[TheClimate.Vote] January 20, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*January 20, 2021*/

[New POTUS]
*Biden to 'hit ground running' as he rejoins Paris climate accords*
President-elect to block Keystone XL pipeline among other swift 
environmental moves – but challenges lie ahead
Joe Biden is set for a flurry of action to combat the climate crisis on 
his first day as US president by immediately rejoining the Paris climate 
agreement and blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, although experts have 
warned lengthier, and harder, environmental battles lie ahead in his 
presidency...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/19/biden-environment-paris-climate-agreement-keystone-xl-pipeline


[coal]
*Court Voids a ‘Tortured’ Trump Climate Rollback*
The ruling strikes down weak rules for coal-burning power plants and 
gives the Biden administration a freer hand to impose tighter restrictions.
Jan. 19, 2021, 2:13 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the Trump 
administration’s plan to relax restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions 
from power plants, paving the way for President-elect Joseph R. Biden 
Jr. to enact new and stronger restrictions on power plants.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia called 
the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule a “fundamental 
misconstruction” of the nation’s environmental laws, devised through a 
“tortured series of misreadings” of legal statute.

On the last full day of the Trump presidency, it effectively ended the 
Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to weaken and undermine 
climate change policies and capped a dismal string of failures in which 
courts threw out one deregulation after another. Experts have widely 
described the E.P.A.’s losing streak as one of the worst legal records 
of the agency in modern history...
- -
Shortly after the election of President Trump, his E.P.A. repealed the 
Clean Power Plan.

Andrew Wheeler, the departing administrator of the E.P.A. and a former 
coal lobbyist, replaced the plan with the weaker Affordable Clean Energy 
rule, which maintained the law only allows the agency to set guidelines 
to reduce emissions at individual power plants with actions like 
increasing efficiency or upgrading boilers that do not threaten an 
entire power sector, such as coal...
- -
Whether Mr. Biden will seek to again use regulation to curb power plant 
emissions is still being debated. Tuesday’s ruling, legal experts said, 
did not give him approval to do so, but it did give him the leeway to 
try. Any new effort would certainly be challenged by conservatives and 
would very likely face an uncertain future before the Supreme Court.

A spokesman for the Biden transition team did not immediately respond to 
a request for comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/climate/trump-climate-change.html



[SCOTUS]*
**Supreme Court Considers Baltimore Suit Against Oil Companies Over 
Climate Change*
January 19, 2021
REBECCA HERSHER
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday in a case brought by the 
city of Baltimore against more than a dozen major oil and gas companies 
including BP, ExxonMobil and Shell. The city government argued that the 
fossil fuel giants must pay for the costs of climate change because they 
knew that their products cause potentially catastrophic global warming.

The Baltimore case is one of more than 20 similar suits brought by 
cities, states and counties in recent years. The cases make a variety of 
arguments about why fossil fuel companies bear responsibility for the 
costs of climate change, including that companies misled the public 
about the threat burning oil and gas poses to the climate.

The Supreme Court is considering a narrow jurisdictional question: the 
Baltimore case was filed in state court, but during the 75-minute 
opening arguments on Tuesday, an attorney for the fossil fuel companies 
contended that such cases should be tried in federal court.

"These cases have the potential to be quite powerful if they finally see 
their day in court," says Karen Sokol, a law professor at Loyola 
University of New Orleans who has written extensively about climate 
liability cases. Sokol says state courts have a long history of handling 
cases about consumer protection, including lawsuits involving alleged 
corporate misinformation campaigns. If the Supreme Court decides in 
Baltimore's favor, it would likely pave the way for cases against oil 
and gas companies to proceed in state courts across the country...
- -
But Karen Sokol of Loyola University New Orleans, who has spent much of 
her career studying climate liability cases, says the new wave of 
climate liability cases is different. In the last decade, investigative 
reporting has revealed the extent to which companies knew about the 
connection between climate change and burning fossil fuels.

