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Fake news is killing us. How can we stop it?

by PBIJannieaz Posted on July 1, 2020

Salmon Arm is a little town of 17,000 in central British Columbia, not far from busy ski slopes in the Canadian Rockies. It’s home to stunning blue lakes, tree-covered mountains, and a worrying number of signs claiming that COVID-19 is a hoax.

Tim Walters

But maybe less than there used to be. Tim Walters, a professor of English at Okanagan College, has been tearing down the signs one by one since they started appearing a few months ago. The signs demand B.C. “wake up” and sport a hashtag tied to QAnon, a far-right conspiracy movement. By June, Walters was walking three or four hours a day, wandering in ever-widening circles, yanking down the signs wherever he went.

It’s become a “low-level obsession,” he said. “Because of how crazy they are, people don’t take these conspiracy theories seriously enough.”

The conspiracy theorists responded by putting their signs higher, 8 or 9 feet off the ground. But Walters is 6 feet 6 inches tall with long arms to match. People have been sending him directions to new signs in their neighborhoods that they can’t reach.

The reality is that fake news is killing people. Research shows that wearing masks could reduce the spread of COVID-19 by half, yet misleading claims about the safety of mask-wearing have proliferated. If everyone wore face masks in public, according to a model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, it could save an estimated 33,000 American lives by October.

“Misinformation about COVID is spreading faster than the virus itself,” said Gale Sinatra, a professor of education at the University of Southern California who’s writing a book about fake news and the public’s understanding of science. Epidemiological experts say that a pandemic is as much of a communications crisis as it is a public health emergency. It’s reminiscent of climate change — despite a mountain of evidence showing the devastating effects on our overheating planet, only two-thirds of Americans say they’re worried about it. That’s a sign that these messages aren’t reaching people, or perhaps that fake news resonated with them more.

As an added challenge, the climate crisis and COVID-19 have both gotten sucked into the vortex of polarization in America. And as the pandemic has stretched on, becoming the background of our lives, it’s activating many of the same psychological barriers that people face when confronted with climate change. “Everyone’s got COVID fatigue now,” Sinatra said.

Coronavirus denial shares many similarities to climate denial, the dismissal of the scientific consensus around global warming. It’s spread by many of the same people, and the arguments for these bonkers theories often sound a lot alike: a rejection of mainstream science, a story of governments plotting to manufacture a crisis, and a message that the best thing to do is just continue business as usual. So why should I wear a face mask?

Studies have shown that fake news spreads faster on social media than real news does. People on Twitter are 70 percent more likely to share false news than the real stuff. And it’s difficult to shut down. “Misinformation is unfortunately a bit more compelling than regular information,” Sinatra said. Conspiracists spin tales that are surprising and dramatic, like a plot twist in a movie — a contrast to the drumbeat of “COVID-19 cases are rising!” seen on the news every day. So short of tearing down posters, what can people do to shut down the spread of misinformation?

Taking misconceptions head-on is one option, Sinatra said. But it has to be done carefully, or it can backfire, because repeating wrongheaded claims in the course of refuting them risks spreading them even further. Repeating things makes them stick. As the linguist George Lakoff pointed out, when you tell people “Don’t think of an elephant” they can’t help but picture an elephant.

“Just saying ‘You’re wrong’” — that does not work,” Sinatra said. You have to explain why something is incorrect and offer a good explanation for a convincing counterpoint.

Conspiracy signs headed for the recycling. Tim Walters

“My thing is, you always have to confront them head-on,” said Walters, who incorporates rebuttals into his English classes. He recently taught a college course about the climate crisis and found that many of his students were on the fence about the science at first, unsure of what was true, before reading assignments like David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, which educated (and terrified) them. Walters equipped his students with the facts about climate change and encouraged them to discuss what they learned with their friends and family.

One resource that could help them is the new Conspiracy Theory Handbook, written by two cognitive scientists, Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook. It’s a free online source that offers tips on how to debunk conspiracy theories and talk to people who believe in them.

Even so, the best way to counter fake news might be to equip people with the tools to evaluate what’s fake and what’s real from the get-go. “It’s better to inoculate people preemptively against conspiracy theories rather than trying to go in afterward and undo the damage,” said Cook, a professor at George Mason University, in a recent interview with The Verge.

