the desalinization of seawater, towing icebergs from the Arctic or pumping water from the Mississippi River through a pipeline — are likely to be seriously considered. None of this, however, will be enough to solve the problem unless it’s accompanied by serious efforts to lower carbon dioxide emissions, which are ultimately responsible for driving changes to the climate.
Meanwhile, population growth in Arizona and elsewhere in the basin is likely to continue, at least for now, because short-term fixes so far have obscured the seriousness of the risks to the region. Water is still cheap, thanks to the federal subsidies for all those dams and canals that make it seem plentiful. The myth persists that technology can always outrun nature, that the American West holds endless possibility. It may be the region’s undoing. As the author Wallace Stegner once wrote: “One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope.”
Originally published on ProPublica by Abrahm Lustgarten via Creative Commons. This article is co-published with The New York Times.
That’s the first line of an open letter released Tuesday by 71 young professionals and students in the advertising and public relations industry calling for an end to contracts with fossil fuel companies, given their significant contributions to the climate emergency.
“The biggest threat to our future is climate change,” they write. “The world’s 20 biggest polluters are fossil fuel companies, with the entire energy sector responsible for creating 75% of carbon emissions. They are blocking necessary and urgently needed climate action.”
“And our industry is helping them do it,” the young professionals continue. “We’re angry. We’re afraid. And we refuse to sit back and watch it happen.”
The letter is clear in its demand:
“We, tomorrow’s leaders, call on all agencies, from the holding companies to the independent shops, to stop working with fossil fuel clients. This means oil giants as well as the alphabet soup of trade associations and front groups.”
– 71 Young Professionals
“No more marketing climate denial and disinformation” or “setting up fake front groups,” the letter adds, further calling for an end to “amplifying lies about how action will hurt the economy” and “greenwashing oil, gas, and coal companies, aiding them in their attempts to dodge pollution safeguards and block meaningful change.”
BREAKING: Today 71 professionals under 30, junior executives, and students in the advertising and PR industry released an open letter calling for advertising and PR executives to end contracts with fossil fuel companies. https://t.co/b3l47m45S0
The signatories urge everyone in the industry—especially agency heads, founders, and leadership teams—to take a stand against continuing to work with polluters, emphasizing that the climate emergency is already taking a toll.
“We won’t be able to reduce, reuse, recycle our way out of tomorrow’s catastrophe—because it is already happening today,” says the letter, which is open for new signatories through the end of the week. “Over the last few years, we’ve seen the devastating impacts of climate-related disasters, like record-breaking wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, and hurricanes. Bold action is needed, at all levels and segments of society. The time has come for our industry to do its part.”
Fires are devouring swaths of the Western United States, forcing evacuations and shutting down every national forest in California. On Sunday, Hurricane Ida, a “poster child for a climate change-driven disaster,” slammed into the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm, killing at least four people, leaving more than a million without power amid widespread destruction, and sparking calls for President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.
“At some point in the recent past, climate change was something that was happening in some distant future, and maybe of little concern to most people. Well, that distant future is now today—everyone will experience climate change as a series of horrific front-page photos and videos until they themselves are taking those photos and videos. It’s no longer some abstract threat,” letter leader Joe Cole toldCommon Dreams.
Cole is strategist working with Clean Creatives, a campaign supported by Fossil Free Media that pressures ad and PR agencies to drop fossil fuel accounts.
The letter comes as the New York Times is under fire for allowing fossil fuel industry advertising, thanks to a new campaign and reporting by climate journalist Emily Atkin in her newsletter HEATED.
As Atkin reported Monday:
[A] new activist campaign to pressure the Times to stop creating and running fossil fuel ads is launching today. Called Ads Not Fit to Print, the campaign argues that fossil fuel advertisements endanger Times readers’ health in the same way now-banned cigarette ads did—and likely, even more.
“What the Times is doing right now is shameful,” said Genevieve Guenther, whose group End Climate Silence is spearheading the campaign. “On one hand, they’re trying to seem like part of the reality-based community who acknowledges the climate crisis and wants to solve it. On the other, they’re doing everything they can to keep the fossil fuel economy going because it is one of the sources of their own power and they believe in it.”
Activists aren’t the only ones taking issue with this practice, either. In conversations with HEATED over the last week, several current and former Times newsroom employees expressed concerns about the paper’s practice of creating and running fossil fuel ads. Their concerns ranged from undermining the Times‘ own climate reporting, to harming Times readers’ health, to aiding industry attempts to mislead the public about the deadly effects of fossil fuels.
Cole highlighted energy giants’ contributions to planet-heating pollution and told Common Dreams that “these clients are represented by some of the most storied ad agencies in the world like BBDO, Edelman, Ogilvy, and WundermanThompson.”
“These ads go on to be featured in some of the most prominent real estate around the world, from billboards to the NYT,” he said. “Although the tobacco industry was and is responsible for a personal health crisis, the fossil fuel industry is killing the entire planet.”
Praising Times journalists’ work on the climate emergency, Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn tweeted that “the paper should stop doing them—and all of us—a disservice by continuing to make and run ads for fossil fuel corporations.”
NYT reporters do great reporting on the climate crisis.
The paper should stop doing them — and all of us — a disservice by continuing to make and run ads for fossil fuel corporations. https://t.co/4wspKFp3eY
In a statement about the letter Tuesday, Cole said that “any time our industry starts to change for the better, it is through a combination of outside and internal pressure. I believe in the power of young professionals in our industry—the leaders of tomorrow—to hasten the necessary transition away from fossil fuel clients.”
The strategist pointed to recent findings that July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded and asserted that “it’s no longer acceptable for agency executives to ignore the damage their work with fossil fuel clients is doing to the planet.”
He argued that “even a single contract with a client like BP, Shell, or Exxon can wipe out the impact of an agency’s sustainability pledge. If agencies are serious about not only protecting the future of their young staff, but recruiting them in the first place they need to begin by transitioning away from fossil fuel work and rejecting new contracts.”
