Regional Fed paper says carbon tax could address the threat
The Fed doesn’t have tools to confront the crisis, paper says
Climate change is becoming increasingly relevant to central bankers because losses from natural disasters that are magnified by higher temperatures and elevated sea levels could spark a financial crisis, a Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco researcher found.
“Climate-related financial risks could affect the economy through elevated credit spreads, greater precautionary saving, and, in the extreme, a financial crisis,’’ Glenn Rudebusch, the San Francisco Fed’s executive vice president for research, wrote in a paper published Monday.
“There could also be direct effects in the form of larger and more frequent macroeconomic shocks associated with the infrastructure damage, agricultural losses, and commodity price spikes caused by the droughts, floods, and hurricanes amplified by climate change,’’ according to Rudebusch, who is also a senior policy adviser at the reserve bank.
While the Fed’s primary policy tools — short-term interest rates and large-scale asset purchases — aren’t designed to address phenomenon like global warming, policy makers may need to take climate-related damages into account when considering the long-term economic outlook, the researcher wrote. “Many central banks already include climate change in their assessments of future economic and financial risks when setting monetary and financial supervisory policy,” he wrote.
‘Fair Question’
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told legislators in February it was a “fair question’’ to ask how the central bank would evaluate the economic impact of climate change and promised to look into it.
Rudebusch, whose bank operates as part of the Fed system but isn’t directed by Powell, suggested lawmakers could promote a transition to cleaner technologies by imposing a carbon tax, which is a fee on emissions. Former Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker in January endorsed a plan to tax emissions and distribute the revenue to U.S. households.
Some pressure is mounting in Congress to take aim at climate change, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledging to take up climate legislation. That effort may not go far in the current political environment, as Republicans control the Senate and the White House. President Donald Trump said during the campaign he opposed taxing emissions and has expressed skepticism that humans contribute to global warming.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/uoo-rrc040519.php UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 5 Apr 19, A new modelling study from the University of Oxford and collaborators has estimated how changing the reflectivity of roofs can help keep cities cooler during heatwaves and reduce heat-rated mortality rates.
Cities are generally a few degrees warmer than the countryside, due to the urban heat island effect. This effect is caused partly by a lack of moisture and vegetation in cities compared with rural landscapes, and because urban building materials store up heat. During heatwaves, daytime temperatures can get dangerously high in cities, leading to serious health effects and increasing mortality risk.
The idea of ‘cool’ roofs is to make roof surfaces more reflective to sunlight (for example by painting roofs a lighter colour) thereby reducing local temperatures.
Scientists used a regional weather model to look at how temperatures changed across the study city of Birmingham and the West Midlands, depending on the extent of cool roof deployment. They looked at the hot summers of 2003 and 2006, and found that the intensity of the urban heat island (the urban-rural temperature difference) reached up to 9oC for Birmingham city.
Previous work has shown that the extra heat associated with the urban heat island is responsible for around 40-50% of heat related mortality in the West Midlands during heatwaves.
This latest study, published in Environment International, suggests that implementing cool roofs across the city can reduce peak daytime local temperatures by up to 3oC during a heatwave. This reduction in temperature could potentially offset around 25% of the heat-related mortality associated with the urban heat island during a heatwave.
The urban heat island effect is most pronounced at night time, because urban materials slowly release their stored heat overnight, however, the biggest benefits of cool roofs were seen to be during the hottest part of the day where sunlight was reflected away. The type of building made a difference too: modifying only half of all the industrial and commercial buildings had the same impact on lowering temperatures as modifying all the high-intensity residential buildings.
Co-author Dr Clare Heaviside, of the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute comments: “Climate change and increasing urbanisation mean that future populations are likely to be at increased risk of overheating in cities, although building and city scale interventions have the potential to reduce this risk.
“Modelling studies like this one can help to determine the most effective methods to implement in order to reduce health risks in our cities in the future.”
How global climate change is already devastating Banglades
Climate change threatens millions of Bangladeshi children, warns UNICEFSBS News A new report shows environmental disasters linked to climate change are threatening the lives and futures of more than 19 million children in Bangladesh, including prompting many families to push their daughters into child marriages., BY CHARLOTTE LAM, 5 Apr 19,
Climate change in Bangladesh could impact the lives of more than 19 million children, according to a new UNICEF report.
