[✔️] May 9, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | 60 sec, Wall St, McKibben at Great Lakes, Hayhoe in FP, Ethics in Science Journal, Population, Arctic ice shrinking, Seminar, Earth as Sacrifice Zone, after 2013, 400ppm

[Richard Pauli]

/*May*//*9, 2023*/

/[ //Sierra Club's //one minute video animation - 
https://youtu.be/ytRJPzcyrNM ]/
*Wall Street's Role in the Climate Crisis*
NationalSierraClub
Apr 18, 2023
http://www.sc.org/fossilfreefinance Everyone knows about the fossil fuel 
industry’s role in the climate crisis. But there’s another, lesser-known 
culprit: Wall Street. Customers, shareholders, and regulators all have a 
role to play in holding big banks and money managers accountable for 
their cozy relationship with fossil fuel companies. Join the growing 
movement telling Wall Street to move money out of dirty energy projects 
and scale up financing for clean energy instead: 
http://www.sc.org/fossilfreefinance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytRJPzcyrNM

- -

/[ Bill McKibben general news ]/
*Weather Permitting*
A few thoughts about 'reform.'
BILL MCKIBBEN
MAY 8, 2023
+Veteran pipeline fighter Barbara Stamiris has a hard-hitting oped 
explaining her view that Line 5, through the Great Lakes, is “the most 
dangerous pipeline in the world,” arguing that “no other pipeline 
endangers 20 percent of Earth’s freshwater, 700 miles of shoreline, and 
the drinking water of 40 million.” She also provides a powerful 
illustration of the pipeline’s route to help make her point
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/weather-permitting

- -

/[ don't pee in the water bucket,  don't poop in the soup ]/
*SAVING THE GREAT LAKES*
GUEST OPINION
BY BARBARA STAMIRIS | MAY 6, 2023
If you visualize our water planet from afar, sending oil through Earth’s 
largest freshwater system is unfathomable. Even in 1953, using the Great 
Lakes as a shortcut for Canadian oil was senseless, except to the oil 
company.
- -
A 2,000-mile Enbridge pipeline carries Alberta oil from western to 
eastern Canada, cutting through the U.S. midway. The Line 5 section has 
leaked 33 times across Michigan carrying oil to Sarnia. Now 70 years 
old, Line 5 is the world’s most dangerous pipeline due to its degraded 
condition and its position among our unique Great Lakes.

At Senator Peters’ 2018 Anchor Strike Hearing, experts called the 
Mackinac Straits “the worst location in the U.S. for an oil pipeline.” 
Its condition in this sensitive location makes Line 5 the most dangerous 
pipeline in the U.S. and in the world. No other pipeline endangers 20 
percent of Earth’s freshwater, 700 miles of shoreline, and the drinking 
water of 40 million. Yet Enbridge chooses the 70-year-old Great Lakes 
route instead of its seven-year-old land-based route to Sarnia.

Why is Line 5 so dangerous? In a busy shipping lane, anchor strikes are 
inevitable. Warnings are ineffective, since dropping anchor is an 
emergency measure. In 2018, the anchor that struck Line 5 was dragged 
unknowingly, and a blizzard delayed inspection.

The Straits’ currents, 10 times stronger than Niagara Falls, scoured 
away Line 5’s bottomland support. As a result, Line 5 requires 219 
remedial supports which suspend it, causing new problems. Line 5 now 
sways in the currents, causing bending and vibrational stress. A 
suspended pipeline represents a completely new design, requiring 
engineering review and approval that it never got.

When the pipeline rubbed against the supports, its safety coatings were 
scraped off—damage Enbridge failed to report for three years. In 2020, 
extensive damage to one of the supports led to months of shutdown. 
Enbridge said its own vessel caused the isolated incident, yet forceful 
currents from record-high lake levels could have caused the displacement 
and affected other supports.

But most importantly, suspension makes Line 5 more vulnerable to anchor 
strikes.

When Gov. Whitmer ordered Line 5 shut down in 2020 to protect the Great 
Lakes, Enbridge sued to keep it operating. While Enbridge lawsuits drag 
on, Line 5—well beyond its 50-year design life—continues to bring in 
billions by operating in defiance of the state order.

