[TheClimate.Vote] August 28, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*August 28 , 2020*/

[science clip]
*What's behind August 2020's extreme weather? Climate change and bad luck*
The month of August alone has brought hurricanes, wildfires and a derecho
August 2020 has been a devastating month across large swaths of the 
United States: As powerful Hurricane Laura barreled into the U.S. Gulf 
Coast on August 27, fires continued to blaze in California. Meanwhile, 
farmers are still assessing widespread damage to crops in the Midwest 
following an Aug. 10 "derecho," a sudden, hurricane-force windstorm.

Each of these extreme weather events was the result of a particular set 
of atmospheric -- and in the case of Laura, oceanic -- conditions. In 
part, it's just bad luck that the United States is being slammed with 
these events back-to-back-to-back. But for some of these events, such as 
intense hurricanes and more frequent wildfires, scientists have long 
warned that climate change has been setting the stage for disaster...
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/2020-extreme-weather-climate-change-hurricane-derecho-wildfire


[DeSmogBlog]
*As QAnon Conspiracy Spreads on the Far Right, Climate Science Deniers 
Jump Aboard*
By Sharon Kelly - Thursday, August 27, 2020
- -
"The QAnon movement hasn't traditionally covered climate change, but in 
May, when an influential QAnon account tweeted about climate denial, 
there was a notable and sustained increase of QAnon content shared 
within the climate denial group," Michael Khoo, an advisor on 
disinformation for the environmental group Friends of the Earth, and 
Melissa Ryan, CEO of CARD Strategies and author of the Ctrl Alt-Right 
Delete weekly newsletters, wrote in an article published today on Medium...
- -
Not only is QAnon taking up climate denial, but prominent climate 
deniers have been taking up QAnon.

"The other thing we see is that the right needs QAnon more and more to 
amplify their messaging," said Ryan.

Take, for example, Naomi Seibt, a young German YouTuber who has 
questioned climate science and who has worked with the Heartland 
Institute, a U.S. think tank and notorious promoter of climate science 
denial.

"So do you want a beautiful planet that you can stare at but that's it? 
It's just like looking at a TV screen," the Express, a UK newspaper, 
quoted Seibt as saying in May. "As a climate realist, I don't deny that 
we don't have some negative impact on the planet. But I don't think that 
it's related to CO2 emissions."

Seibt briefly rose to broader prominence following a Washington Post 
article about her in February -- though she remains far less well-known 
than Greta Thunberg, the young environmental activist who the Heartland 
Institute has sought to compare with Seibt. "She reportedly chose not to 
renew her contract with [the] Heartland [Institute] in April 2020 after 
facing potential fines from a regional broadcasting authority," DeSmog's 
profile on Seibt notes.

In addition to speaking about climate, Seibt has publicly spoken about 
her views on race and religion. "Seibt's rise as the young face of 
climate skeptics has drawn scrutiny of her past remarks. On Friday, 
video circulated of Seibt's remarks after a shooting at a German 
synagogue," Bloomberg reported on February 28. "'The normal German 
consumer is at the bottom, so to speak. Then the Muslims come somewhere 
in between. And the Jew is at the top. That is the suppression 
characteristic,' she said in comments first reported by The Guardian."...

In July, the trial of that synagogue shooter, charged with murdering two 
people and the attempted murder of dozens more, began with the accused 
shooter stating that he felt he was "on the bottom rung of society" and 
that he was "superseded," as he sought to justify horrific crimes.

As in Germany, white supremacists in the U.S. have increasingly engaged 
in racially motivated "mass shooter" armed attacks on unarmed people. 
And QAnon followers have also begun committing violent acts. "I think 
it's also important to remember that the FBI has declared QAnon a 
domestic terrorism threat," said Ryan, "and QAnon has inspired 
kidnappings, it has inspired at least one murder, it has inspired arson, 
there is a real danger from these folks who are drawn to this and become 
just embroiled in it."...
- -
The teenage Seibt has previously denied allegations of anti-Semitism and 
her mother, an attorney whose clients have reportedly included 
politicians from the far-right German AfD party, previously told The 
Guardian that Naomi is not a supporter of the far-right. "'In fact, I 
was commenting that I think it's wrong to comment on different races and 
to view them differently,' Seibt said," in response to questions about 
her views on race, The Guardian reported. "'We should just all be 
regarded as the same.'"

