[TheClimate.Vote] November 10, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest.
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Nov 10 07:33:13 EST 2020
/*November 10, 2020*/
[Audio and text]
*Wildfire smoke leaves people more vulnerable to COVID-19, researchers say*
So it's important for people in fire-prone regions to minimize exposure
to the virus and to avoid smoke.By Diana Madson | Monday, November 9, 2020
- -
“Your body perceives that smoke as a foreign threat, the same way it
would perceive a virus or a bacterium," she says. "And it mounts an
immunological response against the smoke, trying to kill it, basically.
And what this serves to do is kind of distract your immune system."
The smoke also makes cilia - tiny hairlike structures that help keep our
lungs and airways clean - less effective.
"That means the virus that makes it into your body may not get cleared
out of your body as efficiently as it normally would," Henderson says.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/11/wildfire-smoke-leaves-people-more-vulnerable-to-covid-19-researchers-say/
[Climate Psychologist Renee Lertzman - audio interview and transcript]*
* *THE 2020 ELECTION: ANXIETY AND INCREMENTALISM - Part 2*
November 6th, 2020
The 2020 campaign season has finally come to a close. And days after
November 3rd has passed, the country is still reeling.
About seventy percent of Americans - Democrats, Independents and
Republicans - say the election caused a significant amount of anxiety
and stress in their lives. That's up from fifty percent four years ago.
How should we process those difficult emotions surrounding the election?
Climate psychologist Renee Lertzman recommends practicing self-awareness
and self-care.
"It's very important for us each to know what our own thresholds are,"
she says. "So knowing when it's time to sort of disengage and to take
care of ourselves. To do what we need to do to restore our sense of
being grounded, of being connected, of being in balance. So definitely,
it's a balancing act."
With so much at stake, hopelessness might be seen as the default. ..
- -
Regardless of the outcome, Lertzman prefers to see the 2020 election as
a beginning, rather than an ending. "It's a gateway into a deeper way of
doing our climate work and our politics and our educating and our
innovating and all of that -- all of these activities that we're needing
to do right now."
PROGRAM PART 2 - Renee Lertzman
*Renee Lertzman:* Well, at the time I thought okay now we will
finally get it. That there is a profound and deep sense of pain and
people feeling aggrieved people feeling left out to the point where
we would see what happened with the election which is, you know, a
behavior that just seems really counterintuitive, but people coming
from a place of fear. I thought now we will get it and we will
start to change and we will engage in a deep reflection as a
community as a climate community as a climate sector as a
progressive community. And looking back, I think that I
underestimated the profundity and the real dedication that it would
take for us as humans and particularly those of us who were caught
off guard and shocked to do the hard work the inner work quite
frankly of really looking at ourselves and looking at how am I
showing up and how am I pushing myself out of my comfort zone. So
that I'm willing to truly listen to engage to be curious about the
experiences of my fellow Americans, and my fellow humans. I think I
just didn't really take that quite, you know, on board enough. And
looking back I wish that I had kept the attention on that more
consistently.
*Greg Dalton:* The election of Donald Trump I'm hearing you say
presented an opportunity to kind of lean in to talk to people to
understand what fear or anger motivated their vote. So, what are
you thinking about as we head into, you know, as this election is
being counted and decided, have we learned our lesson? What are you
thinking about now in terms of the opportunity after this election
to do what we didn't do last time?
*Renee Lertzman:* Well, what I'm thinking about is how when the
stakes are so high and we care so deeply about the outcomes is
precisely the hardest time it is to show up in the ways we're
needing to. So its sort of the ultimate human paradox that the more
heightened the more fear the more anxiety. Those are the conditions
that actively make it hard for us to move into what I think we kind
of know we need to be doing, which is what we sort of give lip
service to. Which is more listening, more empathy, more
relationship building, you know, healing across the divide all of
that. That's what I'm really aware of. And the way that I frame
this is really as a truly human developmental opportunity that we
have this opportunity now to unfortunately through pain, you know,
which is usually the impetus for change is discomfort and pain.
