[TheClimate.Vote] March 10, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/March 10, 2019/


[adroit visualization]
*Extinction Rebellion activists throw 'blood' outside Downing Street*
Protesters use red paint to symbolise climate deaths, day after sit-in 
at Scottish oil event
Video https://youtu.be/B2_Kd5n8Wvw Extinction Rebellion activists pour 
200 litres of 'blood' outside Downing Street
Extinction Rebellion activists have thrown buckets of "blood" outside 
Downing Street to call for greater action on climate change. About 400 
demonstrators, including families with children, spilled more than 200 
litres of red paint to make the severity of climate change "viscerally 
clear".
The blood was meant to symbolise "the death of our children" and the 
hellish future young people faced, the group said in a statement...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/09/extinction-rebellion-activists-arrested-over-scottish-oil-protest?CMP=share_btn_link


[future demonstrations for citizen future]
*On March 15, the Climate Kids Are Coming*
A massive, international, youth-led mobilization will demand action on 
the climate crisis.
By Mark Hertsgaard - MARCH 4, 2019
Beware the Ides of March, all you climate wreckers out there. The 
Climate Kids are coming, in massive and growing numbers, and they are 
not in the mood to negotiate. They know that you--whether you're a 
fossil-fuel executive, a politician who takes fossil-fuel money, or a 
Fox News hack who recycles fossil-fuel lies--have put their future in 
grave danger, and they are rising up to take it back.
On March 15, tens of thousands of high-school and middle-school students 
in more than 30 countries plan to skip school to demand that politicians 
treat the global climate crisis as the emergency it is. Shakespeare made 
the Ides of March famous with his soothsayer's warning in Julius Caesar, 
but ancient Romans actually saw it as a day for settling debts. What 
bigger debt is there than the theft of a livable future? At the March 15 
School Strike 4 Climate, young people will call in that debt and, in the 
United States at least, demand real solutions in the form of the Green 
New Deal championed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

If you don't know who Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg is yet, you can 
think of her as Ocasio-Cortez's international climate-change 
counterpart. Like the rock-star progressive representative from New 
York, Thunberg is a charismatic young woman whose social-media savvy, 
moral clarity, and undaunted truth-telling have inspired throngs of 
admirers to take to the streets for a better world and call out the 
politicians, propagandists, and CEOs who are standing in the way.

Just as the 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez torched the right-wing trolls who 
laughably derided her as "stupid" after she introduced, with Senator Ed 
Markey, the congressional resolution to create a Green New Deal, so 
Thunberg, 16, has gained prominence partly from her blistering callouts 
of global elites. After riding the train for 32 hours to Davos, 
Switzerland, in January--for the World Economic Forum's annual gathering 
to which many billionaires and heads of state arrive in private 
jets--Thunberg told a panel (which included Gary Cohn, President Trump's 
former chief economic adviser) that "some people, some companies, some 
decision-makers in particular have known exactly what priceless values 
they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of 
money." A pause, and then a final thrust of the knife: "I think many of 
you here today belong to that group of people."

When adults like British Prime Minister Theresa May scolded the strikers 
for skipping classes, Thunberg replied by urging them to join the 
protest on March 15--in effect, calling for a general strike for climate 
action. "If you think that we should be in school instead," Thunberg 
said, "then we suggest that you take our place in the streets, striking 
from your work. Or, better yet, join us, so we can speed up the 
process." In Australia, labor unions representing teachers, 
firefighters, and health workers were a step ahead of Thunberg, 
declaring in early February that they would support the climate strikes. 
The National Union of Workers said of the students, "They are inspiring 
leaders, and we support them in making our political leaders listen." In 
the United States, the AFL-CIO didn't respond to The Nation's request 
for comment.

The grassroots movements now taking charge of the climate fight consist 
overwhelmingly of teenagers and twentysomethings--people like 
Ocasio-Cortez and Thunberg. These young fighters are decidedly not your 
parents' environmentalists: supplicant, "realistic," and all too 
accepting of failure. They are angry about the increasingly dire future 
that awaits them and clear-eyed about who's to blame and how to fix it.

