[✔️] October 18, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*October 18, 2021*/

/[ Senator from a flooded state  ] /
*As Manchin Blocks Climate Plan, His State Can’t Hold Back Floods*
As the senator thwarts Democrats’ major push to reduce warming, new data 
shows West Virginia is more exposed to worsening floods than anywhere 
else in the country.
By Christopher Flavelle - Oct. 17, 2021
FARMINGTON, W.Va. — In Senator Joe Manchin’s hometown, a flood-prone 
hamlet of about 200 homes that hugs a curve on a shallow creek, the rain 
is getting worse.

Those storms swell the river, called Buffalo Creek, inundating homes 
along its banks. They burst the streams that spill down the hills on 
either side of this former coal-mining town, pushing water into 
basements. They saturate the ground, seeping into Farmington’s aging 
pipes and overwhelming its sewage treatment system.

Climate change is warming the air, allowing it to hold more moisture, 
which causes more frequent and intense rainfall. And no state in the 
contiguous United States is more exposed to flood damage than West 
Virginia, according to data released last week.

 From the porch of his riverfront house, Jim Hall, who is married to Mr. 
Manchin’s cousin, recounted how rescue workers got him and his wife out 
of their house with a rope during a flood in 2017. He described helping 
his neighbors, Mr. Manchin’s sister and brother-in-law, clear out their 
basement when a storm would come. He calls local officials when he 
smells raw sewage in the river.

“These last few years here in West Virginia, we’ve had unbelievable 
amounts of rain,” Mr. Hall said. “We’ve seriously considered not staying.”..
- -
“Nobody wants to talk about the real driving factor here, which is the 
climate,” Mr. Baldwin said.

As flooding gets worse, West Virginia’s leaders, including Mr. Manchin, 
should stop viewing the state’s identity as tied to coal, said Jamie 
Shinn, a geography professor at West Virginia University who focuses on 
adapting to climate change.

“I don’t think he’s defending the future economy and viability of this 
state,” Dr. Shinn said. “The state has so much potential beyond fossil 
fuels.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/17/climate/manchin-west-virginia-flooding.html

- -

/[Senator of Coal ] /
*Joe Manchin won’t support a key climate program. Alternatives won’t be 
enough.*
The clean electricity program is “the backbone of the energy 
transition,” experts say.
By Ellen Ioanes  Oct 16, 2021
A key climate policy designed to phase out fossil fuels will likely be 
cut from Democrats’ upcoming reconciliation package due to opposition 
from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has reportedly refused to back the 
measure as negotiations over the budget bill continue.

According to the New York Times’ Coral Davenport, who first reported the 
news on Friday, Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural 
Resources committee, will not support the sweeping clean electricity 
program that is widely seen as the centerpiece of the bill’s climate plan.

The $150 billion program — officially known as the Clean Electricity 
Performance Program or CEPP — would reward energy suppliers who switch 
from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas to sustainable power sources 
like solar, wind, and nuclear power, which are already in use by about 
40 percent of the industry, and fine those who do not.

Experts believe the program is the most effective way to slash US carbon 
emissions significantly enough to prevent the global temperature from 
rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius, a threshold which would have drastic 
consequences for the planet if exceeded.
A clean electricity standard, Leah Stokes, a climate policy expert at 
the University of California Santa Barbara, told the New York Times on 
Friday, “is absolutely the most important climate policy in the package. 
We fundamentally need it to meet our climate goals. That’s just the 
reality. And now we can’t. So this is pretty sad.”

Manchin’s rejection of the energy plan is the latest challenge to the 
beleaguered reconciliation package — also called the Build Back Better 
Act — which is now likely to be pared down in response to demands from 
moderate Democrats like Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who 
have said they oppose the $3.5 trillion in spending called for in the 
original plan for the bill...
- -
Manchin’s home state of West Virginia is one of the largest producers of 
coal in the US, and Manchin himself benefits financially from the coal 
industry.
- -
  if Congress can get serious about climate change, other countries are 
likely to follow suit. But a lack of progress would slow forward 
momentum all around.

