<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><i><font size="+1"><b>December 1, 2020</b></font></i><br>
</p>
[it's their future]<br>
<b>The UN canceled its 2020 climate summit. Youth held one anyway.</b><br>
By Joseph Winters on Nov 30, 2020 <br>
The coronavirus pandemic delayed COP26, the United Nations' annual
climate summit, by a whole year. But it isn't stopping youth climate
activists from holding their own Conference of the Parties.<br>
<br>
"We can't let this pandemic stop us," said Iris Zhan, a 16-year-old
high school junior from Columbia, Maryland. "We need to make
progress and push as much as possible because of how urgent this
is," she said.<br>
<br>
Since November 19, 18 student staff, 216 volunteers like Zhan, and
more than 350 youth delegates from 146 countries have been convening
virtually for Mock COP26, a virtual summit meant to fill the void
created by COP26's postponement. For several hours each day, they've
attended online workshops, panels, and discussions with
environmental activists and experts. Their goal is to craft a formal
statement of policy demands that, when the conference ends on
December 1, they'll deliver to Nigel Topping, the "High Level
Climate Action Champion" designated to engage with stakeholders and
promote climate action ahead of COP26.<br>
Ideally, the statement will raise the bar for COP26 negotiators when
they meet in Glasgow next November. "We're hoping to make a big
difference," Zhan said.<br>
<br>
The mock conference has been designed to address long-standing
diversity problems within the environmental movement. To elevate
voices from the countries at the greatest risk from climate change,
Mock COP26 organizers invited up to five delegates from each country
in the economically disadvantaged global south, giving them greater
voting power and more time to speak. Wealthier countries like the
United States and Canada could only send up to three delegates.<br>
Sofía Hernandez Salazar, a 22-year-old climate activist and a
delegate from Costa Rica, said the mock conference's format helped
address problems of representation that she had noticed while
attending COP25 in Madrid.<br>
<p>"At real COPs, you mostly see men who are white and from Europe,"
she said, adding that delegations from the global south tended to
have fewer negotiators.</p>
<p>Darien Castro, a 23-year old delegate from Ecuador, echoed the
sentiment. "It's important to include marginalized groups," he
said, rather than allowing the needs of Indigenous communities,
rural areas, and island nations to be drowned out by the interests
of superpowers. "These people have knowledge, but many people just
don't care about that."Next year's COP26 has already been
criticized for a lack of inclusivity -- most notably due to its
imbalanced gender ratio. A U.K. plan released in September showed
a 100 percent male team of negotiators, senior politicians, and
civil servants for the climate talks, prompting outcry from the
Fridays for Future movement, which helped organize Mock COP26.<br>
</p>
<p>Kevin Mtai, a 24-year-old conference organizer from Soy, Kenya,
said he has been pleased to see the innovations in the mock
conference's format -- not only how it has prioritized at-risk
communities, but also how it has elevated young voices. At last
year's COP, he said, he had been disappointed to see young people
excluded from negotiations, even though they are the ones who will
face the most severe consequences of climate change.<br>
</p>
<p>"Global leaders from COP need to see how we have been running
this conference so they can take a leaf from us," Mtai said. "Next
year, they need to include more youth in the discussion."<br>
</p>
For the first week of the conference, delegates spent time
developing "high-level statements" to represent their countries'
interests. Those statements were finalized on Wednesday and posted
to the Mock COP26 YouTube channel -- a three-minute speech for each
country. Now, the remaining time until December 1 will be devoted to
writing up their final demands for world leaders.<br>
<br>
ClientEarth, an environmental law nonprofit, is helping the
delegates polish their demands into a legal document that could,
hypothetically, be adopted into law by the delegates' home
countries.<br>
"It's an uphill fight, but I'm optimistic that it's going to get a
lot of attention," said Ellie Gold, a legal researcher for
ClientEarth who's been working with the Mock COP26 delegates.<br>
<br>
Even if the statement doesn't gain a foothold in countries'
legislative chambers, Zhan said she hopes it will send a clear
message to world leaders: Center the needs of the global south,
don't allow fossil fuel interests to direct the conference, and, of
course, listen to the youth climate movement.<br>
<br>
"If COP was youth-led," she said, "we would make so much more
progress than we have in the last decade."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://grist.org/climate/the-un-canceled-its-2020-climate-summit-youth-held-one-anyway/">https://grist.org/climate/the-un-canceled-its-2020-climate-summit-youth-held-one-anyway/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Watch where the money goes]<br>
<b>How climate change could spark the next home mortgage disaster</b><br>
Taxpayers are backing more than a trillion dollars in home
mortgages, but the agencies buying them are neglecting to consider
climate risks.<br>
By ZACK COLMAN - 11/30/2020 <br>
With its lively parks and colorful bungalows, Hialeah, Fla., has
been the gateway to the American middle class for thousands of Cuban
immigrants.<br>
<br>
Hialeah was the place where home ownership, an unattainable goal
under the Communist regime of their homeland, became a reality. And
