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Former U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon just endorsed Democrats’ fight for a Green New Deal

by IvanVelasquez1 Posted on January 25, 2019

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

Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon became the first major international diplomat to throw his weight behind the so-called Green New Deal, a nascent effort by left-wing Democrats to zero out planet-warming emissions and end poverty over the next decade.

In an interview with HuffPost, Ban — now the co-chair of the newly launched Global Commission on Adaptation, a cadre of top world leaders slated to host a summit next year in the Netherlands — called the push “a very, very good initiative.”

“I would strongly support it,” Ban said by phone Wednesday afternoon from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “This kind of initiative is good.”

He held the movement in stark contrast to the climate agenda President Donald Trump has pursued, aggressively bolstering fossil fuel production and announcing a withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. He called the Trump administration “very worrisome.”

“It is very important that the people should speak out,” he said. “I have always been urging that there should be the policies of a civil society heard loud and clearly all around the world.”

Ban, 74, made climate change a priority during his term as the United Nations’ eighth secretary-general from January 2007 to December 2016. In 2008, as much of the developed world slid into the Great Recession, the South Korean diplomat urged international leaders to enact a Green New Deal, which he defined as “an investment that fights climate change, creates millions of green jobs, and spurs green growth.”

The concept caught on. Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, called for a Green New Deal on the campaign trail. Labour Party activists began laying the groundwork for a government-run green investment bank in the United Kingdom. By 2009, the United Nations drafted a report calling for a Global Green New Deal.

But in 2010, austerity politics swept across the Atlantic. In the United States, Democrats came close to passing a cap-and-trade bill — a conservative market mechanism for curbing climate-altering emissions — but ultimately backed down. The term “Green New Deal” remained core to the U.S. Green Party’s platform, but away from the political fringe it all but disappeared.

That is, until 2018. A spate of left-wing Democrats revived the term and imbued it with a new sense of urgency and a much broader scope, calling for a rapid transition to 100 percent renewable energy and a guarantee of union-wage jobs for the millions of Americans struggling to survive as income inequality worsened. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a Democrat from New York) became the most prominent supporter, and at least two top Senate Democrats are now working on legislation. At least half the declared 2020 candidates for president now say they support a Green New Deal in some form.

On Wednesday, Ban stopped short of critiquing the longstanding dogma, among both Democrats and the few Republicans who acknowledge the realities of climate change, that says market-based tweaks, such as putting a price on carbon, are the only politically feasible paths to cutting emissions in the United States.

“There have been many discussions on how to address climate — cap-and-trade, carbon trading, carbon taxes,” he said. “Any such ideas which merit some deep discussions … that should continue.”

The remark bucked with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, which determined in October the world has roughly a decade to halve global emissions or face cataclysmic warming of at least 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and likely much more. At a news conference, two authors of the IPCC report laughed when asked if market-based policies alone could deliver the cuts needed.

Asked whether the fossil fuel industry should be barred from future climate talks, Ban said no, despite widespread criticism of oil and gas companies’ deep-pocketed efforts to upend climate policies in the United States and elsewhere.

“I don’t think those people should not be allowed to participate,” Ban said. “They should listen to the voices of the people. These climate talks and climate conferences are open to everybody, so … we should welcome them.”

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California’s Camp Fire was the most expensive natural disaster worldwide in 2018

by JanaGoffage2300 Posted on January 12, 2019

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

The Camp Fire, which killed 86 people and burned the Northern California town of Paradise to the ground in November, was last year’s most expensive natural disaster worldwide, according to a report from German-based global reinsurance company Munich Re.

The fire, which was the deadliest and most destructive in the state’s modern history, tore through nearly 14,000 homes around Paradise, a rural community about an hour and half north of Sacramento.

Now the blaze holds another devastating record, according to the report released Tuesday: the costliest natural disaster in 2018. Each year the reinsurer tracks major natural catastrophes and estimates the losses incurred, including to insurers, in its natural catastrophe loss database.

Natural disasters worldwide in 2018 cost a total of about $160 billion — significantly higher than the average over the last 30 years of about $140 billion (adjusted for inflation).

The Camp Fire was the costliest last year, at $16.5 billion in losses, including $12.5 billion of insured losses. The next most expensive disaster was Hurricane Michael, which barreled through Florida in October, killing nearly four dozen people and wrecking entire communities.

“Our data shows that the losses from wildfires in California have risen dramatically in recent years,” Ernst Rauch, Munich Re’s head of climate, said in a press release. “We have experienced a significant increase in hot, dry summers, which has been a major factor in the formation of wildfires. Many scientists see a link between these developments and advancing climate change.”