“The people signing this letter truly are the leaders of tomorrow,” Cole added, “and if agencies want to remain relevant, and attractive places to work for top young talent, they need to end their work for the worst polluters on the planet.”
Above: A Climate Change Concept Image: Adobe Stock
More than two dozen advocacy groups launched “extreme weather ads” in five state newspapers on Monday to pressure right-wing Senate Democrats to stop giving taxpayer money to the oil, gas, and coal companies most responsible for the climate emergency.
“It’s time for Congress to stop taking over $15 billion from hardworking Americans and giving it to billionaire fossil fuel CEOs.”
—Anusha Narayanan, Greenpeace
Full page ads—featuring artwork from Hannah Rothstein’s 50 States of Change Collection, which depicts some of the detrimental effects U.S. residents can expect if lawmakers refuse to swiftly enact robust climate mitigation measures—have been placed in The Arizona Republic, The Dover Post, The Billings Gazette, The Union Leader, and The Charleston Gazette-Mail, to mark the beginning of a week of action against fossil fuel subsidies.
Those five publications were chosen because they are the home-state newspapers of Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Chris Coons (Del.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), and Joe Manchin (W.Va.).
The coalition is targeting the six senators because of their close ties with Big Oil, which were exposed in late June when Greenpeace U.K. and the British Channel 4 Newsteamed up to release secretly recorded videos, wherein ExxonMobil lobbyists admitted that the company deliberately sowed doubt about climate science to protect fossil fuel profits and worked with several GOP lawmakers as well as conservative Democrats to undermine climate legislation.
According to the investigation, Coons, Manchin, Sinema, and Tester, along with Republican Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), John Cornyn (Texas), Steve Daines (Mont.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.), have taken tens of thousands of dollars from Exxon.
Photo Credit / Hannah Rothstein
The 25 groups behind the ad campaign—including Greenpeace USA, Our Revolution, Public Citizen, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Food & Water Watch, and the Sunrise Movement—noted that the federal government gives more than $15 billion in public funding to fossil fuel corporations every year.
The ad campaign comes just weeks after the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, which, in the words of Greenpeace USA climate campaign manager Anusha Narayanan, “showed the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels will kill us all.”
“Everyone saw the video where a Big Oil lobbyist named these six Democratic senators as key to their plan to delay climate action,” Narayanan said Monday in a statement. “Members of Congress like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have the fossil fuel industry on speed dial, while they keep the rest of us on hold. That’s a disaster for the future of the planet and its people.”
“It’s time for Congress to stop taking over $15 billion from hardworking Americans and giving it to billionaire fossil fuel CEOs,” she continued. “Despite what these companies say, subsidies don’t actually lead to jobs and most subsidies go to profits.”
Narayanan added that an amended infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, which Democratic Party leaders hope to pass through the reconciliation process, present a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for Sens. Kelly, Sinema, Coons, Tester, Hassan, and Manchin “to invest in a just transition to renewable energy, racial and economic justice, and working-class communities.”
That lawmakers continue to collaborate with oil, gas, and coal companies despite dire warnings from scientists and glaring real-time evidence that fossil fuel emissions are exacerbating extreme weather events prompted Rothstein to ask: “What is wrong with our politicians?”
“Why do they continue to support Big Oil and coal when it’s clear these industries are causing natural disasters that harm everyday Americans?” Rothstein asked Monday in a statement. “California’s increasingly rampant wildfires, Texas’ unprecedented February 2021 snowstorm, and the current water shortages in Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico are only a few examples of the unshakably clear evidence that we need urgent climate action ASAP.”
“We can lessen, reverse, and prevent many of the issues depicted in 50 States of Change, but we need to act now, starting with an immediate and expedited shift away from burning fossil fuels,” she added. “This can’t be done solely on a consumer level. We need our elected officials on our side.”
In addition to being featured in the ad campaign, Rothstein’s artwork is also being used in an interactive story map, which will “underscore a state-by-state breakdown of current and future state-level impacts of the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis.” It is set to be published on Greenpeace USA’s website on Wednesday.
“The president made a promise to ban all new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters,” said Greenpeace, “and the American people expect him to keep it.”
Climate groups are expressing deep concern following an Interior Department announcement Monday that the Biden administration will resume oil and gas drilling leases on public lands and waters—a practice President Joe Biden vowed to ban during his 2020 run for the White House—in response to a federal court ruling.
“The climate emergency reality we are facing demands immediate action, not acquiescence.”
—Nicole Ghio, Friends of the Earth
While the Biden administration confirmed in its announcement that an appeal has been filed with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in a legal battle with the state of Louisiana—which sued the federal government over the pause in the oil and gas leasing program ordered by Biden earlier this year—the Interior Department said leasing would resume while the process plays out.
“Federal onshore and offshore oil and gas leasing will continue as required by the district court while the government’s appeal is pending,” the DOI stated.
According to Bloomberg, the moves by the administration “mark the beginning of an open-ended analysis of the federal oil, gas and coal leasing programs that could span years—and lead to higher fees as well as new limits on development in sensitive areas.”
While environmental advocacy groups commended the administration for appealing the lower court ruling—handed down by a Trump-appointed U.S. district court judge in June—they also said the threat of resuming the leasing program on federal lands and for offshore drilling cannot be overstated.
“Our planet can’t afford any more new fossil fuel extraction,” said Taylor McKinnon, a senior campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement on Tuesday. “We’re out of time. The world’s existing oil and gas fields will already push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius if they’re fully developed.”
Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said in respsonse that with “the climate crisis smacking us in the face at every turn, it’s hard to imagine a worse idea than resuming oil and gas drilling on federal lands. As has been documented in long and excruciating detail, oil and gas drillers have trashed public lands and failed to clean up their mess—while siphoning public resources for a relative pittance.”
As the appeals process plays out, the Biden administration said it will perform a new analysis of the regulatory framework that governs leasing and extraction operations on federal lands as well as hold oil and gas companies to account under existing authorities and guidelines.
“We’re out of time. The world’s existing oil and gas fields will already push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius if they’re fully developed.”
—Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity
“It’s encouraging that the Biden administration is appealing this wrongful decision,” said Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager at Friends of the Earth. “However, the president made a promise to ban all new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, and the American people expect him to keep it. The climate emergency reality we are facing demands immediate action, not acquiescence.”
Mary Greene, public lands attorney for the National Wildlife Federation, urged the Interior Department to act aggressively but also said that Congress must get off the sidelines on the issue.
“While the Biden administration responds to the court, we urge the Department of Interior to issue its reform initiatives so that the outdated leasing system is modernized for the benefit of our public lands, wildlife, and all Americans,” Greene said. “But administrative actions alone cannot solve this problem. Congress must also swiftly take action to update our hundred-year-old leasing law so that our nation can transition to the clean energy economy that we all need and deserve.”
Given the recent IPCC report which argues that global emissions must be urgently reduced, climate action advocates said the administration cannot be allowed to walk away from its commitment to end oil and gas development on federal lands.
“Last week’s IPCC report outlined the grisly risks that fossil fuels pose to people and the planet,” said Tim Donaghy, senior research specialist with Greenpeace USA. “The International Energy Agency (IEA) has clearly said there can be no new fossil fuel projects if we are to stand any chance at limiting the climate chaos.”
A complete and final end of drilling on U.S. public lands and in offshore waters, said Donaghy, “is an essential part of any effective climate plan.” Along with others in the climate just movement, he said there remain many avenues for Biden “to consider in reforming leasing and we urge him to do everything he can to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”
As wildfires swept through the Italian island of Sicily, fueled by an extreme heatwave, officials in one city recorded a Wednesday recorded what is believed to be the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe.
Local meteorologists in Siracusa reported that temperatures reached 48.8ºC or 119.8ºF, breaking the continent’s previous record of 118.4ºF, which was set in 1977 in Athens.
Today has provisionally seen the highest #temperature ever recorded in #Italy 🌡️ ⚠️
SIAS have confirmed that Siracusa in #Sicily reached 48.8ºC earlier this afternoon and if verified by @WMO, it will become a new European temperature record 📈 pic.twitter.com/0L8Af2lp6r
The World Meteorological Organization still needs to independently confirm the high temperature. Local reports of the new all-time record are in line with the weather extremes that have been seen in the Mediterranean region.
“The climate crisis—I’d like to use this term, and not climate change—the climate crisis is here, and it shows us everything needs to change.”
—Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greek prime minister
Firefighters in Sicily and Calabria have carried out more than 3,000 operations in the last 12 hours. Thousands of acres of land have burned, and at least one death was reported in Calabria when a 76-year-old man’s home collapsed in flames.
“We are losing our history, our identity is turning to ashes, our soul is burning,” Giuseppe Falcomata, the mayor of the historic city of Reggio Calabria, said in a statement on social media.
Francesco Italia, the mayor of Siracusa, told La Repubblica that the area is “in full emergency.”
“We are devastated by the fires and our ecosystem—one of the richest and most precious in Europe—is at risk,” Italia said.
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, wildfires driven by extreme heat have devastated other parts of the Mediterranean.
In Algeria, at least 65 people have been killed in wildfires in recent days, including 28 soldiers who had been deployed to battle the flames. Twelve firefighters were also in critical condition in hospitals on Wednesday.
Tunisia recorded its highest temperature ever on Tuesday, registering 49ºC (120ºF).
In Greece, most of the wildfires that have burned through the country this week were under control on Thursday. Surveying the damage, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called the fires “the greatest ecological catastrophe of the last few decades.”
“We managed to save lives, but we lost forests and property,” Mitsotakis said at a Thursday press conference in Athens.
The wildfires started amid an intense heatwave that lasted several days and forced officials to call on firefighters from 24 other countries across Europe and the Middle East to help fight 100 active fires per day.
Mitsotakis did not express confidence that the situation will remain under control in the coming weeks, as the country’s wildfire season continues.
“We are in the middle of August and it’s clear we will have difficult days ahead of us,” the prime minister told reporters.
“The climate crisis—I’d like to use this term, and not climate change—the climate crisis is here, and it shows us everything needs to change,”
“Scientists say we cannot allow this to happen. People in power stand in our way.”
Originally published on Common Dreams via Creative Commons
While heatwaves, fires, and floods produce warnings that “we are living in a climate emergency, here and now,” a scientific study suggested Thursday that a crucial Atlantic Ocean current system could collapse, which “would have severe impacts on the global climate system.”
“The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere.” —Niklas Boers, PIK
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, focuses on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream. As the United Kingdom’s Met Office explains, it is “a large system of ocean currents that carry warm water from the tropics northwards into the North Atlantic,” like a conveyor belt.
Previous research has shown AMOC weakening in recent centuries. The author of the new study, Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK), found that this is likely related to a loss of stability.
“The Atlantic Meridional Overturning is one of our planet’s key circulation systems,” Boers, who is also affiliated with universities in the U.K. and Germany, said in a statement.
“We already know from some computer simulations and from data from Earth’s past, so-called paleoclimate proxy records, that the AMOC can exhibit—in addition to the currently attained strong mode—an alternative, substantially weaker mode of operation,” he continued. “This bi-stability implies that abrupt transitions between the two circulation modes are in principle possible.”
In the absence of long-term data on the current system’s strength, Boers looked at its “fingerprints,” sea-surface temperature and salinity patterns. He said that “a detailed analysis of these fingerprints in eight independent indices now suggests that the AMOC weakening during the last century is indeed likely to be associated with a loss of stability.”
“The findings support the assessment that the AMOC decline is not just a fluctuation or a linear response to increasing temperatures,” he continued, “but likely means the approaching of a critical threshold beyond which the circulation system could collapse.”
As The Guardian‘s Damian Carrington reports, the collapse of “one of the planet’s main potential tipping points” would be devastating on a global scale:
Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America, and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level in the eastern U.S. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.
The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.
“The signs of destabilization being visible already is something that I wouldn’t have expected and that I find scary,” Boers told the newspaper. “It’s something you just can’t [allow to] happen.”