Climate science has also matured. It's now possible to detect the 
effects of global warming in individual weather events, including 
extreme rain storms, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves and wildfires. The 
connection between burning fossil fuels and specific damage from extreme 
weather has never been more verifiable...
- -
Lastly, Sokol says, the new wave of lawsuits have a completely new set 
of allegations. The first wave of cases, which included the Connecticut 
case, alleged that companies were liable for greenhouse emissions. The 
new wave of lawsuits allege deceptive marketing practices by oil and gas 
companies that billed their products as safe. "That's a very, very 
different claim," Sokol says.
The Supreme Court will announce its decision later this year on the 
narrow question of whether the Baltimore case should be considered in 
state or federal court. If the justices decide in favor of the companies 
and the case proceeds in federal court, it's possible that the lawsuit 
will be eventually dismissed without a trial.

However, if the justices decide in favor of Baltimore, it is likely that 
the case will proceed in Maryland state court, which could require the 
companies in the case to turn over vast troves of documents about their 
businesses and marketing practices over the decades.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/19/956005206/supreme-court-considers-baltimore-suit-against-oil-companies
- -
[read the transcript]
*IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES *
BP P.L.C., ET AL., Petitioners,
v.
MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE, Respondent.
No. 19-1189
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2020/19-1189_b97c.pdf



[part of the Davos Agenda of the World Economic Forum]
*Climate change will be sudden and cataclysmic. We need to act fast*
-- Tipping points could fundamentally disrupt the planet and produce 
abrupt change in the climate.
-- A mass methane release could put us on an irreversible path to full 
land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 metres.
-- We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and build 
resilience with these tipping points in mind.
The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, 
businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to 
the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history 
tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats. 
Our evolution has selected the “fight or flight” instinct to deal with 
environmental change, so rather like the metaphor of the frog in boiling 
water, we tend to react too little and too late to gradual change.
- -
Climate change is often described as global warming, with the 
implication of gradual changes caused by a steady increase in 
temperatures; from heatwaves to melting glaciers.

But we know from multidisciplinary scientific evidence - from geology, 
anthropology and archaeology - that climate change is not incremental. 
Even in pre-human times, it is episodic, when it isn’t forced by a 
human-induced acceleration of greenhouse gas emissions and warming.

There are parts of our planet’s carbon cycle, the ways that the earth 
and the biosphere store and release carbon, that could trigger suddenly 
in response to gradual warming. These are tipping points that once 
passed could fundamentally disrupt the planet and produce abrupt, 
non-linear change in the climate.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/climate-change-sudden-cataclysmic-need-act-fast/



[Ooops, from WIRED]
MATT SIMON - 1.19.2021
*The Ongoing Collapse of the World's Aquifers*
When humans over-exploit underground water supplies, the ground 
collapses like a huge empty water bottle. It's called subsidence, and it 
could affect 1.6 billion people by 2040.
AS CALIFORNIA’S ECONOMY skyrocketed during the 20th century, its land 
headed in the opposite direction. A booming agricultural industry in the 
state’s San Joaquin Valley, combined with punishing droughts, led to the 
over-extraction of water from aquifers. Like huge, empty water bottles, 
the aquifers crumpled, a phenomenon geologists call subsidence. By 1970, 
the land had sunk as much as 28 feet in the valley, with less-than-ideal 
consequences for the humans and infrastructure above the aquifers.

The San Joaquin Valley was geologically primed for collapse, but its 
plight is not unique. All over the world—from the Netherlands to 
Indonesia to Mexico City—geology is conspiring with climate change to 
sink the ground under humanity’s feet. More punishing droughts mean the 
increased draining of aquifers, and rising seas make sinking land all 
the more vulnerable to flooding. According to a recent study published 
in the journal Science, in the next two decades, 1.6 billion people 
could be affected by subsidence, with potential loses in the trillions 
of dollars.

“Subsidence has been neglected in a lot of ways because it is slow 
moving. You don't recognize it until you start seeing damage,” says 
Michelle Sneed, a land subsidence specialist at the U.S. Geological 
Survey and coauthor on the paper. “The land sinking itself is not a 
problem. But if you're on the coast, it's a big problem. If you have 
infrastructure that crosses long areas, it's a big problem. If you have 
deep wells, they're collapsing because of subsidence. That's a problem.”...
- -
Really, the only way humanity will be able to stave off subsidence is to 
stop over-exploiting aquifers, a tall order on a rapidly warming planet. 
“Aquifers will be depleted, one way or another,” says Shirzaei. “It's 
not possible to ask people who are in need of fresh water to stop using 
groundwater because it causes subsidence. So the bigger picture is: What 
are the adaptation strategies?” That could mean elevating buildings on 
lands that are subsiding and flooding. It could mean relying more on 
desalinating seawater, though that remains highly energy intensive, and 
therefore expensive. Or cities might follow in the footsteps of Los 
Angeles, which is modifying its streets to collect precious rainwater.