The humanitarian agency said on Friday that the country’s flat topography, dense population and weak infrastructure makes it “uniquely vulnerable to the powerful and unpredictable forces that climate change is compounding”.
The report author, Simon Ingram, said the danger was “flooding is extreme and it is almost on an annual basis”.
The report, titled “Gathering Storm: Climate change clouds the future of children in Bangladesh”, showed about 12 million children currently live in and around powerful river systems, which flow through Bangladesh and regularly burst their banks.
A further 3 million Bangladeshi children live in farming communities, which are facing increasing periods of drought.
The report also found a link between climate change and child marriage, child labour and access to education is evident in various parts of Bangladesh.
“Climate change is undoubtedly increasing the number of children who are pushed into the workplace, where they miss out on an education and are terribly exposed to violence and abuse,” UNICEF Bangladesh Child Protection specialist Kristina Wesslund said……….
Mr Ingram said there were already six million climate refugees in Bangladeshi cities, a number that could double by 2050.
Nuclear power is not a viable solution for Green New Deal https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/437003-nuclear-power-is-not-a-viable-solution-for-green-new-deal, BY DAMON MOGLEN, — 04/02/19The Green New Deal resolution is a bold and necessary path forward to tackle the climate crisis. To be successful, it must leave nuclear power behind. With just a decade left to stop the worst effects of climate change, we must dramatically transform how we produce, use and pay for energy. And as momentum around the Green New Deal turns into concrete proposals, we must recognize why nuclear power is a discredited and dishonest distraction, not a solution.
To reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 60 percent by 2030, and down to zero by 2050, we need cost-effective, proven energy generation technology that can be scaled up to meet these benchmarks. Nuclear power does not and will not ever meet these criteria.
After 60 years, despite massive subsidies, the nuclear industry is dying of its own accord. Why? Because it’s too expensive, too dangerous and dirty, and takes too long to deploy. Reactors are closing across the country, and major corporations have declared bankruptcy.
Nuclear power simply cannot compete against safer, cleaner and cheaper renewable energy. Nuclear power is also expensive. Nuclear’s subsidies have been buried in hundreds of spending bills, it’s costs externalized to the environment and future generations, and its bills literally unpaid, defaulted on or passed to taxpayers. Conservative estimates suggest that the nuclear industry has received more than $85 billion in subsidies. A centrist estimate might double that.
For 60 years, nuclear power has posed a serious risk to people and our planet. It will be the same for the next 10,000 years. Our children and generations of their children will be forced to endure the radioactive pollution and fallout from devastating accidents like 3 Mile Island, Fukashima and Chernobyl, and the permanent waste that no one can safely store. The risks of nuclear proliferation and the spread of dangerous weapons and technology only adds to this.
Nuclear power is too slow to scale up to our current challenge. Far too slow. In 1997, when the historic Kyoto Protocol was signed, nuclear power’s share of electricity generation globally was around 17 percent. Now, after two decades, the aging fleet of reactors account for barely 10 percent of global electricity generation and about 4.4 percent of global commercial primary energy consumption. Even the nuclear industry’s grandiose and preposterously expensive proposal to build two new nuclear reactors a month, from now to 2050, would be far too little and far too late.
The endless talk of a new nuclear technology that will magically transform this problem is a pipe dream that has a proven record of failure. Hundreds of billions were spent on “breeder” reactors and other esoteric designs and not a single one has yielded a commercial scale reactor.
And continuing to subsidize and retool current reactors will re-direct massive resources that should be put into renewables, while doing nothing to slow global warming.
The task ahead is indeed daunting if we are to turn around global greenhouse gas emissions in the time we have. We must move from a 20th-century energy system based on dirty, dangerous and expensive fossil fuel and nuclear power to a 21st-century energy system based on renewables.
The solution is a massive commitment to ramping up renewable energy coupled with energy storage while applying modern energy efficiency technologies to decrease demand. Wind and solar are cheap, clean and proven to work. We must focus all resources on scaling those up.