The problem, of course, is that those under the sway of misinformation aren’t willing to take the vaccine.

One nonprofit, the News Literacy Project, aims to help students across the country get savvy when it comes to identifying fake news and think critically about what they come across online. There’s evidence that this approach helps for people of all ages. One study from the University of Michigan found that people are less likely to trust, “like,” or share fake climate change news on Facebook if they read a few questions beforehand such as “Do I recognize the news organization that posted the story?” and “Does the information in the post seem believable?”

Scientists and public health experts are having a tough time in the COVID-19 pandemic, because they’re learning basic facts about the virus and how it spreads from week to week. They’re trying to communicate new findings to the public in real time, and evolving recommendations are bound to sow confusion. That’s one big difference between the two crises: Climate scientists got the basic story nailed down ages ago. “The science around climate change has been developing for decades,” Sinatra said. “COVID’s only been on the planet for the last six months.”

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Fake news is killing us. How can we stop it?

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Puerto Rico faces another disaster: The coronavirus pandemic

by Nicki74Lqco Posted on March 20, 2020

Puerto Rico has experienced a whirlwind of public health crises in the last few years. In 2017 Hurricane Maria left roughly 3,000 dead and thousands more displaced, making the island something of a patient zero for a world in which warmer global temperatures produce ever more deadly disasters. Then, this January a series of disastrous earthquakes once again put the U.S. territory’s strained infrastructure to the test. Now the new coronavirus has reached its shores.

Puerto Rican Governor Wanda Vázquez signed an executive order on Sunday to shut down the majority of businesses on the island (supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations, and banks are exempt) and impose a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew through March 30. People who violate the lockdown order could face a fine of up to $5,000 or six months in jail. The move comes as Puerto Rico confirmed five COVID-19 cases on the island in the last few days.

“We already have a fragile social fabric, because we’ve had to experience a great number of shocks” in recent years, said Christine Nieves, co-founder and president of the nonprofit Emerge Puerto Rico (and member of the 2018 Grist 50). “Now, we have a situation where we have to remain indoors, but there are negative side effects to that. In particular, older people alone at home could be potentially put in a situation where no one is checking in.”

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More than 20 percent of Puerto Rico’s population of nearly 3.2 million is 65 or older — an age cohort that is particularly at risk for severe and fatal COVID-19 infections. The island’s health infrastructure has not yet fully recovered from the shock of Hurricane Maria, when insufficient power and fresh water compounded patients’ suffering even after they had been admitted to the hospital.

Puerto Rico is also still grappling with the aftermath of the January earthquakes that destroyed three major hospitals and sent thousands of frightened people in the southern part of the island to camp outdoors, making them more vulnerable to the spread of illness — including the novel coronavirus. Nieves told Grist that the government still has not restored feasible housing options for people in the camps and that many of them are still living precariously in makeshift tents out in the open. (Puerto Rico’s Department of Health did not respond to requests for comment.)

“It’s been three years of nonstop shocks,” said Nieves. “People are tired. They are burnt out, and their immune systems are likely low, because they’re not taking care of themselves.”

The pandemic is also decimating tourism, a major component of the island’s economy. On Tuesday, Governor Vázquez demanded that the Federal Aviation Administration suspend all domestic and international flights to the island for 14 days and let her shut down airports.

It’s a new test for the island’s government. The Vázquez administration has been criticized for not acting swiftly enough as soon as the virus escalated in the mainland U.S. and (perhaps unfairly) for not more quickly obtaining test results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, after a few suspected cases initially emerged. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico’s health secretary, Rafael Rodríguez-Mercado, resigned last Friday.

“Frankly, the government has been so negligent in responding,” said Nieves. “Our biggest bet right now, the one thing that we’re holding on to, is that the virus doesn’t spread because of our island’s temperatures.”

But Nieves noted that, unlike the common flu — which peaks during the winter season and then dies down as temperatures warm — it’s not yet known how the novel coronavirus fares in warmer temperatures.

Regardless of the circumstances, Nieves sees the nascent outbreak as an opportunity to step back and reflect on what Puerto Ricans have learned from previous disasters.

