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New York City public schools will adopt ‘Meatless Mondays’

by cherihomer74079 Posted on March 13, 2019

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Bye-bye, sloppy joes. Hello, tofu! Earlier this week New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that starting next school year, New York City’s public school lunchrooms will not serve meat on Mondays.

“Cutting back on meat a little will improve New Yorkers’ health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement (which was released, naturally, on a Monday.) “We’re expanding Meatless Mondays to all public schools to keep our lunch and planet green for generations to come.”

The New York City school district is the nation’s largest and includes more than 1,800 schools and  1.1 million students. The city’s “Meatless Monday” effort started out as a pilot program in 15 Brooklyn schools, where it proved to be both cost-effective and popular with students.

The fact that kids in NYC are down to munch on vegetarian or vegan meals once per week isn’t really a shocker; plant-based diets are more common among young people. Plus, the younger generation is pretty riled up about climate change, and there is no shortage of evidence that large-scale meat production plays a significant role in greenhouse gas emissions.

“Reducing our appetite for meat is one of the single biggest ways individuals can reduce their environmental impact on our planet,” said Mark Chambers, Director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, in a statement. “Meatless Mondays will introduce hundreds of thousands of young New Yorkers to the idea that small changes in their diet can create larger changes for their health and the health of our planet.”

New York Public Schools is not the first district to adopt the policy — more than 100 other districts across the country have also signed on. So, so long, Monday mystery meat! You will not be missed.

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New York City public schools will adopt ‘Meatless Mondays’

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Nearly all tornadoes are survivable, so why are people still dying?

by doriez53344721 Posted on March 5, 2019

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On Sunday, Alabama suffered one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in its history. At last count, 23 people are dead, with at least seven more missing. The worst tornado began just a few miles from Tuskegee and tore through the entire length of Lee County, smashing mostly rural homes and businesses, before crossing into Georgia. In total, 39 tornadoes were reported across a four-state region.

This isn’t just a weather disaster; it’s a failure of society. Lee County’s per capita income is $22,794, 19 percent live below the poverty line, and 17 percent of houses are mobile homes, nearly three times the national average. Unsafe shelter makes residents much more vulnerable to tornadoes.

Meteorological science has reached a place where nearly all tornadoes are survivable — for those with the means to take shelter underground. Average warning time has skyrocketed from 3 minutes to 14 minutes over the past 40 years — plenty of time to get the warning on your mobile phone (if you have one) and head to your basement (if you have one).

New radar and satellite technology that’s already in place and being developed promises forecasters an even longer heads-up for the strongest and deadliest ones in years to come — potentially doubling lead time to 30 minutes in the near future. Some meteorologists are even working to develop tornado warning systems specifically for mobile home residents. But that extra notice is wasted if you’re unable to do anything about it.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning 23 minutes in advance of the storm that hit Lee County on Sunday, and upgraded it to a tornado emergency 10 minutes before it struck. Yet Sunday’s tornadoes killed more people than every tornado in 2017 and 2018 combined.

The South, the poorest region in the country, is increasingly at risk of tornadoes. Climate change is shifting where tornadoes happen, away from the Plains states toward places like Alabama that are much more densely populated. Evidence also shows that although the overall number of tornadoes isn’t changing much, they’re more likely to come all at once — like on Sunday, precipitating chaotic days in which multiple tornadoes targeted the same towns in the span of just a few hours.

But it’s poverty, not changes in the tornadoes themselves, that often decides whether people survive them.

A recent study showed that Alabama has a 350 percent higher chance of having a mobile home hit by a tornado than Kansas. Yes, there are more houses in Alabama, but the state is also one of the poorest places in the entire developed world.

Lee County is at the outer edge of Alabama’s portion of the “Black Belt” region, the heart of Southern poverty. After more than a century of government neglect and exploitation, its poverty levels and poor infrastructure are more similar to impoverished places in Latin America and the Caribbean than the rest of the United States.

In 2017, a United Nations official conducting a two-week investigation on human rights abuses in the United States was shocked at what he saw in rural Alabama’s Black Belt, including yards filled with open sewage and tropical diseases more common in developing countries.