Some have suggested that climate change is so dire that all options must be on the table. But that’s an ideology, not a strategy. We must choose the technologies that will not produce greenhouse gases and can be scaled up quickly, safely and at lowest cost. That means the path ahead must be based on renewable energy. If we want to stop the worse of the climate crisis and pull humanity back from the apocalypse, this is the only way forward.
Damon Moglen is a senior strategic advisor to Friends of the Earth, with over 30 years experience campaigning on climate and nuclear issues.
Euractiv 29th March 2019 The European Parliament voted on a proposed classification for sustainable
assets on Thursday (28 March), voting to exclude nuclear power from
receiving a green stamp of approval on financial markets.
The text voted in Parliament also excludes fossil fuels and gas infrastructure from the
EU’s proposed green finance taxonomy, which aims to divert investments
away from polluting industries into clean technologies. In a bid to prevent
“green-washing”, the Parliament text also requires investors to
disclose whether their financial products have sustainability objectives,
and if they do, whether the product is consistent with the EU’s green
assets classification, or taxonomy.
While activists applauded the move, they said the classification voted by the European Parliament was too
narrow and applies only to a limited set of recognisable green assets, such
as wind and solar power companies.
The even madder plan to build a new nuclear plant on the beachMarch 31, 2019 by beyondnuclearinternationalThe case against Sizewell C,By Linda Pentz GunterIn December 2018 we ran an article — The mad plan to store nuclear waste on the beach— which has become one of our most read stories. Now, as the climate crisis worsens, here comes a possibly even madder plan — a new nuclear power plant on a beach with a shifting coastline famous for erosion…….
The Sizewell reactors sit on a windswept beach just yards from a sea that has already consumed ancient villages as the coastline changed and eroded over the centuries. Now the sea level rise that will come with climate change promises in time to drown a few more, most likely including the Sizewell nuclear site. Undeterred, the French government nuclear company, EDF, insists it will build a new reactor at Sizewell — one of its ill-fated EPR design that is already struggling at Flamanville, Olkiluoto and Hinkley. Just from a climate change point of view, it is an exercise in insanity. But there is so much more at stake.
The local activist group, Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) has been challenging the EDF plan for years, even as Sizewell sits permanently second in the queue behind the ever more delayed and ever more exorbitant sister site at Hinkley C in Somerset, where EDF is attempting to build two EPRs. Despite the technical problems, cost over-runs and the obscene strike price EDF scored off the UK government — which would almost triple current electricity rates — the company insists in can build Sizewell C more cheaply than Hinkley C and that construction could start within the next three years. It’s a pretty tall order and, arguably, total French farce.
What would actually happen to the Suffolk coastline and the surrounding villages, towns and countryside, is so alarming that TASC has ramped up its urgency in appealing to a likely somewhat otherwise distracted UK government — that is busy self-destructing over Brexit — to cancel Sizewell C.
In an eloquent petition, (which UK residents can sign at this link), TASC has laid out the case for halting the Sizewell C planning process immediately, arguing that in “report after report” nuclear power has shown “to be superfluous to UK climate change, cost and electricity generating targets. Nuclear is too expensive, a security risk and leaves a legacy of radioactive waste.” The petition will be delivered in person to the UK Secretary of State for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy.
On March 12, the group delivered an earlier petition, signed by 1,500 local people, to the Suffolk County Council’s Conservative leader Matthew Hicks, ahead of a cabinet meeting to discuss Sizewell C.
ABC News 2 Apr 19, While some view the British parliament as a symbol of political stasis since the 2016 Brexit referendum, other Brits have utilised Westminster’s symbolic power to press — literally and figuratively — for faster action on climate change.
On Monday, members of climate change action group Extinction Rebellion stripped half-naked in the House of Common’s glass-walled public gallery during a Brexit debate, and some appeared to have glued themselves to the glass.
As MPs started yet another day of lengthy debate on how or even whether the country should leave the European Union, 14 protesters stripped to their underpants to show slogans painted on their backs, including: “Climate justice now”.
……. more acts of civil disobedience would occur in the lead up to the group’s ‘International Rebellion’ on climate change inaction slated for April 15.
