Tag Archives: uncategorized

The biggest star at the Golden Globes this year was climate change

Early during the Golden Globes on Sunday night, an emotional Jennifer Aniston read a statement from Russell Crowe, who was being honored for his role in the Showtime miniseries The Loudest Voice. Crowe could not be there to accept the award himself; he was in his native Australia protecting his family from catastrophic wildfires that have ignited millions of acres and killed 25 people.

“Make no mistake,” Aniston said, reading Crowe’s statement. “The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change based.”

Crowe’s warning was just the first of many to come from the stage during the 77th annual Golden Globes. Multiple actors used their few moments onstage to talk about the climate crisis and voice support for Australians facing devastating wildfires.

Patricia Arquette, who won the award for best supporting actress in a series for The Act, begged viewers to vote in 2020, so as to avoid future disasters like the one unfolding in Australia. “For our kids and their kids, we have to vote in 2020,” she said.

Cate Blanchett, who was presenting an award, said, “When one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster, so we’re in it together.” She also gave a shout-out to volunteer firefighters who are battling flames in Australia.

Joaquin Phoenix, who nabbed an accolade for Joker, said it was time for climate-conscious celebrities to start walking the walk. “It’s great to vote, but sometimes we have to take that responsibility on ourselves and make changes and sacrifices in our own lives,” he said, adding: “We don’t have to take private jets to Palm Springs for the awards.”

Fittingly, the extravagant ceremony itself was greener than usual. Stars dined on the ceremony’s first-ever all-vegan menu and drank water out of glass instead of plastic bottles. The Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation even said it plans to “upcycle” the red carpet that stars walk in on — that is, they’ll reuse it for future events. As for the private jets, we’ll see if Phoenix’s version of flygskam has any impact.

Read original article – 

The biggest star at the Golden Globes this year was climate change

Posted in Accent, alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The biggest star at the Golden Globes this year was climate change

We investigate Trump’s claim that people are flushing toilets ‘10 times, 15 times’

This article – 

We investigate Trump’s claim that people are flushing toilets ‘10 times, 15 times’

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on We investigate Trump’s claim that people are flushing toilets ‘10 times, 15 times’

What a Bloomberg candidacy could mean for climate

View post: 

What a Bloomberg candidacy could mean for climate

Posted in Casio, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on What a Bloomberg candidacy could mean for climate

Julián Castro’s Trump-defying plan to save endangered species

Hold your horses, because presidential candidate Julián Castro just came out with an animal welfare plan on Tuesday. The former housing secretary’s proposal may be the first policy proposed by a presidential candidate to highlight the connection between animals, climate change, and extinction (if only because we just learned how bad the extinction situation is about to get). And it arrived on the heels of the Trump administration’s attempt to weaken the Endangered Species Act.

As the effects of the climate crisis — more severe wildfires, floods, and hurricanes — have become clearer, politicians on the left have generally stopped talking about animals under threat and started talking about people at risk. Research indicates that that’s a good thing: Earlier this year, the author of a Yale University study on effective climate change imagery told Grist that the picture of a starving polar bear is pretty much tapped out. After all, most Americans have never even seen a polar bear up close.

But it’s not just charismatic megafauna under threat. A United Nations assessment this spring found that climate change could wipe out 1 million species if left unchecked. Evolution, you see, is hardly a fair match for our fast-warming planet. A new study out on Tuesday from Cornell University shows the climate is changing more speedily than animals can adapt to it. By studying 10,000 climate change papers, a team of international scientists found that normal functions like hibernation, reproduction, and migration are under threat due to shifting seasons and warming temperatures.

Article continues below

“The climate crisis is accelerating an unprecedented decline in biodiversity, threatening not only the future of animals but human life,” Castro writes in a Medium post detailing his new proposal. “Public policy must also confront the consequences of the climate crisis, including the threat of animal extinctions.”

He notes that much progress has been made on the animal welfare front in recent years: California recently established new standards for farming chickens, pigs, and cows. Delaware became the first “no-kill” state this month, meaning that its shelters save at least 90 percent of the cats and dogs that enter their doors (San Antonio, Castro’s hometown, achieved no-kill status a few years ago). But climate change, he posits, threatens to undermine that progress.