The Camp Fire was just one of several record-breaking natural disasters around the world last year that were an indicator of climate change’s effects coming home to roost.

Multiple hurricanes in the U.S. last year — including Michael and Florence hitting within a month — and typhoons tearing through Japan and the Philippines were among the major catastrophes that came at a high cost in 2018, according to the Munich Re report.

The Camp Fire could come at a serious cost to power company PG&E. Dozens of Camp Fire victims have sued the utility for its alleged role in the blaze, saying it did not properly maintain its power lines. Their lawsuit points to PG&E documents that indicated a failing transmission line was in the area where the massive blaze was believed to have started.

Last month California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the company could face charges as serious as murder or manslaughter for its alleged role in the blaze as well as other wildfires it may be connected to around the state over the past couple of years, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, President Donald Trump threatened to cut off wildfire aid to California from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He said in a now-deleted tweet that state officials had to “get their act together, which is unlikely” and improve forest management.

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California’s Camp Fire was the most expensive natural disaster worldwide in 2018

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Democrats might have put a roadblock on the path to a Green New Deal

by MarielVUIU Posted on January 4, 2019

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Thursday was a big day in the U.S. House of Representatives: Democrats took control, Nancy Pelosi regained the gavel as House Speaker, the 116th class of freshman representatives was sworn in, and the new-look legislative body voted on a bill that will fund most government agencies through the 2019 fiscal year and potentially end a two-week government shutdown.

In her first speech as newly elected House Speaker on Thursday, Pelosi singled out climate change as a moral, health, and national security issue. “The American people understand the urgency,” she said. “The people are ahead of the Congress. The Congress must join them.”

But that new budget the House just voted to approve, engineered by Pelosi herself, includes a pay-as-you-go provision that some progressive critics say could hinder attempts at creating sweeping climate legislation. “PayGo,” as it’s known, is a rule that requires any new proposed spending to be balanced out with more taxes or budget cuts before it can come to a vote.

Progressives, environmental groups, and others are displeased with the potential effects of this provision; they say it will stifle the House’s ability to pass big-ticket items like “Medicare-for-all,” tuition-free public college, and, yes, a massive climate-targeted package like a Green New Deal. (Nevermind that such legislation would likely fare poorly in a Republican-controlled Senate.)

On Wednesday, high-profile progressives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California said they would vote against Pelosi’s package, arguing it kneecaps the liberal agenda they’ve been championing. “We shouldn’t hinder ourselves from the start,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Wednesday. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders agreed: “I’m concerned that the concept of PAYGO will make it harder for Congress to address the many crises facing our working families,” he tweeted.

Democratic leaders pushed back, arguing PayGo will decrease the deficit — which is set to balloon over the next decade thanks to the passage of 2017’s GOP-championed tax bill — and restore fiscal responsibility to Congress. They also promised members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who were on the fence about the bill that PayGo wouldn’t stand in the way of major progressive priorities. Pelosi’s chief of staff, Drew Hammill, argued that a vote against the rules package would result in the Republican-controlled Office of Management and Budget defunding any Democratic initiatives that increased government spending.

Despite dissent from a vocal minority on the left, the Democratic rules package passed 234-197 on Thursday evening. Only three Democratic members, Ocasio-Cortez, Khanna, and Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard voted against — a fraction of the 18 votes needed to sink it.

So, does PayGo’s passage mean the end of the Green New Deal and other large-scale progressive legislation?

Not necessarily, according to Justin Talbot-Zorn, senior adviser at the progressive think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “There is a procedural vote through which Congress can suspend the rules and pass legislation,” he said.

The rule could make it more difficult, however, to get people on board with big, expensive agenda items. “It does deter us from being able to do legislation at a scale necessary to do Green New Deal-type legislation,” Talbot-Zorn says. “It emboldens opponents of a Green New Deal; it gives them another argument against it.”

In other words, if progressive Democrats want to push for a large infrastructure investment in, say, green jobs, at some point in the future, they will have to expend more effort to bypass a rule package proposed and approved by their own party.

Or as Talbot-Zorn put it: “If the Green New Deal and major green infrastructure investment is going to be a central plank of the Democratic platform in the House — which it really needs to be — why would we adopt a rules package that would inhibit the passage of that central plank?”

