[✔️] September 1, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*September 1, 2022*/

/[ science know -- now Pew Research brings the realization - link to 
their results ]/
*Climate Change Remains Top Global Threat Across 19-Country Survey*
People see UN favorably and believe ‘common values’ are more important 
for bringing nations together than ‘common problems’
BY JACOB POUSHTER, MOIRA FAGAN AND SNEHA GUBBALA
AUGUST 31, 2022...
- -
  Among the many threats facing the globe, climate change stands out as 
an especially strong concern among citizens in advanced economies, 
according to a new Pew Research Center survey. A median of 75% across 19 
countries in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region label 
global climate change as a major threat.

This is not to say people are unconcerned about the other issues tested. 
Majorities in most countries view the spread of false information 
online, cyberattacks from other countries, the condition of the global 
economy and the spread of infectious diseases (like COVID-19) as major 
threats to their nations.

And despite the many depressing stories dominating the international 
news cycle, there is also a note of positivity among survey respondents 
in views of the United Nations, the benefits of international 
cooperation for solving problems and the importance of common values for 
bringing nations together...
- -
Concerns about climate, misinformation and cyberattacks predominate 
across 19 countries, but people are also concerned about the global 
economy and spread of infectious disease...

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/08/31/climate-change-remains-top-global-threat-across-19-country-survey/


/[ Twitter starts the conversation  ]/
António Guterres
@antonioguterres
*Let’s stop sleepwalking towards the destruction of our planet by 
climate change.*
Today, it is Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.

    Pakistan produces less than 1% of carbon emissions and it is amongst
    top 10 countries most affected by climate change.

https://twitter.com/antonioguterres/status/1564644364730638338



/[ Information means change - misinformation means contorted change ]/
*Many Developed Countries View Online Misinformation as ‘Major Threat’*
New research from the Pew Research Center shows nearly three-quarters of 
respondents are very concerned about the spread of false information online.
By Stuart A. Thompson
Stuart Thompson writes about online information flows.

Aug. 31, 2022
Nearly three-quarters of people across 19 countries believe that the 
spread of false information online is a “major threat,” according to a 
survey released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

Researchers asked 24,525 people from 19 countries with advanced 
economies to rate the severity of threats from climate change, 
infectious diseases, online misinformation, cyberattacks from other 
countries and the condition of the global economy. Climate change was 
the highest-rated concern for most countries, with a median of 75 
percent of respondents saying it is a major threat. Misinformation 
trailed closely behind, with a median of 70 percent deeming it a major 
threat.

Top threats around the world
Among 19 countries surveyed, climate change and misinformation online 
ranked highest as major threats.
The findings add to research that Pew released this year focusing on the 
United States. That survey showed misinformation virtually tied with 
cyberhacking as the top concern for Americans, with about seven in 10 
people saying each is a major threat. In a sharp contrast with the other 
countries surveyed, the United States rated climate change the lowest 
threat among the available options.
Most Americans are concerned about misinformation …
After several bruising years of misinformation about elections and the 
coronavirus pandemic, 70 percent of Americans now believe that false 
information spread online is a major threat. Another 26 percent believe 
it is a minor threat, and just 2 percent say it is not a threat.

*Top threats to Americans*
Cyberattacks and misinformation were the top concern among Americans 
surveyed by the Pew Research Center. Global climate change ranked last, 
with just 54 percent saying it is a major threat.
The findings place the United States among the countries most concerned 
about misinformation online. Germans were the most concerned, with 75 
percent saying it is a major threat. Only 42 percent of Israelis ranked 
the issue that highly, the lowest among the countries surveyed.

… but there are differences across the political spectrum.
Democrats and those with more education were more likely to rate online 
misinformation as a major threat. Republicans and those with less 
education were less likely to rank it as high.
*
**Threats along the partisan divide*
Republicans and Republican-leaning Americans rated most threats lower 
than Democrats and Democratic-leaning Americans.
Among Americans who voted for former President Donald J. Trump in 2020, 
66 percent said online misinformation was a major threat, compared with 
78 percent among voters who backed President Biden...
Researchers have previously warned that people with less education and 
those in more vulnerable positions (because of, for instance, low income 
or poor health) were more likely to believe in, and share, false 
information.

*Worldwide, young people are less worried about misinformation.*
The survey found that young people tended to view misinformation as less 
worrisome than their older counterparts. This finding aligns with 
previous research showing that young people are less likely to share 
misinformation online and have more confidence in navigating falsehoods 
on social media.

*Younger and older views on misinformation*
Younger people are less likely to call online misinformation a “major 
threat,” while older respondents are more likely to see it as a top 
concern...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/technology/pew-misinformation-major-threat.html



/[  Opinions clips from top climate journalist at The Atlantic magazine 
..] /
*‘The Biggest Thing to Happen in International Climate Diplomacy in 
Decades’*
The Inflation Reduction Act could change the world in at least five ways.
By Robinson Meyer...
- -
For decades, climate policy makers have had to navigate two extremes. On 
the one hand, humanity probably can’t solve climate change without the 
United States, and the rest of the world knows it. America is simply too 
big, too rich, and too powerful to ignore. On the other, America has 
treated the climate with tremendous negligence: Few countries have 
thwarted global climate policy—or done as much to cause the climate 
problem—as has the U.S.