“There is this sense of exhaustion about how long is it going to take 
for one of the biggest emitters in the world to do its fair share,” 
Cleetus said
https://www.vox.com/2021/10/16/22729648/manchin-climate-change-reconciliation-clean-electricity-program

- -

/[ Leber zings Manchin ] /
*The myth of the climate moderate*
“There isn’t a middle ground between a livable and unlivable world.”
By Rebecca Leber  @rebleberrebecca.leber at vox.com  Oct 16, 2021

After months of discussion and debate, Democrats are at an impasse on a 
raft of infrastructure legislation that could make or break President 
Joe Biden’s effort to fight climate change. The rift, as it’s framed in 
countless news stories, is between progressives who want an ambitious 
social and climate spending bill and moderates who have protested the 
price tag.

But there’s a problem with portraying these disagreements as a conflict 
between moderates and progressives. This picture leaves out the 
unarguable scientific reality that pollution is warming the planet at an 
unsustainable and dangerous rate. There is nothing moderate or debatable 
about the catastrophic changes that global emissions are wreaking on the 
climate. In August, a panel of United Nations climate scientists called 
it “unequivocal” that humans have warmed Earth’s skies, waters, and lands.
- -
“People don’t know what ‘moderate’ even means, particularly around 
climate change,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist, told Vox. “I 
mean, you’re flooded two feet instead of four?”

A traditional left-right spectrum doesn’t capture widespread consensus 
about climate change
Let’s consider what “middle ground” climate action might mean in 
practice. The planet faces rampant warming unless the entire world takes 
aggressive action this decade. Only if countries make big and rapid 
investments to help clean energy replace fossil fuels will it be 
possible to limit warming to less disastrous levels.

Splitting the difference between doing nothing and doing everything in 
our power, in other words, does not halt the crisis. This “moderate” 
path leads us somewhere between devastating warming and catastrophic 
warming.

Supporters of modest climate action are ignoring the magnitude of the 
problem, argued Ryan Fitzpatrick, director of the Climate and Energy 
Program at Third Way, a group that says it promotes center-left 
policies. “If you don’t publicly acknowledge the severity of the impact 
of climate change, then why would we expect any of your policy 
conditions or solutions to be based in rationality?” Fitzpatrick asked.

If you accept the findings of climate scientists, he added, “you 
understand the level of ambition that’s needed to solve the problem.”
Research suggests that the so-called moderates in Congress don’t 
represent the median US opinion about climate change. Anthony 
Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Communication, has 
spent his career using polling to find out what the public actually 
thinks about climate. When he’s looked at the political differences 
between self-identifying conservative, moderate, and liberal voters, he 
finds there’s more agreement than you might hear in the halls of Congress.

“The pattern that really jumps out to you is that there’s one group 
that’s really not like the others,” Leiserowitz said, “and that’s 
conservative Republicans.” This group made up less than a quarter of 
those sampled. Most of the US voters who are doubtful or dismissive of 
climate change are politically conservative, and most are Republicans, 
his research has shown.

When he ropes off the conservative Republicans as outliers, Leiserowitz 
finds a surprising amount of agreement on some core principles, such as 
support for clean energy. In Yale’s December 2020 national sample of 
1,036 Americans, a large majority of Democrats and moderate Republicans 
supported generating renewable energy on public land. The supporters 
included 94 percent of the liberal Democrats in the survey, 76 percent 
of the liberal and moderate Republicans, and 59 percent of conservative 
Democrats.

There’s also surprising agreement about the importance of transitioning 
off fossil fuels. The survey estimated that more than 8 in 10 Democrats 
across the spectrum support a transition to clean energy, and so did 59 
percent of self-identified moderate and liberal Republicans.