“The coronavirus does present a stop in rebuilding,” she said. “But it also presents a window of reflection, because not necessarily being fast and efficient can get us to where we want to go — so it’s a great opportunity and a great moment to consider what kind of world we are rebuilding for.”

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Puerto Rico faces another disaster: The coronavirus pandemic

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Coronavirus: The worst way to drive down emissions

by JaquelineDawbin Posted on March 3, 2020

The rapidly spreading coronavirus has infected over 90,000 people worldwide, stoked fears about a worldwide pandemic, and rattled global markets. The coronavirus is also having an unexpected environmental effect: It’s cutting carbon emissions.

China’s work stoppages and flagging industrial output have decreased the country’s normally sky-high carbon emissions by at least a quarter, according to an analysis recently published in CarbonBrief by Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. That drop translates to a 6 percent decline in overall global emissions. New research from China’s statistics bureau shows that the country’s factory activity suffered the deepest contraction on record last month.

A decline in air travel might be playing a supporting role. By mid-February, around 13,000 flights a day had been canceled, with many airlines suspending flights to and from mainland China. Aviation remains one of the most carbon-intensive activities, accounting for 2 percent of emissions worldwide.

But how should we think about something as objectively terrible as the coronavirus — which has left more than 3,000 people dead — temporarily slowing climate change?

The truth is that there are a lot of bad things in the world that also happen to (temporarily) lower carbon emissions. Experts have attributed a 10 percent decrease in fossil fuel pollution in the United States between 2007 and 2009 to the global recession and financial crisis then gripping the country, putting millions of people out of work. The Chinese government’s one-child policy was widely decried as causing an epidemic of forced abortions and even infanticide. But the government has boasted that it prevented 1.3 billion tons of carbon emissions.

These respites from fossil fuel pollution aren’t actually “good for” the climate. For one thing, they rarely last. In 2010, post-recession, the U.S. economy resurged, and with it fossil fuel emissions that wiped away losses from the previous years. The drop in Chinese emissions from the coronavirus is also likely temporary; China has been known to increase production dramatically in the aftermath of a crisis in order to make up for lost time.

Moreover, in times of global stress, green projects often take a back burner to more pressing issues. Distracted by the problem at hand, governments funnel political attention and subsidies into the pandemic or the economic meltdown. The environment gets short shrift.

The problem of climate change isn’t about how we save the earth (the earth will be just fine without us). It’s about how humans can thrive, not just survive, in a greenhouse gas-constrained world. So, even if a Thanos-style reckoning might sound nice when you are depressed by species extinction, melting polar ice, etc., you can’t save a world by destroying it.

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Major news networks devoted less than 4 hours to climate change in 2019. Total.

by fishing1461955 Posted on February 27, 2020

When it comes to climate change, television news is covering little more than the tip of the iceberg.

That’s according to a just-released report from Media Matters for America, which found that global warming garnered a tiny sliver — well under 1 percent — of overall broadcast news coverage. The progressive research nonprofit also found that, while these news outlets did cover climate change more often in 2019 than in the year prior, the quality of coverage was “generally shallow.” And when it came to giving voice to those hit first and worst by extreme weather and other climate-related disasters, the networks fell short: People of color were “massively underrepresented” in coverage.

“In spite of the increase in coverage from 2018 to 2019, climate coverage as a whole still made up only 0.6% of overall corporate broadcast TV nightly news in 2019, showing that these programs’ climate coverage does not adequately reflect the urgency and severity of the climate crisis,” the report found.

The study analyzed four nightly news programs and four Sunday morning political shows, focusing both on segments devoted to climate change as well as substantial mentions of the topic in other segments. Yet even with significant year-to-year increases in coverage — for example, a 180 percent increase in climate coverage on nightly news in 2019 compared to 2018 — corporate broadcasters failed to substantially improve the overall quantity and quality of their climate coverage, according to Media Matters.

The analysis focused on four nightly news programs — ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC’s Nightly News, and public broadcaster PBS’s NewsHour — as well as four Sunday morning political shows: ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday. Media Matters has produced variations of this analysis annually since at least 2012, including reports in 2018 and 2017.

