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The Next Great Migration – Sonia Shah

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The Next Great Migration

The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move

Sonia Shah

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: June 2, 2020

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Seller: Bookwire GmbH


A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting–predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change. The news today is full of stories of dislocated people on the move. Wild species, too, are escaping warming seas and desiccated lands, creeping, swimming, and flying in a mass exodus from their past habitats. News media presents this scrambling of the planet's migration patterns as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict and waves of anxiety across the Western world. On both sides of the Atlantic, experts issue alarmed predictions of millions of invading aliens, unstoppable as an advancing tsunami, and countries respond by electing anti-immigration leaders who slam closed borders that were historically porous. But the science and history of migration in animals, plants, and humans tell a different story. Far from being a disruptive behavior to be quelled at any cost, migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change, a biological imperative as necessary as breathing. Climate changes triggered the first human migrations out of Africa. Falling sea levels allowed our passage across the Bering Sea. Unhampered by barbed wire, migration allowed our ancestors to people the planet, catapulting us into the highest reaches of the Himalayan mountains and the most remote islands of the Pacific, creating and disseminating the biological, cultural, and social diversity that ecosystems and societies depend upon. In other words, migration is not the crisis–it is the solution. Conclusively tracking the history of misinformation from the 18th century through today's anti-immigration policies, The Next Great Migration makes the case for a future in which migration is not a source of fear, but of hope.

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The Next Great Migration – Sonia Shah

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Coronavirus postpones major climate plan in Congress

The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, a bipartisan group formed at the direction of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the 2018 midterm election, has been working on a plan to tackle rising emissions — the committee calls it a “climate action framework” — for the past year. It planned to release the framework at the end of this month. On Monday, committee chair Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat, said the release is being postponed due to COVID-19.

“As Congress focuses on the important mission of protecting Americans from the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided today to postpone the release of our climate action plan,” Castor wrote in a press release. “We will continue to work on clean energy solutions and a more resilient America — and look forward to releasing our plan when appropriate.”

The decision to delay the release of the framework, one of the only concerted efforts to mitigate the looming climate crisis in the House right now, is the clearest example yet of how COVID-19 has pushed climate policy to the backburner. Castor said she and her fellow committee members met with more than 1,000 stakeholders (community members, scientists, government officials, etc.) and reviewed more than 700 detailed comments before forming their climate policy recommendations.

One of those comments was authored by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, the former presidential candidate and longtime climate hawk. In a December 16 letter to the committee, obtained by Grist, Inslee called climate change one of the greatest threats Americans have ever faced. “Confronting this challenge and realizing this opportunity must be our nation’s foremost priority,” he wrote. But Inslee has little time for climate action now; he’s busy battling the coronavirus in his state, which is ground zero for COVID-19 in the United States.

Some climate policy wonks have made the case that now is the time for ambitious climate legislation that creates jobs while decarbonizing the economy —a Green New Deal, if you will. But as Congress struggles to pass even a baseline coronavirus relief bill, it’s clear that climate policy has tumbled down lawmakers’ list of priorities for the time being.

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Coronavirus postpones major climate plan in Congress

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Climate change is forcing a rift in the Murdoch family

As wildfires spread across Australia last November, newspapers and television networks owned by conservative media tycoon Rupert Murdoch started pushing a false narrative: Arson, not climate change, was responsible for the crisis.

That wasn’t the only inaccurate claim being bandied about by Murdoch’s conservative news outlets in Australia and the U.S. while millions of acres burned and an estimated billion animals perished. Fox News spread the incorrect claim that 200 arsonists had set Australia on fire. News Corp, the linchpin of Murdoch’s media empire, also pushed the false ideas that environmentalists were opposed to fire prevention measures and that this year’s fires were not out of line with what’s occurred in previous years. The latter claim is diametrically contrary to the science, which indicates rising temperatures are creating conditions ripe for prolonged mega-wildfires.

Murdoch is no stranger to criticism. In a recent op-ed, climate scientist Michael Mann called the mogul an “arsonist.” A six-month New York Times investigation found the Murdoch family turned their outlets into “political influence machines” that “destabilized democracy in North America, Europe, and Australia.” In 2011, Murdoch was denounced left and right when a tabloid he owned called News of the World shuttered after employees hacked into a number of phones, including the device of a recent murder victim.