“The idea of human rights is that people have basic dignity and that it’s the role of the government—yes, the government!—to ensure that no one falls below the decent level,” the U.N.’s Philip Alston said in an interview with Newsweek. “Civilized society doesn’t say for people to go and make it on your own and if you can’t, bad luck.”

Alabama’s section of the Black Belt is where you can clearly see the worst transgressions of slavery and institutionalized racism right now. Lee County’s outsized vulnerability to tornadoes is tied to that history. Adapting to climate change will require tackling poverty and racial injustice — including better health care, housing, schools, and child care — especially for those places like Lee County. And it’s still killing folks during extreme weather — no matter how well we’re able to predict it.

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Nearly all tornadoes are survivable, so why are people still dying?

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A Green New Deal must not sabotage climate goals

by LGYJaymeknbiym Posted on February 2, 2019

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

Recently, 626 organizations — mostly environmental groups, including 350.org and Greenpeace USA — sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to consider a number of principles when crafting climate legislation like a Green New Deal “to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).” Broadly, there were six major principles in the letter: Halt all fossil fuel leasing, phase out all fossil fuel extraction, end fossil fuel and other dirty energy subsidies; transition power generation to 100 percent renewable energy; expand public transportation and phase out fossil-fuel vehicles; harness the full power of the Clean Air Act; ensure a just transition led by impacted communities and workers; and uphold indigenous rights.

These are generally wise goals, but some concerns about the details caused eight major environmental groups — including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund — to decline to sign the letter. As one national environmental group spokesperson put it, “the details matter … There is some language that gave us some concern.”

To meet climate targets, we need every tool in the chest. Meeting the Paris climate agreement targets of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) of global warming above pre-industrial temperatures — or even a more dangerous but more feasible 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) — would require massive and immediate global action to reduce fossil fuel consumption and carbon pollution. Simply put, we’ve already burned through so much of our carbon budget that meeting those targets would take everything we’ve got. (We’ve already locked ourselves in to close to 1.5 degrees C of warming, just based on greenhouse gas emissions to date.)

But the letter includes language that rules out some zero-carbon technologies. For example, it states, “in addition to excluding fossil fuels, any definition of renewable energy must also exclude all combustion-based power generation, nuclear, biomass energy, large scale hydro and waste-to-energy technologies. To achieve this, the United States must shift to 100 percent renewable power generation by 2035 or earlier.”

The listed energy sources all have pros and cons, and groups concerned about their non-climate environmental impacts could certainly make the case for eventually phasing out each one. But the United States currently gets about 32 percent of its electricity generation from natural gas, 30 percent from coal, 20 percent from nuclear, 7 percent from hydroelectricity, 6 percent from wind, and 1 percent from solar, in round numbers. (The remaining few percent come from miscellaneous energy sources such as geothermal, landfill gas, wood, and others.) Were nuclear and hydroelectric power to be eliminated as energy sources at the same time as all fossil fuels, that means that the United States would have to replace its top four electricity sources (nearly 90 percent of its supply) within about 15 years.

Simply replacing all forms of fossil fuels alone (63 percent of the supply) with zero-carbon technologies within this short timeframe would already be an immense task. And the figures here are strictly referring to what it is required for electricity generation in the United States; they don’t even account for other voracious energy-consuming sectors like transportation — which bring the fossil-fuel share of the U.S. economy up to 80 percent, plus another 9 percent from nuclear and 7 percent from hydroelectric power and biomass. Why make the already gargantuan task so much more difficult?

Germany provides a cautionary tale for environmental groups. The country implemented what it called an “Energiewende” (energy transition) strategy that prioritized the phase-out of nuclear power over replacing fossil fuels, despite its goal of achieving a low-carbon energy supply. For example, in the year 2000, 50 percent of Germany’s electricity was supplied by coal compared to 29 percent from nuclear power and 7 percent from renewables. In 2015, the share was 46 percent coal, 15 percent nuclear, and 33 percent renewables. In other words, the country’s coal consumption has remained nearly unchanged since the turn of the century — from 50 percent coal to 46 percent coal. Instead, Germany’s rapid deployment of renewable energy has primarily replaced its nuclear power plants.

