[TheClimate.Vote] March 18, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*March 18, 2020*/

[making change]
*Climate activism in the time of coronavirus*
by Ben Geman
Social distancing is forcing advocacy movements to adjust their tactics, 
creating new hurdles for climate activists who use mass protests and 
on-the-ground organizing as important tools.

Why it matters: Climate change has risen on the political radar in 
recent years. There are many reasons behind this, including the success 
of the Greta Thunberg-inspired protests and a burst of confrontational 
advocacy in the U.S. by the youth-led Sunrise Movement.

But even long before that, environmental groups have for decades used 
tactile organizing -- think door-knocking, lobbying days and so forth -- 
for issue-based campaigns and work in political races.
Driving the news: Those techniques are suddenly off the table. Thunberg 
recently said via Twitter that "we'll have to find new ways" to advocate 
and announced plans for "digital strikes."

Other examples are emerging. Consider the movement to push banks to stop 
financing coal and petroleum projects. The umbrella group, Stop The 
Money Pipeline, canceled April 23 rallies and says it's "pivoting to a 
series of online and individual tactics."
Threat level: Digital advocacy has long been a piece of the advocates' 
toolbox, but smart organizers have also long understood that it's a 
complement to on-the-ground work -- not a substitute.

The big picture: "Over the last decade, the climate movement has become 
a movement through mass action," veteran organizer Jamie Henn tells me, 
citing everything from marches to civil disobedience to house parties 
and potlucks.

"There's no doubt that something is lost when you take that activity 
online," adds Henn, who works with the recently formed Stop The Money 
Pipeline group and co-founded 350.org.
What's next: "This is a moment that demands creativity and thinking 
outside the box," says Pete Maysmith of the League of Conservation 
Voters. "The climate crisis is not slowing down and our efforts to 
combat it are not going to slow down either."

"It is pulling out all the tools in our toolbox. That means phone calls, 
texting, and peer-to-peer and online organizing," says Maysmith, the 
group's SVP of campaigns.
Maysmith lists efforts like online trainings, letter writing, and email 
campaigns. "We are just going to be engaging people in all the ways we 
can figure out."
Henn adds that Stop The Money Pipeline will provide tools to people to 
help them pressure financial institutions. "That means helping people 
move their money, cut up a bad credit card, tweet at CEOs, call 
corporate HQs, and connect with other activists in their area."
The bottom line: "The moment we're in requires a different sort of 
activism," Henn says.
https://www.axios.com/climate-activism-during-coronavirus-outbreak-418a3e28-08d9-4201-9efe-ce9a27ebcce5.html



[realistic discussion economics video]
*Uncharted Territory: Nate Hagens view on how the coronavirus could 
affect the economy.*
Mar 17, 2020
postcarboninstitute
PCI Executive Director Asher Miller speaks with Nate Hagens on the near- 
and long-term implications of COVID-19 on the financial system, energy, 
and the overall economy. This was recorded on March 16, 2020.

Nate is the co-founder of Institute for the Study of Energy and the 
Future, an adjunct professor at University of Minnesota, and a Fellow at 
Post Carbon Institute. After leaving his job on Wall Street, Nate got a 
PhD in Ecological Economics and was the long-time editor of the popular 
energy analysis website, The Oil Drum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt5dsD1z1R4


[opinion in the Guardian]
*Coronavirus gives us a terrifying glimpse of the future - and 
highlights a chilling paradox*
Jeff Sparrow
Capitalism must expand or lapse into crisis. But perpetual growth pits 
humanity against nature
he structural similarities between Australia's two 2020 emergencies 
means that coronavirus offers a terrifying glimpse of the future, 
allowing us to see what might happen as catastrophic manifestations of 
climate change - such as prolonged bushfires - become commonplace.

In December masks didn't protect from air pollution, any more than 
toilet paper wards off Covid-19 today. But, as the skies in Sydney and 
Melbourne and Canberra turned yellow from carcinogenic smoke, after 
years of public policy failing the most vulnerable, much of the public 
no longer trusted the government.

If you could afford a fancy air purification system - or if you could 
flee to a Hawaiian beach - you could breathe freely. If you couldn't, 
you scrambled to get a cheap face mask … because what other choice did 
you have?

