Valhalla is a growing tribe of storytellers out to proliferate freedom culture
by igniting a global passion for sustainability, self-reliance, and collaborative action.

Fat cat pay at fossil fuel companies drives climate crisis – report

by

Executive pay at fossil fuel companies rewards corporate behavior that deepens the climate crisis, and offers no incentive to shift towards renewable energy, a Washington thinktank said on Wednesday.

Executives at the 30 biggest publicly held coal, oil and gas companies in the US were paid more than leaders of other major corporations, about 9% higher than the S&P 500 average, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found.

The big pay days extended across the industry to executives of coal companies whose share prices have gone into free fall last year.

The report, “Money to Burn: How CEO pay is accelerating climate change”, argued that such out-size pay packages – inflated by bonuses for expanding reserves – encouraged executives to hunt for oil, coal and gas even though those new fuel sources can not be tapped without triggering dangerous climate change.

“It seems to me executives are rewarded no matter what is happening with the planet – and even within their own companies,” said Sarah Anderson, director of the IPS global economy project and co-author of the report. “Executives are still being rewarded specifically for expanding carbon reserves at a time when scientists say we are already sitting on too much.”

Shareholder activists have long been pressing for companies to change their corporate behavior – including compensation packages.

“The bottom line is that breaking the link between executive compensation and chasing ever-more expensive barrels of oil is key to transforming the industry,” said Shanna Cleveland, who heads the carbon asset risk programme at Ceres, the green investment network.

In the case of fossil fuel companies, one of the main factors for calculating bonuses was based on executives’ success in expanding fuel reserves. Last year saw oil, coal and gas company executives cashing in.

Chief executives of fossil fuel companies took home an average $14.7m (£9.6m) last year, about 9% higher than the average $13.4m for S&P 500 chief executives.

The chief executives of ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, the two biggest publicly held companies, made more than twice the S&P average last year, the report said. Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s chief executive, took home $33m last year. Ryan Lance, the chief executive of ConocoPhillips and the second-highest paid leader of a big oil company, took home $27m.

More than half of their compensation packages came in the form of stock options and stock grants which vest over three to four years. Climate change plays out over decades, however.

Current pay packages encourage executives to lobby against attempts to end fossil fuel subsidies, or advance clean energy regulations, the thinktank said.

None of the 30 top fossil fuel companies encourage moves to cleaner energy. Campaigners said that needed to change.

“If we are serious about climate change then we need to start incentivising the kind of behavior we need to see,” said Laura Berry, director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. “Until we get a real change in corporate strategy which will not happen without properly aligned incentives, we are not going to see the magnitude of change needed to turn things around.”

Thousands of Icelanders Have Volunteered to Take Syrian Refugees Into Their Homes

by

More than 11,000 Icelanders have offered to take Syrian refugees into their homes, after their government said it would accept only 50 people this year.

A Facebook event created Sunday by Icelandic author and professor Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir encouraged members of the public to call on the government to increase its intake of refugees, reports Agence France-Presse.

Messages on the event page offered food, housing, clothes and schooling.

“I’m a single mother with a 6-year-old son,” wrote Hekla Stefansdottir. “We can take a child in need. I’m a teacher and would teach the child to speak, read and write Icelandic and adjust to Icelandic society. We have clothes, a bed, toys and everything a child needs. I would of course pay for the airplane ticket.”

The overwhelming response has led the country’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson to appoint a committee of ministers to discuss the possibility of allowing more refugees into the country, which has a population of about 330,000 residents, reports the Icelandic Review Online.

“It has been our goal in international politics to be of help in as many areas as possible and this is one of the areas where the need is most right now,” he told Icelandic news site RUV.

More than 4 million Syrians have fled the conflict in their home country and a further 7.6 million are displaced inside Syria, according to the U.N. The number of refugees pouring into Europe after fleeing war and persecution in Africa and the Middle East is the highest it’s been since the end of World War II.

Read next: These Celebrities Are Taking a Stand on the Refugee Crisis

Download TIME’s mobile app for iOS to have your world explained wherever you go

Earth has lost more than half its trees since humans invented axes

by

A remarkable study has calculated that there are about 3 trillion trees on the planet today but this represents just 45 per cent of the total number of trees that had existed before the rise of humans.