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Democrats might have put a roadblock on the path to a Green New Deal

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Inside the bill that set the ‘strongest clean energy requirement in the nation’

by IlanaSettles Posted on December 29, 2018

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

Washington, D.C., is positioning itself on the climate policy fast track. The District of Columbia city council voted unanimously last week to approve an expansive climate bill requiring utility providers to generate 100 percent of their energy supply from renewable sources by 2032. If D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signs the legislation as expected, the provisions will put the nation’s capital on a faster, formally pledged timeline toward cutting utility emissions than any U.S. state. (Hawaii and California have both pledged state-wide goals of 100 percent renewable energy for electricity by 2045.)

While several smaller cities have already reached similar 100-percent renewable energy targets, Washington, D.C., is by far the largest city to make such a commitment. And that’s not all that’s in the bill. Together, the provisions were dubbed the “strongest clean energy requirement in the nation,” by Mark Rodeffer, D.C. Sierra Club chapter chair.

So what’s in D.C.’s bill? And what can the rest of us learn from it, at a time when cities and states are racing to fill the gap left by federal regulators to slow climate change?

What the bill regulates: Electricity and some transportation

D.C.’s new bill is intended to dramatically decrease emissions from one of the most common sources, electricity, by ratcheting up the requirements on utility providers. D.C.’s current law already mandates that utility providers derive 50 percent of their energy supply from renewable sources by 2032, with 5 percent carved out for solar. The new bill doubles these figures to 100 percent renewables by 2032 with 10 percent solar by 2041.

Buildings account for 74 percent of D.C.’s carbon emissions. And the bill also establishes a separate program to set benchmarks for energy efficiency for the largest buildings in the city, those with more than 10,000 square feet of gross floor area. The specific standards, however, have not yet been set. According to Cliff Majersik, the Institute for Market Transformation executive director who worked on the bill, D.C. will become the first U.S. jurisdiction “to require a broad swath of existing buildings to improve their whole-building energy performance.”

The bill also tackles another major contributor of emissions: transportation. While the bill won’t do anything to regulate residents’ private transportation choices, it will regulate the city’s own contributions: By 2045, all public transportation and privately owned vehicle fleets in D.C. will have to produce zero emissions.

How would the bill be implemented?

The burden falls on utility companies to meet benchmarks for renewable electricity — or pay a price. Every year, the city sets renewable energy standards for companies to hit that increase incrementally until they reach 100 percent in 2032. What happens if companies don’t meet those standards? The city requires electricity suppliers to to make compliance payments into D.C.’s Renewable Energy Development Fund.

There are other guaranteed revenue sources to fund other parts of the bill. Utility companies serving D.C. are already required to collect fees from customers who use natural gas and electricity. These fees are put toward a fund for D.C.’s energy efficiency efforts. But this bill temporarily raises those per-unit rates and creates a new fee on home heating and fuel oil to raise even more money for energy efficiency. (D.C. residents who make under a certain income, with the amount dependent on household size, will still be eligible for utilities discounts.)

Helping low-income residents transition to clean energy

Some of the revenue from increased fees will be used to help low-income communities adapt.

“Communities that have done the least to cause climate change [are] disproportionately bearing the burden of climate change,” Judith Howell, a member of the labor union 32BJ SEIU, said in a statement. “Working people in the U.S. and around the world will be extremely vulnerable to those changes.”

Thirty percent of the additional revenue will be put aside for programs like weatherization and bill assistance for low-income households, as well as job training in energy efficiency fields. At least $3 million annually will also be allocated toward energy efficiency upgrades in affordable housing buildings.

The criticism that watered down one requirement for utilities

In November, local energy company Pepco ran some misleading ads on Facebook urging D.C. residents to “act now” and “act boldly” to achieve a “sustainable vision.” When users clicked through to a petition, what it was asking was that its customers oppose a provision of the bill requiring Pepco to use long-term contracts for renewable energy.

WAMU’s Jacob Fenston wrote in November:

“Pepco wants residents to sound off on one small piece of the legislation: a requirement that Pepco purchase renewable energy under long-term contracts. According to the DOEE analysis, this provision would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent by 2032.”

Majersik told CityLab that the long-term contract provision Pepco opposed was stripped from the bill, but may be proposed as part of a new bill in 2019. Ultimately, Pepco supported the revised bill and released a statement calling the legislation an “important step toward advancing the cause of clean energy.”

Among the primary supporters of the bill was the D.C. Climate Coalition, which included over 110 advocacy organizations, faith groups, unions, consumer advocate organizations, and D.C. businesses.

Camila Thorndike, D.C. campaign director at the CCAN Action Fund said in a press release: “With the passage of this bill, we’re taking the power back from President Trump and taking control of our energy future.”