There are certainly legitimate objections to nuclear power, but it is nevertheless a zero-carbon energy source. If we consider climate change an urgent, existential threat and if we want to meet the Paris climate targets, then eliminating fossil fuels must be our first priority. Only after fossil fuels have been replaced can we consider doing the same to other zero-carbon energy sources.

Market-based solutions can be effective. Along similar lines, the letter states: “We will vigorously oppose any legislation that … promotes corporate schemes that place profits over community burdens and benefits, including market-based mechanisms and technology options such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power, waste-to-energy and biomass energy.”

The letter seems to envision that the needed carbon pollution cuts will be achieved purely through government regulations rather than market-based mechanisms such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. But it’s unclear why that must necessarily be our approach. Putting a price on carbon pollution is a logical way to incorporate its costs into fuel and energy prices, and 45 top economists across the political spectrum recently endorsed a carbon tax. And rebating the taxed revenue via regular dividend checks is a progressive measure that would benefit lower income communities.

One concern may be that a market-based system pricing carbon pollution would benefit zero-carbon energy technologies that some letter signatories oppose — such as nuclear, hydroelectric, biomass, and fossil fuels using carbon capture and storage. There are environmental reasons to oppose some of these technologies; for example, other harmful pollution from fossil fuels and the disposal of hazardous nuclear waste present very real problems.

But the letter’s stated primary goal is to meet the Paris climate targets, and we’ll fail if we tie our hands behind our backs by ruling out zero-carbon technologies and market-based policy tools. Phasing out nuclear, hydroelectric, and biomass energy should only be considered after fossil fuels have been eliminated. Pricing carbon pollution certainly shouldn’t be ruled out (and in fact should be pursued vigorously), and even carbon capture and sequestration should remain on the table.

If we consider climate change an urgent existential threat that justifies the Paris climate targets, then at the very least phasing out fossil fuels and carbon pollution must be our top priority when crafting climate policy. Other concerns that undermine zero-carbon energy sources must be secondary, lest we sabotage our own climate-preserving efforts.

Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist, and author of Climatology versus Pseudoscience. He has published 10 papers related to climate change in peer-reviewed journals, including three studies on the expert climate consensus.

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Minnesota winters ain’t what they used to be

by EstellaMotter2 Posted on January 28, 2019

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A rare Arctic blast is set to freeze a vast 12-state swath of the Midwest, from the Dakotas to Ohio. Wind chills well below -40 degrees F, like those expected this week, are cold enough to cause frostbite in minutes. Chicago is set to have its coldest day in decades; “the coldest air many of us have ever experienced,” according to the National Weather Service. Even schools in hardy Minnesota are closing due to the cold.

As brutal as that weather sounds, it’s a point of pride for locals — and this kind of cold is becoming rarer as the climate warms. In Minnesota, one of the fastest warming states in the country, winters are warming at a rate 13 times faster than summers, according to new research from the University of Minnesota. Extreme cold days are virtually ending in some parts of the state.

Grand Rapids is the heart of the coldest part of Minnesota, and one of the coldest inhabited places in the continental United States. From 1950 to 2000, there were 45 days with actual temperatures below -35 degrees F. This century, there have only been two. Wednesday could be the third.

In Minneapolis, Wednesday’s forecasted low temperature of -28 degrees F doesn’t even rank among the city’s top 10 historical all-time lows. And the bulk of this month was much warmer than normal, so even with these few days of cold weather, January 2019 will likely rank warmer than the long-term average.

And, of course, this isn’t just a Minnesota thing: Hundreds of millions of people will lose access to frozen lakes in the northern hemisphere in the coming decades, according to a new study, impacting everything from the availability of freshwater to core aspects of cultural identities.

In this context, this week’s Midwest cold snap isn’t historic — it’s just a glimpse of past winters. As a Minnesota transplant, I was ready for cold weather when I moved here. What I wasn’t ready for was how deep Minnesota natives’ reverence of the cold goes.

On Sunday night, as the National Weather Service issued a warning for 8 to 10 inches of snow and wind chills approaching -60 degrees F (colder than the top of the Greenland ice sheet), I put out a call to my neighbors for their favorite stories of winters past. The responses were almost poetic.

This winter-worship is acted out in person at The Great Northern, an annual outdoor festival of snow sculptures, pond hockey, and sledding in the Twin Cities. And this weekend, temperatures there are set to soar back into the mid-40s, putting frozen activities in jeopardy.