More recently, in addition to talking about climate change and other 
topics, Seibt has begun posting about QAnon. "As of right now, I don't 
consider myself an active part of the QAnon movement," Seibt said in a 
YouTube video posted earlier this month and whose title refers to two 
QAnon themes, "but I am on the side, watching and evaluating for myself 
what I think is verifiable and what to me seems too far out there."

"I do not consider myself an active part of the QAnon movement, nor will 
I ever attach a label to my activism," Sebit said in response to a 
question from DeSmog about whether her position had since changed, 
adding that she also does not identify as a white nationalist, part of 
the far-right, or an anti-Semite. "But as long as the QAnon movement 
continues its peaceful protest against matters of injustice, I consider 
it a positive contribution to the global political discourse."

"I do not view any ethnicity or religion as superior," she said, adding 
that she identifies as a libertarian. "I promote a reduction of 
centralised state power so that individuals may act freely. The premise 
for that freedom, of course, is that the individual does no harm to his 
or her fellow citizens."...
- -
Social Media Fail
Khoo and Ryan pointed to the ways that social media companies for years 
failed to conduct the most basic scrutiny of information that they 
publish online and allowed all sorts of demonstrably false information 
to be repeated in an endless rumor mill online.

"Facebook has policies that let Trump lie uninterrupted," they wrote. 
"And when climate deniers get a simple fact-check on Facebook, members 
of Congress themselves have sent letters to company executives to complain."

All of this can, of course, have significant policy consequences in the 
real world.

"The danger for environmental advocates and for the planet is that QAnon 
could be the energy that stops a big push for any meaningful climate 
action," Khoo told DeSmog. "If a Green New Deal is the next thing, we 
could see QAnon followers serving as the foot soldiers in that war."

There's also the risk that fossil fuel companies and trade organizations 
might jump on the QAnon bandwagon, inspired by the conspiracy theory's 
popularity. Last week, President Trump praised the movement, claiming 
not to know much about it except that "they like me very much."

"If QAnon becomes more mainstream," Ryan said, "I could see a scenario 
where industry groups that are invested in climate denial and fossil 
fuels and such will be incentivized to embrace QAnon or rely on those 
tactics and networks."

The other risk is that conspiracy theorizing, when mixed with social 
media, can not only bring in adherents, it can also raise money.

"The new addition to this history of climate capitalism is the 
capitalism behind the clicks, the monetizing of disinformation that 
happens on all the platforms," Khoo and Ryan wrote. "Virality is central 
to the profit model, as are ads. Whether or not they're true is 
secondary, from a business perspective."

And the reality is that QAnon has been growing, with NBC News reporting 
earlier this month that Facebook discovered QAnon accounts and pages 
have attracted over 3 million member and follower accounts.

Last week, Facebook removed nearly 800 QAnon groups and took some steps 
to restrict QAnon hashtags and other social media. That follows moves by 
Twitter to take down roughly 7,000 Twitter accounts and designating 
QAnon as "coordinated harmful activity."

Some see that as far too little, far too late. "They've had three years 
of almost unfettered access outside of certain platforms to develop and 
expand," Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at the Harvard Shorenstein 
Center's Technology and Social Change Project, told MIT Technology 
Review in July.
As of press time, Facebook and Heartland have not responded to questions 
from DeSmog.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/08/27/qanon-conspiracy-naomi-seibt-climate-science-deniers



[Dave Roberts clips - opinion]
*A second Trump term would mean severe and irreversible changes in the 
climate*
No joke: It would be disastrous on the scale of millennia.
By David Roberts - Aug 27, 2020
If Donald Trump is reelected president, the likely result will be 
irreversible changes to the climate that will degrade the quality of 
life of every subsequent generation of human beings, with millions of 
lives harmed or foreshortened. That's in addition to the hundreds of 
thousands of lives at present that will be hurt or prematurely end.

This sounds like exaggeration, some of the "alarmism" green types are 
always accused of. But it is not particularly controversial among those 
who have followed Trump's record on energy and climate change.

"As bad as it seems right now," says Josh Freed of Third Way, a 
center-left think tank, "the climate and energy scenario in Trump II 
would be much, much worse."