“These are relatively minor differences,” Leiserowitz told Vox. In fact, 
he said, there’s more agreement than disagreement on many policies 
related to climate change, with the specific exception of conservative 
Republicans.
Climate downplayers and deniers, however, have an elevated role in 
politics and arguably skew the public understanding of the consensus 
position. While some Republicans are gradually coming around to the idea 
of climate action, the top GOP senator, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, led 
a Republican Senate majority that ignored the issue for nearly a decade. 
“We can debate this forever,” he said in 2014, ignoring the scientific 
consensus. And when Biden reentered the Paris climate agreement this 
year, a group of Republican senators attempted to override his order.

This helps explain how the future of US climate policy has landed in the 
hands of Sen. Manchin, a longtime coal businessman who continues to 
receive campaign funding from the fossil fuel industry and advocate for 
fossil fuel interests. Before he was labeled a moderate, the press 
called Manchin a conservative Democrat; he has very different goals than 
Sinema, the other senator widely called a moderate in the news these 
days. Sinema hails from one of the leading states in the solar industry 
and has publicly argued for robust climate spending in the 
infrastructure bill. (She has disputed reports that she wants to see 
$100 billion in climate funds cut from the spending bill.)

As Ezra Klein wrote about the myth of the middle in a 2015 Vox story, 
“The idea of the moderate middle is bullshit: it’s a rhetorical device 
meant to marginalize some policy positions at the expense of others.” 
This is what’s happening to climate policy, too.

What should replace the myth of the climate moderate?
The time to take a moderate approach to climate has passed, argued Dana 
Johnson, who leads federal policy office of WE ACT for Environmental 
Justice, a climate advocacy group. “If we would have done this 20, 40, 
60 years ago, perhaps we could take a moderate approach,” Johnson said. 
“The moment right now called for us to go big, and to be bold, if we’re 
going to achieve any kind of meaningful change.”

She’s not the only one. “Perhaps the most politically difficult aspect 
of climate change is that, after decades of denial and delay, there is 
no longer any coherent ‘moderate’ position to be had,” energy writer 
David Roberts wrote in his newsletter.

At the New Republic, Kate Aronoff has argued that lawmakers who 
undermine climate legislation are actually extremists: “No one should 
call them moderates, or even centrists. They’re extremists. If they have 
their way, they’re going to get a lot of people killed.”

Instead, it’s time to judge politicians on the level of their ambition, 
and the extent to which they prioritize the planet’s climate. Leaders 
who aren’t ready to accelerate a transition to clean energy, and 
publicly recognize that fossil fuels cannot be the dominant fuel of the 
future, effectively support a dangerous status quo. Politicians who 
block climate action are more or less on the same side as fossil fuels.
Some climate policies genuinely divide Democrats, such as investments in 
nuclear power and carbon-capture technology. Many progressive 
environmentalists are skeptical of both.

A new framing for the politics of climate change would not ignore these 
policy debates. It’s possible to agree about the reality and urgency of 
climate change while disagreeing about the best strategies to stop it.

Climate change may still become an important electoral issue, as younger 
voters who care more about these policies start to vote in greater 
numbers. “Turnout is going to impact a lot of what happens in the 
midterms,” said Lake, the Democratic strategist. “And in the 2024 
election, the younger voters are going to be bigger than the baby 
boomers for the first time.”

Republicans may be reacting to these electoral pressures. “You have a 
lot of Republicans who have embraced a tax credit that promotes 
emissions reductions and clean energy sources,” Carlos Curbelo, a 
Republican former Congress member who introduced climate legislation in 
the House, told Vox. “It’s a departure from the Republican Party of just 
a few years ago, where the most common element ... was apathy.”

When it comes to climate change, Republicans and Democrats can be judged 
by the same standard. “It comes down to whether or not you acknowledge 
the well-established fact that climate change is going to cause severe 
damage, particularly if we don’t meet these emissions goals,” said 
Fitzpatrick of Third Way. “Whether you call yourself a progressive or a 
moderate, if you’re serious about climate, we all have to be aiming to 
accomplish the same thing. And getting that means getting to net-zero 
emissions by 2050.”
https://www.vox.com/22709379/moderate-versus-progressive-democrats-climate

- -

/[ Activism - time to get on the phones Tues, and Thursdays ]/
*Make Calls to Senator Manchin for Climate Action!*
Virtual Phone Bank
About this event
Join us to make calls to Senator Joe Manchin's office for climate action!