It is unclear what level of global heating would cause a collapse, “so the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible,” he added. “The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere.”
Some climate action advocates responded to the study by highlighting a science fiction movie that, as famed film critic Roger Ebert wrote nearly two decades ago, “is ridiculous, yes, but sublimely ridiculous—and the special effects are stupendous.”
This is literally the exact plot of the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrowhttps://t.co/MQRHRTq9oP
“We all laughed at The Day After Tomorrow, back in 2004,” said Guy Shrubsole, policy and campaigns coordinator at Rewilding Britain. “Turned out it was a documentary.”
The environmental advocacy group 350 Tacoma responded to the findings with a call to action.
“There are warning signs that the Gulf Stream could collapse, an unimaginably catastrophic (and irreversible) impact of fossil fuel-caused climate breakdown,” the group tweeted. “Scientists say we cannot allow this to happen. People in power stand in our way.”
The study comes ahead of a United Nations climate summit in Glasgow set to begin October 31. Last month, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres noted the upcoming event and reminded leaders of wealthy countries that “the world urgently needs a clear and unambiguous commitment to the 1.5-degree goal of the Paris agreement,” and “we are way off track.”
International Report Documents Expanded Risks from All Sides…
For decades, the human species has been treating its oceans poorly. Oil spills, pollution, overfishing, melting ice caps, and above all climate change have made our seas into perpetual punching bags. As a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows, however, the ocean is now at its most fragile. If we do not help it, then it will soon start punching back.
The report is based on an extensive review of more than six thousand studies from scientists in 36 countries and the results are voluminous and, frankly, very scary for any sane observer. These compounded dangers are becoming harder to dispute, and previously challenged assertions such as how to measure the acceleration of the rising sea levels are being more clearly defined and more confidently confirmed by scientists.
The ocean has always been one of the earth’s most crucial natural deterrents to global warming. As a pool of water that covers over seventy percent of the world’s surface, the ocean is an enormous carbon drain. Like a forest, it sucks in lots of our carbon emissions and uses it to sustain its ecosystem.
Unfortunately, as climate change evolves and accelerates, the ocean’s ability to absorb that carbon diminishes. There is so much CO2 in the atmosphere that the ocean is all but overwhelmed. Simultaneously, other kinds of pollution—such as plastic or oil—are also taking their tolls on the seas’ ecosystems.
Rising Sea Levels, Extreme Weather Events, other threats are in Extreme Acceleration
The biggest threat that the ocean poses if climate change is not effectively combatted is rising water levels. The IPCC report shows that with our current level of carbon emissions, arctic ice will start to melt at a more rapid pace, and sea levels will rise significantly. By the next century, certain coastal communities and entire island nations could be uninhabitable. As a huge percentage of the world lives by the water, this could leave millions of people incredibly vulnerable.
The water is not only getting higher, though. It is also getting warmer. As the world’s temperature increases with an oversaturation of atmospheric carbon, the oceans follow suit. Water temperatures are rising and the rate of that rise is increasing.
Warmer water has already brought with it a whole new line of ecological issues. When the temperature changes, it affects marine life behavior and migratory patterns. This is impacting everything from the food chain to the fishing industry, making it a far greater issue than just a few confused fish ending up on the wrong side of the sea.
Furthermore, hurricanes thrive off of warm water, so as the ocean gets hotter, we are already seeing larger and more brutal storms washing up on our coasts. The IPCC report underscores an increased occurrence of powerful storms, with category 4 and 5 hurricanes becoming far more frequent. Flooding will also continue to occur more frequently, and beachside infrastructure will find itself in dire straits all-year around.
Dangers Lurk beyond rising Sea Levels: Pollution, Disease and Contagions Threaten to Rise as well
Then, there is also the fact that our oceans are getting dirtier. Acidification and pollution have led to the extinction of certain species, the eradication of coral reefs, and numerous health problems that find their way to the surface. More foodborne illnesses are turning up in seafood; Marine heat waves affect seabirds and amphibious mammals as well as fish; And a summer dip in the ocean may soon become a grimy bath that leaves you sick and dirty.
The ocean is powerful and beautiful. Ever since humankind evolved out of its depths millions of years ago, the great blue saltwater haven has been helping sustain us on land. Its wondrous waves and illustrious currents have inspired many, and mystified even more. Conscienceless as a silent part of this humble planet we call home, the ocean has asked for nothing in return for her millions of years of ecological service. Now, however, in no small part due to our exploitative nature, she is suffering. If we do not help her now when she is desperate, then her years of docility will soon run out, and we will feel her wrath.
Sci-fi sounding, inevitable upgrade for today’s online communications
You might have heard lately about the “metaverse” and yet that can mean a variety of different things to different people. Often, it’s a term that relates back to gaming and 3D augmented reality enhancements of networked communications.
There are even crypto and blockchain related projects using this term and concept. While all of these various factors are welcome, and potentially part of this next phase of convergence of communication via networked technology, there’s something else happening under the surface.
”The pandemic, with its requirements of physical distancing, has brought people into online digital environments for a growing range of shared human experiences.” — Wired UK from “The Metaverse is coming” by David Baszucki
The acceleration in AI application, machine learning, and converging use cases for all communications tech has created a situation where the entry-portal to the emerging metaverse is already here.
One often overlooked aspect of a transition to a more complete digital life is the need for humans to have adapted to the need and potential benefits of the idea. This is what is happening via many routes, including Apple and the constant synergistic upgrade cycles that have just gone into a new, bigger phase with the migration to a unified OS structure built around Apple Silicon.
The gradual increases in iOS functionality and user sophistication are changing how we interact
iOS15, previewed this week at the WWDC2021 is rolling out literally dozens of new features, many based on machine learning, neural networks and AI that propose a new level of highly sophisticated options to communicate with video, photos and text.
While this mixture of “basic” media has been the staple of our current modes of online communication, particularly via social media, the incredibly increased depth of new options and functionality of iOS15 and iPadOS15 and MacOS Monterey will make all modes of communication feel completely new.
