[TheClimate.Vote] April 5, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*April 5, 2020*/

[InTheseTimes exhortation, to engage online]*
**This Crisis Can Be a Gateway to Climate Action. These Activists Are 
Showing How.*
Climate justice organizers have moved from the streets to the Internet, 
where they are trying to scale up the fight...
BY CHRISTINE MACDONALD
"Mother Nature is fighting back," said Jennifer Falcon, communications 
coordinator for the Indigenous Environmental Network. "Our response to 
climate change should be similar to our response to Covid-19, because 
after the pandemic passes, we are still facing a climate crisis and 
chaos is hitting communities from the arctic to the global south."

The Network is among the organizations--from environmental stalwarts 
like Greenpeace, the Sunrise Movement and 350.org to progressive groups 
like the Working Families Party--that have rallied around proposals for 
a social-justice-infused People's Bailout that would address the climate 
crisis with a clean energy transition, rather than propping up the 
failing oil and gas industry and other polluting corporations. The 
groups also support a detailed Green Stimulus plan, penned by 
progressive economic and policy experts and guided by five 
people-centric principals, including one that calls on the pandemic 
response to build "a regenerative economy" fueled by wind and solar.

Since the pandemic has forced activists to cancel planned Earth Day 
street protests this spring, climate and social justice organizations 
nationwide are scrambling to move online the fight for a just and 
renewable future. While the focus of the protests planned for Earth Day 
had been on climate justice, COVID-19 has exposed the woeful inadequacy, 
activists say, of the country's healthcare and economic infrastructure, 
making the pandemic another strong argument for a more holistic approach 
to dealing with the country's thorniest problems, from crumbling 
infrastructure to atrophied social safety nets, with proposals like the 
Green New Deal championed by Sunrise and many of the other groups...
- -
Andrew J. Hoffman, a business professor at University of Michigan who 
studies society's views of climate change, called the pandemic "a test 
of the resiliency of our institutions" and of ourselves and how each of 
us will react to the climate challenges ahead. So far, he says, it's 
been a mixed bag of partisan sniping and self-interested panic shopping. 
But "on the flip side," he argues, "we've had tremendous giving and 
cooperation. That should give us some hope that we can deal with climate 
change."

"We do have to face facts that the world is changing," he said. "We need 
to develop resilient systems prepared for the kind of challenge that 
corona has presented us and others that we haven't thought through."

He thinks linking the pandemic to climate change risks setting off a 
backlash, particularly among climate change deniers, but notes that U.S. 
views on climate change are undeniably changing. "In the past five 
years, the number of people who believe climate change is real and 
human-caused has been going up steadily even among moderate to liberal 
Republicans…This is a shift that has already taken place," he says. "The 
partisan divide is narrowing."...
- -
While most people are focused on the COVID-19 crisis, the Trump 
administration  has continued rolling back the country's environmental 
protections. In a sign that supporters of the old fossil fuel economy 
are using the shock of the pandemic to prepare for future fights, three 
states just outlawed in-person protesting at oil and gas installations.

But can online activism replace people in the streets in this crucial 
year for climate action? Will it limit the involvement of vulnerable 
communities, which are less likely to have Internet at home? Falcon from 
the Indigenous Environmental Network says radio and podcasts have proved 
more effective particularly on reservations and remote indigenous 
communities where Internet access is limited and expensive.

Bill McKibben, 350.org cofounder, worries that online actions make it 
harder to attract new people to the movement. "You have to work hard to 
make sure that you don't just default to the already engaged," he says.

He's also not so sure whether most people will equate the pandemic as 
one more reason for the sweeping systemic changes 350.org, Sunrise and 
other groups are pushing for. "I'd settle for people deciding that 
reality is real, and can bite us hard," he wrote in an email. "Clearly 
the virus is making this point about biology; climate change requires 
that we take physics and chemistry with similar seriousness."

Despite the current moment's risks, Rogers-Wright of the Climate Justice 
Alliance also sees uniquely powerful opportunities online to broaden the 
movement's base. "It's really one of our only choices right now, so how 
do we use the time to reshape the narrative for everything that we want?"

Online campaigns, he points out, can reach more of the country and 
develop new local leaders using the same online targeting tactics 
advertisers use to build a diverse grassroots movement across the country.

