Manhattan Neighborhood Network featured a panel discussion of climate issues in the wake of the Maui, Hawaii fire on Media Watch with Eric Tait, Bob Anthony, Raymond Peterson, and Alan Singer. Over one hundred people on Maui were already reported to have died and another hundred people were still unaccounted for. We talked about potential technological fixes to climate change, but none addresses the magnitude of the crises or the urgency as humanity faces a climate tipping point. Watch on YouTube.
These are talking points I prepared for the discussion. Most are drawn from earlier Daily Kos posts. I am scared about what is happening and you should be also.
- Scientists have concluded that the Holocene, the geological era that started about 11,700 years ago and made possible human civilization has ended. They call the new geological era marked by fossil fuels, the greenhouse effect and global warming the Anthropocene, an era marked by human-made impacts to the Earth. The Earth could be entering a multiyear period of exceptional warmth driven by two main factors: continued emissions of heat-trapping gases and the return of El Niño. The planet just experienced its warmest June ever recorded with deadly heat waves scorching Texas, Mexico, and India. Off the coasts of Antarctica, sea ice levels this year have plummeted to record lows. The El Niño effect on global weather is the result of changes in the southern Pacific Ocean currents and is a natural and periodic occurrence.
- In a major victory for climate activists a Montana state district court judge ruled that the failure of the State of Montana to protect the environment from the impact of climate change violates the state’s constitution. Mandate that the state should “maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” Judge Kathy Seeley wrote that “Montana’s emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury.” She argued that the sixteen plaintiffs in the case, ranging in age from 5 to 22, have a constitutional right to a healthful environment.
- The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child released a 20-page document arguing that all countries have a legal obligation to protect children from environmental degradation — including by “regulating business enterprises” — and to allow their underage citizens to seek legal recourse.
- In New York, a legislative committee is considering a Climate Change Superfund Act (S.9417). If passed and signed into law, fossil fuel companies responsible for pollution impacting on New York State and its residents will be charged $30 billion over a ten-year period to pay for climate change adaptation. New York State has already suffered billions of dollars in damages from super storms, heat waves, flooding, toxic algal blooms, and extreme weather because of climate change. Environmentalists anticipate that damages caused by climate change could cost $10 billion a year in future decades.
- In July, there was a record setting “heat dome” over Phoenix, Arizona which had more than consecutive days of temperatures above 110°F. An estimated 50 million plus people living in a band from Southern California through Florida faced deadly levels of heat. In Hermosillo, Mexico, the temperature hit 121°F. According to one resident, “It was like I was being thrown balls of fire. Ocean temperatures were measured at 90°F off the coast of Miami where the heat index was above 105°F. With the devastating fires in Maui, the Southern tier heat dome, and the toxic smoke-filled skies in the Northeast and Midwest, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny climate change.
- None of the eight Republican Presidential candidates on stage at the first debate raised their hand when they were asked by a moderator if they believed that human behavior was causing climate change. Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax” invented by China. A Pew Research Center poll found that 58% of Republicans, especially white men, including 75% of Republicans 65 and older, want to “prioritize expanding exploration and production of oil, coal and natural gas,” instead of investing in non-polluting renewal energy. 70% of Republican argue global warming and climate change are either a minor threat or no threat at all.
- The Republican Party released Project 2025. According to Politico, the 920-page proposal, whose 350 hard-right authors include former Trump administration officials, would “decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the transition to clean energy and shift agencies toward nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it.” Its agenda for the first days of a Republican administration taking office January 20, 2025, would repeal or eviscerate the climate friendly Inflation Reduction Act, “block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s car pollution standards; and delegate more regulation of polluting industries to Republican state officials.”
- If humanity continues to emit greenhouse gases by burning high levels of fossil fuel, by 2100 the Earth will be almost unrecognizable and large regions will uninhabitable. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans that cover 2/3rds of the Earth’s surface. In 2022, ocean temperatures, a key indicator of global warming, were the hottest ever recorded and the rate of warming was increasing. Sea surface temperature has a major impact on the world’s weather. Hotter oceans supercharge extreme weather contributing to more intense storms and flooding. Warmer water also expands, raising sea levels and threatening coastal cities.
- America’s production of fossil fuels is expected to hit a record high in 2023, as continued improvements in drilling efficiency in oil and gas and high enough oil prices will support increased output of all fossil fuels, including coal. JPMorgan Chase has recklessly provided more than $382 billion in financing for fossil fuel companies since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, including $65.44 billion to the top 20 companies engaged in the greatest amount of fossil fuel expansion.
- Farmers Insurance will not renew almost a third of the home-owner insurance policies it has written in Florida, becoming the latest insurer to pull business from a state as the industry grapples with the rising costs of covering damage tied to floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and other climate-related disasters. Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway are raising home insurance premiums and deductibles or are refusing to cover climate disasters in vulnerable regions.
- After baseball finally took action to end the Steroids Era and inflated home run totals by over-muscled players, ordinary looking guys are getting a home run boost from global warming. A new study by Dartmouth University climate scientists, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, estimates that more than 500 home runs since 2010 are the result of climate change. They predict that as the Earth continues to warm, there will be several hundred additional home runs each season. The scientists believe that 27 additional home runs were hit in Yankee Stadium between 2010 and 2019 and an extra 24 were hit at Citi Field, the Mets home field.
- Sahel means “border” in Arabic. The Sahel region in Africa is the border between the Sahara Desert in the north and the savannah and tropics further south. In the east, Sudan, a nation of 50 million people, has experienced fifteen military coups since independence in 1956 and is in a constant state of civil war for at least two decades. Wars over water between largely Islamic herders and largely Christian agriculturalists are ongoing and the Sahel has surpassed the Middle East and South Asia to become the global epicenter of jihadist violence. Repeated crises in the region could lead to terrorist activities being exported to other parts of the world. At least six of the countries in the region, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Sudan, and Guinea have recently undergone military take-overs. Mali and Burkina Faso are two of the hottest countries in the world.
- Aquifers that supply 90 percent of the country’s water systems and support its agriculture are severely depleted and threaten irreversible harm to the American economy and society. Industrial farming and growing cities are draining aquifers that could take thousands of years to refill. We already see its impact. In Kansas, corn yields have plummeted. On Long Island, over-pumping is threatening drinking-water wells. In parts of Utah, California and Texas, so much water is being pumped out of the ground that it is causing roads to buckle, building foundations to crack and fissures to open in the earth.
- There is a history lesson about what happens to a civilization that thought its underground water supply would last forever. The Maya on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and in Central America between about 800 and 1200 AD were one of the great ancient civilizations. They invented writing and math and built cities and pyramids. Mayan agriculture depended on water in underground limestone caves called cenotes (se-NO-tes). As the water level dropped, communities went to war over scarce resources and the Maya civilization disappeared.