as in many American communities -- rich and poor, of every ethnic
makeup -- the American dream for families in Hialeah was helped
along by the taxpayer-funded mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac. Their willingness to purchase the loans on homes in the area
provides local lenders with a steady flow of cash to invest in the
community.<br>
...the American dream for families in Hialeah was helped along by
the taxpayer-funded mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Their willingness to purchase the loans on homes in the area
provides local lenders with a steady flow of cash to invest in the
community...<br>
- - <br>
Despite that grim prognosis, the federal government keeps pumping
mortgage money into Hialeah, as it does in hundreds of other
communities now facing grave dangers from climate change. Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac hold the majority of home mortgages in some Hialeah
neighborhoods. More significantly, federal taxpayers hold greater
than 60 percent of mortgages on homes in some areas outside the
specially designated federal floodplain, according to an analysis of
federal data by Amine Ouazad, an associate economics professor at
Canadian business school HEC Montréal...<br>
- -<br>
"It just has not reached that level of concern. And it never does,
right?" Clifford Rossi, a former senior risk officer at both Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac, told POLITICO. "It never reaches the point of
people really kind of being forward-thinking about this until the
crisis is upon you or about to hit you in the face."<br>
- -<br>
Hialeah is just a tiny part of a much larger risk pool, but it
encapsulates the conundrum facing policymakers. Homeownership rates
in the city are relatively low, at less than 46 percent. Meanwhile,
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a congressionally approved mandate
to put more people, especially those from traditionally underserved
backgrounds, in homes of their own...<br>
- -<br>
Officials at the FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
maintain that taxpayers are protected by flood insurance
requirements. Parts of Hialeah, though, don't fall into the
floodplain, a result of outdated maps that do not consider future
flood scenarios arising from climate change -- a problem that,
policymakers maintain, is replicated in communities across the
country. But pricing climate change into mortgage terms would wreak
havoc in the real estate market -- a hit that, while protective of
taxpayers in the long run, runs counter to the missions of the
relevant agencies. Turning off the mortgage spigot in communities
affected by climate change would disproportionately affect people of
color, whose neighborhoods are more likely to be plagued by violent
weather.<br>
<br>
The result, many current and former federal housing officials
acknowledge, is a peculiar kind of stasis -- a crisis that everyone
sees coming but no one feels empowered to prevent, even as banks and
investors grow far savvier about assessing climate risk...<br>
- -<br>
For now, however, "There's a tendency not to want to address these
hard issues and we allow a lot of capital to go in" to at-risk
neighborhoods, added Golding, who is now executive director of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Golub Center for Finance and
Policy.<br>
<br>
Fannie Mae did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Freddie
Mac referred POLITICO to FHFA.<br>
<br>
The mortgage giants appear to be taking fledgling steps to
understand the true cost of climate-threatened loans on their books.
In June, Fannie Mae hired a vice president of climate-risk
analytics. The agency previously issued a request for proposals to
analyze climate exposure to homes that are outside the 100-year
floodplain, and therefore do not require flood insurance coverage,
which was first reported by POLITICO.<br>
- -<br>
As with most aspects of climate change, there's a lack of certainty:
Mortgage assessors can't say exactly when and exactly where life-
and property-destroying events will occur, even if they know the
risks of them will increase.<br>
<br>
A further reason for caution is that any actions taken by the two
mortgage giants would be highly disruptive in themselves: A refusal
to buy mortgages on homes in certain areas would potentially choke
off lending in those areas, driving down housing prices. For those
already owning homes in those areas, equity could disappear
overnight. Some owners, realizing their homes were worth less than
their mortgages, might simply refuse to pay, triggering foreclosures
and igniting some of the forces that created the financial crisis of
2008-2009.<br>
<br>
But failing to take preventative action in anticipation of climate
changes risks a far greater downturn...<br>
- -<br>
Currently, the mortgage market is cross-subsidized: Borrowers in New
Mexico are implicitly subsidizing Florida homes through the
securities of mortgage pools Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sell to
private investors.<br>
<br>
Those securities are opaque, and for good reason, mortgage experts
argue: They exist to generate more cash flow to keep lending fluid.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- in effect, taxpayers -- guarantee the
principal on those investments even if hurricanes or wildfires wipe
out the homes...<br>
- -<br>
"The investment community is wanting to get more granularity and
understanding as to where their risks are," said risQ Chief
Commercial Officer Chris Hartshorn. "Right now, these assets have
been priced irresponsibly."<br>
<br>
Mortgage investors already have, at least implicitly, said the same.