That may have started to change this month with the passage of the 
Inflation Reduction Act. The first comprehensive climate law in American 
history, the IRA mostly focuses on the domestic economy, aiming to cut 
emissions by supercharging the development of clean technology.

But it will also influence the international politics of climate change. 
For the first time since the modern era of climate politics began more 
than 30 years ago, the United States can credibly claim to be a leader 
on climate change.

“Genuinely, my view is that this is possibly the biggest thing to happen 
in international climate diplomacy in decades,” Joseph Curtin, the 
managing director for power and climate at the Rockefeller Foundation 
and a former climate adviser to the Irish government, told me. “That 
sounds quite dramatic, especially given that [the law] doesn’t have an 
international dimension. But it establishes the U.S. bona fides on the 
international stage.”

Over the past week, I’ve talked with international climate experts 
working in the United States and around the world. They agreed that the 
IRA will permanently alter the world’s fight against climate change, 
even if it is not yet clear exactly how. Here are five takeaways from 
our conversations.

*1. The law finally gives America some climate credibility.*
Fighting climate change has been one of President Joe Biden’s biggest 
foreign-policy goals. During his first 100 days in office, he held a 
“Leaders Summit on Climate” from the White House, where he committed to 
cutting the country’s annual emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030 
compared with their all-time high. In international meetings, his 
administration has beseeched other countries to increase their 
emissions-reduction targets...
- -
The IRA has changed that dynamic. “We definitely needed something for 
the U.S. to have a modicum of credibility,” said Claire Healy, a former 
British Labour Party adviser who now leads the Washington, D.C., office 
for E3G, an international climate think tank. “There’s now a plan. And 
before, there wasn’t a plan; there was a gaping hole.”

For years, America’s lack of credibility weakened the force of any 
pronouncements it made about climate change, and could (reasonably!) 
give the impression that Americans wanted only to pay lip service to the 
climate problem. Now its diplomats have a leg to stand on when they spar 
with their peers from other countries or talk to the world directly. 
“The U.S. can come to [this year’s UN climate conference] with the 
position of We’re not only talking the talk; we’re walking the walk,” 
Curtin said.

*2. It will reshape America and China’s relationship over climate change.*
Perhaps the only idea that has defined Biden’s foreign policy more than 
climate change—and that unified Biden’s and Donald Trump’s approaches to 
the world—is that America is locked in a global competition with China 
and must strengthen its position accordingly...
- -
At the same time, the IRA more closely resembles China’s own approach to 
climate policy—that is, the law tries to decarbonize by making strategic 
investments in certain industries, not by regulating or taxing carbon 
emissions. “It’s a validation of that approach, which, in a sense, China 
has been doing all along, for the past 15 years,” Wang said.

Chinese leaders will take note of the fact that U.S. clean-energy 
companies may soon compete with their own, he said, but they may also 
enjoy the indirect endorsement that America has just given their style 
of economic management. Other countries are paying attention too. “I 
think that’s positive—that state support is not viewed as a dirty word 
in the U.S.—and hopefully it validates that approach around the world,” 
he said...

*3. But America’s allies are wary of the law’s protectionist impulses.*
The IRA attempts to remake several clean-energy industries in ways that 
will benefit America’s trade balance. Some of its subsidies, such as its 
aggressive solar-manufacturing or hydrogen incentives, are available 
only to American firms making things on American soil, and it all but 
tries to entirely restore the battery industry.

That made allies’ response to the bill “a bit muted,” Healy, the E3G 
analyst, told me. “Other countries must be looking at this and [getting] 
worried about those local-content requirements,” she said, referring to 
provisions in the bill that say EVs will qualify for some subsidies only 
if the minerals used in their batteries were mined and processed in the 
United States or countries that it has a free-trade agreement with.

But America’s free-trade pacts don’t cleanly overlap with its list of 
security allies: The U.S. has free-trade agreements with Australia, 
Canada, and Mexico, for instance, but not with Japan, South Korea, 
Germany, or the United Kingdom. Representatives of those countries may 
now want to negotiate with the U.S. to see how they can soften the blow 
to their own industries, a process that will wind up integrating U.S. 
climate policy with the larger apparatus of American state power. The 
future may see more agreements like last year’s U.S.–European Union 
steel arrangement, where each jurisdiction agreed to subject its steel 
industries to higher environmental standards in exchange for looser 
trade restrictions.
*
**4. It will help developing countries by reducing the cost of green 
technology.*
Although a handful of places—such as China, the U.S., and the 
EU—dominate global emissions today, that won’t be the case in the 
future. By the middle of the century, some of the world’s most populous 
countries—such as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria—will contribute a 
much larger share of the world’s emissions. (That’s assuming, at least, 
that they follow the same carbon-intensive development path that China, 
Japan, and the United States did before them.)
Although the IRA is targeted domestically, it may help set up a green 
vortex, lowering the cost of wind, solar, batteries, and other crucial 
technologies for decarbonizing. That would make them easier for poorer 
countries to purchase, Fabby Tumiwa, an Indonesian climate expert and 
the executive director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform, 
an Indonesian energy think tank, told me.
- -
“In an emerging economy like Indonesia … we see emission reductions” as 
really having “to come from developed economies,” Tumiwa told me. “We 
need more time. So if developed countries like the U.S. and some EU 
members can make a significant reduction by 2030, I think that is good.”