In order to make public policy match the scale of the crisis, Castro suggests establishing a $2 billion National Wildlife Recovery Fund aimed at protecting animals from imminent extinction. He also wants to preserve 30 percent of America’s lands and oceans, a first step toward an ambitious 50 percent goal by 2050. How does he aim to accomplish this? The proposal doesn’t say. But Castro does write that he’d appoint a conservation scientist to head up the Department of the Interior to clean up “Trump’s environmental disaster.” He would also double the Multinational Species Conservation Fund — an act approved by Congress that gives grants to projects that benefit elephants, great apes, rhinos, and sea turtles around the world.

One of the Cornell study’s coauthors, André Dhondt at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said Castro’s plan seemed like a good idea. Creating a fund to address the crisis, as Castro proposed, “would help everybody,” he said — people and animals included.

Castro’s plan could be interpreted as a return to old school conservation — using wildlife to hook mainstream audiences, or in this case, voters. But it could also be understood as a foray into new territory. By marrying the climate crisis to the extinction crisis, Castro is paving the way for a more enlightened conversation about conservation among the 2020 Democratic hopefuls, two of whom happen to already be vegan (Senator Cory Booker and Representative Tulsi Gabbard). And not a moment too soon.

“Animals have been going extinct forever,” Dhondt said. “The problem is now its happening faster, or will happen faster, than ever before.”

Original article – 

Julián Castro’s Trump-defying plan to save endangered species

Posted in Accent, alo, Eureka, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Julián Castro’s Trump-defying plan to save endangered species

Poll: The Green New Deal is as popular as legalizing weed

From: 

Poll: The Green New Deal is as popular as legalizing weed

Posted in Casio, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Poll: The Green New Deal is as popular as legalizing weed

Bitcoins now suck up as much energy as Las Vegas

Original article: 

Bitcoins now suck up as much energy as Las Vegas

Posted in alo, Cyber, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Bitcoins now suck up as much energy as Las Vegas

Is geoengineering the answer to the climate crisis?

Link:

Is geoengineering the answer to the climate crisis?

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anker, FF, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, oven, Pines, PUR, Ringer, solar, Springer, Thermos, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is geoengineering the answer to the climate crisis?

We’re all recycling wrong, so companies are finally trying to make it easier

View this article:

We’re all recycling wrong, so companies are finally trying to make it easier

Posted in alo, ALPHA, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’re all recycling wrong, so companies are finally trying to make it easier

Which cities have concrete strategies for environmental justice?

This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Just as it is now, Fifth Avenue has long been home to expensive shops drawing not only wealthy New Yorkers, but moneyed visitors. In 1916, when the shop merchants in the Fifth Avenue Association voiced concerns about congestion and declining land values affecting their profits, New York City introduced zoning as a legal apparatus. It was a new concept.

The merchants felt that their land values would be affected by the tall skyscrapers being built near Fifth Avenue to house the garment industry. And they didn’t want the people working in the garment industry to mix with their wealthy shoppers. Zoning’s beginnings had a lot to do with the exclusion of low-income people from certain areas of the city, and in the intervening century, zoning has continued to be used to confine low-income people and people of color to particular areas of a city.

Environmental hazards like hazardous waste facilities, fossil fuel storage, and transportation sites, and other polluting industrial facilities are disproportionally located in communities of color and low-income communities. But a new report from The New School’s Tishman Environment and Design Center shows how tools to enact environmental justice can come from the toolbox of injustice.

The report notes that, “examples of racial zoning are ubiquitous in planning history.” These same local zoning codes and land-use policies are now being used to address both existing and future pollution sources concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color. The report’s authors write: “If zoning and land use policies got us into this mess, they have the potential to get us out of it.”

So, what are these policies that promote environmental justice and where are they being implemented?

