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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>September 4, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[forecast]<br>
<b>Heat 'rarely ever seen' is forecast to roast West by the weekend,
with wildfires still burning</b><br>
Fire danger predicted to spike with temperatures soaring in the L.A.
area in particular, stressing power grid<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/02/california-heat-wave-wildfires/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/02/california-heat-wave-wildfires/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
[far away influence]<br>
<b>What is California's wildfire smoke doing to our health?
Scientists paint a bleak picture</b><br>
Research shows people, even those living hundreds of miles away,
feeling the effects from wildfire smoke in the west...<br>
Historic wildfires burning across California have sent a
500-hundred-mile-long, gray blob of smoky air swirling above the
western United States, and Stanford researcher Bibek Paudel is
already seeing the health effects build up.<br>
<br>
In the days after lightning sparked hundreds of fires across the
north of the state, Paudel, who studies respiratory illness at
Stanford's allergy and asthma research center, saw hospital
admissions for asthma to the university's healthcare system rise by
10% and cerebrovascular incidents such as strokes jump by 23%. Based
on the center's studies of recent fires, Paudel expects that the
number of heart attacks, kidney problems and even mental health
issues will also climb.<br>
<br>
The research is part of a growing body of scientific evidence
painting a dire picture of the effects of wildfire smoke on people,
even those living hundreds of miles away. Many researchers worry
that those debilitating effects will only intensify the risks of the
Covid-19 pandemic. "Wildfire smoke can affect the health almost
immediately," said Dr Jiayun Angela Yao, an environmental health
researcher in Canada...<br>
- -<br>
Earlier studies of young people, who were exposed to even distant
wildfire smoke, showed dramatic changes.<br>
<br>
"We found, even in teenagers, if we drew their blood after a
wildfire, we saw a systematic increase in inflammatory markers,"
said Prunicki, who added that "a lot of chronic disease is related
to inflammation".<br>
<br>
With clouds of smoke from the fires floating around the country,
people as far away as Idaho and Colorado are choking on California's
smoke. "We had several days when we were just socked in," said Sally
Hunter, an air specialist with the Idaho Department of Environmental
Quality, who said smoke travelled north to spark health warnings in
Boise, even though there were no fires nearby. "I got up to go get
groceries and I couldn't see down to the end of my street. I got a
headache and my sister in-law got itchy, watery eyes."<br>
<br>
Since California's fires started months earlier than usual, experts
worry that this will be an especially smoky year.<br>
<br>
The worst year on record for California fire smoke was 2008 when
lightning fires started in June and continued all summer, according
to Lahm. Fires from 2017 and 2018 also unleashed huge amounts of
smoke.<br>
<br>
Paudel and the Stanford researchers found that, since 2011, the
number of smoky days occurring each year has increased in California
and in the entire western US. Unfortunately, some of the largest
increases were in counties with the biggest population centers, such
as those around Los Angeles or along California's central valley.<br>
<br>
When a gray curtain of smoke descended on the Bay Area last week,
76-year-old Berkeley resident Barbara Freeman, who suffers from
pulmonary conditions, tried to follow all the advice. She regularly
checked environmental air monitor readings, stayed inside, sealed
her windows and turned on her two air cleaners.<br>
<br>
Still Freeman lost her voice and found breathing painful. She
worried, if she had to evacuate, she would have nowhere to turn to
escape both the smoke and the danger of coronavirus. But one of the
things she found the hardest was not being able to go outside to
walk her dog.<br>
<br>
"That was how I was maintaining what sanity I had left," she said.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/what-is-californias-wildfire-smoke-doing-to-our-health-scientists-paint-a-bleak-picture">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/what-is-californias-wildfire-smoke-doing-to-our-health-scientists-paint-a-bleak-picture</a><br>
<p><br>
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<p><br>
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[text and audio segments]<br>
<b>Wildfires In California Will 'Continue To Get Worse,' Climate
Change Experts Explore Why</b><br>
Ezra David Romero <br>
Thursday, September 3, 2020... <br>
[conclusion]...Reducing the risk of megafires, like the current LNU
and SZU Lightning Complex fires and past blazes like the Rim Fire
near Yosemite, isn't just about burning all the extra debris.