It's increasingly clear that Scott Morrison's disastrous reaction to the 
2019-20 bushfire season prefigured a deeper ineptitude.

"Going to be a great summer of cricket," the PM tweeted at the height of 
the blazes, "and for our firefighters and fire-impacted communities, I'm 
sure our boys will give them something to cheer about."

The same priorities led him to insist briefly that he would attend an 
NRL match last Saturday, even after he'd issued a ban on non-essential 
public gatherings of more than 500 people the following week.

But, in many ways, Morrison represents merely a local manifestation of a 
rottenness apparent everywhere, with the highest offices the world over 
filled with weak, shallow leaders who govern by spin and bluster, and 
cannot address any issue of substance.
Scientists warned that Australia would be particular susceptible to a 
changing climate that would bring a longer and more intense fire season. 
Morrison waved a lump of coal at his parliamentary opponents.

In 2018 the World Health Organization predicted a threat from what it 
called "Disease X", on the basis that "a serious international epidemic 
could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease". 
At the same time the global pandemic director for America's National 
Security Council resigned - and then his entire team was disbanded by 
Donald Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump, of course, told reporters he took "no responsibility" for cutting 
the global health security team - and tweeted: "I encourage you to turn 
towards prayer as an act of faith."

The echo of the "thoughts and prayers" sent out by Morrison during the 
height of the fires is not accidental.

As the last glacier melts away, a politician somewhere will be clasping 
his hands together, simply because "thoughts and prayers" offers a 
zero-cost alternative to expensive climate action.

Mind you, the problem isn't simply money...
- - -
Indeed, the coronavirus highlights the awful paradox that makes global 
heating feel so inevitable.

A pandemic-induced recession will ruin people's lives. If the economy 
ceases to grow, some of us will lose jobs and others our homes. Many 
more will have to work harder for less pay, abandoning dreams and 
ambitions to struggle for bare survival.

Yet a recession almost certainly also means that carbon emissions will 
fall, just as they did during the 2008-09 financial crisis.

That's because the economic expansion on which we depend requires that, 
each year, industry consumes more and more natural resources.

A healthy economy means a growing economy - and a growing economy makes 
demands on the planet that it can no longer sustain.

A slump, by contrast, reduces that pressure.

To be clear, a recession isn't good news, in any way, shape or form. 
Aside from anything else, expect governments across the world to now 
abandon whatever commitments they've made to long-term decarbonisation 
as they scramble to get the wheels of industry turning again.

But you can see the fundamental contradiction on which we're caught.

Capitalism must expand or lapse into crisis. But an economy dependent on 
perpetual growth must, at some stage, come into conflict with the limits 
of the natural world.

The characteristic ineptitude of today's politicians - the deep 
rottenness pervading our societies - reflects, in part, the 
impossibility of squaring that circle.

In developing nations, for instance, the relentless expansion of capital 
means that cities now encroach more and more on wilderness and peasant 
holdings. With factory farming replacing traditional agriculture, viral 
outbreaks become more likely. As the evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace 
explains:

    Growing genetic monocultures of domestic animals removes whatever
    immune firebreaks may be available to slow down transmission. Larger
    population sizes and densities facilitate greater rates of
    transmission. Such crowded conditions depress immune response. High
    throughput, a part of any industrial production, provides a
    continually renewed supply of susceptibles, the fuel for the
    evolution of virulence.

The emissions pumped into the atmosphere represent another facet of the 
same problem: an increasingly obvious incompatibility between economic 
and natural cycles.

Scientists tell us that, if we continue on this path, extreme weather 
events and other disasters will become more and more common. The 
experience of the past weeks shows precisely what that means.

Capitalism pits humanity against nature. It will destroy both, if we let it.
Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/17/coronavirus-gives-us-a-terrifying-glimpse-of-the-future-and-highlights-a-chilling-paradox



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - March 18, 2013 *

USA Today reports: "Could the USA deal with a Hurricane Katrina every 
two years? Such a scenario is possible by the end of the century due to 
climate change, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings 
of the National Academy of Sciences."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/03/18/storm-surge-hurricane-climate-change-global-warming/1997113/ 


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