[TheClimate.Vote] May 14, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 14, 2020*/

[Time Magazine tells us]
*The Economic Principle That Tells Us a Lot About Coronavirus and Climate*
- - -
Of course, the coronavirus pandemic has come about too quickly to expect 
the administration to have made a formal calculation of the cost of 
addressing it. But a University of Chicago economist used a rough 
cost-benefit analysis to estimate that the U.S. should be willing to 
spend $65 trillion on lockdowns to prevent deaths. That's equivalent to 
roughly three years of U.S. economic output. "COVID-19 has prompted a 
slew of benefit-cost analyses," writes Gernot Wagner, an economist at 
New York University, in a Bloomberg column. "The verdict in virtually 
all of them is clear: shutting down the economy to contain the spread of 
the virus is worth the costs."...
- -
The National Climate Assessment, a report from more than a dozen federal 
agencies, suggests that unchecked climate change will cost the U.S. $500 
billion annually by the end of the century. Globally, we're talking 
about tens of trillions of dollars saved in the next 30 years if we act 
to keep temperatures from rising more than 2C above pre-industrial 
levels, the target outlined in the Paris Agreement, according to the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Delayed climate action will cost us vastly more each year in terms of 
lost lives and livelihoods, crippled businesses, and damaged economies," 
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said late last month. "The highest 
cost is the cost of doing nothing." The rest of the world is starting to 
get this. Now it's the U.S.'s turn.
https://time.com/5835931/climate-change-coronavirus-cost-benefit/


[Roll Call politics]
*Farmers are coming around on climate change*
Flooded fields, persistent droughts or ravaging wildfires are giving 
many a change of heart..
- -
Agriculture may still have a long way to go before it can become a 
climate hero. While the majority of scientists agree on climate change 
and the forces driving it, researchers continue to evaluate the best 
tools to curb emissions. Scientific estimates differ, for example, about 
how much carbon certain soil types can store and for how long.
Even Moore-Kucera of American Farmland says more funding for research is 
needed to understand which soil types work best for sequestration. She 
says more tools and methodologies are needed to monitor the 
effectiveness of management practices on soil carbon storage and 
quantify which land and animal practices best control nitrous oxide and 
methane emissions.

This research is critical to ensure agricultural greenhouse gas 
mitigation is built on a sustainable foundation, Moore-Kucera says.

In Ohio, Yoder says the more comprehensive the science on agriculture 
and climate mitigation is, the more likely U.S. farmers are to adopt 
climate friendly practices.

"I think one of the most valid critiques of us as American agriculture 
is that we're chronic overproducers," Yoder says. "If you give us 
something to produce, we will produce the heck out of it. My thought is 
if you were to take that same approach to sequestering carbon imagine, 
what can come out of that? We're optimizers."

At the Environmental Defense Fund, special project director Callie 
Eideberg says the organization believes the best way to involve farmers 
is to talk about climate change in business terms.

"Farmers are interested in staying in business so they can raise their 
own families," Eideberg says.

"When an organization starts talking about eliminating your way of life, 
that is not going to endear you to their message," she adds. "However, 
if we can talk with agriculture about ways to remain profitable while 
making changes that help the environment and then put us on the right 
path to net zero carbon emission by 2050, they are on board. The 
language is key."

The Environmental Defense Fund sees large-scale agriculture as an 
effective platform to tackling greenhouse gas emissions.

"We know as a society we need to get to net-zero carbon emission by 
2050," Eideberg says. "The way the climate is changing now, we're not 
going to do that unless we find ways to be resilient. Resilience is a 
lot about adaptation and sustainability is about stopping us in our 
tracks and keeping the water as beautiful as it is now."

"Everything is pointing in the right direction. We just have to make 
sure the momentum increases," she adds.
https://www.rollcall.com/2020/05/13/farmers-are-coming-around-on-climate-change/



[Count the ways]
|64 completed |34 in progress |98 total rollbacks
*The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. *
- -
Many of the rollbacks have faced legal challenges by states, 
environmental groups and others, and some could remain mired in court 
beyond November, regardless of the outcome of the election.