But it is unusual for Murdoch to catch heat from his own family. In a dramatic turn of events, a spokesperson for Murdoch’s son, James, said the scion felt “frustration” over the way his father’s business covered the crisis on Wednesday. James and his wife Kathryn Murdoch are “particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary,” according to the spokesperson’s statement, which was first reported by the Daily Beast. Murdoch’s decision to distance himself from his family’s views on climate are notable in no small part because he was recently in line to take over the company — his brother, Lachlan, got the gig — and is on the News Corp board of directors.

The spokesperson’s statement says that “Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established,” and that’s true. As chief executive of Sky, James pushed the British television service to go carbon-neutral. He invited former vice president Al Gore to give a lecture on climate change at a Fox corporate retreat. Meanwhile, Kathryn is, by any definition, a climate advocate. She’s a trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund and Climate Central, and was the director of strategy and communications for the Clinton Climate Initiative for four years.

Now that James is no longer directly involved with his family’s company apart from sitting on News Corp’s board of directors, his comments will likely have little bearing on whether News Corp and Fox News continue to sow disinformation. But fans of HBO’s blockbuster TV drama Succession, a thinly veiled dramatization of the Murdoch family’s exploits, know the younger Murdoch’s public stand would make for extremely good television.

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Climate change is forcing a rift in the Murdoch family

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Australians call their prime minister an ‘idiot’ for ignoring wildfire victims

The Land Down Under has been on fire for weeks. At least 17 people have been killed by wildfires in Australia this season to date. On Thursday, New South Wales declared a state of emergency — the third emergency prompted by uncontrollable wildfires since November. Australians have lost homes, land, and loved ones. And a lot of them are furious with their government.

While his country battled dozens of simultaneous infernos in late December, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was vacationing with his family in Hawaii. When he realized that his absence wasn’t going over well with his constituents, Morrison returned and tried to stage a photo op in wildfire-ravaged Cobargo, a tiny town between Sydney and Melbourne with a population under 1,000. As you can see, hell hath no fury like an Aussie scorned in the middle of a climate disaster.

“You won’t be getting any votes down here buddy,” one man said. “You’re an idiot, mate,” another tactfully added. “You really are.” One resident, who arrived to greet the prime minister with what appeared to be a goat by her side, asked why Cobargo had only received four fire trucks to help battle the blazes.

Morrison promised help was on the way and asked for patience. “What we are saying is we cannot control the natural disaster but what we can do is control our response,” he said. But there are, in fact, a few things Morrison’s government could do to control the extent of the “natural disaster” — like rapidly phasing out fossil fuels.

Unlike a majority of Australians, Morrison has been slow to realize that climate change poses an immense threat to his nation’s health and safety. As recently as December 22, Morrison told journalists it’s “not credible” to suggest a link between climate change and any individual wildfire. (The science linking this year’s catastrophic wildfire season to rising temperatures is robust.). In November, as Aussies took to the streets to protest the government’s inaction on the climate crisis, Morrison vowed to stop climate activists who pressure companies not to do business with the coal-mining industry. “We are working to identify serious mechanisms that can successfully outlaw these indulgent and selfish practices that threaten the livelihoods of fellow Australians,” he told a group of miners.

But public outcry over the government’s handling of the fires has forced the prime minister to defend his controversial positions on the crisis. On Wednesday, Morrison called a national security meeting to assemble a response to the crisis, and he made sure to say that climate change is a factor in the wildfires. “Our emissions reductions policies will both protect our environment and seek to reduce the risk and hazard we are seeing today,” he said. There’s no telling whether the public outcry over the apocalyptic wildfires will prompt Morrison to revisit his emissions reduction policies. What’s clear, however, is that politicians around the world are going to have a hard time openly denying climate change when its effects are on full display.

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Australians call their prime minister an ‘idiot’ for ignoring wildfire victims

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More trouble in Paradise: Camp Fire region braces for floods and mudslides

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Northern California faces a new threat in the aftermath of the disastrous Camp Fire: Weather forecasters are growing more confident that downpours, which could bring flash floods and mudslides, are headed for the fragile, scorched terrain.

On Monday night, the National Weather Service issued flash-flood watches for recent burn areas, in preparation for a series of heavy rainfall events arriving between Wednesday and Friday.

The forecast prompted an escalation of ongoing search and recovery efforts in Paradise, with fears that the rains could wash away the remains of fire victims, reducing the chances of families of the hundreds of residents still listed as missing finding closure.