While many politicians, world leaders and big corporations speak about the future effects of climate change, poor and impoverished nations are already struggling to battle the consequences of rising global temperatures. Hundreds of people have been confirmed dead in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe after Cyclone Idai tore through the southern African countries on 14 and 15 March. With wind speeds reaching up to 177km/h, the United Nations has said the cyclone is potentially one of the worst natural disasters to hit the region.
James Kambaki, head of field HR at Doctors Without Borders Southern Africa told Daily Maverick on Friday that the organisation can only reach the city of Beira, which was hardest-hit by Idai, by ship and by helicopter. According to Kambaki, 90% of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed, and much of it is still under water.
Jamie LeSueur, one of the first people to lead a team from the International Federation of Red Cross, said: “The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous.”
Although the storm itself tore through the country more than a week ago, the citizens of Mozambique were still struggling to survive its effects.
“Two days ago the people reported that their reservoir of clean, treated water would last another two or three days. It’s now the third day and they need clean water still,” said Kambaki when speaking of Beira, which has a population of about 500,000 people.
First responders describe seeing victims of the storm “stranded on rooftops, in trees and other elevated areas”, Unicef spokesperson Christophe Boulierac told BBC.
The cyclone has created a humanitarian catastrophe in both Beira and other parts of southern Africa hit by the storm. With thousands still missing or injured in some of the poorest places in the world, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi will probably feel the effects of Idai for years.
But according to environmental activists Noëlle Garcin and Glen Taylor-Davies, Idai is just the start of extreme weather patterns.
“Politicians speak of global warming as if it’s a future problem, but it’s already here, it’s already happening,” said Garcin, Project Manager of Action 24, a programme that forms part of the African Climate Reality Project, “and the poor are affected the most.”
According to Taylor-Davis, South African team leader for 350 Africa, the people who are causing climate change — big corporations that burn fossil fuels and governments that support coal mining and the extractive industry –are not affected by it.
“The poor aren’t causing the problem, but they bear the brunt of climate change. They are suffering from drought, they suffer the worst in storms because they just aren’t able to build houses that can withstand storms or escape to higher ground,” Taylor-Davis told Daily Maverick.
Both Garcin and Taylor-Davis agree that climate change is unjust. Although President Cyril Ramaphosa recently launched the Good Green Deed initiative, which encourages South Africans to do one good green action per day, ordinary citizens are not the root cause of climate change.
It has been well documented that 71% of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by just 100 companies. Although Garcin acknowledges that it is important for people to reduce their carbon footprint, placing the onus of climate change on regular people is not only unrealistic, it is also dangerous.
Mozambique is a prime example of the inequalities of global warming. The country ranks 180 out of 189 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index, which measures education, economic prosperity and life expectancy. The country contributes a measly 0.14% of global greenhouse gas emissions. According to the World Bank at least half of the population of Mozambique lives in poverty, with the divide between rich and poor quickly becoming more extreme. A legacy of colonialism and civil war has left the country unable to protect itself against extreme weather and rising ocean levels.
“Looking at Beira, this was a city that was absolutely not prepared to deal with such an event, and there are multiple reasons for that, but one of the main reasons is that it’s a poor area,” said Garcin.
“This cyclone is laying bare the fundamental injustices of climate change, and it’s something we need to talk about because this is just going to keep happening.”
Although many people, including US President Donald Trump, refuse to believe that climate change is real, the evidence is surely undeniable: Extreme weather disasters are becoming more prevalent around the world, be it Mozambique’s cyclone, South Africa’s drought or even the wildfires in California. DM
Nuclear Energy Institute Seizes on Climate Momentum to Push for Policy Boost
“The answer to the climate crisis won’t be as simple as replacing carbon with renewables and batteries,” according to NEI’s president and CEO. Greentech Media
EMMA FOEHRINGER MERCHANTMARCH 26, 2019 In an annual briefing on the state of the nuclear industry, Nuclear Energy Institute President and CEO Maria Korsnick laid out a vision of a glowing future for the technology — if the industry receives the proper investment and policy support.
Korsnick argued that nuclear’s cultural capital is on the rise, helped along by concerns about climate change and calls for 100 percent clean energy, but she suggested the industry needs better federal and state policy to grow.
….. Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced $3.7 billion in additional loan support for the expansion of the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia. …..
Vogtle is a polarizing but important point of focus for the nuclear industry’s future. The Georgia expansion is the only large-scale nuclear project underway in the nation — another, V.C. Summer in South Carolina, was canceled in 2017 — and the first to be built in the U.S. in decades. It’s also billions of dollars over budget and significantly behind schedule, in part because key contractor Westinghouse announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy during construction.
……. Korsnick said more states should follow Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Illinois in allowing nuclear plants to compete as carbon-free sources or receive credits. Efforts to advance similar policies failed in Minnesota and are currently underway in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Though environmental groups have mixed views on nuclear, groups in both Ohio and Pennsylvania have spoken out against the support packages.
But Korsnick said a boost in conversations around climate action, the Green New Deal and state-level clean energy goals is bringing more positive attention to the technology.
“It’s this realization that 100 percent renewables — it’s not going to happen,” she said.
Cyclone Idai: thousands still missing in Mozambique
Mozambique Is Drowning. Nebraska Has Flooded. We Need a Green New Deal. BY William Rivers Pitt, Truthout, March 23, 2019 The ocean has come for the coastal African nation of Mozambique. Tropical Cyclone Idai, a devastating storm that pummeled the country with fierce winds, was followed by a massive flood that has obliterated dams, swept away homes and bridges, erased roads, shuttered airports, and damaged 90 percent of the city of Beira, home to more than 500,000 people. There are bodies in the water and no one to collect them, making diseases like cholera an imminent threat.
More than 1,000 are confirmed dead, a number that is sure to rise. Thousands more are homeless and seeking refuge. “Many people were waiting for food, water and medicine,” reportsThe New York Times, “in makeshift shelters in primary schools and other government buildings.” Satellite imagery over Mozambique shows a new flood-made inland sea that is 30 miles wide in places. “We’ve never had something of this magnitude before in Mozambique,” said non-governmental organization coordinator Emma Beatty. To the west in Zimbabwe and Malawi, more than 100 people are known dead, hundreds more are missing and the damage is extensive.
“There are at least three major ways that the Mozambique floods are related to climate change,” reports Eric Holthaus for Grist. “First, a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, which makes rainfall more intense. Idai produced more than two feet of rainfall in parts of the region — nearly a year’s worth in just a few days. Second, the region had been suffering from a severe drought in recent years in line with climate projections of overall drying in the region, hardening the soil and enhancing runoff. Third, sea levels are about a foot higher than a century ago, which worsens the effect of coastal flooding farther inland.”
For years, stories of massive climate disasters such as these may have felt distant to many U.S. readers, but the climate crisis has arrived here, too.
Eastern Nebraska Flooding – March 15 2019
A massive climate change-driven flood has transformed the middle of the United States into a bowl of soup. The waters have rolled down the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and inundated huge swaths of Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. Multiple towns in every state have been severely damaged, and thousands of farms that were already struggling have been scourged. On average, it takes about 28 days for river-borne floodwaters to recede, but repairing the wreckage left behind is expected to take years. Tens of thousands of people have been affected, and many are now without homes.
“In case you were wondering, the climate crisis isn’t coming. It’s already here,” writes Charles P. Pierce regarding flood preparations at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha. “The one institution of government that actually believes that is the United States military, and that’s a good thing, too, because, in this case, the exaggerated effect of the crisis and the extreme weather that results from it — the blizzards, the ‘bomb cyclone,’ the huge snowmelt, and the flooding — has become the national security threat that the Pentagon has seen coming.”……..
The ongoing pushback against the Green New Deal (GND) by most Republicans and some Democrats highlights the degree to which our leaders are willing to wait until the roof caves in on us before they act. ……
According to various polls, more than 70 percent of people in the U.S. believe that climate change is happening right now, and two-thirds of Republicans believe their party is out of step with reality on the issue. Activists like those in the Sunrise Movement are petitioning lawmakers to get it in gear, and are planning a traveling explanation tour through coal states like Kentucky and Pennsylvania to make the case that waiting is no longer an option.