(An Enbridge pipeline around the lakes, rebuilt and expanded after the 
Kalamazoo spill, reopened in 2015 with excess capacity, but Enbridge 
chooses the Great Lakes route.)

Another strategy that keeps Line 5 operating is promising a tunnel. 
Knowing Line 5 is obsolete, Enbridge said a tunnel would replace it by 
2024, but the Army Corps has announced a delay in its review which 
pushed tunnel completion to 2030. So if the tunnel is approved, Line 5 
would be nearing 80 years old. If the tunnel is not approved, Enbridge 
has said it will continue to operate old Line 5. Enbridge has no 
decommissioning date.

Enbridge publicly promotes a tunnel as the solution for Line 5, but its 
internal plans differ. In the 2018 tunnel agreement with outgoing Gov. 
Snyder, Enbridge made sure it could back out without penalty—a wise move 
since an oil tunnel is not a safe investment today. This may explain why 
Enbridge’s Board of Directors has not approved the tunnel and no money 
is allocated for a tunnel in its annual Security & Exchange Commission 
Reports meant to inform shareholders of upcoming projects.

While Enbridge avoids risk, taxpayers must fund years of state and 
federal review for a tunnel unlikely to be built.

In Ottawa this past March, Biden told Trudeau we’re “two countries with 
one heart.” If the Great Lakes are that heart, warnings of a 
deteriorated anchor-struck pipeline, like warnings of a heart attack, 
cannot be ignored. And yet mention of Line 5 was politely avoided.

Biden remained silent about Trudeau siding with Enbridge by invoking a 
1977 treaty. The treaty asserts that Line 5 can’t be shut down by 
Michigan, that the U.S. must transport Canada’s oil against our own 
environmental and economic interests.

When Canada’s interests collide with U.S. interests, silence is not an 
option. Doing nothing leaves Enbridge calling the shots. Biden can 
revoke the permit for Line 5—and save the Great Lakes—if he acts before 
it’s too late.

National Geographic says the Great Lakes are “the irreplaceable fragile 
ecosystem…that our planet needs to survive.” An oil spill here would 
have global implications; yet, unlike other climate threats, this one 
can be solved by turning off a valve. While the fix itself is easy, the 
politics are not. One thing is certain, Enbridge should not get to decide.

 From a planetary perspective, it’s a no-brainer. If the world’s most 
dangerous pipeline has an easy solution, get the oil out of the water. Now.
Barbara Stamiris is an environmental activist living in Traverse City.
https://www.northernexpress.com/news/opinion/saving-the-great-lakes/



/[ Hayhoe in Foreign Policy ]/
*Yeah, the Weather Has Been Weird*
People already care about climate change – the trick is getting them to 
realize it.
BY KATHARINE HAYHOE

We see this attitude reflected in opinions about climate change. In a 
recent Gallup poll, 68 percent of Americans surveyed said they believe 
humans are causing climate change, but only 42 percent agreed that 
global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime. When asked 
if we think climate change will affect us personally, fully 50 percent 
of us respond with a resounding no.

This is a bigger problem than whether we accept the science of climate 
change. Even for many of us who acknowledge that global warming is 
happening — and we should, because it is — chances are we still see it 
as just one more item on our overflowing list of priorities. News 
headlines are full of urgent problems: refugees, immigration, and the 
threat of war; the economy, energy, and finite resources. As individuals 
our daily attention goes to our health, our safety, our jobs, and our 
families....
- -
And here is where we need to alter our approach if we’re going to tackle 
climate change successfully. It’s not a question of moving climate 
change “up” our priority list. I don’t think climate change needs to be 
an issue on our lists at all. We care about a changing climate because 
it affects nearly every one of those things that are already on our 
priority lists.