Kory Honea, the sheriff of Butte County, told the Associated Press that the looming rains means that it’s within the “realm of possibility” that officials might never be able to determine the fire’s exact death toll.

As of Tuesday afternoon, at least 79 people are known to have died, 699 are still unaccounted for, and more than 40,000 displaced. The Camp Fire is already one of the deadliest U.S. disasters of any kind in the 21st century. It is the deadliest U.S. fire in 100 years, and the sixth-deadliest worldwide in that same timespan, according to numbers compiled by meteorologist Jeff Masters. The 17,148 buildings destroyed in and around the town of Paradise are nearly equal to all those lost in each of the other top-10 most destructive fires in California history, combined.

Current forecasts call for as much as six inches of rain near Paradise — about as much as the region gets in an average November — arriving in the span of just a few days. That kind of a deluge would not only frustrate recovery efforts, but it could also spawn mudslides and flash floods by turning the newly barren soil into a roiling, debris-filled torrent. That the still-burning fire that started this whole mess could be extinguished in the process is almost an afterthought.

Survivors’ stories are still emerging two weeks after a wall of flames burned through Paradise in mere hours. While the cause of the fire is yet to be officially determined, it’s nearly certain that climate change played a crucial role in how quickly it grew and spread.

It’s worth noting that climate change is likely playing a role in intensifying heavy rainfall in California, too. More rain can fall in a shorter period of time in a warmer atmosphere that’s becoming more efficient at evaporation. In California, most heavy rainstorms, including those in the forecast this week, come via such atmospheric rivers — tropical conveyor belts of moisture streaming directly ashore — and these are growing wider and more intense as the planet heats up.

The fact that two of the extremes of climate change — drier and hotter droughts, and wetter and wider floods — are manifesting as part of the same disaster is a sign of the urgency of the crisis. The Camp Fire is the latest example of the compound, complex tragedy of climate change.

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More trouble in Paradise: Camp Fire region braces for floods and mudslides

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Toxic algae has oozed out of lakes and into Florida’s Senate race

Slimeballs could determine who wins a race for the U.S. Senate. And in this case, slimeballs isn’t another word for disgraced politicians or dirty-money lobbyists.

Slime is flowing off Florida’s Lake Okeechobee in balls, clots, and sheets into coastal waters. It’s made of algae that blooms in massive numbers when fertilizer-laden agricultural runoff sits in warm water. Rain raised the level of this fetid brew until officials had no choice but to send it downstream to the sea.

The environmental disaster is choking dolphins and strangling the tourism economy. It’s stinky, ugly, sad, and impossible for Floridians to ignore, and so it’s become a central element in the race for Senate between the incumbent, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, and the challenger, Governor Rick Scott. Both blame the other for the crisis.

What’s surprising here is that environmental issues are taking a starring role in a an election campaign. We complain all the time at Grist about the lack of attention to climate change in presidential debates and the like. This lack of focus has allowed politicians — mostly of the Republican persuasion — to ignore and deny the many environmental disasters unfolding in slow motion. But as those problems begin to erode voters’ quality of life, they’re bound to become more of a political issue, which means politicians of all stripes will have to address them to get elected.

In this case, it was Scott — the Republican! — who started the skirmish, releasing this ad saying that Nelson has not managed to clean-up Okeechobee in his 30 years of political service.

Nelson fired back back with his own TV spot, quoting newspapers that blame Scott for the crisis.

Who’s right? Well, Sen. Nelson hasn’t fixed the environmental mess that is Lake Okeechobee, the slimy source of the scum, but it’s an enormous challenge that has bogged down many attempts, said Michael Grunwald, senior writer for Politico Magazine, who laid out that history in his book, The Swamp. The proposed solution was a deal to turn 100,000 acres of sugar-cane farms into reservoirs for storage. “If you build a shit ton of storage you don’t have to dump water on the estuaries and Everglades,” Grunwald said.

But Scott passed a law to block the reservoirs. He also oversaw budget reductions for state environmental agencies, according to the Washington Post, cutting “scientists and engineers whose jobs were to monitor pollution levels and algal blooms.” Thanks to those budget cuts, scientists don’t have the data to show the root causes of the crisis.

Scott and Nelson are now neck and neck in the polls. If there’s a bright spot here it’s that this race is proving that some Republicans are willing to campaign on environmental issues, provided voters care enough to raise a stink. “The old saying here is that election years are good for the Everglades,” Grunwald said.

Taking action once in office, as opposed to using the environment to score campaign points, is another story.