Young people in Minnesota are growing up with a state that’s vastly different than even their parents’ youth, when it comes to having truly cold winters. Earlier this month, a group of about 100 youth held a meeting with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to demand a Green New Deal, in part based on their desire to preserve the region’s cultural traditions. The cold snap is a window into what makes Minnesota Minnesota — and what we could lose under unchecked climate change.

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Minnesota winters ain’t what they used to be

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Minnesota youth demand Green New Deal in meeting with governor

by DemiDealba Posted on January 10, 2019

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On Wednesday, more than 100 youth from across the state ascended the snow-free steps of the Minnesota capitol building to meet with newly inaugurated Governor Tim Walz and demand comprehensive action on climate change.

The group, Minnesota Can’t Wait, was there to push for a Green New Deal. Organizers called it the country’s first youth-led, state-level effort to demand the policy, which pairs labor and environmental justice efforts. In response to the meeting, Walz announced that he would immediately establish a statewide cross-agency working group on climate change.

Minnesota’s winters are warming faster than almost anywhere else in the country. In their conversation with the governor on Wednesday, youth spoke of their love of outdoor ice skating and dog sledding, but also their fear of the rise in infectious diseases and climate disasters.

Minnesota Can’t Wait wants state government to tackle the issue from all angles: In addition to pressuring the governor and legislature on Green New Deal legislation, the group calls for a ban on fossil fuel projects and executive action to regulate emissions. The demands are in line with what IPCC scientists say is necessary to stabilize global warming at 1.5 degrees C, the point above which change is expected to become large enough to disrupt society at a grand scale.

“The idea is that we stop making decisions based on what is politically possible and start doing what is necessary,” said Lia Harel, age 18, from Hopkins, Minnesota. “That’s been the driving force in getting these youth to act, because we don’t have time to wait any more.”

The event was inspired by sit-ins organized by the Sunrise Movement in congressional offices in Washington, D.C., and around the country in recent weeks, and wasn’t originally intended to include a meeting with the governor. However, a representative from Climate Generation, a Minnesota-based youth organization that helped plan the event, said that once they informed the governor’s office of the sit-in, they decided to invite the youth in for a meeting.

“What you’re asking for is concrete changes, which is what you should be asking for,” Walz told the youth. “This move is a tangible evidence of where we are going to go.”

Minnesota’s new state legislative session kicks off with Democrats just one Senate vote away from total control, and a new House committee explicitly focused on climate change for the first time.

“I met with youth climate leaders several weeks ago,” said Jean Wagenius, the state representative chairing the new House climate committee, in an email to Grist. “We will be working with them to rapidly accelerate efforts to reduce climate change gases.”

Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, who is a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and the highest-ranking Native woman ever elected to executive office in U.S. history, attended the event, too. Flanagan said the issue of climate change was especially personal for her. Her tribe has fought for years to protect their lands from pipeline development, and now, she hopes the inclusive approach demonstrated on Wednesday could be a model for other states.

“We talk about having a table where the people who are directly affected by issues can pull up a chair and make sure that they’re seen, heard, and valued,” Flanagan said in an interview with Grist after the event.

That willingness from elected leaders to listen to youth describe the need for radical climate policy has been rare so far. With federal action toward a Green New Deal seemingly stalled for now, youth are hoping for quicker progress at the state level.

That could happen in Minnesota. In Walz’s inauguration address this week, he made a clear call for bold climate action. “Instead of burying our head in our hands when it comes to our changing climate or to providing affordable housing, accessible healthcare and good-paying jobs, we must tackle them head on,” Walz said.

Towards the end of his conversation with Minnesota Can’t Wait, Walz asked the youth to go back to their communities and make the case for the radical change that would benefit future generations as well as the state’s current economy.

It helped that his daughter, Hope, was also there, on her 18th birthday. At one point, she raised her hand, stood up behind her father, and said, “I’m just going to ask how I can get involved with the group, you know, so there’s a better chance of him following through.”