At the end of the day, subsiding cities are up against unstoppable 
physical forces. “Geology is geology,” says Sneed. “We can't do anything 
about that.”
https://www.wired.com/story/the-ongoing-collapse-of-the-worlds-aquifers/




[James Hansen on increasing global heating]
*Global Warming Acceleration*
14 December 2020
James Hansen and Makiko Sato
Abstract.  Record global temperature in 2020, despite a strong La Niña 
in recent months, reaffirms a global warming acceleration that is too 
large to be unforced noise – it implies an increased growth rate of the 
total global climate forcing and Earth’s energy imbalance.  Growth of 
measured forcings (greenhouse gases plus solar irradiance) decreased 
during the period of increased warming, implying that atmospheric 
aerosols probably decreased in the past decade.  There is a need for 
accurate aerosol measurements and improved monitoring of Earth’s energy 
imbalance.
https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-warming-acceleration?e=c4e20a3850


*
*

[Ethics]*
* *Moral injury, the culture of uncare and the climate bubble*
Sally Weintrobe
Published online: 17 Dec 2020
Download citation https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2020.1844167

    ABSTRACT
    The logic of living in a neoliberal economy conflicts with many
    peoples’ sense of moral decency. Neoliberal economic framing means
    that life is generally lived in ways that harm the planet, people
    and animals. To know at a feeling level that one has participated
    exposes one to moral injury, a violation of what is right and fair.
    Participating in the neoliberal economy generates conflict between
    more self-serving and more socially responsible values. Covid 19 has
    clearly exposed neoliberal framing and the underlying mindset that
    drives it, involving political and cultural Exceptionalism and the
    culture of uncare it maintains, generating fraud bubbles which are
    kept afloat by encouraging omnipotent thinking as a magical
    ‘solution’ to transgression of limits. The climate bubble, the most
    consequential fraud bubble ever seeded, is beginning to burst, and
    with that comes the sense of traumatic shock and moral injury at
    having been caught up in it.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02650533.2020.1844167



Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
*Australia: Judge says corporate lawyers should advocate for climate and 
environmental consciousness*
Mon, January 18, 2021
'Top judge urges lawyers to take stand on climate change', 17 January 2021

    Lawyers have an obligation to follow the lead of "climate-conscious"
    practitioners and help repair a "wounded" planet, according to the
    nation's leading environment law judge. Justice Brian Preston, chief
    judge of the NSW Land and Environment Court, says that on top of
    advising their clients on legal issues, there are myriad ways for
    lawyers to follow "the path of climate consciousness"... Justice
    Preston says this could involve "moral counselling with clients", in
    which lawyers might "discuss the rightness or wrongness of the
    client’s projects or business activities and the impact of those
    projects or activities on people and the planet, including the
    climate change consequences of different courses of action"... The
    judge, who helped found the NSW Environmental Defenders Office in
    1985, says lawyers "need to integrate ethical thinking and ethical
    action into their day-to-day legal practice"... "The courts of the
    future will be asked to determine the legality of present action and
    inaction of governments and enterprises in relation to climate
    change." He cites the example of Gloucester Resources, which
    appealed the minister’s refusal of consent to the Land and
    Environment Court, in warning against a "climate blind" approach.
    "Neither party initially raised the impact of the mine on climate
    change as an issue in the proceedings"...

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/australia-judge-says-corporate-lawyers-should-advocate-for-climate-and-environmental-consciousness/


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 20, 1993 *

In his first inaugural address, President Clinton declares: "To renew 
America, we must meet challenges abroad as well as at home. There is no 
longer a clear division between what is foreign and what is domestic. 
The world economy, the world environment, the world AIDS crisis, the 
world arms race: they affect us all."

http://youtu.be/2SWjIPwm954


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