The damage has not primarily been done, and won't primarily be done, by 
Congress, except through inaction (which is no small thing). Under 
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate has effectively abdicated 
its duty as a legislative body; it now mostly exists to approve 
far-right judges to the federal bench.
- -
First, though, let's talk about the main thing, which is that a Trump 
victory would make any reasonable definition of "success" on climate 
change impossible.
- -
The US needs to completely transition off electricity generated by coal 
and natural gas, vehicles powered by gasoline and diesel, and buildings 
heated by natural gas and oil -- and quickly.

Everything Trump has done pushes in the opposite direction. Four more 
years of Trump, backed by a Republican Senate, will mean a heavy drag on 
global efforts to control carbon. Progress on decarbonization will slow 
in the US, and the example America sets will slow other nations' 
progress as well, making the aforementioned 10-year mobilization all but 
impossible. That is a difference that will reverberate for centuries.
- -
The administration is also going after other methane rules on oil and 
gas operations, and in the process, trying to change the EPA's 
rulemaking process to make future regulations more difficult. That 
brings us to a key point.
The Trump administration is stacking the deck to advantage fossil fuels
Aside from all the rules the administration has eviscerated, is 
eviscerating, and plans to eviscerate, it is also pushing several 
changes to agency procedures that will make it more difficult to 
regulate in the future.

Under administrator Andrew Wheeler, the EPA has proposed to alter the 
way it does cost-benefit analysis to exclude consideration of a rule's 
"co-benefits" -- reductions in other pollutants that come as a side 
effect of reducing targeted pollutants. (A coalition of environmental 
groups has opposed the change, which violates EPA precedent, statutory 
intent, and common sense.) If the change goes into effect -- as it 
surely will given another term and friendlier courts -- all future air 
quality rules will be weakened.

The EPA has also promulgated a "secret science rule" that would exclude 
from consideration a wide swath of studies demonstrating the danger of 
air pollution (including its danger in helping spread Covid-19). Without 
those studies to rely on, justifying public health regulations would be 
more difficult going forward. The EPA's own independent board of science 
advisers said the change would "reduce scientific integrity" at the agency.

Speaking of independent science advisers, starting under Pruitt, the EPA 
began pushing out science advisers who had received grants from the 
agency (which includes most of them) and replacing them with fossil fuel 
cronies. Amusingly, even a science board packed with Trump appointees 
has said that three of the agency's major recent rule changes flew in 
the face of established science. Still, given another term to finish the 
job, Wheeler could effectively eliminate independent scientific review 
at the agency.
The administration has also gutted the National Environmental Protection 
Act (NEPA), which requires the federal government to rigorously assess 
the effects of its actions on the environment and local communities, and 
is one of the principal avenues through which communities of color and 
other vulnerable communities communicate their interests to the federal 
government.

In July, the White House Council on Environmental Quality released a 
proposed rule that would dramatically limit the range of federal agency 
actions to which NEPA applies, limit consideration of cumulative and 
indirect impacts (like climate change and environmental justice), and 
curtail public involvement in the decision-making process and judicial 
review. Given another term to see the change through, the White House 
could shape every major federal agency decision going forward.
- -
The administration is also trying to revoke California's waiver under 
the Clean Air Act, which allows the state to set its own (typically more 
ambitious) emissions standards. If it succeeds, it would sabotage not 
only California's standards but those of the 13 states (and Washington, 
DC) that have adopted them.

And it won't be the only way a vindictive Trump could go after his 
perceived enemies. "Blue states will be starved of federal funding, 
which means massive cuts that inevitably lead to a degradation in 
environmental enforcement and investment in cleaner energy," says Freed, 
"but also likely big reductions in mass transit funding and aid to 
cities that will push more people into cars and more emissions."
- -
Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch have recently 
been making noise about radically limiting the ability of federal 
agencies to regulate at all, under a hyper-conservative interpretation 
of the "nondelegation doctrine."

"It's impossible to exaggerate the importance of this issue," my 
colleague Ian Millhiser writes. "Countless federal laws, from the Clean 
Air Act to the Affordable Care Act, lay out a broad federal policy and 
delegate to an agency the power to implement the details of that policy. 
Under Kavanaugh's approach, many of these laws are unconstitutional, as 
are numerous existing regulations governing polluters, health providers, 
and employers."