In the evolution of online media and enriched communication (OMEC to coin an 80s sounding acronym) the slow and uneven progress is based on many factors. #1 is always user adoption and sophistication.
Second is the quality of the hardware devices and software upgrades each user around the world has access to. In the case of iOS (iPad, iPhone & macOS) the immediate adoption of upgrades is a large factor on the plus side, helping new innovation to arrive in general use more quickly.
The last factor, a huge one, is access to fast ubiquitous internet data connections, and, in the US at least, this is less consistent than ever (or our expectations are rising faster than the build out).
However, particularly in Asia, 5g is beginning to make a dent. Satellite broadband, like Starlink, should also start to be a factor as early as 2022. Government infrastructure build-out funding and subsidies in the US is on the way in 2021.
Augmented 3D features are still growing but will merge with 2D
The upshot of this topic is that “2D” factors and increasingly sophisticated manipulation and interactive features that are already coming in iOS15 will bring us all closer the entry-portal stone-age version of the metaverse.
We all depend more and more on communications and using our devices – work from home, personal, business and hybrid activities (such as the emerging content creator class). Often, as a result, we have fewer options to go offline for “organic” RL (real life) interactions.
The increasingly sophisticated capabilities available are beginning to make even face to face communications, particularly in work situations, feel “un-enhanced” as we become accustomed to and dependent on the digital enhancements and potential of a full media rich interaction.
This is an example, one could say, of the subtle encroachment of the emerging metaverse onto the “real world” and how the boundaries are blurring and even beginning to disappear.
Rather than a sudden “jump” into a metaverse, similar to the cliché sci-fi plots from films like “Ready Player 1”, what is happening is a nearly imperceptible transition to metaverse-like experiences that will become commonplace, initially in a primitive form, and then eventually become the norm. Similar to the proverbial Frog in pot, with warm water temperatures that increase so slowly that the Frog doesn’t even notice, until it finds that it is swimming in pot that is already boiling.
The misconception that a “killer app” or sudden shift into an online, virtual reality world, is the future, and that a big leap will happen nearly all at once, is harmlessly superimposed on the real transition that has already begun.
When Apple’s 2007 launch of the iPhone changed communication forever: the journey began
The new “Digital Legacy Program”, also announced at WWDC2021, is another hint that we are already living in an extremely primitive version of the metaverse. Our online identity, data, and even behaviors and experiences are so essential and all pervasive that it has become necessary to keep a digital key to access the huge trove of personal data we will leave behind to pass on to our living loved ones, after we are gone.
The metaverse, that means, is not only creating a parallel digital universe for us to live in, in an ever more complete and sophisticated way, but we are also already setting up the eternal storage of our virtual life experiences to be passed down to future generations.
Though nearly invisible while in such a relatively primitive iteration, the concept, an example of overlapping advancements in innovation, is a tiny step towards digital immortality.
The metaverse could help to save us all
It’s not just professional and work related communication that relates to the gradual increase in the depth of networked communication options, but, even more so, casual and leisure communication and interaction is key.
TikTok and other video communication trends are at the forefront of of user evolution and metaverse activity expansion. When people feel motivated to find new and better ways to communicate using richer media and augmented techniques for fun, and to gain more recognition in online societies, that advances digital sophistication.
This process of the evolution of user comfort and sophistication, while existing and interacting in the metaverse, is the fastest way for the augmentation to become more effective.
There’s a mostly unseen benefit and need for this, otherwise seemingly pointless, global development
The challenges that the world faces, encroaching, devastating fallout from global warming and excess carbon in the atmosphere, political corruption and inequality, disinformation and cybercrime, and so on.
Ultimately, unlike at any time in human history, we are facing a challenge. The survival of our species and even the planet are at stake.
In the years and decades to come it will become more and more obvious that there are only two paths possible. One path toward a kind of Utopia, or another one that will lead, inexorably to Oblivion.
Though the metaverse is scary in many ways, and does not always appear as a way to a better life, augmented and enhanced communication is one of the most desperately needed ways that solutions could eventually be discovered and implemented.
And that would put this progression and evolution of tech more in service of Utopia, and could be at the heart of a rescue plan to prevent Oblivion, before it’s too late.
Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Johns Hopkins University Press
There’s a massive migration coming as the physical and political landscape changes
A gradual, subtle, yet immensely important shift is underway across the planet. That shift is the change in thinking that will be required to accompany the changes that we now know, for a fact, are coming. Global warming, sea level rise, mass decentralization and migration and many more macro trends that are no longer in doubt but will be a reality to cope with.
Taking the positive approach to this – searching for solutions to the many huge geopolitical and technological issues that we face, is a trend that must come to the front and center of our dialog about the future.
Although, it is a book more thought of as a guide for city planners and other professionals, Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities is fascinating evidence of where these forced changes could lead, and what potentials can be unlocked by the opportunities that will inevitably arise from the extreme, changing circumstances.
A great step in the right direction, we’ve provided a look at Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities, by Matthew E. Kahn and Mac McComas, below, along with a description, provided courtesy of the Bookshop (and the publisher), along with some links for a variety of options where to purchase.
The urban centers of New York City, Seattle, and San Francisco have enjoyed tremendous economic success and population growth in recent years. At the same time, cities like Baltimore and Detroit have experienced population loss and economic decline. People living in these cities are not enjoying the American Dream of upward mobility.
How can post-industrial cities struggling with crime, pollution, poverty, and economic decline make a comeback? In Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities, Matthew E. Kahn and Mac McComas explore why some people and places thrive during a time of growing economic inequality and polarization–and some don’t.
They examine six underperforming cities–Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis–that have struggled from 1970 to present. Drawing from the field of urban economics, Kahn and McComas ask how the public and private sectors can craft policies and make investments that create safe, green cities where young people reach their full potential. The authors analyze long-run economic and demographic trends.
They also highlight recent lessons from urban economics in labor market demand and supply, neighborhood quality of life, and local governance while scrutinizing strategies to lift people out of poverty. These cities are all at a fork in the road.