Using a combination of satellite images, data from forestry researchers on the ground and supercomputer number-crunching, scientists have for the first time been able to accurately estimate the quantity of trees growing on all continents except Antarctica.

Previous guesses at the global number of trees were in the range of 400 billion, or about 61 trees for every person on Earth. However, the latest, more accurate study, based on 400,000 estimates of tree densities around the world, puts the total at 3.04 trillion, or roughly 422 trees per person.

However, although the actual number of trees may be about eight times higher than previously thought, the scientists warned that we are cutting them down at the rate of about 15 billion a year, with the highest losses in the tropics where some of the oldest and biggest trees live.

The scientists calculate that there are 1.39 trillion trees growing in tropical and sub-tropical forests, about 0.61 trillion in temperate regions such as the US and Europe and 0.74 trillion in the boreal forests in the higher, more northerly latitudes of Canada and Siberia.

Mapping trees globally will help us to understand the critical role they play as part of Earth’s life-support system, explained Thomas Crowther of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

“Trees are among the most prominent and critical organisms on Earth, yet we are only recently beginning to comprehend their global extent and distribution,” Dr Crowther said.

“They store huge amounts of carbon, are essential for the cycling of nutrients, for water and air quality, and for countless human services. Yet you ask people to estimate, within an order of magnitude, how many trees there are and they don’t know where to begin,” he said.

“I don’t know what I would have guessed, but I was certainly surprised to find that we were talking about trillions,” he added.

The researchers collated data on tree densities using satellite images as well as information from field scientists around the world and were able to make assessments on how tree numbers were affected by factors such as climate, topography, soil and human impacts.

“The diverse array of data available today allowed us to build predictive models to estimate the number of trees at regional levels,” said Henry Glick of Yale, one of the study’s co-authors.

The greatest tree density was found in the cold, boreal forests of Russia, Scandinavia and North America, but this was because the trees here tend to be younger and more stunted than those that grow in the tropical rainforests.

The largest forests, however, are those that grow in tropical regions, such as the Amazon, which are home to about 43 per cent of the world’s trees – boreal regions account for 24 per cent and temperate forests are home to 22 per cent.


The collaborative effort, which was the result of work by nearly 40 researchers from 15 countries, documented the effects of deforestation and changes in land-use – such as the conversion of pristine forest to agricultural land – on tree cover over many years.

They found that as the human population increased, then the number of trees fell, which is what happened in Europe over the past few thousand years as a result of human development.

“We’ve nearly halved the number of trees on the planet, and we’ve seen the impacts on climate and human health as a result. This study highlights how much more effort is needed if we are to restore healthy forests worldwide,” Dr Crowther said.

Simon Lewis, a researcher in global change science at University College London, said the study is the first to come up with an accurate, global estimate for the number of living trees, but he emphasised that this is not the only important part of an ecosystem.

“A plantation forest of many small trees all of the same type isn’t better than a patch of pristine Amazon rainforest with fewer very large trees of all different species,” Dr Lewis said.

“Similarly, measuring carbon storage in forests required different techniques than counting trees, as most carbon in a forest is held in a small number of large trees, not the many small trees,” he said.

“However, global overviews do allow us to see important new aspects of Earth, as the study shows that humans have removed 46 per cent of Earth’s trees, an important statistic showing the heavy influence of human activity on all ecosystems,” he added.

California Is About to Do Something Great That No State Has Ever Done Before

by

Back in January, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) made a promise. His state, he said, would pursue a new package of climate goals that are the most ambitious in the nation (and among the most ambitious in the world). California was already a leader in efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions and promote clean energy. Brown pledged to go further. By 2030, he declared, California would double the energy efficiency of state buildings; get half its electricity from renewables; and halve consumption of gasoline by cars and trucks.

At the time, all those nice-sounding goals were just words in a speech. But they could very soon become the law of the land. The state legislature is currently considering several bills (SB 350 is the most important) that would codify Brown’s climate agenda. The legislation is widely expected to pass before the end of the legislative session next Friday, but not without a fight from the state’s powerful oil lobby.