Among the report’s key findings for 2019:

Although the volume of climate change coverage on the corporate broadcast nightly and Sunday morning news shows increased 68 percent from 2018 to 2019 (142 minutes to 238 minutes), the report noted that this was not difficult to achieve because the amount of coverage in 2018 was “so pitiful” that news shows had a low bar to meet the following year. This climate coverage represented just .07 percent of the overall broadcast nightly and Sunday morning news shows in 2019.

When it came to racial and gender diversity in their climate coverage, Media Matters found that broadcast television also failed: People of color were “massively underrepresented” as news guests, even though communities of color are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Just 10 percent of guests interviewed or featured in these news segments were people of color, and 2019 was the third year in a row that representation came in at this percentage or lower.

Scientists and women were also underrepresented by broadcasters, comprising 22 and 27 percent of guests, respectively. Women of color were featured even less prominently — a troubling reminder that women “typically play second fiddle to white men” in discussions of climate change, according to Media Matters. “A lack of women’s voices in media coverage of climate change is part of a pattern of racism and sexism that these broadcast networks need to address,” the report stated.

Not all of the findings in Wednesday’s report were grim. In 2019, more than a third of climate segments on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox mentioned solutions or actions to address climate change — a significant increase over the previous two years. The broadcasters focused most often on climate adaptation and renewable energy technologies when discussing solutions, but advocacy and direct action, such as youth climate activism, were also featured. The report cited studies showing that media coverage of climate change solutions can help spur collective action from viewers. “Much of this shift in public debate to talking about solutions is being driven by TV weathercasters, who are often trusted and knowledgeable members of local news,” the study added.

Media Matters praised PBS NewsHour for its climate coverage, noting that it has outpaced its broadcast counterparts in climate reporting for the past six years. PBS Newshour aired 121 climate segments in 2019, an average of 10 segments per month. “This is more coverage than we found from the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news shows combined,” the report found.

The analysis also found that climate change coverage last year was driven in large part by reporting on the Green New Deal congressional resolution, extreme weather, climate activism, and the 2020 presidential election. Coverage of climate activism, which comprised about 16 percent of the overall climate coverage from these broadcasters, focused in large part on activist Greta Thunberg and climate strikes, which took place across the globe last year. The report also found that broadcasters did a “pretty poor job overall” covering the connection between climate change and specific extreme weather events.

Media Matters is hardly alone in its withering analysis of major media coverage of climate change — and news outlets’ failure to link global warming to wildfires and other extreme weather events that are becoming the new normal.

Some of those critics are starting to offer solutions. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, Professor Leah C. Stokes and Ph.D. candidate Emily Williams have compiled a concise fact sheet intended to help journalists and citizens understand the scientific evidence linking climate change to wildfires. They are also working on a project with Climate Signals, a science information project from the nonprofit Climate Nexus, to help journalists more easily access academic journal articles on climate change, which are typically behind paywalls, according to a radio interview Stokes gave in September.

As Grist recently reported in a story about how local journalists are tackling climate coverage, a comprehensive approach to covering climate change should include going beyond analyzing the evidence supporting global warming. John Morales, a meteorologist at NBC6 in Miami, Florida, has been covering climate change for decades. He said that local news needs to cover “how fast things are changing, the links between the observed symptoms and causes of rising temperatures, and move on to ‘what do we do about this?’”

As Media Matters made clear on Wednesday, Morales is way ahead of television’s largest news providers.

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Major news networks devoted less than 4 hours to climate change in 2019. Total.

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Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond – Lydia Denworth

by Myrna Posted on January 28, 2020

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Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond

Lydia Denworth

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: January 28, 2020

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read Nonfiction Book of Winter 2020 A revelatory investigation of friendship, with profound implications for our understanding of what humans and animals alike need to thrive across a lifetime. The phenomenon of friendship is universal and elemental. Friends, after all, are the family we choose. But what makes these bonds not just pleasant but essential, and how do they affect our bodies and our minds? In Friendship, science journalist Lydia Denworth takes us in search of friendship’s biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations. She finds friendship to be as old as early life on the African savannas—when tribes of people grew large enough for individuals to seek fulfillment of their social needs outside their immediate families. Denworth sees this urge to connect reflected in primates, too, taking us to a monkey sanctuary in Puerto Rico and a baboon colony in Kenya to examine social bonds that offer insight into our own. She meets scientists at the frontiers of brain and genetics research and discovers that friendship is reflected in our brain waves, our genomes, and our cardiovascular and immune systems; its opposite, loneliness, can kill. At long last, social connection is recognized as critical to wellness and longevity. With insight and warmth, Denworth weaves past and present, field biology and neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed for friendship across life stages, the processes by which healthy social bonds are developed and maintained, and how friendship is changing in the age of social media. Blending compelling science, storytelling, and a grand evolutionary perspective, Denworth delineates the essential role that cooperation and companionship play in creating human (and nonhuman) societies. Friendship illuminates the vital aspects of friendship, both visible and invisible, and offers a refreshingly optimistic vision of human nature. It is a clarion call for putting positive relationships at the center of our lives.

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STIs can save the planet. No, not those STIs.

by LouisaMichalski Posted on January 24, 2020

The words “climate tipping point” brings to mind collapsing ice shelves, rainforests burning to a crisp, and other irreversible environmental disasters. But what if I told you that not all climate tipping points are bad?

A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences outlines the positive “tipping elements” needed to address climate change — society-wide shifts that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert disaster. Each tipping elements, researchers say, can be triggered by one or more “social tipping interventions” (regrettably abbreviated to “STIs”) — smaller changes that pave the way for societal transformation.

The challenge ahead seems almost insurmountably difficult. Global emissions (which rose every one of the past three years), need to reach net-zero by mid-century in order for the planet to stay below 2 degrees C of warming — the threshold between “bad but manageable” warming and “time to get in the bunker” warming.

But the interdisciplinary team of researchers with backgrounds in earth systems analysis, geosustainability, philosophy, and other fields, say these STIs can keep humanity not just below that threshold, but substantially so. The team surveyed more than 1,000 international experts in the fields of climate change and sustainability, and asked them to identify the tipping elements needed for rapid decarbonization. By aggregating the results, the researchers identified seven interventions that have the potential “to spark rapid yet constructive societal changes towards climate stabilization and overall sustainability.” The biggest takeaway, aside from the fact that there actually is a way (well, seven ways) to avoid climate catastrophe, is that financial markets hold the key to keeping us in the black.

Here are the two interventions that the researchers say can be achieved very rapidly, i.e. within a few years.

Divestment from fossil fuels. If national banks and insurance companies warn the public that fossil fuel reserves are “stranded assets” — that is, resources that no longer have value — companies and people could start withdrawing investments in industries that contribute to climate change en masse, and the flow of money to polluting companies could quickly dry up. We’re seeing the potential of the divestment movement already — BlackRock’s announcement that it’s shedding its investments in coal last week sent a tremor through the financial industry.
Emission disclosures from companies and politicians. People need to know how their actions affect the planet. That means more transparency in things like food labeling — the carbon footprint of a banana, say — as well as corporate and political transparency. Voters need to know if their politicians are bankrolled by fossil fuels, and corporations need to disclose their carbon assets. Once the public can clearly make the connection between their consumer choices and the environment, or their vote and the environment, it could trigger political action and lifestyle change on a massive scale, the study says.

The next two can be achieved in 5 to 10 years.

Decentralized energy. Transitioning to locally controlled power systems, like community solar co-ops or community-owned power plants, could lead the way to total decarbonization. The biggest obstacle at the moment is cost. It’s expensive to move energy generation off the main grid. But as technologies develop and more communities invest in local energy initiatives, those costs will come down.
Green cities. The energy needed to construct and power buildings contributes 20 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. Tweaks to building codes all over the globe, particularly in poor and developing countries, could spark demand for fossil-fuel-free resources and tech, like laminated timber. One of the ways to inspire such a shift would be for governments to make massive infrastructure investments in carbon-neutral cities, which could stand as an example to other cities and have a “spillover” effect on developing urban areas.

Flipping the next switches will take longer — 10 to 20 years.