Almost 7.5 billion of us have built our cities and our countries under 
the implicit assumption that climate is stable, and that the conditions 
we’ve experienced in the past are reliable predictors of the future. 
Today, though, that assumption is no longer true. Earth’s climate is 
changing far faster than at any other time in human history. Two-thirds 
of the world’s largest cities lie within a few feet of sea level. We 
can’t pick them up and move them farther inland. We prepare for extreme 
events — the drought of record, or the 100-year flood. What happens when 
a stronger drought comes along, or much more frequent floods? When water 
resources dry up, in many places there isn’t a new source to move on to; 
it’s already taken. By assuming that the climate will continue to be 
stable, we have built our vulnerability to climate change into the very 
foundation of our infrastructure and socioeconomic systems...
- -
By following this train of thought, we arrive at a simple yet 
potentially revolutionary understanding: Getting people to care about a 
changing climate doesn’t require adopting “new” values. Gone is the 
burden of inspiring people to “care” about deforestation and melting ice 
caps. No need to teach them to hug a tree, respect a polar bear (hugging 
not advisable), or throw themselves into land conservation. Most 
remarkably, the implication of this new perspective is that imparting 
urgency and concern is just a matter of showing people how to connect 
the dots among the issues they already care about, and how those issues 
are affected by — and in many cases are threatened by — a changing climate.

I’ve seen it work. I’ve watched people’s attitudes change, going from 
flat denial of global warming to jumping into the fight to prepare for 
it or even stop it. I’ve seen farmers talk about why they prefer wind 
turbines to oil pump jacks. Water planners who work for an organization 
that doesn’t officially acknowledge climate change have asked me for 
future projections. And all this has happened in the most unlikely of 
places — the place I call home...
- -
VI.
When I saw the polar bears in Churchill with Steven Amstrup, Hudson Bay 
didn’t freeze until December. “The ice-free season is nearly a month 
longer than it was three decades ago,” he said, which means the bears’ 
time to hunt and feed is considerably — and detrimentally — shorter. 
There are many important research questions to answer. But, he said, we 
know what we need to do to save the bears. If sea ice continues to 
shrink, the bear population on Hudson Bay could be gone by the middle of 
the century.

As the polar bears see their world changing around them, so do we, but 
with one big difference: We have the capacity to recognize why this is 
happening, how it’s affecting us, and how we can respond. Since the 
Industrial Revolution, we have been conducting an unprecedented 
experiment with our planet. We can’t guarantee a safe future if we don’t 
bring it to a close. Now’s the time to pull the plug and finally heed 
the warning scientists delivered to LBJ on that day in November 1965.

I traveled to Paris a few weeks after Hudson Bay to witness a very 
different event — the world negotiating a plan to keep global warming 
“well below” 2 degrees Celsius. Two degrees isn’t a magic number that 
will avert all negative consequences, but it puts a limit on this 
experiment we’ve been conducting inadvertently. The Paris Agreement on 
climate change gives us a viable target, and 145 countries have ratified 
it (though 41 of the original signers still need to do so).

The link between human warming of the world and polar bear welfare makes 
these animals an iconic messenger for the risks of climate change, but 
it’s one that’s entirely consistent with humans as messengers, too. Both 
of our fates hinge on living in a safe, secure place that provides 
access to the resources we need. This is why Amstrup and his team are so 
focused on telling people about the threats posed by global warming and 
what we can do about it. And this is why I’m so focused on communicating 
the risks of a changing climate. Together, we confront both a challenge 
and a hope. Although some impacts are inevitable, by acting now it’s 
possible to save the polar bears — and ourselves.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/31/everyone-believes-in-global-warming-they-just-dont-realize-it/



/{ Ethics shakeup in trusted sources of information ]/
*‘Too greedy’: mass walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees*
Entire board resigns over actions of academic publisher whose profit 
margins outstrip even Google and Amazon
Anna Fazackerley
Sun 7 May 2023
More than 40 leading scientists have resigned en masse from the 
editorial board of a top science journal in protest at what they 
describe as the “greed” of publishing giant Elsevier.

The entire academic board of the journal Neuroimage, including 
professors from Oxford University, King’s College London and Cardiff 
University resigned after Elsevier refused to reduce publication charges.