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Minnesota youth demand Green New Deal in meeting with governor

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Bernie Sanders calls out Trump for ignoring the real crisis: climate change

by ShelliDubois Posted on January 9, 2019

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President Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday night about an issue he thinks is worth shutting down the government over: illegal immigration at the United States’ border with Mexico. The U.S., he said, is facing “a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.” He called on Democrats to approve a $5.7 billion steel barrier — a move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer say they have no intention of making.

In response to Trump’s address, Pelosi said, “President Trump must stop holding the American people hostage, must stop manufacturing a crisis, and must reopen the government.”

She wasn’t alone in accusing the president of ginning up a fake emergency. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who offered an unofficial response to Trump’s primetime address via YouTube and social media, levied the same charge.

Sanders hit back at Trump for the numerous falsehoods in the president’s speech, and for distracting the American people with politically-charged antics. He added that the U.S. is already facing an emergency of monumental proportions: It’s called climate change. The once-and-potentially-future presidential candidate referred to warming as “the biggest crisis of all.”

“The scientific community has made it very clear in telling us that climate change is real and is causing devastating harm to our country and the entire planet,” he said at the 11-minute mark in his speech. “Mr. President, we don’t need to create artificial crises. We have enough real crises.”

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Bernie Sanders calls out Trump for ignoring the real crisis: climate change

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Ocasio-Cortez: 70 percent tax on mega-rich could pay for Green New Deal

by MikeNeild84 Posted on January 7, 2019

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New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a lot of big ideas, including the Green New Deal, an economy-wide green jobs initiative to combat climate change. But big ideas require big funding — and she has a new plan to make that happen.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper on Sunday’s 60 Minutes, Ocasio-Cortez floated the possibility of taxing the wealthiest tax brackets — people who make $10 million a year or more — up to 60 or 70 percent to fund the Green New Deal. “There’s an element where, yeah, people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” she said.

A 70 percent tax rate might seem astronomically high, but only if you have a short memory. “Under Eisenhower, the top earners paid a 91 percent marginal rate,” Vox’s Matthew Yglesias points out. Under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, that rate was closer to 70 percent, and now it’s around 37 percent.

Right now, someone who makes $10 million gets taxed at the same rate as a person who makes $550,000. Ocasio-Cortez’s progressive tax would basically ensure that there are more tax rate milestones between the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy. She’s suggesting a rate that rises as you make more money, with steeper percentages kicking in above certain benchmarks.

If that sounds radical to you, AOC is fine with that. “I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country,” she said.

You can watch the full episode here. 

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Ocasio-Cortez: 70 percent tax on mega-rich could pay for Green New Deal

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As anti-plastic movements sweep the globe, change doesn’t always come easy

by DannyBurden771 Posted on December 23, 2018

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

Australia’s two largest supermarket chains made waves earlier this year when they announced plans to ban single-use plastic bags in stores across the country. Environmentalists hailed the move, which according to new figures released this month, may have saved more than 1.5 billion bags from going into overstuffed kitchen drawers or landfills in less than six months.

The National Retail Association, a nonprofit group that represents the grocery industry, said in early December the entire country has seen an astonishing 80 percent drop in single-use plastic bags since Coles and Woolworths implemented the bans in July. The two supermarkets, which together own more than 60 percent of the grocery market in Australia, have each said they’ve kept more than 700 million plastic bags out of circulation this year.

But despite the good news, the proposal didn’t happen without some controversy.

Angry shoppers prompted outbursts in checkout lines in several Coles stores and the supermarket giant backflipped just weeks after implementing its ban amid vehement complaints. Coles stores quickly said they would provide heavier-duty, reusable bags for free for the foreseeable future, after some media outlets dubbed the phenomenon “bag rage.”

The reversal, however, created an even bigger outcry among environmental groups who claimed the chain had only increased the plastic problem by making single-use bags more durable and resistant to breaking down. The supermarket quickly backflipped again, saying it would provide those reusable bags for free for a short time before charging customers for them once more.

Both supermarket chains now provide several types of heavy-duty plastic bags for purchase that shoppers can pay for at a cost of about 11 cents apiece, or upwards of several dollars for nicer versions that double as coolers or are made of jute.

Some have worried that the more durable bags have only replaced cheaper single-use plastic bags, but both supermarket chains said they had seen a large uptick in customers bringing in their own bags in the five-month period since the old bags were phased out.