Subsidies for green power. If governments redirect national subsidy programs to existing green technologies like wind and solar and eliminate tax breaks for fossil fuels, renewables can become more profitable than other fuel sources. “Our expert group believes that the critical mass that needs to be reached is the moment when climate-neutral power generation generates higher financial returns than fossil-based power generation,” second lead author Jonathan Donges said in a statement.
Widespread climate education. If educators incorporated climate change into their curricula it could have enormous implications for students, parents, and public decision-making, once those kids enter the workforce and the voting booth. Mass media campaigns, like the one targeting tobacco companies in the U.S. in the 1970s, can work alongside educational campaigns to trigger social transformation.

The final STI will require upward of 30 years of efforts to take effect.

Moral reckoning. Once humans understand the moral case for ditching fossil fuels — aka the devastating effect of carbon emissions on vulnerable communities and future generations — societal norms could change and fossil fuels could become, in effect, taboo. But in order to achieve this, a majority of social and public opinion leaders would have to “recognize the ethical implications of fossil fuels and generate pressure in their peer groups to ostracize the use of products involving fossil fuel burning.”

All of this may seem a bit far-fetched at first. Will stamping foods with their carbon footprints really persuade shoppers to make more climate-friendly choices? Will teaching third-graders about carbon cycles really inspire them to vote for green politicians in a decade? The cool thing about this study, which incorporates findings from previous climate, health, and behavioral studies, is that the researchers found historical parallels for each of the interventions they recommend. The perceived health benefits of eating organic in the early aughts spurred shoppers to look for that label in the grocery store, boosting the global market for organic products by 10 percent every year. A literacy campaign in Cuba in the 1950s slashed illiteracy rates from 24 percent to 3.9 percent in less than a year. Progress is possible — it’s just a matter of opening the right floodgates.

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STIs can save the planet. No, not those STIs.

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Exxon’s law firm tried to recruit Harvard students. Instead, they protested.

by HomerPeek5 Posted on January 16, 2020

On Wednesday night, more than 100 first-year Harvard law students gathered at a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a reception hosted by the corporate law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. The opulent affair, replete with lobsters for snacking, an ice sculpture, and an open bar, was one of many regular functions held by elite law firms to draw elite aspiring attorneys into the fold. But about 30 students put their job prospects at risk when they interrupted the event with a demonstration.

As Paul, Weiss attorney and partner Kannon Shanmugam got up to deliver a speech, a small group of students unfurled a banner that read #DropExxon and cut him off with a protest song. “Which side are you on?” they sang. “Does it weigh on you at all?”

The lyrics alluded to Paul, Weiss’ defense of ExxonMobil in several ongoing lawsuits over the oil giant’s role in climate change. The firm recently successfully defended Exxon in a case brought by the state of New York over the accusation that it misled investors about the costs of climate change to its business. Now, it’s defending the company again in a similar lawsuit in Massachusetts, just miles from the Harvard campus.

After the song, a chorus of students joined lead organizer Aaron Regunberg in a call and response speech, announcing that they refuse to work for a firm that helps corporate polluters block climate action. As long as Paul, Weiss worked for Exxon, they wouldn’t work for Paul, Weiss.

“What is the most critical tool these corporations use to get away with climate murder? It’s this right here,” they chanted. “Exxon knew about climate change 35 years ago, yet continued to wreck the planet and fund climate denial that led us to this crisis. That’s what this firm is enabling, and the tactics they are using are extreme and unethical.”

Regunberg told Grist that it’s highly unusual to see this kind of confrontation in the legal profession, and that many of the students who participated had never been involved in a direct action before. “For the longest time, this is an issue that hasn’t even been questioned,” he said. “We’ve shown that our generation of aspiring lawyers understands that business as usual is a recipe for an unlivable future.”

Climate activism in the Ivy League is heating up. A parallel movement of students demanding that their schools divest from fossil fuel companies made national news in November when hundreds of protestors stormed the field at the annual Harvard-Yale football field.

The law school organizers plan to continue their campaign to get Paul, Weiss to drop Exxon and hope to spread the movement to other law schools. Students from Boston University and Yale University law schools have already expressed support. Regunberg said another goal is to start a conversation with Harvard about the way its culture, curriculum, student debt creation, and career service programming create a pipeline to corporate law firms. Many students who come into the school hoping to pursue public interest law end up in corporate interest law, he said. “That’s a systemic problem, and a profound factor in the creation of a legal system that in so many ways shields the wealthy and powerful at the expense of all of us — or, in the case of ExxonMobil, at the expense of human civilization as we know it.”