That we have the opportunity to allow that to really change us and
to move into ways of being and relating that are different that
actually require us to listen to pause to be curious.
But the other really important aspect of this when we're talking
about anxiety and high-stakes is that we need each other right now
more than ever to help us kind of stay in that place of being what
neuroscientists would call regulated. Like when we actually are
able to self-regulate and stay grounded to stay balanced to stay
responsive versus reactive that we need each other to be doing
that. And in my experience, you know, really the only way we can do
that with each other is by being able to name and acknowledge what's
actually going on. To be able to speak about and normalize the
experiences that we're having, you know whether it's anxiety, fear,
overwhelm, sadness and, you know, inspiration and motivation all
those other things too.
*Greg Dalton:* But how do we know that getting together might just
fuel that anxiety. Sometimes I get together with certain people and
they gripe and I'm feeling like, oh, this is making me more anxious,
maybe I'm getting together with the wrong people. But it's making
me more anxious when people who all agree kind of kvetch and they
talk about one candidate or another and it just seems like, whoa,
this is not soothing.
*Renee Lertzman:* [Laughs] Good point. I think that's the dark side
when we get together and we talk about our feelings. But I think
there's more of a phobia about if we start talking about our
feelings where you just gonna sort of get mired there. What often
can happen is the opposite is that when I share this is what's up
for me, I'm feeling anxious and overwhelmed. What often does happen
is that we tend to move into a different mode of okay now what do we
want to do. How do we want to proceed? We tend to kind of move
through it more often than not.
I think that it's also very important for us each to know what our
own thresholds are. So knowing when it's time to sort of disengage
into, you know, take care of ourselves to do what we need to do to
restore our, you know, a sense of being grounded of being connected,
of being in balance. So, it's definitely it's a balancing act.
*Greg Dalton:* Joe Biden said during one of the debates that we need
to transition away from fossil fuels. Something that is actually
supported by polls that show that 80% of Americans support getting
100% of clean energy in this country. So it's a popular statement
yet so many people still there's fear that so much of this climate
conversation is driven by fear of us losing something, our
hamburgers, our airplane flights, our comfortable cars whatever it
is. Is that contrived fear or is that real fear underneath?
*Renee Lertzman:* Well I think it's incredibly important to situate
any kind of change any kind of transition. It's going to evoke
anxieties and fears with people like that's just a given. I think
that for those working within the climate sectors and movements it's
easy to overlook and to forget that what we're really talking about
when we talk about fossil fuel transition is incredibly profound.
And that it really touches virtually every aspect of who we are our
identities our attachments. Basically, how we live in the world and
all those ways of being in the world that kind of make us who we are
and feel how we are. That when we talk about fossil fuel and energy
and climate change, and food and all of these various practices
we're basically going right into real existential territory.
So, I think what I observe is that for those working to push for an
advance an accelerated transition away from fossil fuels, which we
need to do, we can overlook that or we can almost get impatient or
frustrated with you know, come on, let's go on with it, we not only
do we need to do this everything that you care about is at stake
here. And if we do this, we will have an even more positive and
beneficial future and way of life for all of us. So, there's that
difficulty to you know when we see that as possible to actually
slowdown and pause and really kind of attune to what might this
bring up for people whether or not it's rational. Whether or not
it's even reality-based. How do we really pay attention to those
fears and anxieties?
Because when we don't that's where exactly what leads to inaction to
resistance to all the things that we're actively working against
when we don't actually acknowledge and address those anxieties and
those fears.
*Greg Dalton:* When we're talking with other people about difficult
issues, whether it's climate change it could be abortion other
things. You talk about four roles, educators, cheerleaders,
righters, and guiding. Righters with R-I-G-H-T-E-R-S. So, tell us
about those roles and how they frame the way people talk to each
other about difficult issues.