Both Coles and Woolworths declined to say how many new reusable bags they’ve sold. The 1.5 billion figure shared by the NRA doesn’t take into account any multi-use plastic products that have been handed out in their place. But Coles said the retailer was “delighted to see customers grow more accustomed to bringing” bags from home, a sentiment echoed by Woolworths.

“The majority of our customers are forming new habits by bringing their own shopping bags into stores,” a Woolworths spokesperson told HuffPost in an email. “This is reflected at the check out where we are seeing less and less transactions from customers having to buy new bags.”

Greenpeace Australia, which was heavily critical of Coles during its double-backflip on the ban, said the end of single-use plastic sales was a “great step in the right direction.” It also noted that on top of the grocery bans, every state in Australia has its own ban on plastic bags or one about to go into effect, except New South Wales (where the country’s largest city, Sydney, lies).

Zoë Deans, a campaigner at the environmental group said Greenpeace knew “people were happy to bring reusable bags with them” after an initial adjustment period, but said the change can take time.

“Switching to reusable bags can take a bit of adjustment, and our recommendation is to keep some in your car, by your front door, in your desk — make sure they’re accessible so you don’t forget them,” Deans told HuffPost. “We’d love to see supermarkets encouraging and trusting consumers to do so.”

Single-use plastic bags are produced en masse, but difficult to recycle. Australia has a population of just 25 million, but Coles and Woolworths estimated before the ban the chains used some 3.2 billion bags apiece for customers’ groceries.

The products can easily wind up in waterways, and a 2018 report by the Ocean Conservancy found plastic grocery bags to be the fifth most common item gathered during environmental clean-ups. Stories of animals who gorged to death on plastic have regularly appeared in the news, including a whale found with more than 80 bags in its stomach.

Bans or restrictions on plastic bags are now in effect in more than 40 countries, according to The New York Times.

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Bad news for the Amazon as Brazil backs out of hosting UN climate talks

by Gabriele0723 Posted on November 28, 2018

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Brazil was set to be the host country for COP25, next year’s crucial United Nation talks to address climate change, but just two months after offering to do so, the country’s officials have reversed their stance.

Brazilian leaders communicated the decision on Monday to Patrícia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Climate Change, just days before the start of COP24, this year’s annual climate conference being held in Katowice, Poland. The Brazilian government blames the change on budget constraints and the ongoing presidential transition process. But others are interpreting the move as yet another sign of President-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s impending war on the environment.

“This decision is not surprising considering it comes from a leader with proven skepticism towards the reality of climate change, and open animosity towards those working to preserve our climate,” Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch, told Grist. Poirier also says he doesn’t buy Brazil’s budget excuse for reversing on hosting the conference. “It is clear that Mr. Bolsonaro’s reactionary political agenda was the decisive factor in this decision.”

Bolsonaro confirmed that he participated in the decision, saying “I recommended to our future minister that we avoid the realization of this event here in Brazil.”

(The United Nations did not immediately reply to Grist’s request for comment.)

Before Bolsonaro’s election, the country seemed eager to host the next round of international climate talks. According to Brazilian news site O Globo, the foreign ministry had said Brazil’s offer reflected “the consensus of Brazilian society on the importance and the urgency of actions that contribute to the fight against climate change.”

But in some ways, the current reversal comes as no surprise. During his campaign, Bolsonaro (a.k.a. The Trump of the Tropics) vowed to jettison from the Paris Climate Agreement — though he’s since backtracked from that promise. Still, he’s been steadfast in his desire to open up the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, to mining, farming and dam building. He’s said he wants to open up the country’s existing indigenous reserves to commercial exploitation. And earlier this month, he chose a new foreign minister that has said he believes climate change is a Marxist plot to help China.

A recent report issued by the Brazilian government found the Amazon has reached its highest levels of deforestation in a decade, thanks to illegal logging and the expansion of agriculture in the area. And there are major concerns that Bolsonaro’s lax environmental policies could push the Amazon past its tipping point as one of the world’s most important carbon sinks.

Brazil withdrawing its offer to host COP25 also carries symbolic weight when you consider the country is the birthplace of global climate talks. The milestone Rio Earth Summit of 1992 set the green agenda for decades to come.