Addressing the systemic challenge -- climate change -- could mean
fewer extreme wildfires over the course of history, Gonzalez says.<br>
<br>
"In order to avoid dangerous climate interferences, the entire world
needs to substantially reduce our emissions and eventually go to an
energy system that is completely renewable," he said.<br>
<br>
Gonzalez applauds California's action in the climate fight, such as
laws that require becoming carbon neutral by 2045, and plans for
emissions reductions from trucks, cars and ports. But he says even
all the work the state has done is just a first step. <br>
<br>
"Fundamentally, the main solution to a lot of the fire problems that
we have [is] taking action on climate change," he said. "To be
carbon-free is the ultimate end goal, and the sooner we reach that,
the better it will be for nature and for people."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.capradio.org/articles/2020/09/03/wildfires-in-california-will-continue-to-get-worse-climate-change-experts-explore-why/">https://www.capradio.org/articles/2020/09/03/wildfires-in-california-will-continue-to-get-worse-climate-change-experts-explore-why/</a><br>
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</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[activism, "use purpose-led trauma"]<br>
<b>Extinction Rebellion Cofounder Gail Bradbrook | It's Time For
Autumn Rebellion</b><br>
Nick Breeze<br>
Sept 2, 2020<br>
In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking with Gail
Bradbrook, environmental activist and co-founder of Extinction
Rebellion, as the Autumn rebellion gains momentum in major cities
across the UK.<br>
<br>
Gail talks about the XR demands for this rebellion and the power of
activism for the individual and how that can lead to systemic change
at the societal level. <br>
<br>
We finish discussing the potential for a global citizens assembly to
be held in parallel during next years UN climate conference, COP26,
that will be hosted in November in the UK.<br>
<br>
Thanks for listening, this podcast is available on all major
podcasting channels and on Youtube. All the links are on
climateseries.com.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq0QQTRQ-Ls">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq0QQTRQ-Ls</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
[less than 2 minute video]<br>
<b>Extinction Rebellion: 92-year-old among dozens arrested in London
climate protests</b><br>
Sep 1, 2020<br>
Guardian News<br>
Thousands of Extinction Rebellion protesters have descended on
Parliament Square in London, leading to at least 90 arrests, as the
group kicked off 10 days of civil disobedience to demand government
action on the climate crisis. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/qKmIc966z_c">https://youtu.be/qKmIc966z_c</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[follow the money - clips from NYT]<br>
<b>Wildfires Hasten Another Climate Crisis: Homeowners Who Can't Get
Insurance</b><br>
Insurers, facing huge losses, have been pulling back from fire-prone
areas across California. "The marketplace has largely collapsed," an
advocate for counties in the state said.<br>
Sept. 2, 2020<br>
<br>
As wildfires burn homes across California, the state is also
grappling with a different kind of climate predicament: How to stop
insurers from abandoning fire-prone areas, leaving countless
homeowners at risk.<br>
<br>
Years of megafires have caused huge losses for insurance companies,
a problem so severe that, last year, California temporarily banned
insurers from canceling policies on some 800,000 homes in or near
risky parts of the state. However, that ban is about expire and
can't be renewed, and a recent plan to deal with the problem fell
apart in a clash between insurers and consumer advocates.<br>
<br>
Insurers are widely expected to continue their retreat, potentially
devastating the housing market if homes become essentially
uninsurable.<br>
<br>
"The marketplace has largely collapsed" in those high-risk areas,
said Graham Knaus, executive director of the California State
Association of Counties, which has pushed state officials to address
the problem. "It's a very large geographic area of the state that is
facing this."...<br>
<br>
The insurance crisis is making California a test case for the
financial dangers of climate change nationwide, as wildfires, floods
and other disasters create economic shocks well beyond the physical
damage of the disasters themselves. Those changes have already
started to affect home prices, the mortgage industry and the bond
market.<br>
<br>
In California, the wildfires of the past few weeks have made the
problem more urgent. The state has battled more than 875 fires since
mid-August, which have burned almost 1.5 million acres and destroyed
more than 2,800 structures, according to Cal Fire, the state fire
agency. As of Monday, almost 40,000 people remained unable to go
back to their homes.<br>
<br>
As a result, insurers now face the prospect of another brutal year
of losses.<br>
Around the world, climate change has made storms more powerful and
frequent, increased the intensity of droughts and contributed to
more extreme wildfires, and, as a result, many insurance companies
say their premiums are now set too low to cover the growing losses.