Academics around the world have applauded what many hope is the start of 
a rebellion against the huge profit margins in academic publishing, 
which outstrip those made by Apple, Google and Amazon...
- -
Meanwhile, university libraries are angry about the cost of the online 
textbooks they say students now overwhelmingly want to read – often many 
times more expensive than their paper equivalent. Professor Chris 
Pressler, director of Manchester University Library, said: “We are 
facing a sustained onslaught of exploitative price models in both 
teaching and research.”

According to a spreadsheet of costs quoted to university librarians, 
Manchester University gave a recent example of being quoted £75 for a 
popular plant biology textbook in print, but £975 for a three-user ebook 
licence. Meanwhile Learning to Read Mathematics in the Secondary School, 
a textbook for trainee teachers published by Routledge, was £35.99 in 
print and £560 for a single user ebook.

A spokesperson for Taylor and Francis, which owns Routledge, said: “We 
strive to ensure that book prices are both affordable and a fair 
representation of their value.” He said a print book could be checked 
out for weeks at a time whereas ebooks could be checked in and out 
rapidly and had a much wider distribution.

He added: “Academic publishers provide services that are essential to a 
well-functioning research and scholarly communication ecosystem, and 
most researchers recognise this is a valuable service worth paying for. “

Caroline Ball, librarian at Derby University and co-founder of the 
academic campaign EbookSOS, said: “This is creating a digital hierarchy 
of haves and have-nots. There are institutions that just can’t afford 
these prices for texts.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-mass-walkout-at-global-science-journal-over-unethical-fees 



/
/

/[  Population, the parallel predicament  ]/
*Matters of Population*
Climate Emergency Forum
May 7, 2023
Join Robin Maynard in a discussion with Dr. Peter Carter, Paul Beckwith 
and Regina Valdez on ‘Matters of Population.’

This video was recorded on April 14th, 2023, and published on May 7th, 
2023.
Some of the topics discussed:

    - How it is critical to talk about population, because without it we
    will not be able to enable our children to live that wonderful
    future that should be available to everybody, and we will not
    protect our environment and our ecosystems from collapse.
    - How, as of April 2023, India is on track to surpass the population
    of China.
    - How humanity has been an incredibly successful species and how
    we've overcome all sorts of challenges, not the least of which are
    sanitation, energy, warmth, shelter, modern medicine, leading to a
    surge in our population.
    - How according to the latest reports from the Worldwide Fund for
    Nature and the Zoological Society of London there has been a 69%
    decline in wild populations over the past 50 years.
    - How girls in the global North have the basic right of education
    however this hasn’t been the case for girls living in the global south.
    - How those living in the global North need to ease the burden on
    the planet by reducing their consumption.
    - How honouring the next generation is crucial but also we need to
    value human life in the future.
    - How humans generally fail to understand the concept of exponential
    growth.
    - and much more. . .

Links:

    - Population Matters https://populationmatters.org/

    - Bhopal Disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

    - India to overtake China as world’s most populous country in April
    2023, United Nations projects
    https://www.un.org/en/desa/india-overtake-china-world-most-populous-country-april-2023-united-nations-projects

    - World Wildlife Fund for Nature https://www.worldwildlife.org/

    - The Zoological Society of London https://www.zsl.org/

    - Raffi Foundation - Child Honouring https://raffifoundation.org/

    - Domestic violence in India
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_India

    - Minister says Canada needs more immigration as targets get mixed
    reviews
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sean-fraser-immigration-numbers-1.6712766

    - Dandelion Africa https://dandelionafrica.org/

    - Boys for Change http://dandelionafrica.net/boys-for-change-2/

    - Eco-Migration (CEF Video)

Special Guest:
Robin Maynard - Director of Population Matters - A longstanding and 
passionate supporter of the population cause, Robin began his 
environmental career more than 30 years ago, joining Friends of the 
Earth as a volunteer just before the Chernobyl disaster. That grim event 
led to his first paid job, tasked with tracking radioactive fall-out 
across the UK and securing compensation for affected farmers.
Panelists:

    Dr. Peter Carter - MD, Expert IPCC Reviewer and the director of the
    Climate Emergency Institute

    Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the
    University of Ottawa in the Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as
    at Carleton University

    Regina Valdez - Program Director, Climate Reality Project, NYC.
    GreenFaith Fellow and LEED Green Associate

