[✔️] October 21, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*October 21, 2021*//
/

/[ Yikes, danger ]/
*COP26: Document leak reveals nations lobbying to change key climate report*
By Justin Rowlatt & Tom Gerken
BBC News - October 20, 2021
The report will be used by governments to decide what action is needed 
to tackle climate change and will be a crucial input to negotiations at 
the Glasgow conference.

The authority of these reports derives in part from the fact that 
virtually all the governments of the world participate in the process to 
reach consensus.

The comments from governments the BBC has read are overwhelmingly 
designed to be constructive and to improve the quality of the final report.

The cache of comments and the latest draft of the report were released 
to Greenpeace UK's team of investigative journalists, Unearthed, which 
passed it on to BBC News.

*Fossil fuels*
The leak shows a number of countries and organisations arguing that the 
world does not need to reduce the use of fossil fuels as quickly as the 
current draft of the report recommends.

An adviser to the Saudi oil ministry demands "phrases like 'the need for 
urgent and accelerated mitigation actions at all scales…' should be 
eliminated from the report".

One senior Australian government official rejects the conclusion that 
closing coal-fired power plants is necessary, even though ending the use 
of coal is one of the stated objectives the COP26 conference.

Saudi Arabia is the one of the largest oil producers in the world and 
Australia is a major coal exporter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58982445

- -

/[Opinion]/
*Group of 20 faces a moral imperative on climate safety*
JEFFREY D. SACHS - -Oct 19, 2021
At the group’s upcoming meeting in Rome, many member governments will 
press for more ambitious action to address climate change. But these 
governments must also be prepared to call out the climate laggards, 
starting with the United States.

NEW YORK – The philosopher Immanuel Kant famously said that, “Whoever 
wills the end also wills…the indispensably necessary means to it that is 
in his control.” Put simply, when we set a goal, we ought to take the 
actions needed to achieve it. This is an essential maxim for our 
governments, and it should guide G20 leaders when they meet in Rome at 
the end of October to confront the climate crisis...
/- -[comclusion]/
This track record of world-threatening inaction now looks set to 
continue. In the past few days, the U.S. Senate has been busy gutting 
Biden’s signature budget legislation of its most important climate 
policies. All 50 Republican Senators and a handful of Democrats led by 
Joe Manchin of West Virginia are opposing Biden’s “clean-power plan” to 
decarbonize the U.S. energy sector.

The remarkable thing about American corruption is how blatant it is. The 
oil and gas industry spent $140.7 million on the 2020 elections 
(donating 84% to Republicans) and $112 million on lobbying last year. An 
ExxonMobil lobbyist was recorded confiding that Manchin is the 
industry’s “kingmaker” in Congress. Biden’s hold on power is so weak, 
and the corruption of the U.S. Congress so entrenched, that the 
president cannot even face down a small-state senator from his own 
party, who should be shamed and derided for his devotion to Big Oil.

The G20 governments have a moral imperative to adopt the means to 
achieve the globally agreed goal of climate safety. Their countries 
account for roughly 80% of global output and carbon dioxide emissions. 
An agreement among these governments — followed by specific actions, 
including facing down the corruption in their own countries — can change 
the global trajectory on climate change.

Many G20 governments are ready to act, and they should call out the 
laggards. The U.S. should be put on notice that America’s failed 
response is intolerable to the rest of the world. And the same message 
should be conveyed to Australia, India and Saudi Arabia. There can be no 
tolerance for climate corruption and impunity in a world on fire.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, is 
Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia 
University and President of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions 
Network. Project Syndicate, 2021
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/g20-rome-meeting-must-adopt-credible-climate-plan-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-10

/
/

/[  ask your doctor ] /
*Inaction on climate change imperils millions of lives, doctors say*
Top medical journal warns that rising temperatures will worsen heat and 
respiratory illness and spread infectious disease
- -
According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, at 
least 538 Americans have died in major climate disasters this year. That 
doesn’t account for the less-direct deaths: people who get sick from 
mold that forms after their home is deluged during a hurricane and 
patients whose chronic conditions are exacerbated by extreme 
temperatures. Studies suggest that smoke from wildfires led to thousands 
more coronavirus cases out West, and in one county was linked to 41 
percent of deaths...
- -
By far the deadliest hazard comes from the act of burning fossil fuels, 
which generates tiny, lung-irritating particles known as PM2.5. One 
estimate published this February put the toll of this pollution at more 
than 10 million excess deaths each year. The Lancet study is more 
conservative, putting the figure closer to 1 million.

When it comes to the consequences of warming, heat is the world’s worst 
killer. Elderly people and infants younger than 1 — the groups most 
vulnerable to heat — are exposed to roughly four more extremely hot days 
per year now than a generation ago, the Lancet report found. Almost 
350,000 people died of heat-related illness in 2019.