Harvard Law School and Paul, Weiss had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.

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Exxon’s law firm tried to recruit Harvard students. Instead, they protested.

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The pope might make destroying the earth a sin. Will Catholics listen?

by Ezekiel2332 Posted on November 22, 2019

Pope Francis is not your average pope. He’s weighed in on prison reform and women’s rights, and he wrote a whole encyclical on climate change in 2015. On Friday, at the 20th World Congress of the International Association of Penal Law, Francis waded into the climate change debate again with an unusual idea: perhaps environmental destruction should be classified as an official sin.

During his speech, Francis said he was thinking about adding “ecological sin against the common home” to the catechism, the book that summarizes Catholic belief. “It is a sin against future generations and is manifested in the acts and habits of pollution and destruction of the harmony of the environment,” he said.

Some theology experts think the pope’s interest in the environment is a reflection of his social justice beliefs. “Climate change will impact the poor and marginalized first and worst across the world who have the least capacity to adapt or to recover from disasters,” Erin Lothes Biviano, associate professor of theology at the College of St. Elizabeth, told E&E News. “It’s viewed not as an environmental problem, but an environmental and social problem.”

But will Catholics accept the idea that destroying the environment is an offense against God? The pope’s past efforts to integrate environmental stewardship into the Catholic faith haven’t always convinced his flock. A survey conducted a year after he published his climate-themed encyclical found that the call to action backfired among conservative Americans. Right-leaning Americans were less worried about rising temperatures after hearing his message. Only 22.5 percent of Americans who had even heard of the encyclical expressed concern over climate change. And the Pope actually lost some credibility with conservative Catholics.

Francis might not be the climate influencer advocates hoped he’d be. But that doesn’t necessarily mean all Catholics are ignoring his message. Emma Frances Bloomfield, an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Las Vegas and the author of a book called Communication Strategies for Engaging Climate Skeptics, says it all depends on whether people believe the environment is related to faith.

Folks who see environmental conservation and religion as two entirely separate spheres will likely ignore Francis’ emphasis on the subject. But for religious people who are already inclined to think the two go together, an authority figure like the pope pushing for stewardship might be highly effective. “The idea of casting environmental damage as an ecological sin really amplifies how important the pope and Catholics think environmental damage is,” she said. “If Pope Francis really solidifies it as part of the catechism it can encourage Christians who are uncertain about the environment to consider it more strongly.”

In other words, preaching to the choir may actually be useful … when the pope does it.

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The pope might make destroying the earth a sin. Will Catholics listen?

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‘OK, boomer’: The perfect response to a generation that failed on climate

by ElviraJenson Posted on November 6, 2019

On Monday, Chlöe Swarbrick, a 25-year old member of New Zealand’s Parliament, gave a speech to her fellow lawmakers about the urgent need to take action on climate change. When she raised the point that the issue was of special concern to younger generations that will actually be alive to see the damage wrought by prior generations, an indistinct heckle rose from the audience.

“OK, boomer,” Swarbrick fired back. And then she continued with her speech without missing a beat. Iconic.

As someone born on the cusp between millennials and generation Z, I love the “OK, boomer” discourse. I get a rush of pleasure every time I’m scrolling through Twitter and I encounter a quote-tweeted absurd opinion from an old white dude accompanied by a dismissive “OK, boomer.”

This joy undeniably stems from righteous indignation as much as simple amusement — the two words feel downright poetic after years of hearing my generation blamed for “killing” everything from restaurant chains to department stores to relationships, even as so many of the challenges people my age face — student loan debt, general economic instability, and, of course, a rapidly warming planet — are the result of short-sighted decisions made by earlier generations.

Has the “OK, boomer” discourse gone a little too far, to the point of absurdity and possibly meaninglessness? You’ll have to decide for yourself (but probably yes — that’s the way things go on the internet).

But let’s not entirely do away with “OK, boomer” just yet. Because as a slogan for pushing climate-friendly changes, the phrase is, quite simply, perfect — as Swarbrick so clearly demonstrated.

