[TheClimate.Vote] April 11, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Mon Apr 12 02:35:20 EDT 2021

/*April 11, 2021*/

[Uh oh, another one]
*Drought-plagued California and western U.S. may see another devastating 
fire season*
The drought, which led to the most extreme wildfire season on record in 
California and Colorado last year, is now worse
- -
Drought deepens across the West, and fire risk follows
Large wildfires in the West are driven by a complex relationship between 
shorter-term weather and longer-term climate variability. The West’s 
descent into the current severe and widespread drought began in the fall 
of 2019, when a dry pattern emerged over Oregon, northern California, 
central Nevada and into parts of Idaho, Utah and Colorado. The hot and 
dry summer of 2020 quickly followed, which brought devastating fires to 
California and the Pacific Northwest, and set the stage for Colorado’s 
biggest wildfire season on record beginning in August and continuing 
through October.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/04/10/drought-wildfires-california-west/

[Define the crime]
*As the Climate Crisis Grows, a Movement Gathers to Make ‘Ecocide’ an 
International Crime Against the Environment*
International lawyers, environmentalists and a growing number of world 
leaders say “ecocide”—widespread destruction of the environment—would 
serve as a “moral red line” for the planet.
By Nicholas Kusnetz, Katie Surma and Yuliya Talmazan
April 7, 2021
The Fifth Crime: First in a continuing series with NBC News about the 
campaign to make “ecocide” an international crime.

In 1948, after Nazi Germany exterminated millions of Jews and other 
minorities during World War II, the United Nations adopted a convention 
establishing a new crime so heinous it demanded collective action. 
Genocide, the nations declared, was “condemned by the civilized world” 
and justified intervention in the affairs of sovereign states.

Now, a small but growing number of world leaders including Pope Francis 
and French President Emmanuel Macron have begun citing an offense they 
say poses a similar threat to humanity and remains beyond the reach of 
existing legal conventions: ecocide, or widespread destruction of the 
environment.

The Pope describes ecocide as “the massive contamination of air, land 
and water,” or “any action capable of producing an ecological disaster,” 
and has proposed making it a sin for Catholics.

The Pontiff has also endorsed a campaign by environmental activists and 
legal scholars to make ecocide the fifth crime before the International 
Criminal Court in The Hague as a legal deterrent to the kinds of 
far-reaching environmental damage that are driving mass extinction, 
ecological collapse and climate change. The monumental step, which faces 
a long road of global debate, would mean political leaders and corporate 
executives could face charges and imprisonment for “ecocidal” acts.
- -
Damage to nature has become so extensive and widespread around the world 
that many environmentalists speak of ecocide to describe numerous 
environmentally devastated hot spots:

-- Chernobyl, the Ukrainian nuclear plant that exploded in 1986 and
left the now-deserted area dangerously radioactive;
-- The tar sands of northern Canada, where toxic waste pits and
strip mines have replaced 400 square miles of boreal forest and
boglands;
-- The Gulf of Mexico, site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster that
killed 11 people, spilled at least 168 million gallons of crude oil
into the ocean over 87 days and killed countless marine mammals, sea
turtles, fish and migratory birds;
--The Amazon, where rapid deforestation encouraged by Brazilian
President Jair Bolsonaro prompted Joe Biden, during his presidential
campaign, to propose a $20 billion rescue plan and threaten the
Brazilian leader with economic sanctions...

- -
The campaign to criminalize ecocide is now moving from the fringe of 
advocacy into global diplomacy, pushed by a growing recognition among 
advocates and many political leaders that climate change and 
environmental causes are tied inherently to human rights and social justice.

The effort remains a long shot and is at least years from fruition, 
international and environmental law experts say. Advocates will have to 
navigate political tensions over whether national governments or the 
international community have ultimate control over natural resources. 
And they’ll likely face opposition from countries with high carbon 
emissions and deep ties to industrial development.

The environmentalists must also figure out how criminal law would 
address climate change, which has been driven by practices like burning 
coal and gasoline that are not only legal, but central to the global 
economy.

The campaign for an ecocide crime, however, is about more than law. Jojo 
Mehta, who launched the Stop Ecocide campaign in 2017, describes it as a 
moral and practical issue as well.