Steadily rising temperatures, combined with habitat disruption and 
globalization, have also given infectious diseases a chance to evolve 
and expand...
- -
Meanwhile, disease-carrying mosquitoes are moving to more temperate 
areas and higher elevations, their life cycles accelerated and their 
biting behaviors intensified. Shifting environmental factors have raised 
the basic reproductive rates of illnesses like Zika and chikungunya, 
enhancing their potential to explode into epidemics. A study published 
by the Lancet Planetary Health this July found that unabated carbon 
emissions would put almost 90 percent of the world’s population at risk 
of malaria and dengue by the end of the century...
- -
The Lancet “Countdown” argues that inaction will be even more expensive.

Last year, the direct costs of climate disasters totaled more than $178 
billion, the report says. Drought affected 19 percent of the world’s 
total land surface area, damaging yields of crucial crops such as wheat, 
corn and soy. Extreme heat harmed workers and shut down operations at 
farms and factories, depriving the world of 295 billion potential work 
hours.

But curbing emissions, investing in clean energy and funding adaptation 
efforts could save money as well as lives, the report says. The reduced 
air pollution that would result from eliminating fossil fuels alone 
could deliver global health benefits in the trillions of dollars. A 2019 
study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that 
deaths from fine-particle pollution cost the United States more than 
$800 billion per year; more than half of those costs were attributable 
to pollution from the energy and transportation sectors.

“We have an enormous opportunity to get to the root cause of health 
harms from the burning of fossil fuels,” Salas said. “To me there is no 
greater treatment that will have the widest health benefits for my 
patients than reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/10/20/lancet-climate-inaction-threatens-millions/



/[This man says, "Well, duh.." ]/
*Women do more to tackle climate change than men: Survey*
Many women report changing their behavior to reduce emissions, finds 
Women’s Forum barometer.

Women have made greater changes to their personal habits to tackle 
climate change than men have, according to a survey released Monday by 
the Women’s Forum.

The barometer on gender equity, which surveyed nearly 10,000 people 
across the G20 countries, found that women — more often than men — have 
changed their behavior to decrease their carbon dioxide emissions by 
recycling, buying local, and reducing water and meat consumption.

Women are also more easily motivated than men to decrease their CO2 
emissions, the Women’s Forum concluded — including because it will 
improve the planet and because of the knock-on benefits for future 
generations...
https://www.politico.eu/article/women-men-climate-change-survey/



/[What's with the law?]/
*Human Rights Attorney Sentenced to Prison After Winning Case Against 
Chevron*
In a move calculated to shield Chevron and deter other lawyers from 
suing giant corporate polluters, U.S. human rights attorney Steven 
Donziger was sentenced on October 1 to the maximum of six months in 
prison for criminal contempt. Donziger, who had won a $9.5 billion 
judgement for his Indigenous clients against the oil giant for polluting 
the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, refused to provide Chevron with his 
confidential client communications. Before his sentencing, Donziger 
spent two years on house arrest wearing an ankle bracelet and confined 
to his home.

“When the next book is written touting the American judicial system as 
one built on the rule of law, that shows the ways in which the rule of 
law prevailed over powerful and moneyed interests,” Donziger attorney 
Ron Kuby told Truthout after the sentencing, “I can assure you the 
Donziger case will not be included.”

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska — a leader of the Federalist Society, 
a group dedicated to getting conservatives on the bench and promoting a 
radical right-wing ideology (and which is financially backed by Chevron) 
— was hand-picked to try the contempt case. She found Donziger guilty of 
six counts of criminal contempt. As Preska sentenced Donziger, she 
stated, “It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes 
will instill in him any respect for the law.”
- -
When Truthout asked attorney Martin Garbus, who also represents 
Donziger, for his reaction to the judge’s six-month sentence and 
threatening words, he replied: “Outrageous. Predictable. Very sad.”

Donziger is the only lawyer who has been held in criminal contempt for 
trying to appeal orders which he believed violated the rights of his 
clients to enforce the judgment.

Chevron Responsible for Pouring of Billions of Gallons of Oil Waste Onto 
Indigenous Ancestral Lands
Donziger has spent over two decades trying to hold Chevron accountable 
for pollution of the Ecuadorian rainforest. In 2000, Chevron acquired 
Texaco, which had contaminated the water and soil in Ecuador’s Lago 
Agrio region between 1964 and 1992. Lago Agrio is the ancestral homeland 
of more 30,000 people. Texaco deliberately drained its toxic waste into 
rivers and streams whose water was critical to the survival of five 
Indigenous groups and dozens of farm communities. Texaco created what is 
known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.”

In 2011, an Ecuadorian court found Chevron liable for serious 
environmental and health damage to the Amazon rainforest and the 
communities in the region. The court concluded that Chevron deliberately 
discharged billions of gallons of oil waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands.