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Inside the bill that set the ‘strongest clean energy requirement in the nation’

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Beto O’Rourke might have an oil money problem

by Candela1571 Posted on December 19, 2018

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Beto O’Rourke, millennials’ favorite wannabe-senator-maybe-president, has landed himself in the burn book. The Texas Democratic representative has been taken off the list of politicians who signed a “No Fossil Fuel Money” pledge, according to a new report by Sludge.

Taking the pledge, led by Oil Change USA, means politicians will not knowingly take contributions of over $200 from “the PACs, executives, or front groups of fossil fuel companies — companies whose primary business is the extraction, processing, distribution, or sale of oil, gas, or coal.”

O’Rourke received $430,000 from individuals working in the oil and gas industry, 75 percent of which he received in the form of a donation over $200. There were 29 large donations from fossil fuel executives, according to Sludge reporter Alex Kotch, a strict no-no if you’re sitting pretty on that list. O’Rourke accepted no money from any PAC throughout the entirety of his campaign.

“While we are pleased he hasn’t taken fossil fuel PAC money, he needs to go further in order to be in compliance with the full No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge,” David Turnbull, strategic communications director at Oil Change USA, told Sludge. Other millennial favorites still on the list include Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders.

In the 2018 Texas midterms, O’Rourke faced incumbent Senator Ted Cruz, who received $505,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry. No surprise, Cruz didn’t signed the pledge.

O’Rourke has the high, high score of 95 percent from The League of Conservation Voters, but has a couple less-than-green votes on fossil fuels. In 2015, he voted against the oil export ban and in 2016, he voted against an amendment which would prohibit the use of funds for offshore drilling research in the Gulf of Mexico. O’Rourke also failed to mention climate change in the first high-profile debate between him and Cruz in September.

The 2020 rumor mill is churning despite O’Rourke’s claims that he isn’t interested. It’d probably be easier for O’Rourke to avoid oil-stained contributions during a presidential bid versus a Senate run in the major oil state. If he does run, the O’Rourke campaign may want to reread the fine print of the pledge and do their best to get back on the nice list.

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Here’s a way to fight climate change: Empower women

by LaraeMcDonagh Posted on December 9, 2018

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

“Gender and climate are inextricably linked,” said environmentalist and author Katharine Wilkinson on stage at TEDWomen last week, a gathering of women thought leaders and activists in Palm Desert, California.

Women, she says, are disproportionately affected by climate change. When communities are decimated by floods or droughts, tsunamis or fire, the most vulnerable among them suffer the most. Because women across the world have fewer rights, less money, and fewer freedoms, in those moments of extreme loss, women are often hit the hardest. “There’s greater risk of displacement, higher odds of being injured or killed during a natural disaster. Prolonged drought can precipitate early marriage, as families contend with scarcity. Floods can force last-resort prostitution as women struggle to make ends meet. These dynamics are most acute under conditions of poverty,” she says.

With several new reports painting an increasingly bleak picture of the state of the world’s climate, Wilkinson is delivering her message at a time when leaders on the global stage are looking for solutions. As thousands of people gather this week at a major climate summit known as COP24, Wilkinson is making a plea to open people’s eyes to one fact: Women’s rights are Earth’s rights. “In my experience, to have eyes wide open is to hold a broken heart every day,” she says.

But she has hope. Though women feel the effects of climate the most, they also represent an opportunity. “To address climate change, we must make gender equity a reality. And in the face of a seemingly impossible challenge, women and girls are a fierce source of possibility,” Wilkinson says. She and her team at the nonprofit Project Drawdown have been studying the real-world steps people can take to fix climate change, resulting in a best-selling 2017 book highlighting the top 100 solutions to reverse warming.

Her argument is that if women are empowered in three distinct ways, the downstream effects on the environment will make a huge difference in the fight for climate change. She argues that if women were treated more equally professionally, they’d have fewer kids and the land they farm would be more efficient, all of which would help save the planet.

“Women are the primary farmers of the world,” Wilkinson says. They produce 60 to 80 percent of the food in lower-income countries, she says, on small plots. These farmers are known as “smallholders.”

Yet due to local laws and entrenched biases, women farmers are given fewer resources and support from their governments, and they have fewer rights to their own land. For example, in some countries women are not allowed to own their own land, which makes it impossible for them to use the land as collateral for a loan to buy farming equipment. In other places, women are are not able to borrow money without a man’s signature. These restrictions hamper their ability to run their farms efficiently, leading to lower yields.