Hillary Aidun, who tracks deregulation at Columbia University's Sabin 
Center for Climate Change Law, said many of the rollbacks had not been 
adequately justified, leaving them vulnerable to legal challenge.

The New York Times analysis identified 10 rules that were initially 
reversed or suspended but later reinstated, often following lawsuits and 
other challenges. Other rollbacks were rebuffed by the courts but later 
revised by the administration and remain in effect.

All told, the Trump administration's environmental rollbacks could 
significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions and lead to thousands of 
extra deaths from poor air quality each year, according to energy and 
legal analysts.

Below, we have summarized each rule that has been targeted for reversal 
over the past three years.

Are there rollbacks we missed? Email climateteam at nytimes.com or tweet 
@nytclimate.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html



[Podcast]
*Naomi Klein, Coronavirus Capitalism, and a People's Bailout Now!*
For our first podcast episode of the pandemic, we take a step back and 
examine the big picture -- and who better to guide us than The Leap's 
co-founder Naomi Klein. In a wide-ranging conversation, we explore the 
perils and possibilities of this political moment, from the 
unprecedented ways that Silicon Valley is benefiting from the pandemic, 
to the radicalizing power of "essential work."...
https://change-everything.simplecast.com/episodes/naomi-klein-coronavirus-capitalism-and-a-peoples-bailout-now
https://theleap.org/change-everything/



[for the castle]
*How to protect your home from disasters amplified by climate change*
Individuals and communities can prepare for flooding, fires and drought...
By Mary Caperton Morton
In the coming decades, regions of the United States will be affected in 
different ways by flooding, severe storms, droughts and wildfires. 
Millions may be forced from their homes. But what about the people who 
choose to stay? What can they do to harden their homes, to improve the 
chance the structure will stand up against water and fire? How can 
people help their communities adapt to the everyday realities of climate 
change?
*Predictive flood maps*
Flooding is already the most common natural disaster in the United 
States, occurring in every state and killing more people each year than 
hurricanes, tornadoes or lightning. As warming drives sea levels higher, 
intensifies hurricanes and fuels more heavy rain events, more U.S. 
residents should expect to deal with flooding, even at inland locations 
that have not flooded historically, says Glenn McGillivray, managing 
director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction in Toronto. 
Climate models predict more extreme rainfall events over the next 80 
years, across both wet and dry regions, according to a 2016 report in 
Nature Climate Change.

"There's a perception that your house will only flood if you live on the 
coast or right next to a big river. But some of the most destructive 
flooding events have occurred from heavy rainfall, which can happen 
anywhere," McGillivray says. "Pretty much everybody is at risk of 
overland flooding, but most people have no clue what their level of risk 
really is."

Flood risk for U.S. homeowners has traditionally been calculated by the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of the National Flood 
Insurance Program. FEMA software lumps properties into three categories: 
inside a 100-year floodplain (an area with at least a 1 percent chance 
of flooding in a given year) or outside the floodplain in areas of 
moderate or minimal risk. A 2018 study in Environmental Research Letters 
found that FEMA's maps are outdated and underestimate the flood risk for 
over 28 million Americans.

"FEMA's maps create an illusion of safety for people outside the 
100-year floodplain," says Sharai Lewis-Gruss, lead adaptation 
specialist for the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"The maps are also historical -- they only draw data from past flooding 
events," she says. And the databases are sometimes decades old. The maps 
don't account for projections of sea level rise, more intense hurricanes 
or increased rainfall...
- -
*Ready for the flood*
After assessing your property's flood risk, the next step to prepare for 
flooding is to buy flood insurance, says Melissa Roberts, executive 
director of the American Flood Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group in 
Washington, D.C. Flood damage is not usually covered by homeowners 
insurance, and federal law requires only people living inside 100-year 
floodplains to buy supplemental flood insurance.

