Donald Trump is hampering fight against climate change, WEF warns (excerpt) : The Guardian (2 years ago)

Trump digs coal

Two years after 2018 the situation is even worse.

"World Economic Forum outlines huge increase in all five eco risks since the US president assumed office


The World Economic Forum delivered a strong warning about Donald Trump’s go-it-alone approach to tackling climate change as it highlighted the growing threat of environmental collapse in its annual assessment of the risks facing the international community."

............." the WEF avoided mentioning Trump by name but said “nation-state unilateralism” would make it harder to tackle global warming and ecological damage.

The WEF’s global risks perception survey showed Trump’s arrival in the White House in 2017 had coincided with a marked increase in concern about the environment among experts polled by the Swiss-based organisation.

It said all five environmental risks covered by the survey – extreme weather events, natural disasters, failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, and human-made natural disasters – had become more prominent.

“This follows a year characterised by high-impact hurricanes, extreme temperatures and the first rise in CO2 emissions for four years. We have been pushing our planet to the brink and the damage is becoming increasingly clear. 

“Biodiversity is being lost at mass-extinction rates, agricultural systems are under strain, and pollution of the air and sea has become an increasingly pressing threat to human health.”

Trump has threatened to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris agreement under which nations agreed to take steps to limit the increase in global temperature. He has said the commitments made by his predecessor, Barack Obama, would damage the American economy.

Other states have said they will keep to the pledges made in Paris, an approach supported by the WEF."

Larry Elliott Economics editor

Thu 18 Jan 2018

Go to complete The Guardian article

ALSO

Trump suggests the climate may actually be 'fabulous' after an ominous UN report on looming disaster

Sinéad Baker

Oct 10, 2018, 

Trump digs coal

  

   • President Donald Trump on Tuesday sought to cast doubt on a UN report on climate change that had dire warnings about how little time we have to stop a global catastrophe.

 
   • Trump suggested that the world’s climate might actually be “fabulous” and that he’d seen reports expressing that position.

 
   • The UN report outlines the effects of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

 
   • Trump has previously called climate change a “hoax,” and last year he announced he would pull the US out of the Paris climate accord.

Trump, WEF, Paris Agreement, #climate crisis, #jailclimatecriminals, #criminales-climáticos-de-la-cárcel, #criminalesclimáticosdelacárcel, #extremeheat, #icemelting, hurricanes,  climatechangedenial

Brazil slashes budget to fight climate change as deforestation spikes: Reuters

Climate change driving Brazil's drought; Climate Change News.com

BRASILIA 

"Efforts to keep the Amazon rainforest standing and reduce Brazil’s planet-warming emissions are being hampered by budget cuts for the country’s environmental watchdog and its main climate change programme, researchers have said. 

Brazil has seen a sharp spike in deforestation under the right-wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro, with less than half the forest inspectors it had a decade ago and the COVID-19 pandemic spreading rapidly across the Amazon region. 

Compared with 2019, the first five months of 2020 registered a

Amazon deforestration: Climate Change News com

substantial drop in government spending on forest inspection activities carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama). 

For January to May 2019, the amount allocated was R$17.4 million ($3.24 million), against R$5.3 million so far in 2020, according to figures provided by the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies (INESC), a non-profit organisation that has analysed Brazil’s public budget for more than 30 years. 

Both the major parties in Australia support new gas projects

Climate grief expected to be widespread soon but it's still not openly acknowledged (excerpt): ABC

"Feeling miserable, anxious, helpless and just generally terrible because the world is becoming less habitable? You're not alone.

"The good news is there are strategies that may help you cope. The bad news is the pandemic we're now facing may test your passion and enthusiasm for climate action.

Kurtis Baute recently sought out

 professional help to cope with

 his despair about climate change.

(Supplied: Kurtis Baute)

For the past 18 months, Canadian scientist Kurtis Baute says he has been dealing with a lot of 'climate grief'.

"Basically I can't stop thinking about the fact that millions of people, real people, are dying or will die because of something that is completely unavoidable," he recently announced on his YouTube channel. 

"We can stop using fossil fuels but so far we've completely failed to do so...it feels completely out of control and it's depressing."

Climate grief — or eco anxiety/despair — is a strong psychological response to the current and future loss of habitats, species and ecosystems.

It's recognised by the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and sufferers may feel emotions like fear, anger, guilt, shame, grief, loss and helplessness.

It can be related to the direct impacts of climate change, such as drought or bushfire. But it can also take the form of a sense of doom or even existential crisis about our warming world.

In some ways it's a lot like the grief we experience when someone dies.

The health industry predicts it will be common place in the next 10 years.