Inspired by the high-school students in Parkland, Florida, who began 
protesting gun violence after 14 of their fellow classmates and three 
school staffers were killed on February 14, 2018, Thunberg decided last 
August to protest the Swedish government's lackluster response to the 
climate crisis. With her round, serious face and light-brown hair 
braided into pigtails, she cut a quixotic figure sitting outside the 
Swedish Parliament with a handmade sign that said: "School Strike for 
Climate." Then a BBC reporter filed a story, which was shared on social 
media, and before long students as far away as Australia were striking, 
too. Now the inspiration has come full circle: David Hogg of the 
Parkland students' March for Our Lives movement recently asked his 
941,000 Twitter followers: "So when are we going to start walking out 
against climate change in the US? We live on planet Earth too."

In New York City, 13-year-old Alexandria Villasenor decided last 
December to emulate Thunberg's example: Every Friday, she skipped her 
classes to occupy a bench outside the United Nations headquarters with a 
sign proclaiming "School Strike 4 Climate." Now she's among the leading 
organizers of the March 15 strikes planned in the United States. "We are 
calling it the 'School Shutdown Strike for Climate' because our goal is 
to get so many students striking that we shut down the schools for a 
day!" Villasenor told The Nation. She has subsequently been covered by a 
host of news outlets, including CBS News and The Washington Post in a 
front page-story, where, like Thunberg, Villasenor skewered the 
absurdity of telling young people to prioritize homework over climate 
action. "If I don't have a future, why go to school?" she asked. "Why go 
to school if we're going to be too focused on running from disasters?"

The biggest student strikes thus far appear to have been in Australia 
and Europe, with journalists reporting that 32,000 students and 
supporters filled the streets of Brussels on January 24. Additional 
thousands rallied in Berlin, Munich, and smaller cities across Germany, 
Switzerland, and Belgium. In Dublin, striking students displayed an 
impressive grasp of climate science--particularly the need to stop 
releasing additional CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil 
fuel--chanting, "No more coal, no more oil, keep the carbon in the 
soil." Thunberg has stated in an interview with The Guardian that there 
have been student strikes for climate on every continent except 
Antarctica--70,000 strikers total by the third week of January. 
Meanwhile, she has continued to blast away at the complacency of too 
many so-called grown-ups. "Adults keep saying, 'We owe it to the young 
people to give them hope,'" Thunberg said at Davos. "But I don't want 
your hope…. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to 
act as if the house is on fire. Because it is."

Two groups that have supported Villasenor's strikes at the UN--the 
Sunrise Movement and the Extinction Rebellion--are representative of the 
more militant stance that younger activists have brought to the climate 
movement. Most big environmental groups have traditionally been 
resolutely nonpartisan, focused on inside-the-Beltway policy fights and 
loath to explicitly call out corporate polluters, though Greenpeace, the 
Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth are exceptions. Now, an array of 
youth-dominated grassroots groups are going directly after the 
climate-wrecking industry and the politicians it bankrolls.

And they aren't sparing their supposed allies. Last November, Sunrise 
activists welcomed the incoming Democratic majority in the US House of 
Representatives with protest signs demanding that Democrats "Step Up or 
Step Aside." Next, they occupied the office of incoming House Speaker 
Nancy Pelosi to demand her support for a Green New Deal. The sit-in went 
viral after Ocasio-Cortez, likewise rejecting the wait-your-turn 
etiquette expected of freshmen members, joined the protesters. The 
mainstream media picked up the story, and voila': The Green New Deal was 
on its way. For the first time, the US political class was discussing a 
response to the climate crisis commensurate with the scope and urgency 
of the problem.

Sunrise activists likewise got in Senate majority leader Mitch 
McConnell's face--or tried to, at least--after he refused to meet with 
them to discuss his plan to sabotage the Green New Deal with a rushed 
vote on Capitol Hill. After allegedly being turned away from McConnell's 
office in Louisville, Kentucky, on February 19, 17-year-old Destine 
Grigsby posted a video in which she blasted the man who has arguably 
been the greatest enabler of the Trump agenda: "[W]e're gonna demand 
that [Mitch McConnell] look us in the eyes and he tell us that the $1.9 
million he's gotten [in campaign contributions] from the fossil-fuel 
CEOs is more important than my future," Grigsby declared. On February 
25, 42 Sunrise activists were arrested after demanding to see McConnell 
during a sit-in at his office on Capitol Hill.