    Video Production:
    Charles Gregoire - Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for
    FacingFuture.Earth & the Climate Emergency Forum; Climate Reality
    Leader

    Heidi Brault - Video production and website assistant, Organizer and
    convener, Metadata technician, COP28 team lead for
    FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum;  BA
    (Psychology); Climate Reality Leader

    Our Website: https://climateemergencyforum.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4tHjYa76Z0


/[  Arctic ice area shrinking ]/
APRIL 7, 2023
Editors' notes
*Arctic's peak ice cover has shrunk by an area larger than Egypt*
by Danielle Bochove, Bloomberg News
- -
The fact that the Arctic is warming much more quickly than the rest of 
the planet is changing that temperature gradient. "If we do that, the 
atmosphere has to respond, in one way or another," said Serreze.

Warmer, more open waters absorb heat that ice would reflect, 
accelerating the melting process, and also mean bigger waves that cause 
thermal and mechanical erosion of coastlines. Sea mammals that depend on 
ice are losing their habitat. The livelihoods of Indigenous communities, 
which hunt the animals and use the ice for transportation, are 
threatened. "The question becomes what level of adaptability is there," 
said Serreze.
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-arctic-peak-ice-shrunk-area.html

- -

/[ one of the more popular informational videos - 
https://youtu.be/BbE2TcaxgxY   ] /
*Sea Level Rise Seminar, 2022-10-18: Paul Winberry*
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Nov 14, 2022  Sea Level Rise Seminars
Sea Level Rise Seminar, 2022-10-18:
Speaker: Paul Winberry (Central Washington University)
*
**Title:  Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf: Ongoing Changes, Potential for 
Breakup, and Implications*

    Abstract: Evolution of the Antarctic ice sheet is significantly
    influenced by processes occurring at both its margins, where it
    meets the ocean, and the subglacial environment. However, our
    understanding of processes and conditions at each of these locations
    remains incomplete, due in part to the significant challenge of
    observing each of these locations. In this presentation, I will
    highlight two recent studies that illustrate how geophysics can be
    used to illuminate processes occurring in each these environments.
    First, we will show an example of Antarctic iceberg calving
    generating seismic waves observable at great distances (up to 1000
    km). These waves can then be used to study the calving processes.
    Second, will report on a recent study revealing a dynamic
    groundwater system beneath an Antarctic ice stream and its potential
    impact on glacier sliding. Each of these examples highlight how
    geophysics is enabling the glaciological community to better
    understand Antarctica’s ice sheets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbE2TcaxgxY&list=PLpMmnV3HS7r1zEsdKRnKOpmhy7vaB2Bz1&index=8

https://youtu.be/BbE2TcaxgxY




/[ Goes around, comes around on a globe, where there are no corners, and 
no exits.  ]/
*Denial Doesn’t Change Our Climate Reality: Earth Is Becoming a 
Sacrifice Zone*
Communities that have contributed little to the climate crisis are 
bearing its brunt — but nowhere on Earth is safe.
By JP Sottile, TRUTHOUT
Published May 7, 2023

Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political 
struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation 
of any size.

The people of Madagascar are suffering. Battered by two cyclones last 
year, they’ve been fighting through a perfect storm of pandemic-related 
food supply disruptions and climate-stoked damage to local agriculture. 
That confluence was made worse by a two-year-long drought in the south, 
which laid the groundwork for a terrible famine. And that was all before 
Cyclone Freddy came calling this year… twice.

Although Freddy barely broke through the U.S. mainstream media’s 
navel-gazing news bubble, the cyclone grew to become the most 
“energetic” storm in recorded history. So energetic, in fact, that it 
pummeled Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique two separate times over the 
course of 37 excruciating days, topping out at a Category 5 storm on 
February 21, 2023. Then it literally grew “off the chart” the following 
day. And that wasn’t even Freddy’s halfway point. Ultimately, the 
swirling vortex incubated and recharged in an increasingly warmer Indian 
Ocean, pouring its rain and destruction down on three nations that have 
done almost nothing to earn the wrath of our carbon-polluted planet.