Bans on specific land uses and industries

In 1910, Baltimore, Maryland, became the first U.S. city to pass a residential segregation ordinance. After a 1917 Supreme Court ruling against racial segregation in housing, Baltimore employed other strategies to “exclude people of color from the financial benefits of homeownership,” according to the report. These actions laid the groundwork for today’s racial disparities in the city. In 2018, environmental justice advocates, including local neighborhood groups and national environmental groups with local chapters, successfully pushed for a ban on new crude oil terminals in Baltimore. Although federal law doesn’t allow municipalities to completely regulate commercial rail traffic, Baltimore was able to use its jurisdiction over land use and zoning for the city’s ban.

Baltimore is one of six cities (Chicago, Portland, Oakland, Seattle, and Whatcom County are the others) that the report identifies as prohibiting outright certain land uses and industries determined to be harmful for public health and the environment. Although locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) are often associated with residents trying to guard property values and “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) sentiment, the report argues that, in communities which face environmental injustice, LULUs “take on a wholly different meaning in the context of structural racism, patterns of uneven development” as well as the disproportionate impacts from pollution.

Broad environmental justice programs

New York City, San Francisco, and Fulton County, Georgia, have all enacted broad environmental justice policies and programs, the study’s authors find.

In 2000, San Francisco launched an environmental justice program. Since then it has earmarked more than $12 million in grants for local community projects serving environmental justice areas, and allocated resources to address health inequities, air quality, and renewable and efficient energy.

New York City’s policies, adopted in 2017, required a study of environmental justice areas and established an interagency group to create an environmental justice plan.

And in 2010, Fulton County started an environmental justice initiative that resulted in policies requiring the health impact on minority and low-income populations to be considered in decisions about land use planning and zoning.

Environmental review processes

Most municipalities already have processes, through planning and zoning boards, in which they review new development or expansion proposals. However, not all cities consider the effect of these development proposals on vulnerable or historically overburdened communities as part of the process.

Fulton County, Georgia; San Francisco, California; Camden and Newark, New Jersey; and Boston University have processes in place to review at least some types of new development through an environmental justice lens.

Proactive planning

Some cities also further environmental justice proactively through comprehensive plans (also called general plans, master plans, or land-use plans) that guide future development and establish new standards. Eugene, Oregon; National City, California; Washington, D.C.; and Fulton County, Georgia, all used their comprehensive plans or master plans to devise goals for working toward environmental justice. For example, in 2011, Washington, D.C. added a section in their comprehensive plan with policies that aim to protect all communities from “disproportionate exposure” to hazards as the city grows.

Seattle’s Public Utility Agency, which has significant land assets in historically overburdened communities, worked to make targeted investments to lessen pollution in these areas. And Los Angeles, California, used the concept of “green zones” in a 2016 policy called Clean Up Green Up Ordinance, establishing a Clean Up Green Up district within Boyle Heights, Pacoima/Sun Valley, and Wilmington, where the city applies more strict development standards for new construction and works to reduce negative health impacts. In 2017, Minneapolis, Minnesota, put forth a city council resolution aimed at green zones in order to improve heath and promote sustainable economic development.

Targeting existing land uses and public health codes

Although the above approaches are helpful for furthering environmental justice in future development, they don’t typically apply to existing land uses harmful to public health and the environment.

Huntington and National City, California; Washington, D.C.; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission all have policies targeting existing land uses. For example, National City grappled for a long time with “an excess of polluting industries due to mixed-use industrial and residential zoning,” according to the report. Now, National City has an amortization ordinance, which phases out industries near sensitive areas and includes a process for relocating businesses.

Additionally, San Francisco and Richmond, California; Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; and Erie, Colorado have all used public health codes to protect people from air pollutants. San Francisco, for instance, passed a public health code article in 2014 that strengthened ventilation requirements in buildings within air pollution exposure zones.

The report also notes that when it comes to decisions about where pollution and environmental hazards are located, it’s mostly up to local governments. “This localization of efforts opened up the opportunity to hold local leaders and agencies more accountable,” the authors write. “The insights gained from these policies will fuel a new era of environmental justice policies taking a holistic approach to achieving environmental justice.”

Link to original: 

Which cities have concrete strategies for environmental justice?

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Which cities have concrete strategies for environmental justice?

Elizabeth Warren raises the pressure on the military to take climate change seriously

More here:  

Elizabeth Warren raises the pressure on the military to take climate change seriously

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren raises the pressure on the military to take climate change seriously