“The image of Brazil is at risk,” said Carlos Rittl, executive secretary of the Brazilian Climate Observatory, a coalition of environmental non-governmental organizations, in an interview with the New York Times. “Climate and the environment are the only issues where Brazil is a leader in global terms. We are not leaders in world trade, we are not leaders in a geopolitical sense on security issues. But on climate and environment we are leaders, and we are giving that up.”

The South American country’s decision has left the United Nations scrambling to find a new site for the summit. A new venue for the summit has not yet been determined.

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Bad news for the Amazon as Brazil backs out of hosting UN climate talks

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How Brazil’s presidential election could eff up the planet for everyone

by FreemanGaines6 Posted on October 9, 2018

As the vast Brazilian rainforest steadily dwindles, so do our chances of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And with the possible election of Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called “Trump of the Tropics” and far-right frontrunner in the Brazilian presidential election, a crucial part of the planet’s carbon emission-curbing toolkit might be in jeopardy.

Bolsonaro has indicated he may open Indigenous areas up to mining, even potentially introducing a paved highway through the Amazon. The environmental impact of those policies would be “the biggest threat to the Amazon since Brazil was under a dictatorship,” said Doug Boucher, Scientific Advisor for The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Tropical Forests and Climate Initiative. “It’s a threat to the climate of the entire planet.”

From 2005 to 2012, Brazil’s forests were doing alright. Deforestation decreased by about two thirds under the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration — from 20,000 kilometers per year before Lula was elected to about 6,000 square kilometers per year. Since then, deforestation has basically remained at the same comparatively low levels, reducing Brazil’s CO2 emissions by more than half, according to Boucher.

Any shift in the country’s administration could endanger that progress — Presidential elections in Brazil tend to coincide with higher deforestation rates, regardless of the candidate. But Bolsonaro’s vision for handling environmental matters is uniquely jarring. Known for his homophobic, racist, and misogynistic views, the controversial politician also has a long track record of opposing an environmental agenda. He’s against taking action on climate change at all, pledging to follow President Trump’s lead by jettisoning the Paris Climate Agreement.

Bolsonaro has also made his views on race blatantly clear: He has criticized the Brazilian government’s commitment to preserving vast swaths of the Amazon for Indigenous people, promising that he will “not to give the Indians another inch of land.” Moreover, Bolsonaro has allied himself with the right-wing ruralista bloc, which represents the interests of agribusinesses and large landholders, and has been trying to strip away environmental protections against deforestation for many years.

Bolsonaro’s proposed environmental hit list goes on. He has promised to scrap the country’s Environment Ministry altogether, putting it under the scope of the Agriculture Ministry, which is led by agribusiness.

“Instead of spreading the message that he will fight deforestation and organized crime, he says he will attack the ministry of environment, Ibama and ICMBio [Brazil’s federal environment agencies],” said Brazil’s current environment minister, Edson Duarte. “It’s the same as saying that he will withdraw the police from the streets.”

In many ways, Bolsonaro, an ex-army captain, seems to want to revert to the Amazonian policies that Brazil employed during the years of the South American nation’s dictatorship. At that time, during the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, the country promoted rapid development of the Amazon, paving roads and converting the forests into farmland and ranchland.

As the global fight against catastrophic climate change ramps up, forests are a necessary front of the action. According to a dire, new report by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), halting deforestation could play a vital role in limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as forests have a significant capacity to absorb and store carbon.

“We have to take carbon dioxide basically out of the atmosphere in order to prevent a very dangerous increase in temperature, and major increases in floods, severe storms, and heat waves,” Boucher said. “The best way we know to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is to preserve and rebuild forests.”And protecting the last remnants of Brazil’s forests would go a long way. The country contains 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest — by far the largest forest in the world — which uptakes CO2 year-round due to its perpetually wet and warm climate.

This past week, Bolsonaro won the first round of Brazil’s presidential election by a near majority, and yet his success is not yet certain. He will face left-wing second-place finisher Fernando Haddad in the second round later this month.

“Civil society should keep the pressure up — and they already are,” Boucher said. “We have to watch and see what happens.”

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How Brazil’s presidential election could eff up the planet for everyone

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