The situation is so dire in Madagascar that, as France 24 recently 
reported, families are “forced to abandon or, worse still, sell their 
children.” Gilles Grandclement, project manager for Médecins Sans 
Frontières, says the organization’s staff has been approached by locals 
looking to sell children in a desperate effort to feed themselves. The 
government denied it, refusing to hear from locals who’ve been 
approached by beleaguered parents or from those who’ve found or taken in 
abandoned children. Their denial doesn’t change the reality. And the 
reality is that the people of Madagascar are trapped in a climate 
sacrifice zone.

*The Rise of Sacrifice Zones*
The term “sacrifice zone” is often associated with the urban decay and 
economic desperation wrought by the profit-obsessed paradigm of 
neoliberal economics. Based on the revelatory reporting of the 
Philadelphia Inquirer’s Matt Katz in 2009, the hollowed-out city of 
Camden, New Jersey, became the poster child for the concept of the 
economic sacrifice zone. Camden’s well-documented plight was linked to 
corporate America’s wholesale abandonment of the working class in favor 
of cheaper labor and lax regulations overseas. Back home, many 
Camdenites found themselves struggling to survive in an economic 
sacrifice zone — a place where disempowered people pay the price for 
other people’s cult-like devotion to the bottom line.

But the term “sacrifice zone” has a long, all-too trenchant history that 
predates its more recent application. In fact, the concept has evolved 
over time from a “livestock and land management concept” into a 
“critical energy concept during the 1970s,” and then from an “Indigenous 
political ecology concept in the 1980s” to an “environmental justice 
concept in the 1990s.” That evolution is detailed by Ryan Juskus of 
Princeton University’s Meadows Environmental Institute in an extensive 
article published this year in the journal Environmental Humanities. 
What emerged from the original term “sacrifice area” is, according to 
Juskus, a “critical concept for opposing the human and environmental 
costs of abstract collective projects like development, consumerism, and 
militarism.”

In animal agriculture, “sacrifice areas” are natural spaces “sacrificed” 
to the irreparable consequences of heavy grazing by hoofed animals that 
trample the land and strip away the foliage, breaking down vital topsoil 
in the process. It’s a given that those lands are lost to other uses. 
That’s why areas decimated by topsoil-stripping herds of grazing animals 
were dubbed “sacrifice areas” in a 1970 Bureau of Land Management report 
cited by Juskus. And still today, you can find instructions on how to 
“Construct a Sacrifice Area for Horse Operations” on the website for 
Fairfax County, Virginia. In fact, there are dozens of resources 
available to help animal agriculturists build sacrifice areas and, in 
turn, “protect pastures” from the land-altering consequences of keeping 
hoofed animals.

*Expanding the Zone*
The concept’s wider application was aptly spurred by the Energy Crisis 
of 1973. Responding to an Arab-Israeli War-sparked OPEC embargo, 
then-President Richard Nixon launched a coal-fired energy plan he called 
“Project Independence.” This familiar-sounding push for “energy 
independence” included building 1,000 nuclear plants, finishing the 
Trans-Alaska Pipeline, reducing the speed limit to 55 mph and, most 
controversially, converting oil-fueled plants to coal. It meant, notes 
Juskus, that eastern-based coal companies heading to coal-rich western 
states would be bringing destructive strip-mining practices with them.

This was quickly labeled “Appalachianization” by an alliance of 
“ranchers, Native Americans, and environmentalists” and, Juskus 
explains, “Don’t Appalachianize the West” quickly became “a rallying cry 
that [sought] to prevent the energy companies from ravaging with strip 
mines such coal-rich states as Montana and Wyoming,” writing them off as 
“national sacrifice areas” where “little of the vast mineral wealth [is] 
returned to the citizens.”

That same year, the National Research Council completed a report on the 
rehabilitation of western coal lands, and its publication in 1974 firmly 
established “sacrifice areas” as an energy concept by designating 
coal-extracted lands as “national sacrifice areas,” essentially adapting 
the agricultural concept to match the catastrophic reality of strip 
mining. Writing a year later in The Washington Post, Helena 
Huntington-Smith called the report’s use of “National Sacrifice Areas” a 
“verbal bombshell” that was “seized upon by a people who felt themselves 
being served up as ‘national sacrifices.’”