Becoming more environmentally engaged

 

The danger of unvalidated grief

Climate grief is often categorised as a form of disenfranchised grief which means it isn't always publicly or openly acknowledged.

"There's no ritual around loss of environment," says Tristan Snell, a counselling psychologist and researcher in environmental psychology at Deakin University.

"When you lose someone, there's a funeral and all sorts of ways people connect and this helps process that loss. That's just not the case for loss of environment." 

People experiencing disenfranchised grief can feel unsupported or

The thought of climate catastrophe can be overwhelming

ashamed, and consequently can be very reluctant to talk with friends, family or a professional.

"People may feel this isn't something someone else can help with," says Dr Snell.

This can then snowball into major physical and mental health problems.

Some will feel this more than others

Researchers, including Dr Snell, are currently trying to gauge the mental health impacts of climate change and recent climate-related events on Australians with this survey which you can get involved in. 

However, the latest research says that if you're between 15 and 24-years-old you are at higher risk of feeling climate grief, with almost half of young Victorians feel extremely frustrated, fearful, sad and outraged about climate change.

Climate change is causing grief

"How to cope

Clinical psychologists are developing strategies to help people work through climate grief, but research is still quite limited.

However you may find the follow tactics help with feelings of emotional distress:

• Gather trusted and authoritative information on the topic to ensure your knowledge on climate change is correct
 
• Become more environmentally engaged by getting involved in land care or tree planting for example — taking action to better the planet is thought to relieve some anticipatory grief 
 
• Spend time in nature to remind yourself it's a source of strength

• Talk with like-minded family or friends and if needed, seek professional help"

Read the complete ABC article 

Related:  We need action to prevent further catastophic fires and we need to be prepared for wildfires


#cambio-climatico, #climateaction, #climate crisis, #climateemergency, #criminales-climáticos-de-la-cárcel, #jailclimatecriminals, #人类灭绝, #气候变化, fossil fuel industry, 

Why COVID deniers and climate skeptics paint scientists as alarmist (excerpt): Grist

Climate Change Denial Tactics

By Kate Yoder on Aug 13, 2020 

 

 

In an interview with Fox News last month, President Donald Trump called Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, an “alarmist,” using a pejorative straight from the playbook of those who deny the science behind climate change. Fauci rejected the characterization, describing himself as a “realist.”

For anyone paying attention to arguments about climate change over recent decades, Trump’s comment sounded awfully familiar: Scientists are alarmists, everything’s a hoax, and hysteria abounds.

 Michael Mann, a climatologist at Penn State University, wrote an op-ed for Newsweek this week drawing parallels between his experience and Fauci’s during COVID-19. Science deniers have lobbied attacks on the two public figures, he explained, sending death threats, calling them names, and questioning their expertise.
So what do terms like alarmist and hysteria really mean, where did they come from, and how can people respond to such accusations?"

"The strategies used to dismiss the threats of climate change and coronavirus follow a similar pattern, and they’re employed by many of the same people. It starts with denying the problem exists, as Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history at Harvard who studies disinformation, has explained. Then, people trying to obstruct action deny the severity of the predicament, say it’s too hard or too expensive to fix, and complain that their freedom is under threat. Denying the science requires dismissing what scientists are saying, and the easiest way to do that is by questioning their motives, impartiality, and rationality.

“If we don’t trust scientists or medical experts because we see them as alarmist or hysterical or as contributing overreaction, then we don’t trust the info they’re giving us,” said Emma Frances Bloomfield, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas."

Read the complete Grist article by Kate Yoder

See also:

'Two global health emergencies': doctors group backs green stimulus: The Age

climate deniers, Trump, COVID-19, #cambio-climatico, #climatecrisis, #climatecriminals, #corporations, #criminales-climáticos-de-la-cárcel, #

The verdict from bushfire experts: there's no sidestepping climate: SMH

A week before Christmas last year, five of my fellow veteran fire and emergency chiefs and I held a press conference as fires ravaged Australia’s east coast. Appalled by the utter lack of leadership from Canberra in supporting bushfire response efforts, we took matters into our own hands.

We announced that 33 retired fire and emergency chiefs would convene a National Bushfire and Climate Summit to do what the federal government should have done: bring together everyone with a role to play in an effective bushfire response, and develop solutions to help protect Australians against the growing bushfire threat, fuelled by climate change.

Much has changed since then. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned life as we know it on its head, forcing us to take our summit online, but it did not change our commitment to finding solutions to improve Australia’s bushfire response, readiness, and recovery.

Our sense of urgency was fuelled by a simple truth that was echoed time and again in every session: climate change has pushed Australia into a new era of unprecedented bushfire risk, and our governments have underestimated the threat. This puts communities in danger.