Although experts have said it was too early to draw specific conclusions from Idai, for a continent already wracked by the effects of climate change, the Tropical Cyclone has been another chilling reminder of the destructive power of the kind of storms that will become more common in the future. It has been described as the worst weather-related disaster to hit the southern hemisphere, and the UN says more than 2 million people have been affected.
VERDADE By Adérito Caldeira
A week after Tropical Cyclone IDAI “massacred” the center of Mozambique, there are still people under siege in the trees and on the roofs of houses in the provinces of Sofala and Manica.
“The affected area is much larger than we thought, there are almost 125 kilometers of flood areas” said Saviano Abreu of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The location of 92 more corpses raised the number of fatalities to 294.
In Nhamatanda in Sofala province 47 bodies were found. Government official Toze Joseph said that there are other communities under water with which communication is impossible
The remaining 45 bodies were located and removed at Dombes administrative post in Sussundenga, Manica province.
In the neighboring province of Manica other 45 bodies were removed from the water at the Administrative office of Dombe in Sussendenga district, said the governor Manuel Rodrigues.
Since Tuesday, March 19, the Government has not publicly updated the number of affected people or fatalities.
“We are still updating the numbers. When the flood waters subside, more bodies will be discovered. When I addressed the nation and world, I said the numbers of dead will increase and that is what is happening,” said President Philip Nyusi in Tete.
Nyusi had earlier said that the number of deaths could rise to a thousand.
Cyclone Idai: The worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambique’s history | DW News
‘Bodies are floating’: Cyclone Idai leaves trail of destruction with more than a million affected, news.com.auStephanie Bedo and Ben Graham, MARCH 20, 2019
They can’t even count the dead in a city of 500,000 people as chilling images show the unprecedented disaster is far from over.
Countless people have been killed and almost a million left destitute after what could be one of the worst weather-related disasters in the southern hemisphere.
A national disaster has been declared after Cyclone Idai left a trail of death, destruction and homelessness in southern Africa.
Where once streets teemed with life, only the swamped shells of homes are left in the wake of the devastation that has affected millions in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Footage taken from the skies over Mozambique’s central port city of Beira, a city of half a million people, shows there is no discernible trace of life left.
More than 90 per cent of the city was destroyed as 170km/h winds tore across southeastern Africa, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“If the worst fears are realised … then we can say that it is one of the worst weather-related disasters, tropical-cyclone-related disasters in the southern hemisphere,” said Clare Nullis of the UN World Meteorological Organisation.
Emergency workers called it the region’s most destructive flooding in 20 years, and heavy rains are expected to continue until Thursday. In the low-lying coastal city of Beira, the water has nowhere to drain. “This is not going to go away quickly,” Ms Nullis said.
In Mozambique, the rapidly rising floodwaters created “an inland ocean,” endangering tens of thousands of families, aid workers said as they scrambled to rescue survivors and airdrop food, water and blankets to survivors.
Those left clinging to life amid the ruins could be battered by eight-metre waves during high tides over the coming days. Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program said the crisis “is getting bigger by the hour”.
……. The official death toll of Cyclone Idai — the deadliest storm in generations to hit Mozambique and Zimbabwe — more than doubled to more than 350 overnight, but that is expected to rise again, dramatically.
…… “The waters of the Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, making whole villages disappear and isolating communities, and bodies are floating,” said Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi.
Mr Nyusi said Idai, which ripped through the impoverished southeast African country of 30 million people on Thursday, was a “disaster of great proportions”.
The cyclone struck the Indian Ocean city of Beira late that day and then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi, with strong winds and torrential rain lashing the region.
But it has taken days for the scope of the disaster to begin to emerge in Mozambique, which has a poor communication and transportation network and a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.
That question gets at the urgency of the youth climate strikes and hints at the despair inherent in not getting this fight right. For anyone who was paying attention to the worldwide action last Friday, it’s absolutely clear that the moral heart of climate action today is in young people demanding a better world.