*Renee Lertzman:* So, when we care very deeply about issues and
we're actually trying to help and be helpful on behalf of the planet
and humans, we tend to fall into these modes of being that are very
common. And what I've observed over working with organizations for
many years now are these very kind of predictable modes very
understandable modes. It might look like being an educator where we
really focus on educating and we really believe deep down in our
heart of hearts that if people really understand the issues that,
you know, really get it that they can't help but want to do
something to change the situation. So that's the -
*Greg Dalton: * If you knew as much as I do about this then you'd
think my way.
*Renee Lertzman:* Yes, because that's often what our own story was,
right? That we had a wakeup moment we had the light went off and so
we wanted therefore have others to have that same kind of experience
and so we lean into being an educator. The other mode that's very
common is a cheerleader. A cheerleader is, you know, feeling like
we have to keep things really positive really upbeat various
solutions focused and sexy and all of that which is sort of like the
other end of the spectrum which is we don't want people to feel
overwhelmed or you know, bummed out the whole doom and gloom thing.
So, we're gonna keep things really upbeat. So that's a cheerleader
mode, which is can be pretty exhausting for a lot of us.
The righter mode, R-I-G-H-T, that language comes out a motivational
interviewing and that refers to righting. So that's the righteous,
the moralizing, the ethical, like you know the finger-pointing where
this is the right thing to do. And if we don't do this now, we're
all gonna, you know, be in really big trouble and that's a very
strong stance that makes a lot of sense as well.
So, all of those modes the educating the cheerleading and the
righting, they all make complete sense. But they're not actually
very effective on their own at truly engaging people, especially
people who are not already dialed in. Which let's face it right now
at this moment in time, we have got to level it up. We've got to be
able to develop more sophistication and more skill like engaging
with much, much broader groups and communities than we have been,
right. So, it's on all of us to do that. And the paradox is that
educating, righting and cheerleading don't really get us there.
But what I found does get us there is when we bring those together
in a new way and we actually show up as guides. A good guide
actually knows a lot. You don't want a guide that doesn't know a
lot about where you're going and what you're doing. A guide has a
very deep expertise and a guide knows what to do or not to do. Don't
fall off that don't go off that trail you're gonna you know fall off
the cliff. So, a guide can be very directive, but at the same time
if you think about the experience of being with a guide, guides
listen and they work with you and they partner with you and they
give you the sense that we're in this together and let's go you know
let's do this. And it's a nuance but it's a very powerful very
effective shift that I see our community starting to evolve more
into and I think needs to be growing into right now right at this
moment, more than ever.
*Greg Dalton:* What do people who care about climate need to do?
There's some hope for bipartisan climate progress, but a lot of
people on the left are upset at the Republican Party for blocking
climate progress and shaming on people for supporting Donald Trump.
If people who care about climate want to come together and have
something bipartisan meaningful in 2021 what should they do? How
should they approach that?
*Renee Lertzman:* Well, I think it's essential that we begin or
continue the work of true conversation. And, you know, we talk a
lot about climate conversations we've been talking about it for
years. I don't think we actually really understand what that
means. And what it means is really centering our climate crisis in
the context of compassion and recognizing that these are profound
and existential issues that that are scary and overwhelming for a
lot of us. And that we need to be having honest and open
conversations. What we're needing right now is to lean in to
convening and forging new ways of interacting and connecting right
now more than ever.
It's truly about a moment of care. It's shouldn't just be moment
but right now my hope is that we enter into a true kind of moment
where we bring care to every aspect of what we do. And, you know,
this relates to the need to push ourselves, to stretch ourselves, to
have uncomfortable conversations with people that we are not used to
talking to and to, you know, to look at how can we resource
ourselves and support ourselves so that we are better able to do
that. So, you know, again the frame is, how do I develop myself and
how can I help develop and support those around me to grow and to
know that this is the long haul, right. This is really the long haul.
