[TheClimate.Vote] March 9, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Tue Mar 9 08:42:39 EST 2021

/*March 9, 2021*/

[follow the money, leads to food]
*Big Banks Make a Dangerous Bet on the World’s Growing Demand for Food*
While banks and asset managers are promising to divest from fossil 
fuels, they are expanding investments in high-carbon foods and 
commodities tied to deforestation.
By Georgina Gustin - March 7, 2021
As global banking giants and investment firms vow to divest from 
polluting energy companies, they’re continuing to bankroll another major 
driver of the climate crisis: food and farming corporations that are 
responsible, directly or indirectly, for cutting down vast 
carbon-storing forests and spewing greenhouse gas emissions into the 
atmosphere.

These agricultural investments, largely unnoticed and unchecked, 
represent a potentially catastrophic blind spot.

“Animal protein and even dairy is likely, and already has started to 
become, the new oil and gas,” said Bruno Sarda, the former North America 
president of CDP, a framework through which companies disclose their 
carbon emissions. “This is the biggest source of emissions that doesn’t 
have a target on its back.”
By pouring money into emissions-intensive agriculture, banks and 
investors are making a dangerous bet on the world’s growing demand for 
food, especially foods that are the greatest source of emissions in the 
food system: meat and dairy.

Agriculture and deforestation, largely driven by livestock production, 
are responsible for nearly one quarter of global greenhouse gas 
emissions. By 2030, livestock production alone could consume nearly half 
the world’s carbon budget, the amount of greenhouse gas the world can 
emit without blowing past global climate targets.
-- 
“There’s absolutely a big gap, full-stop,” said Jessye Waxman, 
shareholder advocate with Green Century Funds. “I think this speaks to 
the broader questions about what it really means for a firm to be 
addressing climate risk comprehensively. If you want to address climate 
risk, you need to address agriculture.”

Feedback Global and other critics contend that engagement—from appealing 
to companies directly to shareholder resolutions—isn’t working. They’re 
now calling for divestment from carbon-intensive agricultural and 
livestock companies.

Still other critics say that banks and investors have an opportunity to 
influence companies toward more sustainable forms of agriculture.

“Our call isn’t for full and immediate divestment from the agriculture 
industry as it essentially is for fossil fuels,” said Birss, of Amazon 
Watch. “It’s not the same. We can’t say it’s all terrible.”

But, she added, “If irreparable harms to the climate come from the 
production of food, those who are carrying out the production of that 
food and the people providing the one necessary ingredient —finance—have 
a responsibility to ensure those irreparable harms aren’t happening.”
more at - 
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07032021/agriculture-banks-climate-change-emissions-meat-dairy-blackrock/

[don't forget the free heat in the ground]
*Daniel Cohan: The Potential for Geothermal*
Mar 7, 2021
greenmanbucket
Is Geothermal a dark horse clean energy resource?
Daniel Cohan is an atmospheric scientist and an associate professor of 
environmental engineering at Rice University.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3mUR1s9lEU

[clips for a common question]
*What's the Most Climate-Safe Place in the World?*
Daniel Kolitz
3-8-21
  If you’re motivated (or rich) enough, you can maybe escape the 
dangerous hellscape large swaths of the planet could become if humanity 
doesn’t get its act together. The question is, though, where to escape 
to? Twenty years from now, or 50, will there be any place to go? What’s 
the most climate-safe place in the world? For this week’s Giz Asks, we 
reached out to a number of experts to find out.
- -
Sarah Kapnick
Deputy Division Leader & Research Physical Scientist, NOAA/Geophysical 
Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
To answer the question, I define places that are “climate-safe” to also 
include those that have plentiful resources and are resilient to 
potential changes in climate extremes. This means they need to have the 
following characteristics:

    1) Access to clean freshwater

    2) Not too hot or humid in a warming world

    3) Low risk for catastrophic extreme events: wildfire, hurricanes

    4) Weatherized to handle: blizzards, extreme rainfall events, wind
    storms

    5) Well above sea level (due to rising seas)

    6) Food security

In the U.S., these conditions are best met in the Great Lakes Region, 
especially on the colder lakes less prone to algae blooms, and the 
inland portion of the Northeast. (Although there have been some extreme 
flooding events from weakened hurricanes in inland New England in recent 
years.)