"But we're seeing more flooding events outside of that zone, often from 
heavy rainfall," Roberts says. The American Flood Coalition "now 
recommends that everybody get flood insurance. The good news is, if you 
live outside that 100-year flood zone, it's often pretty affordable."

Homeowners who take steps to physically protect their homes from 
flooding may get discounts on flood insurance premiums. Flood-control 
strategies can range from temporary measures that cost hundreds of 
dollars to pricier home redesigns. Not every homeowner needs to brace 
for historic hurricanes, but even heavy rain can do a lot of damage if 
water finds a way inside, Roberts says...
- -
"Flood control isn't something that should be left to individuals to 
deal with. Solutions have to involve everybody."...
- -
*From floods to wildfires*
When it comes to climate-driven natural disasters, fires are as 
frightening as floods. In 2017 and 2018, California wildfires killed 147 
people, burned 3.5 million acres and destroyed over 34,000 structures in 
two of the worst fire seasons on record. And wildfires are expected to 
become more severe across the West, says Max Moritz, a wildfire 
specialist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Warming 
temperatures are melting snow sooner and drying out vegetation so that 
we're already seeing longer fire seasons and more available fuel."

Between 1990 and 2010, more than 12 million homes across the United 
States were built in what's known as the wildland-urban interface, where 
flammable vegetation meets human development and sources of ignition, 
such as vehicles or power lines, according to a 2018 analysis in the 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (SN: 12/22/18 & 1/5/19, 
p. 8).

All Western states are prone to wildfire, Moritz says, and he's seen 
upward trends in the Midwest and Southeast, too, due to long-term 
drought, tree blights, insect-killed trees and a history of fire 
suppression that has allowed forest fuels to build up.

California has long led the charge in wildfire management, with the 
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, overseeing more 
than 31 million acres of fire-prone landscapes. Since 2008, new 
construction in high and very high hazard zones must use noncombustible 
exterior materials and fire-resistant features such as covered gutters 
that prevent the accumulation of flammable leaves and needles. A few 
other states, such as Oregon and Washington, have adopted similar 
building codes.

The November 2018 Camp Fire that swept through Paradise, Calif., showed 
the benefits of fire-hardened homes: Fifty-one percent of homes that 
were built to code after 2008 survived; only 18 percent of older homes 
escaped serious damage. "Those numbers are stunning. Building codes 
really do work," says Robert Raymer, an engineer with the California 
Building Industry Association in Sacramento...
- -
Making fire-hardening improvements may lower insurance costs. Unlike 
flood insurance, fire insurance has traditionally been part of 
homeowners insurance. But with insured losses from the 2017 and 2018 
fires totaling over $24 billion, insurers are scrambling to figure out 
how to stay in business.

Some insurance companies have responded by drastically raising premiums 
or dropping high-risk customers. In December 2019, the state insurance 
commissioner imposed a one-year moratorium on policy nonrenewals. And 
the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan expanded to 
provide fire insurance to homeowners when all other insurance options 
have failed.

*Ready for fire*
In a wildfire, most houses are ignited not by walls of flames but by 
embers -- small sparks that can travel far from the main fire, Hawks 
says. House fires can start when one or a few of these sparks land on 
combustible material, such as dry leaves in a gutter, or if embers find 
their way inside the house through a roof vent or open window.

For homes built before 2008, Cal Fire suggests some low-cost 
retrofitting strategies, including sealing any gaps with caulk, weather 
stripping or fine metal mesh screens; removing dead or dry vegetation 
from around the house and regularly cleaning leaves and other flammable 
material from gutters and under decks. More expensive investments 
include replacing roofs and decks with fire-resistant materials and 
upgrading windows to multipaned tempered glass that can withstand high 
temperatures.