Before we get into the bills themselves, let’s talk about California. Believe it or not, the state where America fell in love with cars and highways is now leading the nation, and the world, when it comes to climate action. And that matters, because California, the world’s seventh-largest economy, is a world-class emitter of greenhouse gases. It ranks second for state emissions, behind Texas, and if it were its own nation, it would rank 20th globally, right between Italy and Spain. Still, it’s remarkably clean for its size: On a per-capita basis, it ranks 45th among US states and 38th when compared with countries around the world. (Below, the bars represent total emissions and the dots represent per-capita emissions.)

California is also special because of how much of its emissions come from road transportation (cars, trucks, buses, etc.), which is why a major reduction in gasoline use would be so significant. Nationally, just 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are from transportation; in California, it’s 37 percent. Another way to crunch those numbers: One-tenth of the nation’s road transport emissions come from California. Unsurprisingly, California is also the biggest consumer of gasoline, accounting for one-tenth of the national gas market. As a result, it also has an infamously aggressive oil lobby-more on that in a minute.

“If California can do this, it could really be the beginning of the snowball,” Tim O’Connor said.

California first stepped onto the national climate stage back in 2006 during the Arnold Schwarzenegger administration, with the passage of AB32, known as the Global Warming Solutions Act. That law sets a target of reducing the state’s economy-wide carbon footprint to 1990 levels by 2020. Since the bill was enacted, gasoline consumption in the state is down 9 percent-double the nationwide decline. Total carbon emissions are also down, while GDP and population are both on the rise. Roll those things together and you get the most impressive number: The carbon intensity of the state’s economy (that is, emissions per unit of GDP) is down 28 percent. The upshot is that California has become a proving ground for the notion that strong economic growth and climate action can go hand in hand:

That’s where the current bills come in. SB 350 would bring the state’s gasoline consumption down to about where Florida’s is now, while setting new targets for clean energy and energy efficiency projects. There’s also SB32, which would build on Schwarzenegger’s targets and require the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 (to meet that target, emissions have to start falling about five times faster than they currently are). That would be the most aggressive state target in the country; nationally, the furthest President Barack Obama has gone is to aim for a 26-28 percent reduction by 2025 (and that’s not enshrined in law, either). Both bills passed the state Senate in June by a wide margin; they’re due for a vote in the Assembly within the coming week. If they pass, they’ll head to Brown’s desk for a signature.

Neither bill includes specific prescriptions for how to meet the targets. Those are left to the state’s Air Resources Board (CARB), which would be required to turn in an enforcement plan by 2017. The gas consumption target would likely require some combination of new fuel efficiency standards for cars, incentives for alternative fuels and biofuels, cooperation with local planning agencies to improve public transit and make communities less car-reliant, and a push to get people to buy more electric vehicles. (California is already home to half of the roughly 174,000 electric vehicles on the road in the United States.)

“If California can do this, it could really be the beginning of the snowball,” said Tim O’Connor, director of California policy for the Environmental Defense Fund. “This is how California can really shake up the national conversation on climate.”

The oil lobby has long been the most powerful special interest group in Sacramento.

Combined, these efforts are expected to create up to half a million jobs, according to a recent University of California-Berkeley study, and draw billions in clean tech investments (for which California is already the undisputed national champ). The bills’ supporters in the California capitol also say they will save millions of dollars in traffic-related public health costs and result in reduced energy bills.

The bills’ other supporters include Obama; both the state’s US senators and a majority of its congressional delegation; and a coalition of California businesses, large and small. But they also have some powerful enemies who are pushing back hard.

Because of the state’s share of the gasoline market, and its robust oil and gas production industry, the oil lobby has long been the most powerful special interest in Sacramento. The biggest group, the Western States Petroleum Association, spent $8.9 million on lobbying last year. Now, Californians are getting blitzed by ads like the one below, from the so-called California Drivers Alliance (backed by WSPA, and representing “fuel users & providers”). The ad claims SB 350 will lead to gas rationing and is all about “limiting how far we can drive” and “penalizing drivers for using too much gas.” The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), called the ad “absurd” and “fear-mongering.”