I know that we're all exhausted. We are all feeling absolutely
maxed out that many of us are feeling stretched in ways we never
could've possibly imagined. And we've got a real cognitive load
going on where there are so many kinds of inputs and pressures and
stressors and all of that. So that's all a given, right, that
that's where we are. And I prefer to see this as a gateway. It's a
gateway into a deeper, you know, it's a deeper way of doing our
climate work and our politics and our educating and our, you know,
innovating and all of that all of these activities that we're
needing to do right now. I think that we'll find when we bring
humility and we bring kindness and care and compassion into the mix
of our work on the front lines of advancing change, keeping the
pressure up, keeping it going, we're gonna find that we're gonna
have so much more traction and we're gonna be less exhausted.
---
Greg Dalton: You're listening to a conversation about moving through our
feelings as we move past the election. That was Renee Lertzman, climate
psychologist and founder of Project InsideOut. Coming up, Utne Reader
founder Eric Utne confronts our collective mortality.
http://www.climateone.org/audio/2020-election-anxiety-and-incrementalism
[Astounding that information wars over Covid, and vaccines manage to
ignore and deny global warming]
*The Denialist Playbook*
On vaccines, evolution, and more, rejection of science has followed a
familiar pattern
By Sean B. Carroll on November 8, 2020
- -
In brief, the six principal plays in the denialist playbook are:
1. Doubt the Science
2. Question Scientists' Motives and Integrity
3. Magnify Disagreements among Scientists and Cite Gadflies as
Authorities
4. Exaggerate Potential Harm
5. Appeal to Personal Freedom
6. Reject Whatever Would Repudiate A Key Philosophy
The purpose of the denialism playbook is to advance rhetorical arguments
that give the appearance of legitimate debate when there is none. My
purpose here is to penetrate that rhetorical fog, and to show that these
are the predictable tactics of those clinging to an untenable position.
If we hope to find any cure for (or vaccine against) science denialism,
scientists, journalists and the public need to be able recognize,
understand and anticipate these plays.
- -
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-denialist-playbook/
[continues to deny global warming]
[video discussion]
*Does Climate Change Cause Conflict?*
Oxford Climate Society
Do you think an authoritarian approach to cutting carbon emissions
would cause greater loss of freedom than the consequences of
unmitigated climate change?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEGytLvQK0A
[NYTimes]
*9 Things the Biden Administration Could Do Quickly on the Environment*
The first 100 days of the Biden administration are likely to see a
flurry of executive actions on climate change.
By Lisa Friedman
Nov. 8, 2020
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. campaigned on the most
ambitious climate platform of any presidential candidate in history,
promising to spend $2 trillion over four years to draw down
planet-warming fossil fuel emissions and convert much of the nation to
clean energy.
The possibility that the Senate could remain under the control of
Republicans, who have generally opposed climate legislation, puts a
damper on some of his biggest-ticket plans. But with or without
Democratic control of the Senate, the first 100 days of the Biden
administration are likely to see a flurry of executive actions
addressing climate change, as well as a major push to insert clean
energy provisions into legislation that could pass with a bipartisan
coalition.
Here are nine things Mr. Biden may do early on to put the United States
back on a path to addressing climate change.
*1. Rejoin the Paris Agreement*
Mr. Biden has pledged throughout the campaign, and again this week, that
on the day he takes office he will recommit the United States to the
global agreement on climate change. That would only require a letter to
the United Nations and would take effect 30 days later.
*2. Convene global leaders*
Mr. Biden has said he intends to assemble a "climate world summit" to
press leaders of the big industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas
emissions more aggressively.
*
**3. Reverse energy rollbacks*
Expect the Biden administration to immediately rescind a large number of
President Trump's executive orders on energy, particularly a March 2017
order calling on every federal agency to dismantle their climate
policies. Several experts said he is likely to replace it with one
declaring his administration's intention to cut greenhouse gases and
instructing all government agencies to look for ways to do so.
