[TheClimate.Vote] October 20, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Tue Oct 20 10:53:43 EDT 2020
/*October 20, 2020*/
[The Guardian makes a list]
*75 ways Trump made America dirtier and the planet warmer*
In the past four years, Trump has shredded environmental protections for
American lands, animals and people
This list was adapted from the *Harvard Law School's Regulatory Rollback
Tracker.*
https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/regulatory-rollback-tracker/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2020/oct/20/trump-us-dirtier-planet-warmer-75-ways
[CNBC]
OPINION - POWERING THE FUTURE
*Op-ed: Climate change threatens U.S. banks far more than they're
disclosing*
PUBLISHED MON, OCT 19 2020
Steven M. Rothstein and Dan Saccardi, Ceres
*KEY POINTS*
- All six of the largest banks in the U.S. -- Bank of America, JPMorgan
Chase, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo -- face
above-average loan risk related to climate change, according to new
research from Ceres.
- Lending linked to fossil fuels and energy transition could translate
into more than $100 billion in losses for U.S. banks and systemic
financial risk.
The financial world is beginning to reckon with a hard truth: Climate
change poses a clear threat to the entire U.S. financial system...
- -
Banks, and regulators have their work cut out for them, as do the
investors and customers that rely on them, but the work will be far
harder and more expensive the longer they wait. Banks' vulnerability to
climate change will continue to mount regardless of the outcome of the
U.S. presidential election. To avoid another systemic-scale crisis like
the world experienced in 2008-2009, only concerted, systemic,
preventative action will do.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/19/climate-change-threatens-banks-far-more-than-theyre-disclosing.html
- -
[Ceres recently released the report]
*Financing a Net-Zero Economy: Measuring and Addressing Climate Risk for
Banks.*
October 19, 2020
This report investigates banks' climate-related financial risks and
their exposure to a disorderly transition. Based on the finding that a
majority of bank lending is in climate-exposed sectors, the report also
lays out a blueprint for bank action with key recommendations for how
banks can discuss their climate risk exposure and the mitigation
strategies they can use to address this risk exposure and broader
climate-related societal impact.
https://www.ceres.org/resources/reports/financing-net-zero-economy-measuring-and-addressing-climate-risk-banks
[NYTimes Opinion]
*I Am Watching My Planet, My Home, Die*
Our world cannot survive four more years of the Trump administration's
environmental policy.
By Margaret Renkl
Contributing Opinion Writer
Oct. 19, 2020
NASHVILLE -- I was writing a love letter to autumn and its perfect
miracle of timing -- the way berries ripen just as songbirds migrate
through berry-filled forests -- when the songbirds suddenly began to
die. With no warning at all, thousands and thousands of birds, possibly
millions of birds, were simply falling out of the sky.
It's not yet clear why the birds were dying -- smoke from the wildfires
on the West Coast? an unseasonable cold snap? the prolonged drought? --
but whatever its immediate reason, the die-off was almost certainly
related to climate change or some other human-wrought hazard. Every
possible explanation for the birds' deaths leads back to our own choices.
We think of songbirds as indicator species -- so sensitive to
environmental disruptions that they serve as an early warning of
trouble. But the fact that the environment has become increasingly
inhospitable to songbirds -- and to human beings -- is only one measure
of a planet under life-threatening stress.
The earth is getting measurably hotter, each year breaking records set
the year before, while Arctic sea ice continues to thin. Wildfires are
growing hotter, more frequent, more widespread and more deadly.
Northeastern forests are sick. Our oceans are full of plastic. The
world's largest wetland is on fire, and the Amazon rainforest is on its
way to becoming a savanna. The pandemic that has paralyzed global life
is itself the manifestation of a disordered relationship between human
beings and the natural world...
None of this is new. We've seen it all happening, worsening with every
passing year, for decades now. Any chance of reversing climate change is
long since gone, and the climate will inevitably continue to warm. The
question now is only how much it will warm, how terrible we will let it
become.
There are days when I lose all hope, when it feels as if the only thing
left to do is to sit quietly and bear witness to all that will soon be
gone: the rain forests and the tidal estuaries, the redwood forests and
the Arctic sea ice, the grasslands and the coral reefs. Every wild place
and every living thing that wild places harbor, all gone. I held my
father's hand as he died, and I held my mother's hand as she died, and
now it feels as though I am watching my planet die, too.
But that isn't how I feel most days. On most days I am still fighting as
hard as I can possibly fight, living as lightly on the earth as I can
manage. The only other option is surrender.
But personal responsibility isn't going to save the planet by itself.
Saving the earth at this late date will also require us to reform the
entire global economy. It will require government regulation. It will
require industry innovation. It will require companies to invest in the
very planet they have been profiting from.
None of that can happen in a country governed by "leaders" in thrall to
the fossil fuel industry. Instead of getting serious about climate
change, Republicans have run headfirst into the fire, repealing or
weakening nearly 100 existing environmental protections. Those changes
alone, if left to stand, will add 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse
gases to the atmosphere by 2035...
We cannot let them stand, and I'm heartened by signs that we won't.