Depending on choices made today, they could enjoy a significant comeback–but only if local leaders are open to experimentation and innovation while being honest about failure and constructive evaluation.
Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities provides a roadmap for how urban policy makers, community members, and practitioners in the public and private sector can work together with researchers to discover how all cities can solve the most pressing modern urban challenges.
‘Seaspiracy‘ was met with a suspicious amount of criticism in the media…
Above: photo / Netflix Seaspiracy
Which, for some, can be added reason to view it anyway, with open eyes, and judge for oneself. The same goes for many of the films show here below. It’s understandable that we are all still recovering (many in a literal sense) from the year long emergency crisis related to the novel coronavirus, and “crisis fatigue” has put the climate out of mind, to a degree.
Maybe it’s just that we are all tired of being scared out of our wits? That makes sense for sure. However, the situation can only improve with increased awareness leading to action.
“Seaspiracy“, regardless of its possible shortcomings, many of which were very convenient to the industrial fishing interests that are exposed in the film, there is one theme that runs throughout that is the one that deserves more and more attention.
Forget the shocking facts and figures. That’s all obvious news by now in many areas including the challenges to the ocean and it’s ecosystem. The message is the overwhelming importance of both Industry and Government in solving a problem that has been, in essence, created primarily by those same interests and entities.
In the film there is a thread of awakening that occurred in the mind of director / author Ali Tabrizi. He explains how he was very focused on individual responsibility and issues like plastic drinking straws and how they end up polluting the ocean.
The awakening came about when he dug deeper, with hands-on research, detailed in the film, and found out that, basically, the straws were a tiny, infinitesimal percentage of the plastic destroying the ocean. The real causes, it turned out, of the huge and growing problem traced back to…. you guessed it Industry and Governments.
Likewise, the Kiss the Ground documentary (also below) presents a strong and eminently sensible case for a sure-fire way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by massive amounts. The film has been popular but there are many more “tech” based ideas that are getting a lot of attention also, and it’s easy to imagine millions being pumped into some wacko expensive high tech “solution” when the real-world solution (such as outlined in the movie) is staring us all in the face.
Why? Because to implement the Soil Regeneration systems put forth in the film would require the support of… wait for it…. The huge Industrial Agribusiness Complex and Governments. To be fair the Biden administration has put forward a plan to reward farmers that are using regenerative soil systems and that is definitely needed. But will it be enough? Will it be blocked when it hits the Senate and Congress?
In the mean time it is these films, and more certainly to come, are a lifeline to real solutions, and in particular increasing clarity regarding where the actual, devastating problems lie. And they are essential in countering the “pro-pollution propaganda” that can be so cleverly disguised by organizations that are dedicated to getting “rich” by practices that amount to planetary suicide.
Passionate about ocean life, a filmmaker sets out to document the harm that humans do to marine species — and uncovers alarming global corruption.
Kiss the Ground is a full-length documentary narrated by Woody Harrelson that sheds light on an “new, old approach” to farming called “regenerative agriculture”
In celebration of Earth Day 2021, Apple TV+ will debut “The Year Earth Changed,” an original documentary special narrated by Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning broadcaster David Attenborough. “During this most difficult year, many people have reappraised the value and beauty of the natural world and taken great comfort from it,” said Richard Attenborough. “But the lockdown also created a unique experiment that has thrown light on the impact we have on the natural world. The stories of how wildlife responded have shown that making even small changes to what we do can make a big difference.”
What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?
Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change.
Directed by Avi Lewis, and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.
Presented by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Novak Djokovic and Chris Paul — a revolutionary new film about meat, protein and strength.
Cowspriacy
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary following intrepid filmmaker Kip Andersen as he uncovers the most destructive industry facing the planet today – and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it.
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and pollution, is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry, and is a primary driver of rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topsoil erosion, ocean “dead zones,” and virtually every other environmental ill. Yet it goes on, almost entirely unchallenged.
Chasing Coral
Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world.
The film took more than three years to shoot and is the result of 500+ hours of underwater footage, coral bleaching submissions from volunteers in 30 countries, as well as support from more than 500 people in various locations around the world.
A Plastic Ocean
When he discovers the world’s oceans brimming with plastic waste, a documentary filmmaker investigates the pollution’s environmental impacts. Starring:Tanya Streeter
In the center of the Pacific Ocean gyre researchers found more plastic than plankton. A Plastic Ocean documents the newest science, proving how plastics, once they enter the oceans, break up into small particulates that enter the food chain where they attract toxins like a magnet. These toxins are stored in seafood’s fatty tissues, and eventually consumed by us.
If four years of the Former Guy taught us anything, it’s that we have no time left for evil, soulless greed run amok
– Opinion & Analysis –
Recent attempts by politicians, beholden to the fossil fuel industry in Texas, to use the collapse of the energy infrastructure during the recent weather disaster as an opportunity to bash and trash wind and solar energy is an example of an unfortunate, banal and still common form of pure evil.
The deeper connections, easily seen lurking just beneath the surface, are rich and multilayered.
If this extreme weather disaster is one of many that are linked to climate change, a manifestation of dangers that climate scientists have been warning of for decades, the irony goes beyond just sick.
Wind and solar energy exist as an early and tentative positive step toward somehow stopping, or at least slowing down, the negative man-made climate change repercussions before it is too late.
The real reasons behind the Texas power grid collapse are related to traditional fossil fuel based energy sources and bad management of the energy infrastructure that can be traced back to an arrogant belief that Texas is better off without connections to the national system.
The local political response to this eminently preventable catastrophe was to bash and trash and blame the very technology that, ultimately, is part of a tentative start to actually begin to solve the bigger problem of man-made climate change.
…the time is gone to accept “two sides” to an argument that, by postponing any real solutions, will kill us all.
Just as the history of the internal combustion engine and the fossil fuel and auto industry’s attempts to prolong its near monopoly, using disinformation and other tactics for over 50 years was evil, the anti-sustainable energy politics in Texas today is just a continuation of that effort.