“There’s a significant amount of inertia protecting the industry,” O’Connor said. “The lobby is putting its aim right at the center, at swing moderates” in the Assembly.

We’ll have to wait and see how this pans out. But California has a strong history of leadership on climate policies-including carbon trading programs (it created the nation’s first economy-wide cap-and-trade market in 2012) and clean vehicle standards-so the odds are pretty good.

“The governor has put his reputation on the line,” O’Connor said. “It’s hard to imagine 350 won’t pass.”

How ‘gold-plating’ the Australian electricity grid is killing off coal

by

A startling decoupling of grid-supplied electricity and economic growth has occurred in Australia over the past few years.

Since peaking in 2009, electricity demand in the Australian National Electricity Market has fallen by 7.5 percent while Australian GDP has expanded by about 16 percent.

What this goes to show is that economic growth can-and has-proceeded without having to rely on coal-fired electricity.

Falling demand for grid-supplied electricity has been driven in part by less appetite from energy-intensive industries (in particular by shutdowns of aluminium smelters in New South Wales and Victoria) but also by energy-efficiency advances and growth in rooftop solar installations.

Australia as a whole is just short of 15 percent solar penetration already-plenty of room still to grow but the uptake has been remarkable. The state of South Australia will soon reach 25 percent penetration while the Queensland city of Brisbane has achieved 40 percent penetration. Meanwhile, average rooftop solar system sizes continue to expand, growing from about 4.5 kilowatts earlier this year to 4.84 kilowatts in recent months.

WHY THE BOOM IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ROOFTOP SOLAR?

Much of it can be attributed directly to an exponential increase in retail electricity prices. Those prices in turn are tied to ‘gold-plating’ of the networks, that is, utilities’ pouring money into the grid as a way to ensure they continue to make money.

The divergence in retail and wholesale pricing is nothing short of extraordinary. Chart 1 here how retail electricity prices in the state of Victoria have risen 195 percent over the past 16 years -in stark contrast to the 56 percent increase to the consumer price index over the same period. Wholesale prices have actually fallen over the same period of time.

The advent of electricity storage will only accelerate these trends, especially the installation of rooftop solar over the medium term. AGL Energy, one of the major Australian utilities, recently rolled out a solar battery-package offering, although the price is too high to drive significant take-up in the short term.

(On my house, for example, I can get a 4-kilowatt solar system fully installed for $A5,757 with a payback period of approximately five years while what AGL is offering-a 7.2-kilowatt battery-would have an installed cost of $14,289 and a payback period of approximately 8.5 years.)

As new battery products hit the market-lithium and flow batteries, for instance-and as scale economies drive prices down, storage costs will decline rapidly. History is a guide on this point. Since 2009, photovoltaic panel and systems prices haves fallen by about 25 percent annually in Australia.

Battery-storage costs will most likely follow a similar trajectory. As shown in the Chart 2 and Chart 3, AEMO forecasts strong growth in rooftop solar uptake, and expects battery storage installations to take off. Our guess is that these forecasts, as with many new technologies, will prove too conservative.

What does all this mean for Australia’s electricity market?

It means, in part, that demand for grid-supplied electricity from commercial-and particularly from residential customers-will probably continue to fall, thereby putting further pressure on coal-fired electricity-generator profits.

And it means that the increasing risk of stranded assets calls for the development of a long-term national electricity-sector transition plan. Such a plan, done right, would address vital issues that include network stability, reducing grid overinvestment, decarbonization and power plant site rehabilitation.

Tim King is IEEFA’s director of energy policy, Australasia.

RenewEconomy Free Daily Newsletter

Share this:

Solar ready to thrive without subsidy, says US Energy Secretary

by

Solar ready to thrive without subsidy, says US Energy Secretary

02. September 2015 | Applications & Installations, Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Markets & Trends | By: Ian Clover

Ernest Moniz says the Obama administration backs Democrats’ calls for an extension of the Federal ITC, but stresses the solar industry will grow even without further subsidy.

The solar industry in the U.S. is primed to grow and survive even without the need for subsidy support, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has said this week.