“We use criminal law to draw moral lines,” Mehta said. “We say 
something’s not accepted, your murder is not acceptable. And so, simply 
putting mass damage and destruction of nature below that red line 
actually makes a huge difference, and it will make a difference to the 
people that are financing what is going on.”...
- -
The concept of ecocide was born of tragedy. Over a period of 10 years, 
the United States government sprayed 19 million gallons of powerful 
herbicides, including Agent Orange, across the countryside in Vietnam, 
Cambodia and Laos to expose enemy sanctuaries during the Vietnam War.

The dioxin-laced chemicals defoliated verdant jungle and caused cancers, 
neurological disease and birth defects in people living nearby. While 
the number of victims is disputed, Vietnamese groups claim there are 
more than 3 million. In 1970, Yale biologist Arthur Galston invoked the 
destruction to call on the world to outlaw what he called “ecocide.”

More than 20 years later, the global community came together to form the 
International Criminal Court, which was formally established in 2002 
under a treaty called the Rome Statute to prosecute genocide, crimes 
against humanity, crimes of aggression and war crimes when its member 
countries, which currently number 123, fail to do so themselves.

Early drafts of the Rome Statute included the crime of environmental 
destruction, but it was removed after opposition from the United States, 
United Kingdom and the Netherlands, relegated instead to a wartime 
offense that has never been enforced.

As a result, international criminal law includes few guardrails to 
prevent peacetime environmental destruction...
- -
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07042021/climate-crisis-ecocide-vanuatu-the-fifth-crime/

[a 12 min video summary]
*The Rapidly Changing Arctic*
Apr 5, 2021
University of Colorado Boulder
Sharpen your knowledge of the Arctic in CU on Coursera's Arctic Climate, 
Environment, and Geographies of a Changing North specialization.
Learn more at 
https://www.colorado.edu/ali/arctic-climate-environment-geographies-changing-north-specialization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPO5EohG_jA

- -

[45 min video rambling, personal conversation with a glaciologist]
*The Cascading effects of Climate Change in Mountains with Michele Koppes.*
Mar 30, 2021
Salt Spring Forum
A gatherer of the stories of ice and stone, Michele Koppes holds the 
Canada Research Chair in Landscapes of Climate Change in the Department 
of Geography at the University of British Columbia.  She is also a 
Senior TED Fellow.  Dr. Koppes’ passion is understanding how glaciers 
respond to climate change, and how glacier changes impact landscapes, 
waterscapes and people.
Only 2% of water on Earth is freshwater and of this, 90% comes from 
glaciers.
Join Michele Koppes in conversation with moderator Katharine Byers, as 
they explore glacier retreat and ice-sheet break-up and what that means 
for landscapes and humanity. Towards the end of the video they go into 
what water means to the planet and how it really connects to humans. 
Both an informative and moving way to finish this fascinating discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy4VB1h7FPU

[Follow the money]
*House hunters are fleeing climate change, causing a new kind of 
gentrification*
A new survey shows that Americans are factoring climate change into 
their moving plans. This could push low-income families into at-risk 
areas...
- -
Climate change is causing many Americans to rethink where they want to 
live, according to a new survey conducted by real estate brokerage 
Redfin. The survey of 2,000 U.S. residents — conducted between February 
25 and March 1 — reveals that about half of the 628 respondents planning 
to move in the next year are motivated in part by extreme temperatures 
or the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters. 
Three-quarters of all respondents said they would be hesitant to buy a 
home in a community facing climate risks, and about a quarter wouldn’t 
purchase property there even if it were more affordable...
- -
When the survey results were broken down by region, Midwesterners 
surfaced as the outlier — they were the least likely to cite climate 
risks as a factor in their homebuying decisions. Fairweather said this 
could be due to the fact that the Midwest has so far not experienced 
some of the more extreme effects of climate change, such as wildfires 
and hurricanes. That doesn’t mean global warming isn’t having an impact, 
though: The region has experienced an increase in heat waves, heavy 
downpours, and flooding in recent decades...
https://grist.org/housing/house-hunters-are-fleeing-climate-change-causing-a-new-kind-of-gentrification/ 

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - April 11, 1987 *

Reporting on Tennessee Sen. Al Gore's decision to run for the Democratic 
presidential nomination, the Los Angeles Times notes:

"Along with evoking the Kennedyesque image of vigor, Gore also sought to 
revive the spirit of youthful idealism associated with the New Frontier. 
He laid out a broad list of national objectives, from combatting AIDS 
and Alzheimer's disease to curbing the 'greenhouse effect'--the threat 
to the Earth's atmosphere from the burning of oil, gas and coal."

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-04-11/news/mn-639_1_albert-gore

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