This is a problem not just for their earning potential, but for the Earth. Every year, humans clear-cut forests to create more agriculture land to grow crops to feed the world’s growing population. In turn, this deforestation increases the rate of climate change.

Instead of clear-cutting new land, why not work to make the existing farms run by women more efficient? “Close that gap and farm yields rise by 20 to 30 percent,” says Wilkinson. “Support women smallholders, realize higher yields, avoid deforestation, and sustain the life-giving power of forests.” If women’s farms yielded as much on average as farms run by men across the world, it would stop approximately 2 billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere between now and 2050. “That’s on par with the impact household recycling can have globally,” she says.

Besides addressing inequality in agriculture, Wilkinson says giving women access to high-quality voluntary reproductive health care would have tremendous benefit for the climate.

“Curbing growth of our human population is a side effect,” she says — one that would reduce global emissions. Do that by making birth control and medical care more available to women across the world.

And do it by educating women. Wilkinson notes that more than 130 million women worldwide are denied access to school. Yet the more education a woman attains, the fewer children she has. From a conservation perspective, empowering women to have smaller families is an objectively positive outcome. “The right to go to school effects how many human beings live on this planet,” says Wilkinson.

With these three changes — empowerment of women farmers, increased global access to family planning, and the right to an education — Wilkinson and her team at Project Drawdown predict that by midcentury, improving gender equality could equal 1 billion fewer people on Earth.

“Gender equity is on par with wind turbines and solar panels and forests,” Wilkinson says, adding, “This does not mean women and girls are responsible for fixing everything. But we probably will.”

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Here’s a way to fight climate change: Empower women

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Another 2 billion people are coming to dinner. How do we feed them?

by ColleenMXZ Posted on December 5, 2018

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How do we feed the world’s growing population without wrecking the earth? It’s a question that looks especially urgent given estimates that some 9.8 billion people will inhabit the planet by 2050, up from 7.6 billion now. Without improving techniques and technology, feeding all of them would require putting an area twice the size of India under plow and pasture while emitting as much carbon as 13,000 coal plants running nonstop for a year, according to a report published on Wednesday by the World Resources Institute.

The Washington D.C.-based think tank has been working on this report for the last six years, looking for a solution to our existential triple challenge: feed everyone and shrink agricultural emissions to keep the world from heating more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, all without clearing more land for farming. The WRI’s report lays out a way that everyone could get enough to eat in 2050, even as we turn farmland into forest and allow carbon-sucking trees to spread their leaves over an area larger than Australia.

The report recommends an all-of-the-above approach starting with reducing the size of harvests needed. By eating less meat, leveling off population growth, reducing waste, and phasing out biofuels, we could reduce the amount of additional food needed by half:

World Resources Institute

But diminishing demand for meat by getting more people to go vegan just isn’t enough.

“There’s a tendency in this field for people to treat dietary change as a magic asterisk where somehow we wave our hands and there will be an overwhelming reduction in meat eating,” said Tim Searchinger the Princeton professor who led the research on this report. “We wanted to focus on things that were realistic and achievable.”

If we also develop better seeds and animal breeds and use existing farm and pasture-land more intensively, we could shrink our agricultural footprint by 800 million hectares, an area bigger than Texas.

That’s important, because the world needs to cover at least one Texas with trees to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees of warming. And, as the chart below shows, we’d have to do all of the above and more if we want to make agriculture do its part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Pulling all this off seems daunting, but the researchers divided the action needed into a 22-item “menu” with discrete recommendations like eating less beef and lamb, and breeding crops that can withstand higher temperatures.

“Not everything on the menu is going to be for everyone,” said Richard Waite, a WRI researcher who worked on the study. “But there’s something for everyone whether you are just shopping for your family, or in charge of food procurement for a major company,”

The report also points out that very little of the $600 billion a year governments spend on agriculture goes toward the innovations that would give us a sustainable food system. Agricultural research and development gets just $50 billion a year — that’s including private funding and public support.

World Resources Institute

Most of the money for agriculture comes in the form of subsidies and price-supports that shelter farmers from changes in the industry. The report says if those funds were diverted to programs that reduce food waste, squeeze more food from the ground, and study how to improve soil health, the world could solve this three-headed monster of a problem.

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Another 2 billion people are coming to dinner. How do we feed them?

