[TheClimate.Vote] March 22, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*March 22, 2021*/

[see Australian TV news coverage flooding]
*NSW flood emergency - Coverage on 7NEWS - March 2021 | 7NEWS*
Mar 22, 2021
7NEWS Australia
NSW Flood Emergency: There are warnings for low-lying areas around the 
Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers with the Warragamba Dam spilling this 
afternoon.
More Details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZJ5Q2r74cU


[climate modeling lecture video with policy presentations]
*How Can Climate Models Help Us Respond to Climate Change? - with Vicky 
Pope*
Feb 25, 2021
The Royal Institution
Vicky Pope describes what goes into a cutting-edge climate model, how it 
is used to provide information on how and why the climate is changing 
and how it might change in the future.
Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/gEcFsYQQ1WU​

Prof Vicky Pope is a climate scientist specialising in climate modelling 
and providing science to help both governments and the general public to 
understand the implications of climate change.

Her work has helped to provide the information that the government and 
others need to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. She has also 
helped to encourage evidence-based decisions on diverse issues including 
drought and the interaction between air quality and climate change.

Her current interests are very diverse, encouraging wider appreciation 
and protection of the environment and improved access to science and 
mathematics education. She is the Chair and trustee for a number of 
charities and an honorary professor at University College London.

Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe​
This talk was livestreamed by the Ri on 14 January 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-XrpTWxoOw


[Racism and global warming]
*The Unbearable Whiteness of Climate Anxiety*
Is it really just code for white people wishing to hold onto their way 
of life or get “back to normal?"
By Sarah Jaquette Ray on March 21, 2021
The climate movement is ascendant, and it has become common to see 
climate change as a social justice issue. Climate change and its 
effects—pandemics, pollution, natural disasters—are not universally or 
uniformly felt: the people and communities suffering most are 
disproportionately Black, Indigenous and people of color. It is no 
surprise then that U.S. surveys show that these are the communities most 
concerned about climate change.

One year ago, I published a book called A Field Guide to Climate 
Anxiety. Since its publication, I have been struck by the fact that 
those responding to the concept of climate anxiety are overwhelmingly 
white. Indeed, these climate anxiety circles are even whiter than the 
environmental circles I’ve been in for decades. Today, a year into the 
pandemic, after the murder of George Floyd and the protests that 
followed, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, I am deeply concerned 
about the racial implications of climate anxiety. If people of color are 
more concerned about climate change than white people, why is the 
interest in climate anxiety so white? Is climate anxiety a form of white 
fragility or even racial anxiety? Put another way, is climate anxiety 
just code for white people wishing to hold onto their way of life or get 
“back to normal,” to the comforts of their privilege?

The white response to climate change is literally suffocating to people 
of color. Climate anxiety can operate like white fragility, sucking up 
all the oxygen in the room and devoting resources toward appeasing the 
dominant group. As climate refugees are framed as a climate security 
threat, will the climate-anxious recognize their role in displacing 
people from around the globe? Will they be able to see their own fates 
tied to the fates of the dispossessed? Or will they hoard resources, 
limit the rights of the most affected and seek to save only their own, 
deluded that this xenophobic strategy will save them? How can we make 
sure that climate anxiety is harnessed for climate justice?

My book has connected me to a growing community focused on the emotional 
dimensions of climate change. As writer Britt Wray puts it, emotions 
like mourning, anger, dread and anxiety are “merely a sign of our 
attachment to the world.” Paradoxically, though, anxiety about 
environmental crisis can create apathy, inaction and burnout. Anxiety 
may be a rational response to the world that climate models predict, but 
it is unsustainable.

And climate panic can be as dangerous as it is galvanizing. Dealing with 
feelings of climate anxiety will require the existential tools I 
provided in A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, but it will also require 
careful attention to extremism and climate zealotry. We can’t fight 
climate change with more racism. Climate anxiety must be directed toward 
addressing the ways that racism manifests as environmental trauma and 
vice versa—how environmentalism manifests as racialized violence. We 
need to channel grief toward collective liberation.

The prospect of an unlivable future has always shaped the emotional 
terrain for Black and brown people, whether that terrain is racism or 
climate change. Climate change compounds existing structures of 
injustice, and those structures exacerbate climate change. Exhaustion, 
anger, hope—the effects of oppression and resistance are not unique to 
this climate moment. What is unique is that people who had been 
insulated from oppression are now waking up to the prospect of their own 
unlivable future.