Money from philanthropic organizations is finally flowing into
planet-saving research. As the costs of failing to address climate
change have become increasingly clear, people on both sides of the
political aisle are beginning to wake up: Today, 72 percent of Americans
recognize that climate change is happening, a marked departure from the
position of the climate-denier in the White House. Fewer than 10 percent
share his view that climate science is a hoax.
Despite the Democratic Party's forward-thinking position on conservation
and Joe Biden's own $2 trillion plan to address climate change, Mr.
Biden is not an environmentalist's dream candidate: There is just no
responsible way forward that includes fracking, which Mr. Biden would
not move to end. Nevertheless, he represents our only hope at the
moment, and preserving hope is our only chance to inspire change.
Every single issue that matters to me -- education, social justice,
women's rights, affordable health care, criminal justice reform, gun
control, immigration policy etc. -- won't mean a single thing if the
planet becomes uninhabitable. The same is true for my brothers and
sisters across the political aisle: If they care about the right to
life, as they say they do, if they care about the economy, about
freedom, about national security, as they say they do, then they have no
choice in this election but to vote for candidates who are committed to
halting the rate at which the planet is heating up.
For now and for the foreseeable future, there is only one issue, and in
this election there is only one choice. Because there is only one planet
we can call home.
Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna,
politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the
book "Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/opinion/trump-environment-vote.html
[short video on cement technologies and CO2]*
**Concrete Carbon Capture. A pathway to net zero?*
Oct 18, 2020
Just Have a Think
Carbontech is a developing industry dedicated to drawing carbon dioxide
out of our atmosphere and locking it up in products, buildings and
infrastructure.One of the fastest growing of those new developments -
carbon capture in concrete - may prove to be one of the most effective
ways to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkE-2npiqFc
[the possible will become the likely]
*Alaska's new climate threat: tsunamis linked to melting permafrost*
Scientists are warning of a link between rapid warming and landslides
that could threaten towns and tourist attractions
Erin McKittrick - 18 Oct 2020
In Alaska and other high, cold places around the world, new research
shows that mountains are collapsing as the permafrost that holds them
together melts, threatening tsunamis if they fall into the sea.
Scientists are warning that populated areas and major tourist
attractions are at risk.
One area of concern is a slope of the Barry Arm fjord in Alaska that
overlooks a popular cruise ship route.
The Barry Arm slide began creeping early last century, sped up a decade
ago, and was discovered this year using satellite photos. If it lets
loose, the wave could hit any ships in the area and reach hundreds of
meters up nearby mountains, swamping the popular tourist destination and
crashing as high as 10 meters over the town of Whittier. Earlier this
year, 14 geologists warned that a major slide was "possible" within a
year, and "likely" within 20 years.
In 2015, a similar landslide, on a slope that had also crept for
decades, created a tsunami that sheared off forests 193 meters up the
slopes of Alaska's Taan Fiord.
"When the climate changes," said geologist Bretwood Higman, who has
worked on Taan Fiord and Barry Arm, "the landscape takes time to adjust.
If a glacier retreats really quickly it can catch the surrounding slopes
by surprise - they might fail catastrophically instead of gradually
adjusting."
After examining 30 years of satellite photos, for instance, geologist
Erin Bessette-Kirton has found that landslides in Alaska's St Elias
mountains and Glacier Bay correspond with the warmest years.
Warming clearly leads to slides, but knowing just when those slides will
release is a much harder problem. "We don't have a good handle on the
mechanism," Bessette-Kirkton said. "We have correlations, but we don't
know the driving force. What conditions the landslide, and what triggers
it?"...
- -
Over the past century, 10 of the 14 tallest tsunamis recorded happened
in glaciated mountain areas. In 1958, a landslide into Alaska's Lituya
Bay created a 524-meter wave - the tallest ever recorded. In Alaska's
1964 earthquake, most deaths were from tsunamis set off by underwater
landslides.
To deal with the hazard, experts hope to predict when a slope is more
likely to fail by installing sensors on the most dangerous slopes to
measure the barely perceptible acceleration of creeping that may presage
a slide.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/18/alaska-climate-change-tsunamis-melting-permafrost
[radical Socialist opinion - from theAnalysis - audio]
*Trump Says Socialism is His Enemy - He's Right*
Meagan Day, a journalist for Jacobin Magazine and member of the DSA,
joins Paul Jay to discuss the challenges in building a broad democratic
front that focuses on the climate crisis and defeating rising fascism;
and organizing a socialist movement for a more radical transformation of
the society.
https://youtu.be/SXXlnG7R_fA?t=1841 [cued up to section on global warming]
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - October 20, 2013 *
MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry discusses the emotional and financial toll
of Superstorm Sandy, one year later.
http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/denial-cant-stop-climate-devastation-55061059573
http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/disasters-test-our-infrastructure-and-leaders-55059523943#
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html>
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request>
to news digest./
*** Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only. It does not carry
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers. A
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and sender.
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for democratic
and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial purposes.
Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe,
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to
this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20201020/6d647337/attachment.html>
More information about the TheClimate.Vote
mailing list