There may already be five conservative votes on the court for this 
radical lurch backward. If Trump gets another two SCOTUS appointments, 
it is all but a certainty.

Land, water, and wildlife are also getting the shaft
I've mostly been focusing on the EPA and energy, but Trump's damage is 
omnidirectional.
- -
A second Trump term will almost certainly see a renewed push for more 
offshore oil and gas drilling, expanding on the recent opening of the 
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A plan to open virtually all the 
nation's coastal waters to drilling was put "on hold" after pushback 
from courts and coastal communities last year, but it will return, as 
will further delays for offshore wind projects.

Bernhardt also moved the headquarters of DOI's Bureau of Land Management 
to Grand Junction, Colorado (a fossil fuel hub), and gave DC staff 30 
days to decide whether to follow. Predictably, and by intent, the move 
resulted in an enormous brain drain, as about half of the experienced 
staff left...
- -
There is no telling how many more agencies Trump could gut given four 
more years. Many staff, at EPA and other agencies, have been holding on 
to hopes of a new president. If Trump is reelected, there's likely to be 
a huge exodus of knowledge and talent from the federal government.

*Trump's foreign policy is entirely devoted to fossil fuels*
Promoting fossil fuels has been one of the few consistent themes of 
Trump's foreign policy.
- -
In a second term, Trump is unlikely to rejoin Paris; he's much more 
likely to remove the US from the United Nations Framework Convention on 
Climate Change entirely. It is an open question whether the Paris 
framework could survive that at all.
*
**Four more years of Trump would leave democracy, and hope for a safe 
climate, in tatters*
The above constitutes a highly selective list, a small portion of the 
damage Trump has done to climate and energy progress across federal 
agencies and international agreements. There are plenty of other 
examples to cite, including his beloved trade wars, which he will 
undoubtedly expand in a second term. A recent analysis found that his 
solar tariffs to date have cost 62,000 jobs in the solar industry and 
blocked 10.5 gigawatts of new solar from coming online. (If you can 
stomach a more comprehensive list, check out this piece from the Global 
Current.)
The main bulwark against Trump's changes so far has been the courts, but 
that bulwark will not hold against an administration with four more 
years to bolster its legal cases and appoint sympathetic judges.

Under Trump and McConnell, the Senate has already appointed 200 federal 
judges, almost a quarter of the total number. If McConnell keeps the 
Senate, the next four years could see half of federal judges being Trump 
appointees and a 7-2 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. That 
would likely mean a rapid return to pre-New Deal jurisprudence, 
radically curtailing the reach of foundational environmental laws. Trump 
-- or, more precisely, the Federalist Society -- would be utterly 
unrestrained.
And that's not even accounting for the possibility that Trump could 
simply ignore court judgments he doesn't like, which seems to be the 
logical next step for an administration that has faced so little 
accountability for its law-breaking.

In a second term, especially if Republicans keep the Senate, there would 
be few tools left to use against Trump's march into the fossil fuel 
past. Big businesses and financial institutions might exert some 
influence. The EU might impose a border adjustment tax. But most hope 
would fall on direct activism.
- -
Yet activism is only going to get more difficult, as it tends to under 
authoritarian states. "It's impossible to separate the massive, vicious 
assault on democracy and civil rights Trump would prosecute in a second 
term from the actions he would take on climate and energy," says Freed. 
Many states have been passing laws ramping up the scope and severity of 
penalties for direct activism, increasingly being redefined as "domestic 
terrorism." Trump's use of federal forces to brutalize protesters in 
Portland is likely a preview of a much more extensive crackdown on civil 
disobedience in a second term. Some environmental groups are already 
having serious discussions about how to prepare their members.

There's no sugarcoating it: If Trump wins the election and Republicans 
keep the Senate, democracy in America might not survive. At the very 
least, any hope of public policy to rapidly decarbonize the US is off 
the table. The US will push actively in the opposite direction.

I often think about this passage from a 2016 commentary in the journal 
Nature (signed by 22 noted climate scientists):

    Policy decisions made during [coming years] are likely to result in
    changes to Earth's climate system measured in millennia rather than
    human lifespans, with associated socioeconomic and ecological
    impacts that will exacerbate the risks and damages to society and
    ecosystems that are projected for the twenty-first century and
    propagate into the future for many thousands of years.