It is a surprisingly short step from “chronic fear of environmental 
doom,” as the American Psychological Association defines ecoanxiety, to 
xenophobia and fascism. Racism is not an accidental byproduct of 
environmentalism; it has been a constant reference point. As I wrote 
about in my first book, The Ecological Other, early environmentalists in 
the U.S. were anti-immigrant eugenicists whose ideas were later adopted 
by Nazis to implement their “blood and soil” ideology. In a recent, 
dramatic example, the gunman of the 2019 El Paso shooting was motivated 
by despair about the ecological fate of the planet: “My whole life I 
have been preparing for a future that currently doesn’t exist.” Intense 
emotions mobilize people, but not always for the good of all life on 
this planet.

Today’s progressives espouse climate change as the “greatest existential 
threat of our time,” a claim that ignores people who have been 
experiencing existential threats for much longer. Slavery, colonialism, 
ongoing police brutality—we can’t neglect history to save the future.

I recently gave a college lecture about climate anxiety. One of the 
students e-mailed me to say she was so distressed that she’d be willing 
to submit to a green dictator if they would address climate change. 
Young people know the stakes, but they are not learning how to cope with 
the intensity of their dread. It would be tragic and dangerous if this 
generation of climate advocates becomes willing to sacrifice democracy 
and human rights in the name of climate change.

Oppressed and marginalized people have developed traditions of 
resilience out of necessity. Black, feminist and Indigenous leaders have 
painstakingly cultivated resilience over the long arc of the fight for 
justice. They know that protecting joy and hope is the ultimate 
resistance to domination. Persistence is nonnegotiable when your mental, 
physical and reproductive health are on the line.

Instead of asking “What can I do to stop feeling so anxious?”, “What can 
I do to save the planet?” and “What hope is there?”, people with 
privilege can be asking “Who am I?” and “How am I connected to all of 
this?” The answers reveal that we are deeply interconnected with the 
well-being of others on this planet, and that there are traditions of 
environmental stewardship that can be guides for where we need to go 
from here.

Author’s Note: I want to thank Jade Sasser, Britt Wray, Janet Fiskio, 
and Jennifer Atkinson for rich discussions about this topic, which 
inform this piece.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-climate-anxiety/



[Reuters]
*Global warming could cut over 60 countries' credit ratings by 2030, 
study warns*
By Marc Jones
LONDON (Reuters) - A new algorithm-based study by a group of UK 
universities has predicted that 63 countries – roughly half the number 
rated by the likes of S&P Global, Moody’s and Fitch - could see their 
credit ratings cut because of climate change by 2030.
Researchers from Cambridge University, the University of East Anglia and 
London-based SOAS looked at a “realistic scenario” known as RCP 8.5, 
where carbon and other polluting emissions continue rising in coming 
decades.

They then looked at how the likely negative impact of rising 
temperatures, sea levels and other climate change effects on countries’ 
economies and finances might affect their credit ratings.

"We find that 63 sovereigns suffer climate-induced downgrades of 
approximately 1.02 notches by 2030, rising to 80 sovereigns facing an 
average downgrade of 2.48 notches by 2100," the study here released on 
Thursday said.

The hardest hit countries included China, Chile, Malaysia, and Mexico 
which could see six notches of downgrades by the end of the century, as 
well as the United States, Germany, Canada, Australia, India, and Peru 
that could see around four.
“Our results show that virtually all countries, whether rich or poor, 
hot or cold, will suffer downgrades if the current trajectory of carbon 
emissions is maintained.”

The study also estimated that as rating cuts usually increase countries’ 
borrowing costs in international markets the climate-induced downgrades 
would add $137–$205 billion to countries’ annual debt service payments 
by 2100.

In an alternative ‘RCP 2.6’ scenario where CO2 emissions start falling 
and go to zero by 2100, the rating impact would be just over half a 
notch on average and the combined additional cost would be a more modest 
$23–34 billion.