The concern we felt was mirrored in the discussions at the summit, which brought together almost 200 experts including firefighters, bushfire survivors, economists, doctors, farmers, Indigenous cultural burning experts, economists, and many more.

In every session, there was a shared, palpable level of fear. Fear that the death and destruction of our Black Summer is now the benchmark for our periodic worst fire seasons. Fear that no matter what we do to fight such fires, fire seasons like our last will overwhelm every effort at control. Fear that some communities are now located in places that cannot be defended on the worst days. Fear that old approaches to fuel management are no match for fires that now burn so fast and intensely that they create their own dry thunderstorms and weather systems.

The biggest fear expressed, however, was that our national government will continue to ignore the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and act on climate change, while supporting the opening of new fossil fuel projects that will worsen global warming.

The truth is abundantly clear: we need a fundamental rethink of how we plan, prepare for, respond to and recover from bushfires. Our Australian Bushfire and Climate Plan, with 165 practical recommendations resulting from summit discussions, is a good start.

But first, if we are to have any hope of coping with the increasing bushfire threat, we must deal with the underlying driver – by phasing out fossil fuels, banning new coal, oil, and gas projects, and reaching net zero emissions as fast as possible.

The remaining recommendations outline how we can better use the support capabilities of our defence forces, better resource our fire, emergency and land management agencies, increase fuel reduction, resource Indigenous cultural burning capabilities and improve insurance access. We also need a national strategy to deal with the health consequences of worsening bushfires.

We recommend new rapid fire-detection technology, new types of water-bombing aircraft and more remote-area fire teams to stop small fires becoming big ones.

There is also considerable emphasis on community support, and community-led solutions. This includes boosting mental health support for afflicted communities and firefighters, and community resilience hubs in every vulnerable local government area.

It is an ambitious plan, for a big problem, but who will pay for it? The summit concluded that fossil fuel companies, which drive the emissions-causing global warming and extreme weather, should pay a levy so Australia can build resilience to, and recover from, worsening climate disasters.

Greg Mullins  July 30, 2020

Read the complete SMH article 

Related:  9 Ways to assist Australia's farmers with climate change

 #cambio-climatico, #climateaction, #fossilfuelcompanies, #criminales-climáticos-de-la-cárcel, #jailclimatecriminals, #wildfire, 

Government's COVID Commission manufacturing plan calls for huge public gas subsidies: ABC NEWS

methane gas industry calls for sunsidies

State bans on coal seam gas development would be scrapped and the Federal Government would underwrite gas prices and massively subsidise costs and investment for gas companies, under confidential plans for a "gas-led manufacturing recovery" post-COVID-19.

Key points:

• Leaked documents reveal a draft plan calling for massive gas subsidies and public investment
• The interim report also calls for reduced 'green and red tape' and an end to all fracking moratoriums in NSW and Victoria
• The National COVID Coordination Commission has several members with deep links to the gas industry

The draft plans, obtained by the ABC, call for the scrapping of "green and red tape" on gas development, including a relaxation of Australian standards for equipment used in gas infrastructure and a loosening of environmental regulations and approval processes.

They are set out in an interim report from the manufacturing taskforce of the National COVID Coordination Commission (NCCC).

The NCCC is a hand-picked team of business leaders and former bureaucrats set up by the Prime Minister's Office to shape the economic recovery from the virus and lockdown, and includes several members with strong links to the gas sector.

The manufacturing taskforce includes business representatives as well as union leaders from that sector.

Its draft report advocates "underwriting new [gas] supply with government balance sheets" to allow gas producers "to invest with confidence and new pipelines to be built to get the gas to markets".

Read the ABC NEWS article

World has six months to avert climate crisis, says energy expert : The Guardian

Climate Change is Real

The world has only six months in which to change the course of the climate crisis and prevent a post-lockdown rebound in greenhouse gas emissions that would overwhelm efforts to stave off climate catastrophe, one of the world’s foremost energy experts has warned.

“This year is the last time we have, if we are not to see a carbon rebound,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency.

Governments are planning to spend $9tn (£7.2tn) globally in the next few months on rescuing their economies from the coronavirus crisis, the IEA has calculated. The stimulus packages created this year will determine the shape of the global economy for the next three years, according to Birol, and within that time emissions must start to fall sharply and permanently, or climate targets will be out of reach.

“The next three years will determine the course of the next 30 years and beyond,” Birol told the Guardian. “If we do not [take action] we will surely see a rebound in emissions. If emissions rebound, it is very difficult to see how they will be brought down in future. This is why we are urging governments to have sustainable recovery packages.”

Read The Guardian article

The Australien Government has made an ad about its Economic Recovery Plan, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative.

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