*Thousands of years.*
Trump's damage to the climate is not like his damage to the immigration 
system or the health care system. It can't be undone. It can't be 
repaired. Changes to the climate are, for all intents and purposes, 
irreversible. They will be experienced by every generation to come.

It is a cliché by now to call this the most important election of our 
lifetimes, but even that dramatic phrasing doesn't capture the stakes. 
 From the perspective of the human species as a whole, the arc of its 
life on this planet, it may be the most important election ever.
Read full article - 
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/8/27/21374894/trump-election-second-term-climate-change-energy-russia-china



[OK lets have a look]
*What's Left to Destroy*
Aug 22
What do four more years of Trump mean for the climate and energy agenda?
Since taking office, the Trump administration has set-off on an 
extensive effort to deregulate and weaken climate and environmental 
protection, while promoting fossil fuels. This includes vehicle fuel 
efficiency standards, the Clean Power Plan, methane leaks, and an 
overlying effort to undermine scientific rule making. U.S. greenhouse 
gas (GHG) emissions are up since 2017 and the bedrock of environmental 
standards weakened across the federal government.
With less than 100 days to go before the general election, we ask what a 
second term of the Trump administration spells for the climate and 
energy agenda. Our assumptions are the following: the 2020 election is 
won by the incumbent, split congressional chambers with Democrats 
holding the House, and Republicans winning a swath of gubernatorial and 
state legislator positions.

Sections:

    1. Oil and Gas

    2. Fuel Efficiency Standards

    3. Research & Development

    4. Solar and Wind Power Financing

    5. Laws and Regulations

    6. Supreme Court Cases

    7. Republican Obstructionism

    8. Eroding Cooperative Federalism

    9. International Climate Policy...

more at - https://www.theglobalcurrent.com/home/whats-left-to-destroy



[VICE news video]
*Russia's Fires Are So Out of Control They're Melting Polar Ice Caps*
Aug 26, 2020
VICE News
As temperatures reached a record 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Russian 
Arctic this summer, the shrubs, grasses and mosses of the tundra started 
to burn. That's an entirely new source of planet-warming carbon, as well 
as methane from thawing permafrost. Soot from these fires also helps 
melt polar sea ice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3R0PoS_Q4Y&t=224s&utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=curated_vice_daily_1473227



[NPR on the ironic power of wind and gravity]
*Hurricane Laura Rips Down 'South's Defenders' Confederate Statue In 
Lake Charles, La.*
The South's Defenders Memorial Monument features a young flag-bearing 
soldier, looking out over the lawn of the Calcasieu Parish Courthouse, 
where it has stood for more than 100 years. But Laura, which came ashore 
as a Category 4 storm with winds of 150 mph, knocked the soldier off its 
pedestal and onto the grass...
- -
The storm damaged or destroyed a number of other landmarks, including a 
bowling alley, a casino and a Happy Donuts, which is a popular source of 
pastries such as king cakes and kolaches.
https://www.npr.org/sections/hurricane-laura-live-updates/2020/08/27/906717766/hurricane-laura-rips-down-south-s-defenders-confederate-statue-in-lake-charles



[GIZMODO reports]
*Bill de Blasio's Back-to-School Plan Ludicrously Relies on Global 
Warming to Ward off Coronavirus*
On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced part of his 
vision to protect students from the coronavirus. Chiefly among them is 
proper air ventilation. Some researchers have found this can reduce the 
spread of the highly contagious virus.

Keeping windows open is a no-brainer, then. Right? Well, until winter 
rolls around. New York regularly sees cold-ass winter days. De Blasio, 
however, isn't too worried. According to Spectrum News, de Blasio told 
reporters on Tuesday that global warming would bring enough days where 
teachers could open classroom windows this winter. You read that right: 
The mayor's solution to winter-time classroom safety during a pandemic 
is good old global warming.