For a global perspective, I first look for places that are not too hot 
or humid in a warming world. Here, I draw from a paper my postdoc, Karin 
van der Wiel, led on changes in global mild weather. This narrows the 
places with pleasant weather in a changing climate to higher latitude 
regions as the tropics become hotter and more humid. Additionally, these 
need to be locations where there is regular precipitation (rainfall or 
snowfall) now and in the future to ensure access to freshwater, which 
removes many subtropical locations. So higher latitude locations away 
from the coasts will be well positioned like portions of Canada and Europe.
This assessment of a location being “climate-safe” is based on the 
access to resources and risk to society from known physical climate 
risks (i.e. damages that can happen due to weather and climate 
extremes). Beyond access to freshwater and food security, with some 
basic habitable conditions when a person or animals are outside (a 
manageable number of days that are extreme heat or extreme cold), the 
built environment determines if a place is “climate-safe” for society. 
For hot days, people need to have access to air conditioning and water. 
For cold days, they need access to heat. For extreme rainfall days, 
water management and building codes avoid flooding or extreme damages to 
structures. Planning for extreme weather and climate events in addition 
to average climate is critical to making a place “climate-safe.” This 
requires combining known physical climate risks with infrastructure and 
technology to build a resilient world.
- -
Camilo Mora
Associate Professor, Geography and Environment, University of Hawaii 
Mãnoa...
We’ve seen a lot of billionaires buying up islands, thinking they’re 
going to be secure. Because who’s going to go there, right? But the 
reality is that not even those islands are safe. How are they going to 
get clean water? How are they going to keep away all of the people 
living without water or electricity, in houses that stink because they 
can’t flush their toilets?..
So, as for your question of where could be the safest place to live? 
Maybe Mars.
- -
Stephanie Spera
Assistant Professor, Geography and the Environment, University of 
Richmond...
I mean, if I could just pick up and move, I’d happily head to 
Burlington, Vermont: It’s not going to get that much warmer, no 
wildfires, there’s an abundance of freshwater, and they’re prepped for 
cold weather...
Everywhere around the globe is already feeling the effects of climate 
change. The countries and people most affected by changes in climate are 
going to be those that have contributed the least to this problem. And, 
a lot of us need to acknowledge 1) the privilege we have in a wealthy 
country where we’ll be buffered from many of the worst effects of 
climate change (although we need to recognize that poor people and 
minorities living in this country are burdened with the adverse physical 
and mental health the effects of environmental racism time and time 
again); and 2) the immense privilege we have if we have agency to 
actually decide and choose where we want to live based on the answer to 
this question.
- -
Lauren Nishimura
Doctoral Student, Law, University of Oxford, whose research focuses on 
the intersections of climate change adaptation, migration, and public 
international law...
  Indeed, there are legal and moral obligations to support countries 
that are most susceptible to climate impacts but that have contributed 
least to—and benefited least from—its causes. This means that while some 
places will be better off, climate impacts are not ethically neutral nor 
equally felt.
- -
Jesse Keenan
Associate Professor, Architecture, Tulane University, whose research 
focuses on the intersection of climate change adaptation and the built 
environment...
For now, I am going to invest in Toledo, Ohio.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/whats-the-most-climate-safe-place-in-the-world-1846409071

[ video from extinction rebellion on money and global warming]
*Banks, Markets and the End of the World | Chidi Oti-Obihara and Roger 
Hallam | August 2020*
Mar 8, 2021
Extinction Rebellion
Roger Hallam (Beyond Politics) in conversation with Chidi Oti-Obihara 
(Financial and Environmental activist and campaigner).
International: https://rebellion.global/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR

    1. Tell The Truth
    2. Act Now
    3. Beyond Politics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7hPWepLLIQ

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 9, 2017 *

March 9, 2017: In an appearance on CNBC, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt 
denies human-caused climate change.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/09/epa-chief-scott-pruitt.html
https://thinkprogress.org/epa-head-falsely-claims-carbon-emissions-arent-the-cause-of-global-warming-262bd9b0937e#.oaigkdwq0 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/us/politics/epa-scott-pruitt-global-warming.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur 

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