"We've had three people's climate marches and the climate crisis has 
gotten even worse," he points out. "So if we can use this moment to 
recapture the narrative and go on offense with our narrative that's in 
itself would be a tremendous win."
https://inthesetimes.com/article/22433/climate-justice-pandemic-just-transition-peoples-bailout-green-new-deal



[Crisis science meets politics]
*How science finally caught up with Trump's playbook - with millions of 
lives at stake*
The president's failure to heed the warnings about coronavirus and act 
quickly has set in train a domino effect that now imperils large swathes 
of the US..
- - -
For Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard, the 
unfolding calamity is the fulfilment of her worst fears.

"When we first heard about coronavirus, I and several of my colleagues 
worried that Trump would not attend to scientific advice. This is a man 
who has exhibited a reckless disregard for scientific evidence over 
climate change; if he could do that, there was always the question of 
whether he would take seriously any science."

Oreskes sees Covid-19 as Trump's ultimate challenge. Would he put the 
lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans first, or would he dig into 
the tried-and-tested Republican playbook of showing hostility to science 
and expertise, reining in government intervention and prioritizing the 
money markets?

"This was a test of whether Trump's government would act. What we've 
seen is that for the people in power in this country, ideology beats 
even an imminent threat."..
- - -
At the same time, US intelligence agencies were passing on their own 
warnings to the White House. According to the Washington Post, Azar 
tried several times to sound the alarm but couldn't get an audience with 
Trump until 18 January, at which point all the president wanted to talk 
about was vaping.

The Post quoted an anonymous US official who said the system was 
"blinking red". The official said: "Donald Trump may not have been 
expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were - they 
just couldn't get him to do anything about it."

With the full might of the US scientific community at his disposal, 
Trump appointed individuals not known for their prowess with pandemics 
in charge of the federal response. The coronavirus taskforce was to be 
led by the vice-president, Mike Pence, who has been widely criticized 
for his handling of a 2015 HIV outbreak when governor of Indiana.

Trump is also increasingly relying on his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who 
made his first appearance at the taskforce briefing on Thursday. 
Politico has reported that Kushner, whose skill set is in real estate, 
has in turn reached out to his brother's father-in-law, who is at least 
a physician, for advice on fighting the pandemic.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/04/trump-coronavirus-science-analysis?CMP=share_btn_link


[Book review 25 MARCH 2020]
*The Story of More, by Hope Jahren*
Posted by Callan Bentley
Humanity faces a crisis today, and we struggle to find the right way to 
deal with it, to solve it, to live meaningfully within the constraints 
it imposes. You might think I'm referring to coronavirus, but it's 
actually climate change that's on my mind. Hope Jahren, author of the 
incandescent Lab Girl, has a new volume out, on the unsustainability of 
modern Western life, and what actions we can take as individuals to 
lessen our negative impact on the global environment while 
simultaneously living richer, more thoughtful lives. It's called The 
Story of More (more people, more energy, more resources, more carbon 
dioxide, etc.) with the subtitle of "How We Got to Climate Change, and 
Where to Go from Here." Apparently derived from a university-level 
course on climate change that Jahren teaches, this book is more 
relentlessly quantitative than the deeply personal stories told in Lab 
Girl, but each chapter includes some tale from Jahren's life that 
illustrates some connection to the topic in question. These vary between 
extremely apt and peripheral, but they are invariably heartfelt and 
poignant. Her writing, as always, is exceptionally elegant. One example 
of this is her description of a petroleum refinery south of New Orleans: 
It's "a bizarre landscape that looks to have been co-designed by Ayn 
Rand and Aldous Huxley. For a full five miles along the road next to 
Chalmette, Louisiana, you'll pass a massive array of smokestacks, 
steamstacks, and chimneys, looped together with pipes and shutoff 
valves, more angular than a Dr. Seuss drawing but equally fantastic." 
The focus is always on the human connection, and never delves into 
remote, inhuman topics like atmospheric dynamics.  reviews these 
sources, enabling readers to explore the numbers on their own). All 
told, the book doesn't "land" emotionally with the same intensity as Lab 
Girl, but it's less of a memoir and more of a "personal textbook." I 
could very easily imagine this volume as one of a triad of readers for 
an Environmental Geology course: Along with John McPhee's The Control of 
Nature and Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, The Story of More 
would serve there to round out an understanding of the human 
relationship to nature with an emphasis on personal opportunity and 
responsibility. Recommended, particularly the audiobook, which Jahren 
herself reads at perfect pace and with vital emphasis.
https://blogs.agu.org/mountainbeltway/2020/03/25/the-story-of-more-by-hope-jahren/
- - -
[Amazon]
*The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here*
https://www.amazon.com/Story-More-Climate-Change-Where/dp/0525563385