"I hate to say it, but the winters aren't the winters we used to know, 
so we're going to have a number of days throughout the year where you 
can have the windows open in a way that works because this is global 
warming in action, unfortunately," de Blasio said during a presser...
https://earther.gizmodo.com/bill-de-blasio-s-back-to-school-plan-ludicrously-relies-1844845587



[LA Times]
*Californians fleeing wildfires are talking about climate change like 
never before*
By SAMMY ROTH - AUG. 27, 20206 AM
California continues to burn, and it's hard to focus on much else.

I'm guessing your news feed, like mine, has offered an endless stream of 
doomsday images and headlines: More than 1.4 million acres burned, at 
least seven dead and 136,000 people ordered to evacuate, even as weather 
conditions began to improve. More than 1,600 structures destroyed, 
mostly by the second- and third-largest fires in state history. Nearly 
14,000 lightning strikes.

The numbers and facts can be overwhelming. Difficult to comprehend. They 
start to become meaningless.

To get a handle on what it all means, I called Anita Chabria.

Anita is a Times staff writer based in the Sacramento Valley. She was on 
the front lines of the 2017 Tubbs fire, the 2018 Camp fire and the 2019 
Kincade fire. This year she's covering the LNU Lightning Complex fires. 
She's learned to always bring a paper map because of all the times her 
GPS has lost signal on remote mountain roads where the smoke is so thick 
it's hard to see.

"It's like being on the moon," Anita told me. "You go down these roads 
where all the trees are black and everything's burned, but some of the 
utility poles are still standing and burning more slowly. It's hot. I 
always have to wear boots because when you get out it's hot on the 
ground. And propane tanks are popping. It is a little crazy at times."

Anita and I spoke Monday afternoon as she prepared to go back into the 
field. She talked about what makes the current fire emergency so 
unprecedented, why California isn't prepared to deal with this scale of 
devastation, and how people living through these disasters are thinking 
about climate change.

Here's an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

ME: You've covered a lot of big fires. What's different about what's 
happening right now?

ANITA: What's striking about these fires is how quickly we went from 
nothing in California to our largest fire crisis in history. Just in the 
span of a couple days, we've seen 1.4 million acres burn. We just have 
never seen anything else like this.

And what's becoming more and more clear is we do not have the resources 
to fight it. So our only goal right now is to protect people and 
property and infrastructure, and wait it out for cooler weather to help 
us get this under control.

We have 14,000 firefighters out right now. I've heard people say we need 
three times that many folks just to start to get a handle on these 
things. We don't have the equipment, we don't have the engines, we don't 
have the air power.

ME: What aren't we doing right now that we would be doing if we had more 
resources?

ANITA: Normally you set a defensive line around the fire. Your goal is 
to ring the fire in and keep it from spreading. And you do that by 
sending hand crews to dig fire lines, bulldozers to dig fire lines. You 
literally circle the fire, and then you have a defensible perimeter.

We don't have enough people to set lines at all the fires. So that means 
our priority is not containing these fires from going farther like we 
normally would, it's simply pushing them back from our most populated 
places, from the places where they're going to do the most damage.

ME: That's so depressing.

ANITA: We've just been incredibly lucky. I think what the firefighters 
don't want to say out loud is that one good windstorm and we could lose 
total control of this. Right now, if there's one blessing in this, [it's 
that] Santa Cruz saw some high winds for a while, but we haven't seen 
those gusting winds that blow it across the freeway and take it into the 
neighborhoods.

My little contribution to the world is when I talk to people in the 
evacuation centers, I always get their address, so if I'm near their 
home I can take a picture and tell them if it's there or not. Because 
the anxiety for people is they've left and they have no idea if their 
house is there or not, and they can't get through. But I can.

ME: There's been a lot of research showing how climate change is making 
these wildfire crises worse. Have you seen that in your reporting?

ANITA: Time and again this week, people have told me they are living 
through climate change.

I see it the most in the interviews I do with people in places like 
Sonoma County, who will tell me over and over again that when they were 
kids, it was wet this time of year. They remember it being so lush and 
so cool. And now, literally within one generation, they see they are 
living in a different climate than they grew up in, even though they're 
in the same town.

I hear it from moms all the time. They're in these towns where they grew 
up, and then they're raising their kids there, but it's not the same 
place that they grew up in, weather-wise. And that makes it not the same 
place fire-wise and safety-wise.

ME: So often the narrative about climate is that it's hard to get people 
to care, because it's not their lived experience. It's in the 
background, exacerbating existing crises. So it's fascinating to me to 
hear about people who realize that climate change is happening to them.

