[TheClimate.Vote] August 30, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.

[Richard Pauli]

/August 30, 2019/

[making it worse]*
**E.P.A. to Roll Back Regulations on Methane, a Potent Greenhouse Gas*
WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration laid out on Thursday a 
far-reaching plan to cut back on the regulation of methane emissions, a 
major contributor to climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule aims to eliminate 
federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to 
detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage 
facilities. It would also reopen the question of whether the E.P.A. had 
the legal authority to regulate methane as a pollutant...[more]
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/climate/epa-methane-greenhouse-gas.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage


[Hurricane prep - AP video]
*Hurricane Dorian strengthens to Category 2 storm*
Associated Press
Published on Aug 29, 2019
Hurricane Dorian is now a Category 2 hurricane and is expected to 
continue strengthening over the weekend. Forecasters expect Dorian to 
become a major hurricane Friday and make landfall on Florida's east 
coast on Monday night. (Aug. 30)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PTkFXOAxKo


[incremental positions]*
**Sanders' Climate Plan Includes Holding the Fossil Fuel Industry 
Accountable*
By Dana Drugmand
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released his plan for 
tackling the climate crisis on Thursday, and it includes perhaps the 
strongest call yet for holding fossil fuel companies accountable for 
climate change–-including pursuing criminal liability.

"Fossil fuel executives should be criminally prosecuted for the 
destruction they have knowingly caused," Sanders said via Twitter.

Sanders' three-pronged, $16 trillion plan includes transforming the U.S. 
energy system to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, holding the 
fossil industry accountable for climate change and rebuilding the U.S. 
economy to ensure justice for frontline communities and a just 
transition for those currently employed by the fossil fuel industry.

Sanders said if elected president, he will ensure that the Department of 
Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission investigate fossil 
fuel companies and bring suits -- both criminal and civil -- for any 
wrongdoing, just as the federal government did with the tobacco 
industry. He said companies should pay for damages that they have 
knowingly caused.

"The fossil fuel industry has known since as early as the 1970's that 
their products were contributing to climate change and that climate 
change is real, dangerous, and preventable. Yet, they kept going," 
Sanders said in the plan, adding that once the fossil fuel industry knew 
the danger their products posed to the climate, they doubled down.

"Instead of working to find solutions to the coming crisis, the fossil 
fuel industry poured billions into funding climate denialism, hiring 
lobbyists to fight even the slightest government regulation and 
oversight, and contributing to politicians who would put the interests 
of fossil fuel executives over the safety and security of the planet," 
he said.

"Fossil fuel corporations have fought to escape liability for the 
pollution and destruction caused by their greed,"  Sanders added. "They 
have evaded taxes, desecrated tribal lands, exploited workers and 
poisoned communities,."...
- - -
Climate advocacy groups applauded the plan, including the piece about 
directly investigating fossil fuel companies and executives.

"All candidates should take notice of Senator Sanders' hard line on 
accountability for the fossil fuel corporations, and its executives who 
have profited from global destruction for decades," said Tamara O' 
Laughlin, director of 350 Action, an advocacy group focused on climate 
change and mobilizing voters.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade organization 
representing the oil and gas industry, said pitting environmental goals 
against working families who rely on affordable American energy is a 
false choice.

"While some may use attacks on natural gas and oil to energize their 
political base, our industry will remain focused on providing the energy 
that powers America's economy and modern lifestyle, while also 
continuing to lower carbon emissions beyond their current generational 
low," said the API in a statement.

"If fossil fuel executives and lobbyists reading Sanders' plan are 
scared, they should be," Jack Shapiro, a senior climate campaigner with 
Greenpeace USA said in a statement.

"They've spent millions of dollars to convince the American people that 
we can't thrive without oil, gas, and coal, when the exact opposite is 
true. It's time we have a president who calls out their dangerous lies, 
not one who repeats them."
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/08/23/sanders-climate-plan-includes-holding-the-fossil-fuel-industry-accountable/


[interior Colder makes for hotter ]
*The air conditioning trap: how cold air is heating the world*
  Illustration: Guardian Design
The warmer it gets, the more we use air conditioning. The more we use 
air conditioning, the warmer it gets. Is there any way out of this trap?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/29/the-air-conditioning-trap-how-cold-air-is-heating-the-world



[Washington Post - talks linguistics]
*How should we talk about what's happening to our planet?*
Dan Zak - August 27
[Frank Luntz..] In 2001, he'd written a memo of environmental talking 
points for Republican politicians and instructed them to scrub their 
vocabulary of "global warming," because it had "catastrophic 
connotations," and rely on another term: "climate change," which 
suggested "a more controllable and less emotional challenge."

Last month, with a revised script, Luntz appeared before the Senate 
Democrats' Special Committee on the Climate Crisis... "I've changed. And 
I will help you with messaging, if you wish to have it."

Don't talk about threats, he told the senators. Talk about consequences.

Don't talk about new jobs created by green energy. Talk about new careers.

And sustainability?

"Stop," Luntz said. "Sustainability is about the status quo."