*
**4. Make climate part of coronavirus relief*
The Biden administration will very likely push to include clean energy
provisions in any new economic stimulus measures Congress considers.
That could include things like research and development funding for
clean energy, money for states to continue their renewable energy
expansion, and an extension of tax credits for renewable energy industries.
*5. Sign executive orders to cut emissions*
Developing and finalizing new regulations will take time, and, if
challenged, they may ultimately be struck down by the conservative
majority on the Supreme Court. But Mr. Biden has indicated that, early
in his administration, he will sign executive orders instructing
agencies to develop new methane limits for oil and gas wells, to
reinstate and strengthen fuel economy standards, and to tighten
efficiency standards for appliances and buildings.
*6. Create new financial regulations*
Mr. Biden has also said he will, on the first day of his administration,
sign an executive order requiring public companies to disclose climate
change-related financial risks and greenhouse gas emissions in their
operations.
*7. Revise rules on fossil fuel production*
Mr. Biden is expected to cancel a 2017 executive order to lift
restrictions on offshore energy exploration and production. He also
could stop the Trump administration's expedited reviews of pipelines and
other fossil fuel projects.
*
**8. Prioritize environmental justice*
Mr. Biden has made addressing the effects of pollution and global
warming in low-income communities a central element of his climate plan.
In the near term, a Biden administration could create an environmental
justice advisory board to coordinate policies across agencies and take
concrete steps like increasing pollution monitoring in vulnerable
communities and creating mapping tools to better understand disparities.
*
**9. Restore wildlife areas*
Mr. Biden has pledged to take "immediate steps to reverse the Trump
assault on America's national treasures" including major cuts in 2017 to
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, as well as
opening parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration.
He has said on the first day of his administration he will sign an
executive order to conserve 30 percent of United States land and waters
by 2030.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/08/climate/biden-climate.html
[danger ahead]
*Revealed: Covid recovery plans threaten global climate hopes*
Exclusive: analysis finds countries pouring money into fossil fuels to
fight recession
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent - 9 Nov 2020
The prospect of a global green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is
hanging in the balance, as countries pour money into the fossil fuel
economy to stave off a devastating recession, an analysis for the
Guardian reveals.
Meanwhile, promises of a low-carbon boost are failing to materialise.
Only a handful of major countries are pumping rescue funds into
low-carbon efforts such as renewable power, electric vehicles and energy
efficiency.
A new Guardian ranking finds the EU is a frontrunner, devoting 30% of
its €750bn (£677bn) Next Generation Recovery Fund to green ends. France
and Germany have earmarked about €30bn and €50bn respectively of their
own additional stimulus for environmental spending.
On the other end of the scale, China is faring the worst of the major
economies, with only 0.3% of its package - about £1.1bn - slated for
green projects. In the US, before the election, only about $26bn
(£19.8bn), or just over 1%, of the announced spending was green...
- -
In at least 18 of the world's biggest economies, more than six months on
from the first wave of lockdowns in the early spring, pandemic rescue
packages are dominated by spending that has a harmful environmental
impact, such as bailouts for oil or new high-carbon infrastructure,
outweighing the positive climate benefits of any green spending,
according to the analysis.
Only four countries - France, Spain, the UK and Germany - and the EU
have packages that will produce a net environmental benefit.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/09/revealed-covid-recovery-plans-threaten-global-climate-hopes
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - November 10, 2014 *
The Boston Globe reports:
"Professors at Boston-area colleges are adding their voices to a
student-led movement that is pressing higher education institutions to
shed investments in fossil fuel companies.
"The growing faculty involvement has not only galvanized the effort with
increased support but also added an important and unique perspective,
activists say."
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/11/10/fuel-divestment-movement-grows-boston-campuses/uOKCKYo71b6QhMVaKmQQNK/story.html
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