*5. The IRA doesn’t help with one of the biggest hurdles to global 
decarbonization.*
In sub-Saharan African and several other regions of the world, the 
greatest obstacle to decarbonizing today is not the cost of an 
individual solar panel or wind turbine. “The key issue is not the cost 
of technology; it is the cost of money,” Saliem Fakir, the director of 
the African Climate Foundation, told me...
- -
“So if I was sitting in another part of the world, I’d say, ‘Great 
shakes, you’ve pulled out a pot of money to deal with COVID for 
Europeans and Americans, then you’ve pulled out another pot of money for 
climate. Where’s the pot of money for us?’ Where is the offer to those 
countries to build the modern economy?”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/08/inflation-reduction-act-america-world-diplomacy/671293/ 




/[  Comedy and Climate rarely combine - still struggling to reach a 
state of humor  ]/
*Climate Comedy - Stand Up For Climate Change 2021 LIVE From Inside The 
Greenhouse*
Apr 22, 2021  Did you hear the one about the 16 comedians who walked 
into a Creative Climate Communication course at the University of 
Colorado during a global pandemic? No joke- this actually happened 
(okay, the 16 comedians Zoomed in).

Why? To generate comedy for the annual Inside the Greenhouse Stand Up 
for Climate Comedy production, an online show featuring the comedy of 
New York comedian, Chuck Nice, select pieces from 15 stand-up comedians 
from across the nation, winners from our international climate comedy 
video competition, hosted by Max Boykoff and Beth Osnes, sprinkled 
throughout with contributions by our students, and all edited together 
and ready to launch to the world on Earth Day, April 22, 2021.

This is a class project to co-create climate comedy through a 
partnership between an undergraduate class of 45 students and 16 
professional comedians from across the USA. During the Spring semester 
of 2021-- while night clubs across the world remain largely closed to 
live standup comedy—Max Boykoff and Beth Osnes-- co-instructors of a 
course entitled Creative Climate Communication at the University of 
Colorado-- concocted a plan. We decided to recruit and pay 10 comedians 
from coast to coast to partner with our students to create climate 
comedy in an online environment. Through a long-term, climate comedy 
partnership with New York comedian, Chuck Nice, we put out the call to 
comedians far and wide. The response was overwhelmingly positive, such 
that we ended up with 15 comedians instead or our intended 10 (plus 
Chuck=16).

We divided the class into groups and have matched each with a comedian. 
Each group chose a specific climate solution from the list generated by 
Project Drawdown for their assigned comedian to focus on in their comic 
piece. Students provided a summary of research on the solution, links to 
media stories about this solution, and ideas for jokes and comic 
approaches for this solution. The comedians used this material to create 
an original comic piece.

Presented by Inside the Greenhouse- a project of the University of 
Colorado for creative climate communication and the Center for Creative 
Climate Communication and Behavior Change (3CBC).

Jacob Poushter, an associate director of global attitudes research for 
Pew, suggested that older people tended to rank technological threats 
more highly than threats like infectious diseases or an ailing economy.

“We know that older people are more concerned about cyberattacks and the 
spread of false information online,” Mr. Poushter said. “That could mean 
that it’s a lot about technology.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/technology/pew-misinformation-major-threat.html



/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*September 1, 2015*/
September 1, 2015:
The New York Times reports:

    "President Obama on Monday issued a global call for urgent action to
    address climate change, declaring that the United States was partly to
    blame for what he called the defining challenge of the century and
    would rally the world to counter it.

    "'Climate change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening
    here, it is happening now,” Mr. Obama said here at an international
    conference on the Arctic. 'We’re not acting fast enough. I have come
    here today, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and its
    second-largest emitter, to say that the United States recognizes our
    role in creating the problem, and we embrace our responsibility to
    help solve it.'

    "In remarks that bordered on the apocalyptic, Mr. Obama warned that
    the effects of global warming that have hit the Arctic the hardest
    would soon engulf the world — submerging entire countries,
    annihilating cities and leaving fields barren — unless more was done
    to reduce emissions. Four times in a 24-minute speech, he repeated his
    assertion that “we’re not acting fast enough.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/us/us-makes-urgent-appeal-for-climate-change-action-at-alaska-conference.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw4tOX1upD8

http://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/obama-issues-warning-on-climate-change-517249091765

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_1bejUQkI0


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