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Toxic algae has oozed out of lakes and into Florida’s Senate race

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Federal officials accidentally emailed a reporter their plans to spin Puerto Rico.

In a memo leaked last week, Department of Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert recommended White House staff pivot to a “theme of stabilizing” with regard to messaging around the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.

President Trump, however, appears to have missed that particular update. On Thursday morning, he threatened to pull federal relief workers from the devastated island just three weeks after Maria made landfall.

Meanwhile, most of Puerto Rico is still without power, hospitals are running out of medical supplies, and clean water remains scarce.

Trump isn’t the only prominent Republican refusing to recognize the severity of the crisis. In an interview with CNN on Thursday morning, Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, accused host Chris Cuomo of fabricating reports of the severity of the disaster.

“Mr. Cuomo, you’re simply just making this stuff up,” Perry said. “If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying, and they’re not.”

45 Puerto Rican deaths have been officially confirmed so far, and reports from the ground indicate the unofficial number of deaths due to the storm is higher.

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Federal officials accidentally emailed a reporter their plans to spin Puerto Rico.

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Donald Trump is threatening to end federal relief to Puerto Rico — on Twitter, of course.

In a memo leaked last week, Department of Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert recommended White House staff pivot to a “theme of stabilizing” with regard to messaging around the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.

President Trump, however, appears to have missed that particular update. On Thursday morning, he threatened to pull federal relief workers from the devastated island just three weeks after Maria made landfall.

Meanwhile, most of Puerto Rico is still without power, hospitals are running out of medical supplies, and clean water remains scarce.

Trump isn’t the only prominent Republican refusing to recognize the severity of the crisis. In an interview with CNN on Thursday morning, Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, accused host Chris Cuomo of fabricating reports of the severity of the disaster.

“Mr. Cuomo, you’re simply just making this stuff up,” Perry said. “If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying, and they’re not.”

45 Puerto Rican deaths have been officially confirmed so far, and reports from the ground indicate the unofficial number of deaths due to the storm is higher.

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Donald Trump is threatening to end federal relief to Puerto Rico — on Twitter, of course.

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Puerto Ricans might be drinking Superfund-polluted water, the EPA says.

In a memo leaked last week, Department of Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert recommended White House staff pivot to a “theme of stabilizing” with regard to messaging around the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.

President Trump, however, appears to have missed that particular update. On Thursday morning, he threatened to pull federal relief workers from the devastated island just three weeks after Maria made landfall.

Meanwhile, most of Puerto Rico is still without power, hospitals are running out of medical supplies, and clean water remains scarce.

Trump isn’t the only prominent Republican refusing to recognize the severity of the crisis. In an interview with CNN on Thursday morning, Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, accused host Chris Cuomo of fabricating reports of the severity of the disaster.

“Mr. Cuomo, you’re simply just making this stuff up,” Perry said. “If half the country didn’t have food or water, those people would be dying, and they’re not.”

45 Puerto Rican deaths have been officially confirmed so far, and reports from the ground indicate the unofficial number of deaths due to the storm is higher.

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Puerto Ricans might be drinking Superfund-polluted water, the EPA says.

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Trump’s Harvey aid donation is a drop in the bucket compared to the storm’s real price tag.

On Thursday, explosions and black plumes of smoke were seen coming from a chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, 15 miles east of Houston’s city center.

Arkema, the company that owns the plant, said there was nothing they could do to prevent further explosions. The volatile chemicals stored onsite need to be refrigerated at all times to prevent breakdown, but flooding from Harvey cut the plant’s power. The “only plausible solution” now is to let the eight containers, containing 500,000 pounds of organic peroxides, explode and burn out, Arkema CEO Rich Rowe said at a press conference on Friday.

That’s bad news for Arkema’s neighbors. On Thursday, 15 public safety officers were taken to the hospital after breathing in acrid smoke from the plant. After local officials took a peek at Arkema’s chemical inventories, they ordered everyone within a 1.5-mile radius of the plant to evacuate. We don’t know precisely what’s in the noxious fumes, as Arkema has refused to release details of the facility’s chemical inventories.

In the worst-case scenario documented in the company’s 2014 risk-management plan, the air pollution coming from the plant could put the 1 million people living within 20 miles radius in danger. That seems unlikely — but then again, Harvey has outdone plenty of worst-case scenario predictions so far.

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Trump’s Harvey aid donation is a drop in the bucket compared to the storm’s real price tag.

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