The metaphorical horse was out of the barn (or the fenced-in sacrifice 
area) and it gained traction wherever lives and landscapes were trampled 
by extractive, polluting and waste-intensive industries. From coal and 
uranium mining on Native reservations in the ‘80s, to toxic industrial 
pollution in predominantly Black neighborhoods in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the 
concept of a “sacrifice area” or “zone” readily explained the brutal 
logic of sacrificing the health, welfare and the lives of those living 
on lands that, essentially, were written off to protect and/or enrich 
others living on the equivalent of protected pastures.

Sadly, the concept has taken on a terrible new significance in the 
carbon-polluted 2020s. Not only do we see traditional notions of 
sacrifice zones still applied to people who live near oil drilling, next 
to heavy industry or amid chemically treated agriculture, but almost 
daily we see, as predicted by climate and oil company scientists alike, 
the sacrifice zones being created by decades of flippantly burning 
megatons of hydrocarbons.

The key difference is that our anthropomorphically altered climate 
exacts its toll on a global scale. It’s not as simple as building a 
fence to contain the damage, or locating a petrochemical plant in an 
economically disempowered town. Instead, climate sacrifice zones emerge 
within the context of an interdependent, macro-ecological system that 
sustains everything we know. And that system is a closed system. 
Externalities are a null concept. Much like the misnomer about throwing 
“away” garbage, there is no “away” for climate pollution.

You can think of it like the conservation of energy. It’s a basic 
principle of physics and chemistry stating that the “energy of a closed 
system must remain constant,” and that energy “cannot be created or 
destroyed, but it can be transferred and transformed” from one form to 
another. That basic truth can also be applied to the sacrifices 
connected to the closed system of climate change. The sacrifices we 
refuse to make can “only be transformed or transferred” from one place 
or person to another. Like plastic trash, carbon or methane doesn’t just 
go “away” simply because we refuse to take responsibility for it.
*
**And therein lies the rub.*
Just as climate pollution is tallied daily and in the aggregate on the 
Great Balance Sheet in the Sky, so too are the mounting costs of climate 
pollution imposed daily and in the aggregate on “we humans,” regardless 
of the relative contributions we make to the problem. And all too often 
it seems to be imposed, or “transferred,” in spite of those 
contributions, like the price currently being paid by low 
carbon-emitting Madagascans. Or by Pakistanis who, despite producing one 
of the world’s smallest per capita carbon footprints, still find 
themselves wading through the hunger-inducing aftereffects of last 
year’s climate-stoked deluge. Or by the Panamanian tribe that long lived 
on an island free of cars and motorcycles, but is now forced to relocate 
to the mainland to avoid being swallowed by the rapidly rising sea. 
There are easily a dozen other countries like these that have 
contributed little to the climate crisis, but now find themselves facing 
a bleak near-term future of sacrifice for a problem they did not create.

*Zoned Out*
Meanwhile, politicians argue over the inherent “unfairness” of the U.S. 
taking “unilateral” action on climate, while “communists” in Beijing 
build coal-fired power plants with a capitalism-inspired impunity. These 
callow protestations, though, wither under scrutiny. One obvious problem 
with their argument is that China’s massive emissions are largely made 
in America. The Chinese industrial juggernaut was built in no small part 
to service the U.S. consumer market, and to serve the bottom lines of 
U.S. corporations that have shown no compunction about exploiting cheap 
Chinese labor and lax Chinese environmental regulations to feed their 
ever-expanding profit margins. Frankly, it’s a serious ethical mistake 
to predicate one’s bad behavior on the bad behavior of someone else. In 
this case, it’s doubly fallacious to defiantly pump pollutants into the 
atmosphere because China’s “getting away with it.” The bitter truth is 
that nobody is getting away with anything.