As Hurricane Harvey barreled down on Texas in 2017, securities that
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sell to private investors in what's known
as a "credit risk transfer" went haywire, spiking 150 basis points
-- or 1.5 percent -- amid fears that the storm would obliterate
entire communities. When the credit risk transfer market settled
after Harvey, the Association of Mortgage Investors, a trade group
representing mortgage securities buyers, asked Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac to remove mortgages vulnerable to climate change from
those offerings.<br>
That spike occurred because, unlike with most of the mortgage-backed
securities that the mortgage giants sell, private buyers take the
loss on credit risk transfers if mortgages default. The idea is to
relieve taxpayers of the risk of having to cover for potential
losses, putting it on private investors instead. But that solution
can only work for so long, especially given the pressure investors
have put on the mortgage giants to remove loans on properties at
risk of climate change from those offerings, said Rossi, the former
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac risk officer.<br>
<br>
Rossi called the letter "a clarion call" that investors were
skeptical of the risks the mortgage giants were taking on from
climate-exposed properties -- so Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took the
loans out of the credit risk transfer pool, he said, letting
climate-vulnerable mortgages pile up on their own books.<br>
<br>
"In a still relatively low-risk environment relative to the rest of
their portfolio they can get by pulling those loans out and putting
them aside," Rossi said. "But over time, that's going to pose
challenges for them."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/30/climate-change-mortgage-housing-environment-433721">https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/30/climate-change-mortgage-housing-environment-433721</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[animals uneasy XR video]<br>
<b>Margaret Atwood, Emma Thompson, Lily Cole and others raise
awareness of animals almost extinct</b><br>
Streamed Nov 30, 2020<br>
Extinction Rebellion<br>
Join us for an evening with writers and earth activists Margaret
Atwood, Amitav Ghosh, Emma Thompson, Lily Cole, Bianca Jagger and
many others to raise awareness of animals at threat of extinction.<br>
Over the coming decade over one million species face extinction. It
is estimated that 200 species go extinct every day. We can remain
silent or we can lend our voices however best we can to try to save
them. <br>
<br>
We have 20 writers and cultural figures reading new work and
speaking to specific animals at threat from extinction. You'll hear
from: Margaret Atwood on the Tasmanian devil; Homero Aridjis on the
Vaquita porpoise; Emma Thompson on the puffin; Ben Okri on the
tiger; Taiwanese artist Wu Ming-Yi on the pangolin; Bianca Jagger on
the eastern gorilla; Judy Ling Wong on the snow leopard; Amitav
Ghosh on the Irrawaddy dolphin… as well as Nana Oforiatta Ayim, Lily
Cole, Prerna Singh Bindra, Lydia Millet, Sangu Iyer, Laura Jean
McKay, Laura Coleman, Elizabeth Kolbert and more. <br>
<br>
Chloe Aridjis, David Lindo the Urban Birder, entomologist Erica
McAlister, Mya-Rose Craig aka 'BirdGirlUK', and BBC Springwatch's
Gillian Burke are our five illustrious comperes.<br>
<br>
On the Brink takes place online on Monday November 30th at 7pm GMT
to commemorate Remembrance Day for Lost Species
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.lostspeciesday.org">www.lostspeciesday.org</a>). <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTYYGng1m9g">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTYYGng1m9g</a> starts about 2:45 mins<br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[Promises]<b><br>
</b><b> </b><b>Top court gives France three months to fulfil
climate change commitments</b><br>
In a ruling hailed by campaigners as "historic", France's top
administrative court on Thursday gave the government a three-month
deadline to show it is taking action to meet its commitments on
climate change.<br>
<br>
The government of France, which brokered the landmark 2015 Paris
Agreement on climate change, was hauled before the Council of State
by Grande-Synthe, a low-lying northern coastal town which is
particularly exposed to the effects of climate change.<br>
<br>
The Council, which rules on disputes over public policies, noted
that "while France has committed itself to reducing its emissions by
40% in 2030 compared to 1990 levels, it has, in recent years,
regularly exceeded the 'carbon budgets' it had set itself."<br>
<br>
It also noted that President Emmanuel Macron's government had, in a
decree in April, deferred much of the reduction efforts beyond 2020.<br>
<br>
Despite Macron's headline 2017 promise to "make our planet great
again" -- a swipe at climate denialist US President Donald Trump who
vowed to "make America great again" -- France is far off track to
meet its commitments under the 2015 treaty...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201119-court-gives-france-three-months-to-fulfil-climate-change-commitments">https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201119-court-gives-france-three-months-to-fulfil-climate-change-commitments</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 -
December 1, 1987 </b></font><br>
<p>During a Democratic presidential debate on NBC, Rep. Richard
Gephardt states that the US must work with the Soviet Union on
addressing international environmental issues such as the ozone
layer and greenhouse gas emissions, noting, "The problem we've had
with these issues is not that we don't know what to talk about;
the problem we've had is that America hasn't been a leader."<br>
<br>
(25:10--26:03)<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?20-1/Presidential">http://www.c-span.org/video/?20-1/Presidential</a> <br>
<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/<br>
<br>
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html"><https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html></a>
/<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote</a><br>
<br>
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request"><mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request></a>
to news digest./<br>
<br>
*** Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only. It does not
carry images or attachments which may originate from remote
servers. A text-only message can provide greater privacy to the
receiver and sender.<br>
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain must be used for
democratic and election purposes and cannot be used for commercial
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.<br>
To subscribe, email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote">contact@theclimate.vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote"><mailto:contact@theclimate.vote></a>
with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe<br>
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote</a><br>
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TheClimate.Vote">http://TheClimate.Vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://TheClimate.Vote/"><http://TheClimate.Vote/></a>
delivering succinct information for citizens and responsible
governments of all levels. List membership is confidential and
records are scrupulously restricted to this mailing list.<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>