One of the most important strategies, required by law in some fire-prone 
states, is a 100-foot (30.5-meter) radius of defensible space around the 
home that is kept free of dead or dry plant matter. At least five to 20 
meters of cleared space around a structure can slow or stop the spread 
of a wildfire and protect a home from catching fire from direct flame 
contact or radiant heat, according to a 2014 study in the International 
Journal of Wildland Fire. "I don't stop at 100 feet. I clear everything 
around my ranch out to 500 feet. Defensible space is the most effective 
tactic I've seen for protecting property," says retired Kern County 
firefighter Carrie Shreffler, a resident of Posey, Calif...
- -
In densely built areas, the houses themselves can fuel fires. "You've 
probably seen aftermath photos where a fire has swept through a town and 
all the homes have burned, but there are still trees standing and green 
vegetation," Moritz says. "That's what happens when the homes themselves 
are the fuel. It's not a land management problem where you should have 
cleared more brush. You can't thin the fuels because the homes were the 
fuel."

As more homes are built in fire-prone areas across the United States, 
community-level fire safety approaches will be needed, Moritz says. "A 
whole suite of risk-reduction measures can be applied at the community 
scale," he says. "We need to pay attention to how we lay out 
communities, with buffer zones between houses and between the community 
and the surrounding landscape."

In a report published in April by the University of California Division 
of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Moritz and colleagues also 
recommend burying power lines, creating water storage facilities for 
fighting fires, hardening emergency facilities and creating community 
refuges where people can take shelter.

Some communities are already taking steps to prepare for emergencies. In 
Sequoia National Forest, the Posey Area Fire Auxiliary has been meeting 
every month for over two decades to educate residents about fire 
prevention. In 2016, the Cedar Fire burned right to the edge of the 
mountain community, located within the national forest, but no lives 
were lost and of about 300 homes, only three abandoned cabins burned, in 
part due to the community's diligence. "We all learned a long time ago 
that we need to be our own first line of defense," Shreffler says.

After the Cedar Fire, Posey and other surrounding communities were 
struck by several rain-triggered floods. Flooding after a wildfire is 
common, Moritz says, because the charred ground cannot absorb water as 
readily as it once did. These flood events can sometimes evolve into 
highly destructive debris flows, a thick slurry created when ash mixes 
with floodwater.

Homeowners living in fire-prone regions near creeks or drainages should 
consider the possibility of needing to fire- and flood-proof their 
homes, Moritz says. "The vision is that someday, we will build such 
hardened and sustainable homes that natural hazards will just be 
something that happens outside," Moritz says. "We'll [be able to] watch 
fires go by like violent rainstorms."

*Old-fashioned self-sufficiency*
Adapting to climate change may seem daunting, but for many in the United 
States, the impacts won't come in the form of devastating floods or 
fires. Instead the seasons will gradually get hotter. For those not 
facing catastrophe, many of the most effective climate resiliency 
tactics are rooted in common sense and self-sufficiency, says Alexandra 
von Meier, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley.

"A small amount of preparation can go a long way to making any situation 
more livable," von Meier says. For example, a solar power array and 
battery bank, or an emergency generator or portable solar setup, "can 
make a big difference" in maintaining basic home systems and lines of 
communication. Installing rainwater collection barrels can help see your 
garden through a dry season and help you keep water on hand in 
emergencies. And making upgrades for a better insulated, more 
energy-efficient home will help lower home operating costs, as well as 
your carbon footprint, Raymer says.

That preparation is key, von Meier says. "Whether people will be able to 
stay in their own homes in the aftermath of a natural disaster or a 
long-term power outage will ultimately depend on their level of 
preparedness. Do you have enough food and water on hand? Do you have a 
plan for when the lights don't work or water stops coming out of the 
faucet? Do you have ways to communicate with the outside world? These 
are very basic needs that people should know how to meet."
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-to-protect-your-home-from-disasters-climate-change