Chevron was ordered to pay $19 billion to remediate the damages but an 
appellate court reduced the judgement to $9.5 billion, which was 
affirmed by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court

“I, with other lawyers, helped Indigenous peoples in Ecuador win a 
historic $9.5bn pollution judgement against Chevron for the deliberate 
dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing waste into the Amazon,” 
Donziger told Al Jazeera before his sentencing. “That’s an historical 
fact. That case has been affirmed on appeal by 28 appellate judges, 
including the highest courts of Ecuador and Canada for enforcement 
purposes. So why am I the one being locked up? I helped hold them 
accountable.”

Judge Lewis Kaplan Manipulates Case to Benefit Chevron
“Judge Kaplan picked the charges, picked the private prosecutors, picked 
the judge, and remained a judge on the case,” Kuby and Garbus wrote in 
their sentencing memorandum.

“Our L[ong] T[erm] strategy is to demonize Donziger,” Chevron stated in 
2009. Aided and abetted by Judge Lewis Kaplan, Chevron made good on its 
promise.

In 2011, at Kaplan’s suggestion, Chevron sued the Indigenous plaintiffs 
and their lawyers, including Donziger, in the U.S. District Court for 
the Southern District of New York under the Racketeering and Corrupt 
Organizations Act (RICO), a law designed to target the mafia. Two weeks 
before trial in 2014, Chevron dropped its demand for $60 billion damages 
to prevent Donziger from receiving a jury trial.

Kaplan, who did nothing to hide his explicit bias in favor of Chevron 
throughout the proceedings, presided over the RICO case. Kaplan ruled 
that the $9.5 billion judgment the Indigenous plaintiffs had won against 
Chevron could not be enforced in the United States...
- -
37 Organizations Representing 500,000 Lawyers File Judicial Complaint 
Against Kaplan for Violating Duty of Impartiality
In September 2020, 37 organizations collectively representing 500,000 
lawyers worldwide, including this writer, filed a judicial complaint 
against Kaplan for unethically targeting Donziger for the benefit of 
Chevron.

Formally filed by the National Lawyers Guild and the International 
Association of Democratic Lawyers, the complaint alleges that the 
“statements and actions of Judge Kaplan over the last ten years show him 
to have taken on the role of counsel for Chevron … rather than that of a 
judge adjudicating a live controversy before him.” It added, “By these 
standards, he has violated his duty of impartiality under the canons of 
judicial conduct.” The complainants were concerned that the 
“persecution” of Donziger by Kaplan and Chevron “will have a chilling 
effect on the work of other human rights lawyers” and will act “as a 
warning of the consequences they will suffer” if “they try to hold major 
corporations accountable for their human rights violations.”

Donziger is appealing his six-month sentence, but he remains under house 
arrest since Preska denied his request for bail. “Chevron is now using 
me as a foil to distract from the plight of Indigenous peoples in 
Ecuador who are suffering massive health problems because of the 
company’s planet and people-destroying practices,” Donziger wrote in a 
group email I received. “I am the most convenient target to try to scare 
future environmental lawyers from seeking accountability for the 
industry’s destructive operational practices. If I didn’t exist, Chevron 
probably would have invented me.”
https://truthout.org/articles/human-rights-attorney-sentenced-to-prison-after-winning-case-against-chevron



/[ travel trek //by the BBC across Mauritania ]/
*Fleeing the shifting sands of the Sahara desert, due to climate change 
- BBC News*
Oct 16, 2021
BBC News
In northern Mauritania, people are seeing first-hand the impact of 
climate change.
Rising temperatures and desertification are wiping out communities and 
many are being forced to leave their ancestral homes in search of a 
better life.
BBC Life at 50C looks at the impact of extreme weather, on communities, 
across the globe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx8wm8ulk0c



/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming October 21, 1984*

  October 21, 1984: In the second presidential debate between President 
Ronald Reagan and Democratic challenger Walter Mondale, Reagan is asked 
by panelist Marvin Kalb:

"Mr. President, perhaps the other side of the coin, a related question, 
sir. Since World War II, the vital interests of the United States have 
always been defined by treaty commitments and by Presidential 
proclamations. Aside from what is obvious, such as NATO, for example, 
which countries, which regions in the world do you regard as vital 
national interests of this country, meaning that you would send American 
troops to fight there if they were in danger?"

Reagan responds:

"Ah, well, now you've added a hypothetical there at the end, Mr. Kalb, 
about where we would send troops in to fight. I am not going to make the 
decision as to what the tactics could be, but obviously there are a 
number of areas in the world that are of importance to us. One is the 
Middle East, and that is of interest to the whole Western World and the 
industrialized nations, because of the great supply of energy upon which 
so many depend there."

(15:00-15:52)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF73k5-Hiqg


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