Revealed: how the gas industry is waging war against climate action (excerpt) : The Guardian

Methane gas contributes to climate change

"After the gas ban was beaten back in Seattle, Caleb Heeringa, a spokesman for the Sierra Club in the city, said advocates saw coordinated industry and union pushback against gas-related climate efforts grow.

A new group called the Partnership for Energy Progress (PEP) was taking root. The partnership is an organization of western utilities, labor unions and businesses that plans to spend $2.8m in 2020 convincing consumers that “natural gas is part of a clean energy future”, and fighting state and local climate restrictions on gas, according to records reviewed by the Guardian."

Methane gas well. They leak.

.................

"The American Gas Association (AGA), which represents mainly investor-owned gas providers, now convenes monthly calls “that bring together appliance, homebuilder, fuel, and other associations to compare notes and support efforts to push back on decarbonization and electrification issues”, according to the same document."

Communities say no to gas wells.

........................

"As the public learns more about the harms of natural gas, the industry is playing both defense and offense.

Burning natural gas produces less planet-heating carbon dioxide than burning coal or oil. Gas advocates have positioned it as a smart alternative to those dirtier fossil fuels. Even the Obama administration backed gas as a “bridge fuel”.

But the extraction and transportation of natural gas leaks methane: a climate pollutant with a short-term warming potential far more powerful than carbon dioxide. Scientists are revealing we have greatly underestimated the methane emitted by the gas industry.
Fossil gas is responsible for 42% of the US greenhouse gas emissions that come from burning fossil fuels, according to data from the Department of Energy interpreted by Robert Howarth, who researches methane at Cornell University.

#jailclimatecriminals

“Gas is one of the biggest drivers of emissions growth both in the US and globally, and the future trends for expansion on the system are really worrying,” said Sheryl Carter, director of the power sector climate program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The infrastructure investments that are being made right now … they last for 40 to 60 years. So that really locks in those emissions increases.”"

Read the complete The Guardian story 

Related: What Can I Do? The Truth About Climate Change and How to Fix It by Jane Fonda
Published August 20, 2020 

#jailclimatecriminals, greenhouse gas pollution, methane gas, #America, #Australia, #climate crisis, #climateaction, #climatecriminals, #economy, 

Legal challenge to native forest logging in Tasmania might succeed

"BIG NEWS ! This court case could be a watershed moment in

ending the taxpayer-subsidised destruction of Tasmania’s precious native forests and the best chance in a generation to properly protect our old growth wilderness, their critters and critical carbon sinks.

Australian political parties support logging native forests

For more than two decades, too many Tasmanian politicians have hidden behind these dodgy Regional Forest Agreements and promoted the interests of a few profiteers at the expense of our environment and taxpayers.

We have long known these Regional Forest Agreements were used 

Native forests are already at risk from fires.

as cover to abandon the endangered wildlife they were set up to protect, simply to grease the wheels for a marginal industry that has wielded significant political clout. 

Recently the Tasmanian Government failed again to get FSC certification for its destructive native forest logging operations. 

This is no surprise when, for decades, it has not had a robust legal framework holding the industry to account especially around the protection of endangered species such as the Tasmanian devil, wedge-tailed eagle and swift parrot, and also for the logging of old growth forests." Senator Whish-Wilson on Facebook

..............................

"Bob Brown launches legal challenge to native forest logging in Tasmania

State-sanctioned felling is ‘based on a monumental lie’, former Greens leader says

'The former Greens leader Bob Brown has launched a legal challenge to native forest logging in Tasmania, claiming it is inconsistent with federal environment law.

The case by the Bob Brown Foundation, lodged in the federal court on Thursday, challenges what has been seen as an effective exemption from environment laws granted to state-sanctioned logging under regional forest agreements between Canberra and the states.

Australia ranks second worse on climate protection

It argues the Tasmanian regional forest agreement is not valid as it lacks a legally enforceable requirement that the state must protect threatened species.

The foundation says if the case were successful it would consider similar action against federal-state forest agreements in Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. It said the current rules “essentially allows the state government to make up the rules as it suits, and gives no guaranteed protection for our wildlife and environment”.

Brown said the foundation had been buoyed by a landmark federal court judgment in May that found logging in Victoria’s central highlands by the state-owned agency VicForests was in breach of a regional forest agreement.

Logging in NSW leaves Koala stranded.

“This is a huge undertaking for us but everyone knows that the flattening and burning of native forests and wildlife is not ecologically sustainable,” Brown said. “The industry is based on a monumental lie and this challenge puts that lie to the test.”

Read complete The Guardian story, August 21, 2020

  Related: Both the major parties in Australia support new gas projects

What Can I Do? The Truth About Climate Change and How to Fix It by Jane Fonda

What Can I Do?