Even the committee's name had a troublesome word in it: "crisis." It's 
flabby from overuse, Luntz thought. If everything is a crisis, then 
nothing is...
- - -
In May, the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg ditched "climate change" for 
"climate breakdown" or "climate emergency." The Guardian now uses 
"climate catastrophe" in its articles. A resistance movement born in 
Europe last year named itself Extinction Rebellion, partly to normalize 
the notion of aggressive action in a life-or-death situation...
- -
The climate problem is not just scientific. It's linguistic. If we can 
agree how to talk and write about an issue that affects us all, maybe we 
can understand and fix it together...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-should-we-talk-about-whats-happening-to-our-planet/2019/08/26/d28c4bcc-b213-11e9-8f6c-7828e68cb15f_story.html
[try: "Global heating with climate destabilization"]


[Speaking of Greta]
*The Misogyny of Climate Deniers*
Why do right-wing men hate Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 
so much? Researchers have some troubling answers to that question.
By MARTIN GELIN
August 28, 2019
...the idea that white men would lead the attacks on Greta Thunberg is 
consistent with a growing body of research linking gender reactionaries 
to climate-denialism--some of the research coming from Thunberg's own 
country. Researchers at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology, 
which recently launched the world's first academic research center to 
study climate denialism, have for years been examining a link between 
climate deniers and the anti-feminist far-right.
- -
The connection has to do with a sense of group identity under 
threat...the shock some men felt at the #MeToo movement--and now climate 
activism's challenge to their way of life, male reactionaries motivated 
by right-wing nationalism, anti-feminism, and climate denialism 
increasingly overlap, the three reactions feeding off of one another.
"There is a package of values and behaviors connected to a form of 
masculinity that I call 'industrial breadwinner masculinity.' They see 
the world as separated between humans and nature. They believe humans 
are obliged to use nature and its resources to make products out of 
them. And they have a risk perception that nature will tolerate all 
types of waste. It's a risk perception that doesn't think of nature as 
vulnerable and as something that is possible to be destroyed. For them, 
economic growth is more important than the environment"
- - -
in the United States, where there is a massive gender gap in views on 
climate change, and many men perceive climate activism as inherently 
feminine...The rise of Thunberg and Ocasio-Cortez has generated a 
predictable backlash among conservative men. In the U.S., Ocasio-Cortez 
has become an obsession on right-wing media...
- - -
The rise of Thunberg and Ocasio-Cortez has generated a predictable 
backlash among conservative men. In the U.S., Ocasio-Cortez has become 
an obsession on right-wing media. Fox News mentioned her an average of 
76 times a day during her first month in Congress. Now, Greta Thunberg 
is becoming a similar target for European nationalists. In Germany, the 
far-right Alternative für Deutschland party seems to have coordinated 
their attacks on Thunberg with the right-wing European Institute for 
Climate and Energy think tank.

Climate change used to be a bipartisan concern, the first Bush senior 
presidency famously promising to tackle global warming. But as 
conservative male mockery of Thunberg and others shows, climate politics 
has quickly become the next big battle in the culture war--on a global 
scale.
As conservative parties become increasingly tied to nationalism, and 
misogynist rhetoric dominates the far-right, Hultman and his fellow 
researchers at Chalmers University worry that the ties between climate 
skeptics and misogyny will strengthen. What was once a practical 
problem, with general agreement on the facts, has become a matter of 
identity. And fear of change is powerful motivation.
https://newrepublic.com/article/154879/misogyny-climate-deniers
- - -
[research papers]
*A green fatwa? Climate change as a threat to the masculinity of 
industrial modernity*
Abstract

 From the autumn of 2006 and until 2009, climate change was
described in Sweden as having apocalyptic dimensions. There was a
parliamentary and public consensus that anthropogenic climate change
was real and that society needed to take responsibility for lowering
greenhouse gas emissions, though a small group of climate sceptics
did not agree with the majority of the scientists or the need for
drastic changes in the organization of Western societies. This small
group, with only one exception, consisted of elderly men with
influential positions in academia or large private companies. In
this article we discuss how they described themselves as
marginalised, banned and oppressed dissidents, forced to speak
against a faith-based belief in climate science. They characterised
themselves as having strong beliefs in a market society, great
mistrust of government regulation and a sturdy belief in engineering
and natural science rationality. We contend that climate sceptics in
Sweden can be understood as being intertwined with a masculinity of
industrial modernity that is on decline. These climate sceptics
tried to save an industrial society of which they were a part by
defending its values against ecomodern hegemony. This gender
analysis of climate scepticism moves beyond the previous research of
understanding this discourse as solely an ideologically-based outcry
against science and politics, and highlights the recognition of
identities, historical structures and emotions.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18902138.2014.908627?journalCode=rnor20
- - -
*Industrial/breadwinner masculinities*
Chapter · June 2019 
DOI: 10.4324/9780429424861-5
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333818011_Industrialbreadwinner_masculinities


[NYTimes compiled list]
84 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back Under Trump
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html?module=inline


*This Day in Climate History - August 30, 2005 - from D.R. Tucker*
August 30, 2005:
In an essay published in the Boston Globe, and republished the next day 
in the New York Times, Ross Gelbspan writes:

"The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina
by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming."

http://web.archive.org/web/20130618033413/http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0830-22.htm
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