But raising premiums, which are often closely regulated, can create
a headache for officials. California and other states have the
authority to reject or reduce rate increases, and they often face
pressure from voters to do so.<br>
The result is a dilemma for governments. Either let rates rise,
squeezing homeowners, or take the chance that more insurers will
pull back from vulnerable areas, as many across the West are doing
already. Without insurance, banks won't issue mortgages, making
homes harder to buy or sell.<br>
<br>
The challenges are especially pronounced in California, where
regulations lean toward consumer protection. The state forbids
insurance companies from setting rates based on what they expect in
future damages. Insurers are allowed to set rates only based on
prior losses.<br>
<br>
Regulators also forbid insurers from passing along the costs of
buying their own insurance, which they do to soften the blow of
unexpectedly big losses. As wildfires get worse, those costs for
insurers are going up as well.<br>
<br>
Both rules were designed to guard against higher rates. But in the
age of climate change, insurers say those rules have prevented them
from keeping up with wildfire damage...<br>
<br>
"From homeowners' point of view, this is scary," said Char Miller, a
professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College
near Los Angeles. But for insurance companies, he said, not covering
high-risk homes reflects a straightforward logic: "Why am I insuring
something that I know is going to be destroyed?"<br>
<br>
The problem has become so bad that the state's insurance
commissioner, Ricardo Lara, last December banned companies from
dropping people in or near ZIP codes struck by recent wildfires,
calling the situation a "crisis." The move, which covered at least
800,000 homes around the state, marked the first time his office had
used that authority.<br>
The ban was never meant to be a permanent fix. It lasts just 12
months and can't be extended.<br>
And data suggests that insurers have continued to drop customers.
The number of households buying coverage from California's high-risk
insurance program, a costly and bare-bones alternative for people
who can't get private coverage, has increased by more than 50
percent between the start of 2019 and June 2020, to almost 200,000
households.<br>
<br>
That program, called the FAIR Plan, covers fewer types of damage
than private insurance policies and caps policies at $3 million. Yet
even that plan is getting more expensive: It has asked the state for
permission to raise its rates by 15.6 percent, after initially
seeking an increase more than double that amount.<br>
<br>
Still, officials have struggled to find a solution that both
insurers and consumer advocates will accept.<br>
- -<br>
The state's insurance commissioner said his focus now was working
with high-risk communities to reduce their wildfire risk enough that
insurers will keep offering coverage without big rate increases. "I
will continue to move quickly to tackle the costs and availability
of wildfire insurance affecting our state," Mr. Lara said. "If
Californians do our part to protect homes from wildfire," the
industry should respond by agreeing to insure those homes, he said.<br>
<br>
But reducing the human and economic toll of wildfires will require
deeper reform than just tweaking building codes or encouraging
better landscaping, others said. It may also require addressing the
shortage of new housing in Californian cities, which has helped push
development further into areas at risk of burning, a trend that has
continued despite years of severe wildfires.<br>
<br>
David Shew, a former staff chief at Cal Fire, said that the spread
of houses into fire country used to seem like a reasonable
trade-off. "There are great needs to build housing in more
affordable areas, which kind of, by default, tend to be these more
exposed, fire-prone landscapes, because land is cheaper there," Mr.
Shew said. "There was a feeling that, well, it was worth the risk."<br>
<br>
But as climate change makes wildfires more devastating, that logic
seems less obvious, he said. Short of more onerous restrictions on
construction in high-risk areas, worsening the statewide housing
crisis, there are physical and political limits to how much
governments can do to reduce that risk, which means insurance will
become more expensive.<br>
<br>
"We will never, ever, have enough fire engines to park in every
driveway," Mr. Shew said. "It's only going to get worse."<br>
Christopher Flavelle focuses on how people, governments and
industries try to cope with the effects of global warming. He
received a 2018 National Press Foundation award for coverage of the
federal government's struggles to deal with flooding. @cflav<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/climate/wildfires-insurance.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/climate/wildfires-insurance.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
September 4, 2001 </b></font><br>
Published on Tuesday, September 4, 2001 in the Boston Globe<br>
<b>An Ecological Betrayal</b><br>
by Theodore Roosevelt IV <br>
<blockquote> ''THERE'S BEEN an oil spill in Alaska; it looks like a
big one.'' That was John Sununu, the White House chief of staff
during the administration of George Bush Sr., speaking to the EPA
administrator, Bill Reilly, after the spill of the Exxon Valdez.