[Political power]
*Bargaining for the Common Good | Bargaining for Climate Justice*
Todd E. Vachon , Saket Soni , Judith Le Blanc , and Gerry Hudson
- -
Communities seeking to rewrite the rules of disaster response to achieve 
greater resilience and equity can begin by drafting a "disaster recovery 
bill of rights" to inform and help move "contracts for recovery" for 
workers and local communities. These could be drafted collaboratively by 
local unions in partnership with community organizations and pushed for 
adoption in contract bargaining campaigns and at the municipal, county 
or state level of government. They could include a set of protections 
for workers and community members, such as the right to living wages for 
cleanup workers and the right to return home for residents without 
eviction or job loss. They could establish local water or land use codes 
by local entities. They could also help to ensure a just transition for 
workers who face job loss and communities that are economically devasted 
by plant or factory closures. Fighting for these new rules for recovery 
locally through BCG campaigns could coincide with and reinforce ongoing 
union legislative efforts to expand the social safety net, including 
more public money in unemployment insurance and food stamps, new social 
supports such as universal healthcare coverage, and a public jobs 
program as well as protections of tribal sovereignty. These new rules - 
or disaster recovery rights - could also reinvent housing, 
transportation, education, environmental impact monitoring and 
healthcare systems to serve working class and tribal communities...
- -
*Coming to a Contract Campaign Near You?*
As the climate catastrophe has shown us time and again, and that more 
recently the Coronavirus outbreak is demonstrating, the unchecked 
corporate and financial powers-that-be will always place profit before 
human wellbeing. However, times of crisis can also be times of 
opportunity for radical change, if action is taken. In February, the 
Minneapolis janitors became the first U.S. union to go on strike for 
climate justice. In recent weeks, local unions across the country have 
responded to the global pandemic by articulating demands that meet the 
needs of their members and the communities they live and work in. By 
broadening labor's bargaining demands to include these common good 
concerns, BCG campaigns can open an important new front for challenging 
the corporate and financial powers that drive inequality and help pave 
the road to building the just, equitable, and sustainable economy we all 
need and deserve.
A Call to Action in This Moment
https://forgeorganizing.org/article/bargaining-climate-justice



[even more distressing news]
*Second wave of locusts in Africa expected to be 20 times worse | DW News
*May 11, 2020
DW News
A second wave of desert locusts has descended on East Africa. Estimates 
indicate it will be 20 times worse than the swarms that made their way 
through the region two months ago. The UN says the locusts present "an 
unprecedented threat" to food security and livelihoods. The coronavirus 
exacerbates the logistical challenges of fighting the plague, as DW's 
Sella Oneko reports from Kenya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM58cANxUW0



[Over 30 years ago in the Washington Post]
*On this day in the history of global warming - May 14, 1989 *
In a Washington Post op-ed, Sen. Al Gore (D-TN) notes:

    "As a nation and a government, we must see that America's future is
    inextricably tied to the fate of the globe. In effect, the
    environment is becoming a matter of national security -- an issue
    that directly and imminently menaces the interests of the state or
    the welfare of the people.

    "To date, the national-security agenda has been dominated by issues
    of military security, embedded in the context of global struggle
    between the United States and the Soviet Union -- a struggle often
    waged through distant surrogates, but which has always harbored the
    risk of direct confrontation and nuclear war. Given the recent
    changes in Soviet behavior, there is growing optimism that this
    long, dark period may be passing. This may in turn open the
    international agenda for other urgent matters and for the release of
    enormous resources, now committed to war, toward other objectives.
    Many of us hope that the global environment will be the new dominant
    concern...

    "When nations perceive that they are threatened at the strategic
    level, they may be induced to think of drastic responses, involving
    sharp discontinuities from everyday approaches to policy. In
    military terms, this is the point when the United States begins to
    think of invoking nuclear weapons. The global environment crisis may
    demand responses that are comparatively radical.

    "At present, despite some progress made toward limiting some sources
    of the problem, such as CFCs, we have barely scratched the surface.
    Even if all other elements of the problem are solved, a major threat
    is still posed by emissions of carbon dioxide, the exhaling breath
    of the industrial culture upon which our civilization rests. The
    implications of the latest and best studies on this matter are
    staggering. Essentially, they tell us that with our current pattern
    of technology and production, we face a choice between economic
    growth in the near term and massive environmental disorder as the
    subsequent penalty."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101200827_pf.html

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