The Truth About Climate Change and How to Fix It

By: Jane Fonda

Available: 9th September 2020
ISBN: 9780008404598
Number Of Pages: 252

Share This Book:

Paperback

 GO TO BOOKTOPIA WEBSITE

 

A call to action from Jane Fonda, one of the most inspiring activists of our time, urging us to wake up to the looming disaster of climate change and equipping us with the tools we need to join her in protest

This is the last possible moment in history when changing course can mean saving lives and species on an unimaginable scale. It's too late for moderation.

Our climate is in a crisis. 2019 saw atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases hit the highest level ever recorded in human history, and our window of opportunity to avoid disaster is quickly closing. In the autumn of 2019, frustrated with the obvious inaction of politicians and inspired by contemporary activists, Jane Fonda moved to Washington, DC to lead weekly climate change demonstrations on Capitol Hill. On October 11, she launched Fire Drill Fridays (FDF), and has since led thousands of people in non-violent civil disobedience, risking arrest to protest for action.

In What Can I Do?, Fonda's deeply personal journey as an activist is weaved alongside interviews with leading climate scientists, and discussions of issues, such as water, migration, and human rights, to emphasise what is at stake. Throughout, Fonda provides concrete solutions and actions that everybody can take in order to combat the climate crisis in their community.

As Annie Leonard, Executive Director of Greenpeace US and Fonda's partner in developing FDF, has declared, "Change is inevitable; by design, or by disaster." The problems we face now require every one of us to join the fight. The fight not only for our immediate future, but for the future of generations to come.

About the Author

Jane Fonda is an Emmy- and two time Oscar-winning actress and highly successful producer. She revolutionised the fitness industry with the Jane Fonda Workout in 1982 and has sold more than seventeen million copies of her fitness-focused books, videos, and recordings. She is involved with several causes and is the founder of both the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention and the Jane Fonda Center at Emory University. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller My Life So Far, and she received a Tony nomination in 2009 for her role in 33 Variations.

She lives in Los Angeles.

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, 

Lessons From the Frontlines of Global Warming (excerpt): New Republic

"What interviews with flood, wildfire, and drought survivors can teach us about how to live amid the threat of climate change

 

Extreme heat kills

Ronnie Scott lost his wife when she tried to to rescue their dog and cat from floodwaters in West Virginia in 2016. Carole Duncan almost lost her 83-year-old father during Australia’s massive 2019 bushfires, the firefighters finding him just in time. 

KerryAnn Laufer returned home days after the 2019 Kincade Fire in California to find only her fireplace still standing, while Dave Mackey saw nearly every house in his neighborhood on Grand Bahama island washed away, pummeled by raging waters and 200-mile-per-hour winds from Hurricane Dorian.

Storms, wildfires, and other such disasters are getting more common and intense as climate change accelerates. Scott, Duncan, Laufer, and Mackey, who survived these extreme weather events, are among the lucky ones. But each of them found themselves changed by the experience.


What would you do if your house burned down or your neighborhood washed away in a flood? How would you respond if a cataclysmic weather event killed someone you love or forced you to abandon, perhaps forever, the place you call home? And how would it change the way you think about the world?


These questions are at the heart of a new “Voices from the Future”

Green new deal is cheap actually

interview series a small group of journalist, researchers, and I have developed at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. We have collected the stories and insights of nearly three dozen survivors on five continents, eight of which will be published in these pages over the next few weeks."

Original story 

Steven Beschloss is a professor of practice at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and directs the Narrative Storytelling Initiative at Arizona State University. He has written for The New Yorker and The Washington Post, among other publications.

 

#California, #firestorms, #wildfire, Australia, cyclones, floods, Green New Deal, hurricanes, 


 

Greenpeace Gives Democratic Platform C+ on Climate, Calling for 'Action at the Scale That Science and Justice Demand':

Climate Criminals

"We know the Republicans have no plan," says the advocacy group. "But that doesn't mean the Democrats can take their feet off the gas."

Greenpeace USA announced Wednesday that the platform which Democrats are set to adopt this week earns only a C+ rating based on the scorecard process the group previously used to rank the climate policies of what was once a large field of the party's 2020 presidential primary candidates.

That C+ (52.5 points out of 100) is notably lower than the B+ (75.5/100) that Greenpeace gave to former Vice President Joe Biden, whom Democrats formally nominated as the party's candidate Tuesday night, or the B+ (77/100) the group gave to his former competitor and current running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).

Although the soon-to-be-finalized 2020 Democratic platform received "decent marks for advancing renewable energy and environmental justice," Greenpeace determined that there are "critical policy gaps in addressing the power of the fossil fuel industry" and it makes "no mention of the Green New Deal."