It’s a fact highlighted by a recent Associated Press report. The author 
consulted climate scientists after a terrifying winter of extreme 
weather rocked the U.S., and it turns out that the same geography often 
touted as an “exceptional” advantage also functions as a set of force 
multipliers exacerbating the impact of climate change across North 
America. Scientists say the U.S. is “getting hit by stronger, costlier, 
more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on the planet” 
because “two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting 
peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream 
combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather.”

It’s a fact manifested in the recent growth of extreme weather events to 
previously unseen proportions — from the barrage of “Atmospheric Rivers” 
that slammed the West Coast to a tornado so big, its trail of 
destruction across Mississippi could be seen from space. And then 
there’s the state of Kentucky, which late last summer found itself 
drowning in its own unique experience of becoming a climate sacrifice zone.
*
**In the Zone*
A full six months after “biblical floods” decimated eastern Kentucky, 
The Washington Post detailed the continuing struggles of low-income 
folks without “the means to repair damaged homes [or] obtain mortgages 
or scrape together rent,” while others “are living in homes without 
electricity or running water, doubling up with relatives, staying in 
camping trailers or even tents.” Citing an analysis by the Ohio River 
Valley Institute, the Post notes that “6 in 10 Kentucky families with 
homes damaged in the floods have annual incomes of $30,000 or less” and, 
in a preview of climate refugees to come, explains that some have simply 
“moved away.” It also portends a replay of the much-feared 
“Appalachianization” that catalyzed the evolution of the concept of 
“sacrifice areas” in the first place.

To wit, Axios cited U.S. Census data which shows that “roughly 3.4 
million Americans were displaced by a hurricane, flood or other disaster 
event in 2022” and, per E&E News, approximately “16% of those displaced 
never returned home — and 12% didn’t return for more than six months.” 
For those that do return to rebuild, like a group of fire-displaced 
Coloradans, progress rebuilding their homes correlated with household’s 
income — the lower the income, the slower the rebuilding. And the kinds 
of immediate relief from FEMA or HUD available to those fleeing a 
“single disaster event” are not available to refugees who are “forced to 
eventually leave an area following compounding pressures from a series 
of climate-related hazards.”

Unfortunately, as Spectrum News 1 reported, Kentucky may find itself in 
both categories simultaneously. Kentuckians not only face a cycle of 
floods and “blistering temperatures, dryness and long dry spells,” but 
the state’s sunbaked soils “can start shrinking, cracking and pulling 
away from” home foundations and, in turn, lead not only to “thousands of 
dollars of foundation damage,” but also “increase the pathways for radon 
gas” to leak into homes.

Carcinogenic radon gas is a big issue in Kentucky. In a January 2023 
story to mark “Radon Awareness Month,” WKYT talked to the University of 
Kentucky’s Ellen Hahn, who pointed out that Kentucky leads “the nation 
in new lung cancer cases, as well as death from lung cancer.” The story 
noted that Kentucky’s “higher radon exposure” is due to “the nature of 
our bedrock.” It’s a sad, “full-circle” moment for a state so deeply 
associated with the sacrifice areas created by extracting hydrocarbons, 
to now be mired in the sacrifice zone created by the burning of 
hydrocarbons.

It’s also why connecting the dots on sacrifices being made today by 
starving Madagascans or deluged Kentuckians is so crucial. Faced with 
both the irrefutable science and the lived experience of human beings 
drowning in or fleeing from climate sacrifice zones, the question of 
climate pollution becomes far more than a problem of economics; it is a 
matter of ethics.

If it were just a matter of economics, all we’d have to do is switch to 
a new, shiny industrial infrastructure that purports to allow us to have 
our cake and eat it with both hands while our self-driving electric 
vehicles haul us into a carbon-neutral future. But in our hurry to find 
one-for-one consumer replacements instead of making real sacrifices, we 
run the risk of remaking the same mistakes that got us here in the first 
place, thereby creating new sacrifice zones in places like Myanmar, 
Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo as we busily build our own 
protected pastures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCqDniAuZRM



/[The news archive - looking back at the year when CO2 levels passed 400 ]/
/*May 9, 2013*/
May 9, 2013: NOAA announces that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has 
now passed 400 parts per million.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/7992

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/historically-high-levels-of-carbon-dioxide-recorded-in-hawaii/


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