The time is gone to accept “two sides” to an argument that has one side trying, by attempting to postpone any real solutions, to kill us all, in the name of short term greed.
Under unique circumstances lending legitimacy to evil is too costly to condone
Looking at “both sides” of an issue is a practice based on a theory that “reasonable people” can disagree on diametrically opposed views. This idea is often suspended, however, by unreasonable people for their own reasons. That is sometimes called “war”.
Reasonable people, people, for example that understand climate science and want to prevent the total destruction of the earth and the extinction of all inhabitants, are often reluctant to suspend this idea of “good people on both sides” by their very nature as caring individuals.
“Now we need to understand that the “silence of one good man” can spell disaster for all good people. Each of us who remained passive as our impending disaster continued might have been the one “good man” who didn’t act, didn’t speak out, didn’t resist…
Now is a time when huge changes are going to be forced by an external and highly powerful and dangerous threats to our survival. The changes that are needed involve radically new ways of thinking and acting across many spheres of activity.
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New technologies, such as the aforementioned wind turbines and solar collectors, new forms of transportation, new ways of looking at other causes of, and remedies to, the excessive expulsion of carbon into the atmosphere will be absolutely required.
The truth is that for these new ways of thinking and acting to take over in human commerce the old ways must be cancelled. With extreme prejudice.
The past and those that want to go back to it are a lost cause, unfortunately
Many many “rich” people will be unhappy about this. And they will have politicians in their pocket that will gladly spread lies and disinformation to try and sustain the sick, evil gravy-train of polluting, carbon spewing systems as long as possible.
Sick and evil, not because those ways of surviving for humanity, burning fossil fuels and using them for a million different things that were a benefit in the short term, but because the short term is over.
The various arguments that somehow it is a good idea not to change and for the changes to slow down and not step on any toes as they gradually become “viable” have zero validity as of today (really as of 25 years ago but that’s water under the bridge).
Eventually the climate itself will kill them for their mistakes. Unfortunately it will also kill the rest of us if we allow them to continue to postpone positive change with lies and disinformation.
– D.L.
There must be an understanding among “reasonable” people, people who want to be part of an urgent crusade to save the world, literally, that points of view and the people who espouse them represent evil, plain and simple.
They will scream that reasonable people are “femi-nazis and “eco-terrorists” and say and do whatever it takes to protect what’s left of a deadly status quo. But they are wrong.
Eventually the climate itself will kill them for their mistakes. Unfortunately it will also kill the rest of us if we allow them to continue to postpone positive change with lies and disinformation.
“Every one of these people is the banality of evil personified. Every one of them became what Arendt called a “leaf blowing in the whirlwind of time.” Now every one of them bears responsibility for what could lie ahead.”
This change in thinking about how to respond to this kind of evil will be a more important factor in the survival of humanity than all the technological advances combined.
“World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” – Marshall McLuhan (1970), Culture is Our Business, p. 66.
–Marshall McLuhan
“Info-wars” were predicted as the battlefield of WWIII by Marshall McLuhan in 1970 and now we are in it and there must be an understanding of what is at stake.
When disinformation is used as a perennial weapon against positive, necessary change it is necessary to do more than disagree. It is necessary to expose the lies and, more importantly, the obvious sick and criminal motives for the lies. Over and over as often as necessary.
Elon Musk is one of the most interesting humans, and now he is also, at any given moment, the wealthiest. It’s somewhat unusual, even on Twitter, to see anything but positive and supportive reactions to his tweets, given the level of love and admiration he has among followers.
Above: Photo / Adobe Stock
Add to that the concrete, if cryptic, pledge to donate 100M towards a prize for the “best carbon capture tech. It has been pointed out that this is .05% of his net worth, but that is an odd calculation, it seems, since Tesla itself is firmly on the side of climate rescue, with it’s stated mission to “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”.
It is, as a matter of fact, what separates Musk from almost every other tech-billionaire: His motivations are not to acquire wealth as an end but only to support his planet and species saving efforts. Others, such as his sometimes rival (not worthy) Jeff Bezos, can not claim any such thing with a straight face (or any believability).
The reactions were swift and attempted humor but also truth
The number of replies that popped up swiftly proposing planting trees as likely the best “carbon capture tech” that would deserve such a prize was noteworthy. Because, in one of the few criticisms of the EV revolution that Tesla has started, it is likely not enough to rely solely on “S3XY” technology to save the world from carbon emissions causing global warming and climate change.
Not only is the plant-a-tree a valid rejoinder to the idea that some kind of elaborate technological breakthrough is needed (Bill Gates recently suggested blotting out the sun as a cooling solution), but there are also other “low tech” solutions that should not get short-shrift in order to fund expensive, possibly overly technological, solutions to a problem of our own making.
The recent highly acclaimed documentary film “Kiss the Ground” proposes soil regeneration to reduce carbon emission, improve health benefits of food and, at the same time actually reduce the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere.
The arguments made by this excellent documentary beg the question: why not take funds, such as those being offered by Elon Musk, and divert them first towards obvious, low-tech solutions with proven results, rather than funding a moon-shot style tech search for a method that may, in then end, like so much that has come before, have unintended and even possibly negative repercussions.
At the very least, shouldn’t a portion of this 100 million, or even an equal sum (purportedly amounting to, therefore, 1% rather than .05% of Musks net worth) be allocated to existing, proven methods, rather than a search for new tech invented out of whole cloth?
Twitter posts hit a nerve, now maybe government and private funding should follow common sense
This is not a scientific or detail specific criticism. There may well be “issues” with planting trees or recovering damages soil around the world, and in the process reversing carbon imbalances and even reducing the levels currently measured.
But common sense says otherwise. The destruction of the soil and the deforestation of the globe are part and parcel of the same problem, extreme dependence on fossil fuel long after the dangers were well known, that has caused the current and worsening global problem.
Elon Musk is a hero of the sustainable energy movement, as he well should be. It is powerful and dedicated figures like Musk that are needed, desperately, to solve the looming and already unfolding crises that we face.