For one thing, climate change is a generational issue. Although Americans’ views on whether or not climate change is a) happening, b) caused by humans, and c) urgent are usually divided according to political party, a Pew Research Survey from last year found that millennial Republicans are twice as likely as older Republicans to believe in climate change. And another survey by the research group Ipsos showed that millennial Republicans hold similar positions as Democrats of the same age on environmental issues.

And what generation do you think the President and many of his cabinet members belong to? I’ll give you a hint: They’re in positions to take meaningful action on the climate crisis but instead choose to roll back environmental regulations and deny climate change is happening, endangering the health of everyone who has to live on the planet when they’re gone. (If you guessed “baby boomer,” congrats.)

OK, boomer.

The two words manage to convey everything I want to say in response to older adults who call climate activists unreasonable, unrealistic, or naive. “OK, boomer” is just a more efficient way to say, “Why should we listen to you when your position directly contradicts the scientific consensus that our planet faces an existential threat?” Packed into the short phrase is a longer message: “Your generation has known about the problem for decades and failed to do anything to stop it, and you’re not going to have to live with the consequences and we will, so why are you still telling us what to do?”

And as an added bonus,  the phrase works just as well — with one slight modification — to brush off another obstacle to climate progress: the people who think it’s too late to do anything.

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‘OK, boomer’: The perfect response to a generation that failed on climate

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Grab your apocalypse bag — it’s fire season in California

by BrockCecil Posted on October 29, 2019

It’s officially fire season in California. Dry winds rush in from the desert to the east, smoke turns midday to twilight, people hurry from place to place in facemasks, and the electricity goes out.

That’s been the story for the last three years. The risk of wildfires has always been high in the fall when the wind that usually carries cooling fog from the ocean into the interior reverses course. But it has never been so consistently bad. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but behind it all is a warming climate that’s killing trees, drying out brush, and turning bad behaviour into disasters.

Meteorologists predicted the dangerously dry weather a few days in advance, and Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility, let customers know that it would be turning off power to guard against windblown branches crashing into power lines. I was visiting my parents in Nevada City, a 3-hour drive east of my home in the Bay Area, when the lights went out on Saturday. The kids delighted at the novelty of it We set jugs of water by the sinks and made our way to bed by lamplight. In the morning, despite protests from the children, my father fired up the noisy generator he had hooked up to his propane tank, so we could do the dishes, cool the refrigerator, and check the news.

In Southern California, people grabbed their “apocalypse bags” of pre-packed necessities and made their way through jammed roads out of harm’s way. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and basketball star LeBron James were among the evacuees. James had to try four hotels before he found one with room for his family.

The search for housing was tougher in Northern California wine country, where evacuations from the Kincade fire have forced some 200,000 people out of their homes. People have been sleeping in churches and fairgrounds. Officials ordered mandatory evacuations from an area stretching from the active fire east of Highway 101 all the way to the Pacific Ocean as 70 mile-per-hour winds whipped the flames to the west. Some of the houses rebuilt since the 2017 fires may burn again. The smoke was dangerously thick in many parts of wine country, but farmworkers were still out picking grapes.

Many of the schools in the Bay Area closed, and those closest to the fire will be shut all week. More than 100,000 students stayed home Monday around Los Angeles. Firefighters worked to contain the Getty Fire in west Los Angeles, in anticipation of the most severe winds so far this year. PG&E expects to cut power to more than half a million customers on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Sunday, when I surveyed routes for driving home, I found my options were limited. To the west, the Kinkade Fire was swallowing more of wine country. To the east, a handful of small fires were blazing. And in the middle, a wall of fire had engulfed the Carquinez Bridge, closing Interstate 80, our usual path home. We waited for hours. Fortunately, firefighters quickly put out most of the new fires, I-80 reopened, and we slipped home Sunday evening, gawping at smoking black patches on either side of the road.

The winds have calmed here in the Bay Area, but it’s only temporary. The weather is supposed to turn incendiary again by Wednesday. It’s just what Californians have come to expect. After all, it’s fire season.

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Grab your apocalypse bag — it’s fire season in California

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