[From The Atlantic - article concludes:]
*The Coronavirus Killed the Policy Primary*
The coronavirus has forced the Democrats to change how they talk about 
policy...
EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE - APRIL 4, 2020

*Then there's climate change,* the issue that had become definitional in 
the Democratic race, vying with health care in polls about voters' top 
concerns. The pandemic might seem like the best imaginable shock to the 
system to get people serious about climate change--the population of the 
entire world responding together to a threat measured by science and 
(hopefully) eventually defeated by science, for better or worse.

But just ask Washington Governor Jay Inslee, the official most 
identified with fighting climate change, how much time he's had to talk 
about the environment while nursing homes and hospitals are being 
overrun by COVID-19. "It's worth noting that the people who told us that 
the coronavirus is a hoax, or not to be concerned with it, are the same 
people who have ignored the clear and present science on climate 
change," Inslee's former climate-policy adviser, Sam Ricketts, told me 
last week.

Ricketts is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and 
though he's been working on potential policy responses to the 
pandemic--he stressed that investing in climate-change technology would 
be one patch for the hole being opened up in the economy--he's not 
expecting the coronavirus to create a sudden push for environmental 
policy. From Barack Obama to Pete Buttigieg, a number of Democratic 
leaders have suggested that the pandemic might spark that kind of 
action. But Ricketts isn't sure.

"I don't know how much people are going to draw a straight line from a 
virus that's killing people around the world, to climate change," he said.

For others, though, the pandemic makes what once seemed unlikely look 
more possible. Take the Green New Deal, which Republicans and Democrats 
alike spent the past two years dismissing as unrealistic and 
unaffordable. Stephen O'Hanlon, the national field director for the 
youth-run Sunrise Movement, which has led the charge for the Green New 
Deal, points out that the plan was designed to take the country out of a 
recession by making a 1930s-style government investment in fighting 
climate change. Now that recession appears to be here.

"What we're seeing is that the next few months have the potential to be 
a once-in-a-century moment of political realignment in this country," 
O'Hanlon told me on Wednesday afternoon. "The Trump administration is 
talking about bailing out oil and gas companies at the same time that 
working families are struggling and seeing their paychecks disappear…. 
It's a real moment of reckoning for our country."

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to 
the editor or write to letters at theatlantic.com.
EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-climate-change-policy-primary/609280/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - April 5, 2002*
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman denounces White House press 
secretary Ari Fleischer's "...use of a press conference on the crisis in 
the Middle East to shill, once again, for the Bush energy plan," observing:

    "Even if the United States weren't dependent on imported oil, the
    Middle East would still be a strategically crucial region, and the
    Israeli-Palestinian conflict would still be a world nightmare.

    "But to the extent that oil independence would help -- and it would,
    a bit, by reducing the leverage of Persian Gulf producers -- the
    Bush administration has long since forfeited the moral high ground.
    It has done so by vigorously opposing any serious efforts at
    conservation, which would have to be the centerpiece of any real
    plan to reduce oil imports.

    "There are many ways to make this case; here are two more. Even at
    its peak, a decade or so after drilling began, oil production from
    the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would reduce imports by no more
    than would a 3-mile-per-gallon increase in fuel efficiency --
    something easily achievable, were it not for opposition from special
    interest groups. Indeed, the Kerry-McCain fuel efficiency standards,
    which the administration opposed, would have saved three times as
    much oil as ANWR might produce. Or put it this way: Total world oil
    production is about 75 million barrels per day, of which the United
    States consumes almost 20; ANWR would produce, at maximum, a bit
    more than 1 million.

    "Yet a few months ago, Republican activists ran ads with
    side-by-side photos of Tom Daschle and Saddam Hussein, declaring
    that both men oppose drilling in ANWR -- and Dick Cheney, when
    asked, stood behind those ads. Administration critics could, with
    rather more justification, run ads with side-by-side photos of
    George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, declaring that both men oppose
    increased fuel efficiency standards. (Actually, I'm not aware that
    Iraq's ruler has expressed an opinion on either issue.) Of course,
    if such ads did run, there would be enormous outrage. After all,
    turnabout wouldn't be fair play because, well, just because."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/05/opinion/at-long-last.html

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