That’s why I was intrigued to read a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed that frames the Green New Deal as fundamentally an anti-despair public health agenda. The article’s author, Abraham Gutman, argues that America’s growing income inequality and structural racism are isolating and destructive to our mental health by stealing the hope for a better future. He says we’ve reached a crisis point, not only in the damage this system is doing to our bodies, but also to our planet. Rallying Americans to take bold action on climate change and address inequality could also go a long way to tackling addictions and lowering the suicide rate, Gutman says, saving hundreds of thousands of lives each year.
“The Green New Deal is the shift we need to give people something to look forward to,” he writes.
This potential for optimism, combined with the consistently high polling data that the Green New Deal (and climate in general) is getting lately points to the current moment as a breakthrough unlike any in the history of the climate movement. Climate change has rocketed to the top of the Democratic 2020 primary agenda, in large part due to the insistence of youth voices.
America’s youth have seen two possible visions of the future: One where we continue on with the status quo, or one where we have re-oriented our entire society to live in harmony with the planet we call home.
The rising power of the youth strikes show clearly which one they’d prefer. Once the rest of us have the courage to realize what’s at stake, we can get to work creating it.
Hong Kong students join global school strike calling for action against climate change
School climate strikes: 1.4 million people took part, say campaigners, Guardian, Damian Carrington, Environment editor@dpcarrington, 19 Mar 2019
Activist Greta Thunberg, 16, says action proved ‘no one is too small to make a difference’ More than 1.4 million young people around the world took part in school strikes for climate action, according to environmental campaigners.Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish student whose solo protest last August prompted the global movement, said: “We proved that it does matter what you do and that no one is too small to make a difference.”
A generation gap, when it comes to climate change?, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Dana Nuccitelli, March 15, 2019 “……….A record number of Americans now view global warming as a serious threatand blame human activities as the cause. But there is apparently a generation gap out there when it comes to accepting the scientific evidence. And an ethnic gap, a gender gap, and a gap in political leaning—along with whether one can be considered one of society’s “haves” or “have nots.” So, who are these climate deniers? What is their profile?
A June 2014 Washington Post-ABC News poll asked a nationally representative sample of American respondents several questions about their support for climate policies. Specifically, those surveyed were asked whether they would be in favor of government greenhouse gas regulations that increased their monthly energy expenses by $20 per month. Overall, 63 percent of respondents expressed support for the proposed policy, including 51 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats.
Interestingly, there was a significant age gap among the responses. For Democrats under age 40, support for the policy proposal was 78 percent, as compared to 62 percent over age 65. Among Republicans, 61 percent under age 50 supported the proposed regulations, as compared to 44 percent over age 50. According to a Pew Research Center survey, younger Americans are also more likely to correctly answer that the planet is warming and that this warming is primarily due to human activities.
……. A recent survey conducted by the National Center for Science Education found that teachers who identified as Republicans, teachers who regarded the Bible as the actual word of God to be taken literally, and teachers who favored libertarian and small-government views, were all less likely to emphasize the scientific consensus on climate change and more likely to air opposing views in the classroom.
Consequently, this survey of US middle and high school science teachers found that while approximately 70 percent of these teachers spent one to two hours on climate change per course, only 54 percent taught students about the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. Thirty percent incorrectly characterized climate change as being natural in origin, and 15 percent ignored the origins of climate change or the topic of climate change entirely. Although the survey identified systemic obstacles to teaching about climate change in American classrooms, those obstacles will eventually be overcome, and climate literacy will improve as a result—at least among the younger generation.
Exposure to the opinions of one’s peer group may also help explain the climate age gap, as older men are the most common faces of climate denial. For example, in 2009 the American Physical Society was petitioned by 206 of its members (approximately 0.45 percent of its membership) to change its climate position and reject the expert consensus on climate change. An analysis of the petition signatories by John Mashey found that approximately 86 percent were born before 1950 (compared to approximately 40 percent of the society’s membership as a whole), and 97 percent were born before 1960 (compared to approximately 60 percent of the overall membership). Climate denial conferences are also disproportionately attended by old white men.
But age is not the only predictor of climate change denial.
The climate acceptance ethnicity gap. African- and Hispanic-Americans were also more likely to correctly answer the Pew Research Center climate questions—and to express concern about climate change—than white Americans. ……..
nuclear-news 