Fleeing climate change - the real environmental disaster | DW Documentary

DW Documentary

Published on May 2, 2019

How many millions of people will be forced to leave their homes by 2050? This documentary looks at the so-called hotspots of climate change in the Sahel zone, Indonesia and the Russian Tundra. Lake Chad in the Sahel zone has already shrunk by 90 percent since the 1960s due to the increasing heat. About 40 million people will be forced to migrate to places where there is enough rainfall. Migration has always existed as a strategy to adapt to a changing environment. But the number of those forced to migrate solely because of climate change has increased dramatically since the 1990s. It is a double injustice: after becoming rich at the expense of the rest of the world, the industrialized countries are now polluting the atmosphere with their emissions and bringing a second misfortune to the inhabitants of the poorer regions. One of them is Mohammed Ibrahim: as Lake Chad got hotter and drier, he decided to go where the temperatures were less extreme and there was still a little water, trekking with his wife, children and 70 camels from Niger to Chad and then further south. The journey lasted several years and many members of his herd died of thirst. Now he and his family are living in a refugee camp: they only have seven camels left. Mohammed is one of many who have left their homelands in the Sahel - not because of conflict and crises, but because of the high temperatures. He's a real climate refugee.

'People are dying': how the climate crisis has sparked an exodus to the US : The Guardian

"As part of the Running Dry series, the Guardian looks at how drought and famine are forcing Guatemalan families to choose between starvation and migration
by Nina Lakhani in Camotán

At sunrise, the misty fields around the village of Guior are already dotted with men, women and children sowing maize after an overnight rainstorm.

After several years of drought, the downpour brought some hope of relief to the subsistence farmers in this part of eastern Guatemala.

But as Esteban Gutiérrez, 30, takes a break from his work, he explains why he is still willing to incur crippling debts – and risk his life – to migrate to the United States.

“My children have gone to bed hungry for the past three years. Our crops failed and the coffee farms have cut wages to $4 a day,” he says, playing nervously with the white maize kernels in a plastic trough strapped to his waist."

Read The Guardian article

Related:  

Heatwave: think it’s hot in Europe? The human body is already close to thermal limits elsewhere :The Conversation

Want to Build a Stronger Climate Movement? Integrate. :NexusMedia

"Dr. Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University in Houston, believes that big green groups need to do more to support environmental justice groups, which treat pollution not as an isolated problem, but as part of a larger constellation of issues that includes poverty, discrimination and political marginalization."

"We saw that in Hurricane Katrina when we didn’t take care of the levees in the lowest-income communities. That’s obvious to many communities on the ground who are facing the ravages of climate right now. For them, it’s not a debate. It’s not theory. It’s real. For workers who work outside, they know it’s getting hotter. They know it’s more difficult to work outside, and they know that if it’s too hot to work, or if it’s raining every day, they can’t do their job, and they’re losing money. It’s not a matter of whether or not climate change is real. They know it’s real."

Read the original Nexus story 

Related: 

The World's Poor are Hurt Not Helped by Fossil Fuel Subsidies

 

#environmentaljustice   #environment   #workers   #climateactivism   #climatejustice   

Public Money Propping Up Fossil Fuels: Market Forces

Your Australian taxes funding fossil fuels

"Each year, the Australian government spends billions of dollars of your money on programs that encourage more coal, gas and oil to be extracted and burned. Market Forces estimates that tax-based fossil fuel subsidies cost almost $12 billion a year federally. This includes subsidies that support both the production and use of fossil fuels.

But tax-based subsidies aren’t the only government financial backing for fossil fuels. Direct handouts and contributions to the industry are doled out at both federal and state levels. 

On top of this, public money is used to finance fossil fuels through our national export credit agency EFIC, as well as our involvement with international financial institutions.
Australia has built a bad reputation as one of the world’s biggest backers of the dirty fossil fuel industry, a stance made clear at the 2015 Paris climate talks when it refused to sign an agreement that would phase out fossil fuel subsidies. 

This came despite Australia having committed on multiple occasions to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”

Your Australian taxes are funding fossil fuels.

Read the Market Forces article

 Related:

The World's Poor are Hurt Not Helped by Fossil Fuel Subsidies

#fossil fuel industry  #fossil fuel subsidies  #fossil fuel subsidies, poverty  #climate action   #Australia,  

The World's Poor are Hurt Not Helped by Fossil Fuel Subsidies : GMO

Vote for my climate

"Governments argue that fossil fuel subsidies are designed to help the poorest members of society, however, this is not borne out by the research.  The true beneficiaries of these subsidies are wealthier people and wealthier nations not the poor.
According to an IEA report, more than 85 percent of these subsidies go to middle and higher end income earners while only 8 percent of the aid is reaching the poorest 20 percent. These subsidies encourage energy consumption as people with the lowest incomes tend to be lower energy users and rarely drive.
"Fossil-fuel subsidies as presently constituted tend to be regressive, disproportionately benefiting higher income groups that can afford higher levels of fuel consumption," the report said. 'Social welfare programs are a more effective and less distortionary way of helping the poor than energy subsidies.' "

Read the Green Market Oracle story

#fossil fuel subsidies   #climate catastrophe  #poverty   #renewable energy  #100% renewable energy  #electricity #Australia

The Guardian: We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN

Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, says IPCC

• Overwhelmed by climate change? Here’s what you can do

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
 
The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.

Read the full The Guardian article