In the month of October you have the opportunity to join us any Tuesday 
or Thursday evening starting at 6pm EDT to get involved and make your 
voice heard! You and other volunteers will be making phone calls to West 
Virginia voters to talk about the importance of the Build Back Better 
Act and crucial climate provisions like the Clean Electricity 
Performance Program. If the voter is excited about the Build Back Better 
Act then they will be patched through to Senator Manchin's office to 
voice their support of the bill.

We will give you all the tools you need - RSVP now to get the Zoom link 
to hop on a call and learn more.

See you there!
https://www.mobilize.us/ccanactionfund/event/416726/



/[from the Oxford Climate Society]/
*Climate Change: what are the implications on our mental health and 
wellbeing?*
by Rhiannon Hawkins - 11/10/2021

Since the actions of Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg taking to the 
streets on a school strike against climate change in 2018, young people 
(aged 16-25) have become more aware and willing to act about 
environmental degradation affecting our planet. However, this is causing 
increased distress amongst young people due to the lack of action taken 
by international governments and corporations in tackling climate 
change. This is known as Eco Distress. So, what is Eco Distress?
​
As defined by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Eco Distress is 
experienced when people hear about or witness events which are causing 
the environment and our planet damage (Usher et al., 2019). This may 
trigger feelings of anxiousness, fear, anger, and desperation (Usher et 
al., 2019). If you are feeling like this, it is ENTIRELY NORMAL as Eco 
Distress is not an illness or disease but shows that you care about the 
planet and its future!

As Greta Thunberg says:
“If you feel bad so many people are feeling so sad and depressed but 
that’s a good thing as they still have empathy, they don’t want to live 
in this world where they have lost everything.”

There are many young people across the globe who are also feeling the 
same way, so if you’re feeling like this you are not alone, if it helps, 
I feel like this too.

Psychiatrists and researchers have been investigating the impact of 
climate change and environmental degradation on young people’s mental 
health. The most recent and global study surrounding Eco Distress is led 
by Professor Caroline Hickman and her team from the University of Bath.

The study results indicate that 83% of respondents believe that people 
have failed to do enough to protect the planet and 75% believe that the 
future is frightening (Hickman et al., 2021). This shows that Eco 
Distress and anxiety surrounding climate change is believed to be 
widespread across the globe and having knock-on impacts for future 
generations living on this planet.

These statistics are also shown to be the tip of the iceberg, with many 
climate activists experiencing anxiety and Eco Distress are going on to 
experience ecological burnout. This can often be the case with activists 
becoming traumatized through reading and acting against climate change 
so intensively (Pihkala, 2019). Therefore, the lack of action by 
institutions and witnessing so many incidents of environmental 
degradation can cause psychiatric symptoms associated with experiencing 
events of serious trauma, such as compassion fatigue (Pihkala, 2019).

Environmental conditions caused by climate change and climate related 
trauma during childhood can also cause considerable damage to our brain 
function. This can lead to further risk of developing other psychiatric 
disorders. For example, exposure to high levels of air pollution means 
when we breathe ultrafine toxic particulates, they are transported from 
the nasal cavity via nerve endings to the brain (Van Susteren & 
Al-Delaimy, 2020). This causes neuro-inflammation therefore, putting 
millions at risk of depression, bipolar and schizophrenia (Van Susteren 
& Al-Delaimy, 2020).

However, despite the physical implications of climate change on our 
mental health there are many things which can be done to help prevent 
anxiety surrounding climate change from affecting your day-to-day life.