As companies’ borrowing costs generally track those of the countries 
they operate in, their combined annual debt bills were predicted to rise 
$35.8–$62.6 billion in the higher emissions scenario by 2100 and 
$7.2–$12.6 billion in the lower one...
“There are caveats, there are no scientifically credible quantitative 
estimates of how climate change will impact social and political 
factors,” the paper said. “Thus, our findings should be considered as 
conservative.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-ratings-idUSKBN2BA2XW



[Precarity - a word first used in 1952 - audio discussion - "Climate 
precarity"?]
*Rhodes Center Podcast: How Precarity Puts Capitalism on Edge*
Mar 19, 2021
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
On this episode Mark talks with Albena Azmanova, IWM Visiting Fellow at 
the Institute for Human Studies in Vienna and author of ‘Capitalism on 
Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis 
or Utopia’. In the book, Albena explains how precarity (not inequality) 
is the central driver of our current political, economic, and social 
woes. Mark and Albena explore the roots of economic precarity, the 
reasons it’s more dangerous and destabilizing than inequality alone, and 
why addressing it will require mixing tried-and-true economic policies 
with a radical rethinking of how our economy is structured.
You can learn more about Albena Azmanova's book here: 
[cup.columbia.edu/book/capitalism-…ge/9780231195379]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq67zwxylm4


[New swamps forming]
*NORTHEAST ‘GHOST FORESTS’ MULTIPLY AS WATERS RISE*
MARCH 17TH, 2021 - POSTED BY TODD BATES-RUTGERS
New research indicates two factors behind the emergence of “ghost 
forests” filled with dead trees along the mid-Atlantic and southern New 
England coast.
- -
Coastal forests in the mid-Atlantic and southern New England (from 
Virginia through Massachusetts) have a mix of hardwoods and evergreen 
trees. They provide habitat for an array of rare plants and wildlife, 
store carbon, and are valuable timber resources. Coastal forests along 
with adjacent salt marshes also help buffer inland areas from coastal 
storms. But sea-level rise is altering coastal forest ecosystems and 
“ghost forests” filled with dead trees are becoming a growing phenomenon 
in parts of the Northeast.
- -
The likely reasons for the death of coastal forests vary by location. 
But the most important factors appear to be rising groundwater levels 
that saturate soils in low-lying areas, especially during periods of 
high rainfall, stressing forest vegetation; and increasing saltwater 
inundation from very high tides and storm surges. Accelerated sea-level 
rise is expected to worsen these impacts, which can leave areas 
inhospitable for trees...
https://www.futurity.org/ghost-forests-dead-trees-2533252-2/



[over-population a self-resolving problem - a chemo-technical opinion]
Daily Impact
*Genocide by Spermicide*
By Tom Lewis | March 20, 2021
- -
As with other scenarios that have been advanced, I do not buy the notion 
of total extinction — the world is a big place, with lots of nooks and 
crannies and people, plenty of room for exceptions. Still, it seems 
entirely possible that declining sperm counts could do what global 
climate change has been threatening to do, only sooner: cause a 
catastrophic collapse of the human population.

The source of this existential threat is, of course, industrial: a class 
of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — PFAs for short — called the 
“forever chemicals” because they do not break down. They persist in the 
soil, in the water, in the human body, for unknown decades. They have 
been linked to several cancers and they disrupt the human endocrine 
system especially in males, reducing sperm count, penis size and 
testicular volume.

But they are devilishly useful to industry and since the 1950s some 
5,000 of them have been put to use in plastic containers and food 
wrapping, waterproof clothes and fragrances in cleaning products, soaps 
and shampoos including baby products,  electronics and carpeting — in 
short, they play a role in damn near everything, they have been 
accumulating for seven decades, and now they are poised to wipe out mankind.

Does anybody remember the Precautionary Principle? It holds that before 
industry introduces a new product or chemical into the environment, it 
must first prove the substance does no harm. Yeah, I know — cue the 
hysterical laughter...
http://www.dailyimpact.net/2021/03/20/genocide-by-spermicide/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 22, 2014 *

The New York Times reports on EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy's tour to 
discuss her agency's efforts to address carbon pollution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/22/us/as-listener-and-saleswoman-epa-chief-takes-to-the-road-for-climate-rules.html

The Boston Globe reports on the collapse of the coal industry in the 
United States.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/03/21/coal-plants-closing-here-and-across-nation/B3m6a0ABuLTF7xrse0eBoM/story.html


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