ANITA: It wasn't so much a discussion before, like with the Tubbs fire. 
But now everywhere I go, it comes up in the interviews. Because they 
aren't just a community that has lived through fire. They're a community 
that is living through perpetual trauma.

It's not just that your house gets burned. It's children being taken out 
of school, children whose safety is threatened, families that are having 
to flee in the middle of the night on an annual basis. That's a horrible 
thing to grow up with, that's a terrible sense of insecurity.

Then if you combine it with maybe not speaking the language or not being 
socioeconomically at the top, and you're having to flee in the middle of 
the night when maybe you don't own a car -- the sense of safety of a 
whole generation growing up in these fire places is really compromised.

ME: The people you're having these conversations with -- are they 
thinking about moving somewhere else?

ANITA: Absolutely. I talked to a woman in a story I recently did, her 
name is Harvest Echols. She grew up in Healdsburg. Actually, her dad and 
his siblings built a geodesic dome in the hills there. So she grew up 
very hippie. She's in her 40s, and she has two kids.

They were evacuating in an RV when I spoke to them. Last October when 
they had to evacuate, it was a middle-of-the-night run to Sebastopol, 
where they found a hotel, went to bed, and a couple hours later there 
was pounding on their door because the hotel was in the fire zone now. 
And so they had to flee again. And she was just so traumatized on behalf 
of her kids that this time they're not even waiting for the evacuation 
order. They bought an RV and they're getting out of town. And she said 
she's thinking about moving.

People are so tied to this region. It's Northern California, we're 
Californians. No one wants to go anywhere else, really. But a lot of 
people are talking about Oregon.

ME: Have you seen anything in the course of your reporting that makes 
you optimistic we're going to figure this stuff out as a state, and 
learn to live in a reality with bigger and more devastating fires?

ANITA: I do personally think that California has some of the best 
firefighters in the world, because they're the most experienced, 
unfortunately. If there is a body of fire professionals that can handle 
this now and in the future, it is California's firefighters. I haven't 
met one of them that is not willing to to give their life to this fight.

What I hear over and over again from the experts is that we need to get 
our act together when it comes to the reality of fire. We prepare for 
earthquakes, we have earthquake drills. We build earthquake-proof 
buildings. We could rebuild fireproof buildings. We could treat fire the 
same way we treat other potential disasters where preparing for it is an 
expectation.

We need to up our game when it comes to living in those zones where the 
wilderness is coming into contact with our suburbs. There are things we 
can do to prepare for the reality that fire is going to come through. 
California just hasn't fundamentally embraced that truth.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2020-08-27/boiling-point-newsletter-california-wildfires-boiling-point



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - August 28, 2014 *
The New York Times reports:

"At a private conclave with the billionaire Koch brothers' political 
apparatus this year, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican 
leader, laid out a confrontational agenda for a Republican-controlled 
Senate aimed at dismantling President Obama's legislative successes 
through the federal budget.

"In an audio recording leaked to The Undercurrent, a liberal-leaning 
YouTube channel, and initially reported by the magazine The Nation, Mr. 
McConnell told the mid-June gathering in Dana Point, Calif., that if the 
Republicans gained control of the Senate and retained control of the 
House in November, Congress could use the budget process to force the 
president to roll back his priorities.

"'In the House and Senate, we own the budget,' he said, explaining that 
the initial blueprint on taxes and spending does not require the 
president's signature.So what does that mean? That means that we can 
pass the spending bill. And I assure you that in the spending bill, we 
will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what's called 
placing riders in the bill. No money can be spent to do this or to do 
that. We're going to go after them on health care, on financial 
services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board. All 
across the federal government, we're going to go after it.'

"The channel released audio of three other Republicans in tough Senate 
races -- Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Representative Cory 
Gardner of Colorado and Joni Ernst, a state senator in Iowa -- all of 
whom praised Charles G. and David H. Koch and the millions of dollars 
they have provided to help Republican candidates."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/us/politics/on-tape-mcconnell-envisions-using-budget-to-undo-obama-initiatives.html

http://www.msnbc.com/watch/mitch-mcconnell-s-promise-to-the-koch-brothers-322691139574


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