Twelve years later, more than half the affected species have not
recovered.<br>
The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is the biological heart of one
of the last great wilderness areas in North America, considered by
many the American Serengeti.<br>
<br>
Despite the stalwart opposition of most Democrats and moderate
Republicans, despite the overwhelming objections of the American
people, the House of Representatives recently passed an energy
bill that would open these ecologically valuable and sensitive
lands to oil drilling. The bill goes to the Senate this fall.<br>
<br>
Yet again, on an environmental issue of grave concern to the
American people, the more conservative elements in the Republican
Party, my party, choose to turn from its own proud conservation
heritage and from its own rank and file. Instead, it bows to
myopic partisan pressures.<br>
<br>
The American people rightfully expect protecting our environment
to be a bipartisan undertaking. Unfortunately, they no longer even
associate the Republican Party with conservation. They have
forgotten, just as our party's leadership has forgotten, that it
was President Eisenhower who gave us the Alaskan National Wildlife
Refuge; President Nixon who gave us the Clean Air Act, the
Endangered Species Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency;
and Teddy Roosevelt who gave us the first national wildlife
refuges, national monuments, and millions of acres of public land.<br>
<br>
Today, another Republican, John Sununu, the New Hampshire
congressman, has given us a disingenuous amendment to the House
energy bill. The amendment is an attempt to disguise as
conservative a willful and aggressive intrusion on the pristine
wilderness of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. It claims to
limit the drilling to 2,000 acres, but this includes only the land
where drilling pads and supports actually touch the ground. This
is like measuring the New Jersey Turnpike by the acreage occupied
by its tollbooths, in which case the turnpike would be situated on
2.77 square miles.<br>
<br>
We are facing a potential energy crisis, but it has nothing to do
with lack of supply. There is no shortage of fossil fuels in the
world pantry. The problem is that America contains only 4 percent
of the world's oil reserves. The administration claims that
draining our small oil stocks will feed America's undisciplined
appetite for energy and give us greater independence from foreign
powers. Only Christ could perform the miracle of the loaves and
the fishes.<br>
<br>
Earlier this year I gave a speech to Asian business leaders on
globalization and the financial markets. To the surprise of some
of my colleagues, I included a section on the global environment.
To their amazement, all the follow-up questions were on the
environment. Those Asian business leaders are strategizing for the
future, and they get the big picture.<br>
<br>
While the economic forces unleashed by globalization are
responsible for breaching the Berlin Wall, while those forces
break through trade barriers and challenge national and
ideological borders, the one wall with which we are heading for a
collision is the carrying capacity of the global environment and
the world's depleted stock of renewable resources.<br>
<br>
Efficiency and technological innovation will continue to fuel the
global economy, but those values must be tempered by decency.
Restraint and discipline are no longer optional.<br>
<br>
The American people also get the picture. When the administration
talks about ''balancing'' environmental and energy needs, the
American people recognize the problem: Those needs are not
currently in balance. Our environmental accounts are in the red;
we are running on credit, and we are running out of it.<br>
<br>
As James Gustave Speth of Yale University's School of Forestry
states, ''We are entering the endgame in our relationship with the
natural world. Whatever slack nature previously cut us is gone.''<br>
<br>
We Americans are heading into a carbon-constrained, ecologically
fragile future for which we are ill prepared. Under the present
leadership we are dragging our feet, willing to sacrifice vital
natural resources instead of making real investments in current
efficiency and future energy technologies. This is hardly a
conservative agenda.<br>
<br>
Moderate Republicans, and I am one, are distressed that an
administration that strenuously claims to be conservative is
instead intent on maintaining undisciplined and wasteful
consumption. This is unsustainable public policy, and I doubt that
it will go far in achieving victory in the midterm elections. Bad
public policy and bad politics are a lethal combination.<br>
<br>
Our country is about more than the success of our economic
enterprise, and it is that more that keeps us strong: our moral
vigor, determination, and grit, our openness and generosity. The
vastness of these lands has harbored the vastness of the American
spirit, and our people will not part with either easily. And they
shouldn't.<br>
<br>
The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is this nation's Rubicon; it
is the place where we will learn if we possess the restraint,
reason, and decency to respect the values preserved there. It is
the place where we will learn whether our nation will rise
honorably to the challenges of this new century or capitulate to
them.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Theodore Roosevelt IV is a member of Republicans for Environmental
Protection and the great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20020619223452/http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0904-01.htm">http://web.archive.org/web/20020619223452/http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0904-01.htm</a><br>
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