But no encounter was more revealing than a meeting between Senator 
Dianne Feinstein and activists from groups including the Sunrise 
Movement, Youth vs. Apocalypse, and Bay Area Earth Guardians, which 
attracted mainstream media coverage after the California Democrat 
corrected the assembled kids--"You didn't vote for me"--and insisted 
that she wouldn't endorse the Green New Deal because it couldn't pass 
Congress. Feinstein invoked her 30 years of experience on Capitol Hill, 
insisting that "I know what I'm doing" and "Maybe people should listen." 
Her mini-lecture summed up the problem perfectly: Like virtually 
everyone in the political/media class in DC, Feinstein doesn't grasp 
that climate change has become an emergency precisely because she and 
the rest of the status quo have done so little over the last 30 
years--and that humanity's survival now requires nothing less than the 
transformative mobilization embodied by a Green New Deal.

As Ocasio-Cortez tweeted two days later: "Climate delayers aren't much 
better than climate deniers. With either one, if they get their way, 
we're toast."

"Power concedes nothing without a demand," Frederick Douglass observed 
during the fight against slavery. "It never did and it never will." 
Their understanding of this axiom of social change is what makes 
Ocasio-Cortez, Thunberg, Villasenor, and all the Climate Kids so 
effective and exciting. They grasp what many of their elders apparently 
never learned: The climate struggle is not about having the best 
science, the smartest arguments, or the most bipartisan talking points. 
It is about power--specifically, the power that ExxonMobil and the rest 
of the fossil-fuel industry wield over governments and economies the 
world over, and their willingness to use that power to enforce a 
business model guaranteed to fry the planet. With the moral urgency of 
youth and the self-preservation instinct of all living things, the 
Climate Kids recognize that either the industry goes or they do. And 
they are not giving up without a fight.
Ed's note: An earlier version of this article identified the activists 
who met with Senator Feinstein as members of the Sunrise Movement. They 
also include members of Youth vs. Apocalypse, and Bay Area Earth Guardians.
https://www.thenation.com/article/greta-thunberg-climate-change-strike/



[Ready]
*What If Climate Change Were A Game? Earth's Existential Threat Made 
Tangible*
During the design of a Sports and Popular Culture course, I wanted my 
students to grasp keenly the concept of socioeconomic status (SES) 
differences. So I created a game called, "Take Me out to the Ballgame," 
where each student would be assigned the fictitious task of bringing a 
favorite niece and nephew to a matinee for the Boston Red Sox. During 
the course of the game, students would pick cards that would have an 
associated cost. These included travel to and from the stadium, tickets, 
snacks, souvenirs, lunch, and bonus cards. Students could find 
themselves with low transportation costs, as the game prescribed that 
they lived near the stadium. Their tickets might be affordable bleacher 
seats or the extraordinarily expensive Monster Seats. They might have 
refillable water bottles or $6 sodas. Even a rain delay could make a 
difference, as a bonus card required the additional cost of a hotel room 
for the play the next afternoon.

Students were smug if they had accumulated affordable costs by the end 
of the game -- say, $300 or less -- and wide-eyed if they had been 
charged around $1000. We deconstructed afterward by describing how 
something as innocuous as a MLB game could be accessible for some and 
prohibitive for others, based on SES differences, regardless of work 
ethic or intense fandom.

This game has been on my mind lately as I've been advocating alongside 
Sunrisers to promote a legislative agenda around the Green New Deal. 
Many climate deniers contact the group, berating everything from the 
reality of climate change to what they deem as unnecessary financial 
costs to local communities. I realized that, if these resistors had an 
opportunity to play "The Climate Change Game," they might have an 
opportunity to see how their decisions really do have an effect on the 
sum of all emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 which are induced by 
daily activities.

*The Climate Change Game*
Each player starts with 100 points. You gain or lose points based on 
decisions that you make which do or do not contribute to anthropogenic 
climate change.

You're out to dinner with your good friends. You have a choice to order 
a big juicy cheeseburger or a salad brimming with nuts, berries, and a 
wide assortment of vegetables. You are aware that switching to a 
plant-based diet not only benefits your health -- it can help protect 
the environment, as well. You see that your pals are going full burger, 
baby, and you join them. Lose 5 points.

You survey the origin of the produce and other foodstuffs that you're 
buying at the grocery, favoring local items because they incur fewer 
travel miles and associated emissions. Earn 5 points.

You retrieve plastics that have washed up onshore every time you walk 
the beach on those sun-sparked summer days. Earn 5 points.