Here are some top tips which I recommend:
Stay informed about climate related issues – these might help and 
explain why these feelings of distress are happening. However, do not 
over consume yourself with information as it could perpetuate the distress.
Learn to understand and deal with the emotions which you are 
experiencing – remember this is an entirely normal reaction as you care 
about the planet and its future. Therefore, engaging with the natural 
environment, looking after your mental health and talk to others about 
this may help alleviate the distress you’re feeling.
Take action no matter how small – it is important to consider that 
climate change is everyone’s problem and it’s not your fault it is 
happening. So meeting others who feel the same way via Oxford societies 
etc. will help. Endeavors give us control and make us feel better about 
climate change. Potential gestures include, producing less waste, using 
reusable products, and eating less meat.

Here are some links to online resources which can be helpful to help 
deal with Eco Distress:
Royal College of Psychiatrists:
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/parents-and-young-people/young-people/eco-distress---for-young-people
The resilience project:
https://www.theresilienceproject.org.uk/
Conservation Optimism:
https://conservationoptimism.org/
Force of Nature:
https://www.forceofnature.xyz/

However, if you are struggling to deal with eco distress or it has 
become too overwhelming,  please seek professional support either with 
the university counselling service or at your GP practice.

Citations:
Hickman C., Marks E., Pihkala P., Clayton S., Lewandowski R E., Mayall E 
E., Wray B., Mellor C., & Van Susteren L. (2021). Young people’s voices 
on climate anxiety, government betrayal and moral injury: global 
phenomenon. Lancelet, pp. 1-23.
Pihkala, P. (2019). The cost of bearing witness to the environmental 
crisis: Vicarious Traumatization and dealing with secondary traumatic 
stress among environmental researchers. Social Epistemology, 1, pp. 86-100.
Usher K, Durkin J, Bhullar N. (2019). Eco‐anxiety: How thinking about 
climate change‐related environmental decline is affecting our mental 
health. Int J Mental Health Nursing, 28:1233-1234.
Van Susteren, L. & Al-Delaimy, W. (2020). Health of People, Health of 
Planet and Our Responsibility: Climate Change, Air pollution and Health. 
Springer Open, 1, pp. 1-414.

https://www.oxfordclimatesociety.com/what-you-need-to-know-about/climate-change-what-are-the-implications-on-our-mental-health-and-wellbeing



/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming October  18, 1983*

October 18, 1983: In what would be one of her last "News Digest" 
broadcasts, NBC anchor Jessica Savitch mentions a recently released EPA 
report on the consequences of carbon pollution.

    While cleaning out my office the other day, I found a yellowed
    newspaper clipping with the headline, "Greenhouse effect viewed with
    alarm."    The article was dated Oct. 18, 1983.  Check it out below
    the fold:

        WASHINGTON  (AP) --  A potentially catastrophic warming of the
        Earth will start in the 1990s, disrupting food production and
        raising coastal waters as the polar icecaps melt, the federal
        government said in a report released today.

        The study by the Environmental Protection Agency said the
        climatic changes from the so-called “greenhouse effect” are
        unavoidable and warned that the United States and other
        countries must begin searching now for ways to mitigate the impact.

        The report, titled “Can We Delay a Greenhouse Warming?”
        concluded that even as drastic and unlikely a step as a total
        ban on coal burning would delay by only 15 years a 3.6 degree
        increase in average worldwide temperatures.

        While other government studies have warned that the greenhouse
        effect was a potential problem, the EPA report is the first to
        state with certainty that the warming will occur no matter what.

        The EPA study is based on earlier projections by the National
        Academy of Sciences that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the air
        – which could occur by the middle of the next century – would
        raise present world temperatures within a range of 2.7 degrees
        to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

        This result is known as the greenhouse effect because carbon
        dioxide acts like the glass in a greenhouse allowing the sun’s
        warming rays to reach earth but not allowing the heat to escape.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w4pFNCzhTg
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/#videoclip-3279
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/06/21/1101930/-A-Greenhouse-Effect-Warning-from-1983 





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