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Bad news for the Amazon as Brazil backs out of hosting U.N. climate talks

by RaquelBeauregar Posted on November 28, 2018

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Brazil was set to be the host country for COP 25, 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 U.N. Convention on Climate Change, just days before the start of COP 24, 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 COP 25 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 U.N. climate talks

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California wildfire smoke spreads to New York, 3,000 miles away

by Laurind2964 Posted on November 21, 2018

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

The U.S. East Coast has been provided a firsthand reminder of the deadly California wildfires after smoke swept across the country and caused a haze to envelop the eastern seaboard, including Washington, D.C. and New York City.

Hazy skies were reported in several places on the East Coast from smoke wafting from 3,000 miles farther west, where wildfires in California have killed more than 80 people and razed more than 15,000 homes and other structures.

An unusually dense fog shrouded the top of New York City skyscrapers and the sunset was particularly intense due to the smoke particles in the air. “Wow. I knew tonight’s sunset over New York City seemed different, and I should’ve realized,” tweeted Kathryn Prociv, a meteorologist on the Today Show. “Wildfire smoke is in the air, all the way from California.”

Donald Trump visited the areas affected last weekend and created controversy by refusing to acknowledge climate change as a major factor, getting the name of the incinerated town of Paradise wrong, once again blaming forest management, and arguing for leaf-raking as a key factor in prevention.

Early on Wednesday morning, the former California governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger made a surprise visit to firefighters, who have been working exhaustingly long shifts in extremely dangerous, unpredictable conditions.

He served breakfast to officers who have been battling the Camp Fire in Northern California, and criticized Trump for jumping to blame the fires on forest management.

Schwarzenegger, who was California governor from 2003 to 2011, said he was in Hungary when he heard Paradise had been destroyed, and wanted to visit firefighters to show his appreciation for their efforts while they risked their lives.

Satellite imagery released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed a band of smoke curling up from Southern California to Massachusetts. While the diffused smoke can be hard to distinguish from other pollution, it makes a telltale appearance at sunrise and sunset.

The smoke is moving fairly high in the atmosphere but can exacerbate health problems if it settles – D.C.’s air quality was classed as only “moderate” on Tuesday.

This smoky pall is still nothing compared with the situation on the West Coast, where there have been shortages of protective masks in some places. Schools and sporting events have been shut down due to the dire air quality, although San Francisco’s famed tram network has now reopened. The air is expected to improve this week, with rain forecast for Wednesday.

The Camp Fire in Northern California is the deadliest blaze in the state’s history, with 81 confirmed deaths and nearly 700 people still unaccounted for since it broke out earlier this month, with the cause yet to be determined. The fire obliterated almost all of Paradise, a small town close to the Sierra Nevada, and displaced more than 50,000 people. A smaller blaze near Los Angeles has caused three deaths and is now largely contained, but still prompted some dramatic rescues of those stranded by the flames and smoke.

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California wildfire smoke spreads to New York, 3,000 miles away

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New York just filed a big ol’ lawsuit against ExxonMobil

by HenrietBernard Posted on October 24, 2018

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Donald Trump has said time and time again that he only hires “the best people.” He sure ends up firing them a lot, too. That may have been a wise decision with his former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who was implicated in a major lawsuit filed on Wednesday. The issue at hand? Climate change.

In a blistering series of tweets, New York Interim Attorney General Barbara Underwood laid out the basic tenets of her office’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil. The suit alleges that Exxon — formerly run by Tillerson — tricked investors with a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” that downplayed the financial risks climate change regulation posed to the company.

Unlike other climate change lawsuits, like those launched by California or Colorado in recent months, this one doesn’t seek to hold Exxon responsible for its role in creating climate change. In a nutshell, this case is about fraud: lying to someone to get their money.

Underwood’s lawsuit argues that Exxon overstated how prepared the company was for the tough regulations that are necessary to combat climate change. She hopes to prove that Exxon told investors one thing while doing another. Climate change regulations can take a toll on fossil fuel businesses. Exxon said it was (and still currently is) taking steps to make sure that toll doesn’t hurt its interests, but the receipts say otherwise.

Will Exxon wiggle out of this suit like it wiggled out of lawsuits by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and even a previous lawsuit launched by New York City? It’s already argued that these lawsuits a) limit its right to free speech and b) are a big conspiracy. And the company has even counter-sued the people taking it to court!

But, again, this new lawsuit takes a different tack. In the event that it succeeds, it would require the oil company to cough up all the money it made from investors through climate fraud, and then pay back its investors. That’s a lot of dough, but we don’t yet know exactly how much — Underwood’s lawsuit doesn’t include a final sum.

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New York just filed a big ol’ lawsuit against ExxonMobil

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