You bring the kids to the new wind turbines in your region and explain 
to them their long-term benefits. Earn 5 points.

You gather together a dozen neighbors on Earth Day and, wearing bright 
orange vests, pick up litter that has accumulated over the long winter. 
Earn 5 points.

You ask your kids to sit with your parents and have them listen to 
stories about what the life, earth, and climate was like 50 years ago. 
Those stories would likely include references to earlier frosts in 
northern geographic areas, sleeping in forced hot air bedrooms rather 
than climate controlled rooms, growing vegetables in a backyard garden, 
lakes healthy with indigenous plants, or biking rather than driving well 
into their late teens. Earn 10 points.

You replant a farmer's fallow field with neighbors in an effort like an 
old-fashioned community barn-raising. We know that replanting and 
improving how we manage forests and avoiding wetland conversion could 
tackle a third of global greenhouse gas reductions needed by 2030 to 
stay on track with the Paris Agreement to keep global temperatures 
increases well below 2°C.  Earn 10 points.

You advocate with your local school board to make a climate change 
curriculum required in all grades. Earn 15 points.

You divest your stock portfolio of all fossil fuel holdings. You see 
your ROI drop, but you know your fiscal decision has real consequences 
for renewable, clean energy in the future. Earn 20 points.

Your neighbor asks you to join their carpool. You know that driving 
yourself to work in your internal combustion engine (ICE) everyday adds 
significant emissions to the atmosphere, but your personal convenience 
of being able to come and go when it's good for you outweighs the 
environmental costs. Lose 20 points.

You weigh your options when it's time to purchase a new personal 
transportation vehicle and decide to stick with an ICE. You've never 
been an early adopter, and, anyways, who wants to drive something little 
more than a golf cart, anyways? Vehicle electrification policies can 
contribute at least 1% of cumulative emission reductions to meet a 
2-degree target through 2050. Lose 50 points.

You listen to your neighbor, who has taken out a loan to purchase solar 
panels, electric heat pumps, and battery storage system for her 
residence. You think about the years it would take to pay off such a 
system in your own residence and decide to keep with your oil burner and 
regional utility authority. Lose 60 points.

Final Thoughts
In a recent New Yorker piece, Bill McKibben described standing with a 
broad field of cross-country skiers in Sweden, waiting for the race to 
begin. He realized that a race that commemorates a 16-century revolt 
against a tax hike might have a finite future, with winter shifting 
later into the calendar and the little future snow underfoot creating 
more of a mud fest. What he described as a sensation as "glorious as 
pushing down hard against the snow and feeling that energy converted 
into uphill glide" could soon be a sheer memory.

This is the existential threat and reality that we are all facing -- the 
way of life which seems to be a norm could dissipate very quickly unless 
we each take individual action.

If you played along with "The Climate Change Game" as you read, how did 
you do? There are many more ways that we can make conscious decisions on 
a daily basis that would help to lessen global temperature rise. The 
list of items in "The Climate Change Game" is just a start. You can help 
us to build this game. Add your ideas for points earned or lost based on 
carbon footprint decisions in the comments section below.

    About the Author
    Carolyn Fortuna Carolyn Fortuna, Ph.D. is a writer, researcher, and
    educator with a lifelong dedication to ecojustice. She's won awards
    from the Anti-Defamation League, The International Literacy
    Association, and The Leavy Foundation. She's molds scholarship into
    digital media literacy and learning to spread the word about
    sustainability issues. Please follow me on Twitter and Facebook and
    Google+

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/07/what-if-climate-change-were-a-game-earths-existential-threat-made-tangible/


*This Day in Climate History - March 10, 2014 - from D.R. Tucker*
March 10, 2014:
-- On MSNBC's "Ronan Farrow Daily," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) discusses 
the all-night climate-change symposium Democratic and independent 
Senators will hold that evening.
http://on.msnbc.com/1fkoDvA

-- MSNBC's "The Cycle" covers the Senate symposium on climate change.
http://on.msnbc.com/1isqKAQ

-- On MSNBC's "NOW with Alex Wagner," Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and 
Brian Schatz (D-HI) discuss the Senate climate symposium.
http://www.msnbc.com/now-with-alex-wagner/watch/senate-dems-plan-climate-change-talkathon-190456387545 

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