The voices for trees and soil regeneration are also an extremely important element of the solutions that are desperately needed, sans the hoopla and massive money prize that tech already has attached.
Would it be too far fetched, @elonmusk, for these various factions, all wanting the same result, to cooperate and collaborate on all the solutions that will undoubtedly be required is we are to pull back from the brink and substantially improve the condition of a planet on its way to possible total annihilation?
Thanks to Elon Musk for all his contributions and they are many. Rescuing the E.V. and turning the entire auto industry on it’s head and bringing about an accelerating transition to sustainable transportation much sooner than could have happened without him and Tesla.
Creating the understanding that a business and an entrepreneur does not have to focus relentlessly on profit for its own sake to be successful and powerful. And, as for giving the human species a “plan-b” in the form of abandoning a dying earth in favor of Mars, let’s stick with plan A for now and plant trees, reiterate the soil and, yes, find other solutions to the massive carbon emissions that are choking the life out of our world.
Renovate the future could be an apt title for “Power Trip”
Perhaps a reality TV star is not the first place or person one would think of when considering the next cutting edge filmmaker to take on the corruption and controversies surrounding the potential transition to sustainable energy.
However, as someone who, on his show, is seen as an expert in home renovation, particularly high end homes, a solar-roof and energy installation is becoming standard and so it is natural that Johnathan Scott, Co-Host of the series of “Property Brothers” shows and associated products would have been exposed to the ins and outs of installing solar panels.
More surprising, however, is the way his experiences took him on a journey of discovery that led to him creating a serious and hard-hitting documentary film on the challenges and even the politics surrounding the solar industry. His eye-opening discoveries mirror his experiences and, by extension, give viewers of the film an opportunity to see this controversial state of affairs through his sympathetic eyes.
In “Power Trip”, Property Brothers co-host and home-renovation expert Jonathan Scott journeys all across the U.S. to uncover why clean, renewable energy isn’t available to all. While traveling to learn both the obstacles and opportunities for achieving energy freedom, Jonathan talks with conservatives fighting for solar freedom; sits down with farmers struggling to make ends meet; engages coal workers desperate for a new, healthy means of making an income; the Navajo Nation who built a utility-scale solar plant; religious leaders who made a desperate attempt to help meet their community’s energy needs; and politicians at the forefront of the battle for energy freedom.
Shortly after they finally approved us, they killed net metering in Nevada. And all of us a sudden, solar companies left the state, and my head sort of spun, and I was like, “What the hell is going on here?” And that’s when I started digging in. I hired a researcher. And we discovered this secret war being waged against rooftop solar.
Johnathan Scott on his INSPIRATION FOR MAKING “Power Trip”
While the film may not be from a major name in the sustainable energy or climate crisis movements, for that very reason, one could say it has potentially enhanced credibility or at least a more approachable back-story with an experienced TV host known to many for his more traditional fare.
story about corruption that he fell into when trying to solar his roof in NV
Best known for his HGTV reality show “Property Brothers”, where Jonathan and his brother Brew purchase and renovate houses on a budget.
“The film explores how utility companies across the country have fought to maintain their monopolies, focusing on power players including Buffett’s NV Energy, Duke Energy in North Carolina and Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power.”
PBS
More quotes from Jonathan Scott:
“It turned into a human story. I traveled around the country. I met with hundreds of people from all different walks of life. And I discovered that across the board, whether they are Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, city dwellers, country dwellers — everybody agreed that renewable energy was a good thing. They liked the idea of being able to produce their own power. The only people I found that were against it were people affiliated with fossil-fuel companies or the utilities.”
“We need some sort of national energy policy that will not only bring that cost down and simplify the process, but also promote what is the future of energy. When I started the film, there were 20 coal-fired power plants slated to be built in the U.S. By the end, all of those projects were either abandoned or shut down. And that’s a good thing. We are moving in the right direction.”
“But solar is still being met with opposition. The new trend is that a lot of utilities are saying, “We’re pro-solar, we’re pro-renewable energy.” They support utility-scale solar farms, but they’re anti-rooftop solar because they want to own the power.”
“I was a big fan of Warren and all the stuff he’s done. Then I saw him talking about how net metering is a subsidy. Either he was severely misinformed by the people who work for him who run NV Energy, or he was lying through his teeth. Warren is an intelligent guy, and I don’t think he would ignorantly run a company of that magnitude without knowing what’s happening.”
As massive political and economic crises come into focus a must-solve climate issue looms
After nearly four years of madness emanating from the White House, now, even as the world reels from a pandemic that has yet to show signs of abating, another issue is still to come back into the center of our consciousness, and soon. If and when the vaccines and immune system strengths among survivors increases, other serious issues will come to the forefront, if not sooner.
Along with another great recent documentary on how to solve the climate crisis, “Kiss the Ground“, this documentary is inspired by the book by Naomi Klein and is called ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’. It is unique in that it exposes the deep and obvious ties between failed capitalist systems and the climate crisis. Since we are already facing, as 2021 rapidly approaches, a twin if not triple group of crises, with the economic devastation potentially even worse, in the coming years, than either the pandemic or the climate crisis, the message of this film is more urgent than ever.
The premise that the climate crisis actually presents an opportunity to change the entire world economic system for the better has been made even more pertinent and cogent by the events of 2020, both by the political disaster brought about by Trump, particularly his anti-environmental crusades, and the pandemic, which brought economic hardship upon millions worldwide.
The future is, in some ways, clearer than ever before
The positive side of this debate, what ‘could be‘ rather than the devastating and depressing reality of what already is, has a great potential to become a growing and expanding movement in 2021 and beyond. Ultimately, the climate crisis, as an extinction level threat, is, without a doubt, a wake-up call for the entire human race and almost certainly the last one that will be coming.
In other words, we all need to wake up to what might be the only solutions to this threat, or else we simply won’t be around to try any alternative solutions.
![Chasing Coral | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b6fHA9R2cKI/hqdefault.jpg)