With the price of solar having fallen dramatically over the past few years, Moniz believes that the cost of electricity from rooftop solar arrays could fall to $0.06/kWh in some U.S. states very soon – a situation that would make solar “extremely competitive” with fossil fuel-based power generation sources.

Democrats in Congress are pulling hard for an extension of the Federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which currently stands at 30% until January 1, 2017.

However, despite the Obama administration fully backing the goal of extending that 30% ITC further, Moniz is nevertheless sanguine about solar’s ability to survive free from subsidies.

“I certainly see solar growing, even without subsidy,” Moniz said. “The cost reductions have been incredible for the solar industry, making for an improved value proposition in many contexts.”

The Obama administration is in favor of supporting the extension of the ITC indefinitely, but a Republican-controlled Congress is likely to throw up roadblocks to stop that from happening. The issue, however, is not as simple as Democrats being in favor of renewables and Republicans in opposition – the growth of the wind industry has been rooted in many red states, prompting support for further subsidy support among Republicans in Congress.

pv magazine has explored this issue in dept in the September edition of the magazine. You can read more here.

There is a vast, untapped solar potential in New York City’s roofs

by

Fast Company

Photo courtesy of Fast Company.

New York City seems like it would be a difficult place to build a solar installation. But with so many buildings packed into a small area, the rooftops offer seemingly limitless potential.

A startup called Mapdwell, previously a Fast Company Innovation By Design award winner, has calculated how much.

Using its 3-D modeling and visualization technology combined with aerial data, it looks at more than one million buildings in New York City and identifies 11 gigawatts of “high yield photovoltaic potential” that could deliver over 13 million megawatt-hours per year. For those unfamiliar with energy terms like those, that’s equal to powering 1.2 million homes while offsetting the carbon emissions equivalent to planting more than 185 million trees, or $40 billion in business potential.

…

Mapdwell, a company that spun out of MIT, has launched Solar System so far in nine cities, including Boston, Washington, DC, and Boulder, Colorado.

…

Read the full article in Fast Company.

*Mapdwell has just launched in San Francisco, as well. You can read more about Mapdwell in the Autumn 2013 issue of Energy Futures.

Arizona Regulators to Utilities: Get Your Money Out of State Politics : Greentech Media

by

Here are some of the stories we’re reading this morning.

Arizona Daily Sun: Regulators Want Utilities to Keep Money Out of Campaigns

Two state utility regulators want the Arizona Corporation Commission to adopt a formal policy urging utilities to stay out of future races for the panel.

And if the request doesn’t stop the money, they may seek an audit of affected companies to find out exactly how they’re spending their money on politics.

In pushing the plan, Chairwoman Susan Bitter Smith and member Bob Burns cited media reports of the apparent involvement of Arizona Public Service and Pinnacle West Capital Corp., its parent, in trying to elect two specific Republicans in the 2014 race by funneling money through outside groups.

SF Gate: PG&E Plan Would Hit Solar Homes Harder Than Previously Thought

California’s utility companies have proposed making solar power less financially attractive to homeowners, now that so many are generating their own electricity and cutting their monthly bills. Now it appears that for customers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co., those changes could have a bigger impact than initially thought.

On Aug. 3, PG&E and the state’s other big utility companies proposed changing the state’s financial incentives for people who install solar panels on their roofs. On Thursday, however, the San Francisco utility refined its estimates. Some solar homeowners who take aggressive steps to cut their energy use and install batteries connected to their solar arrays would end up paying $13 more per month than they would under today’s rules.

Financial Times: Eni Discovers ‘Supergiant’ Gasfield Near Egypt

Italian energy group Eni has discovered what it says is a “supergiant” gasfield off the coast of Egypt, the largest ever found in the Mediterranean Sea and which could provide a much-needed boost for the country’s economy.

Eni, one of Europe’s biggest oil and gas companies, said on Sunday that the Zohr discovery “could become one of the world’s largest natural-gas finds” and would play a “major” role in meeting Egypt’s natural gas demand for decades once fully developed.

Mint: WTO Rules Against India in Solar Panels Dispute With the U.S.

A World Trade Organization panel has ruled against India in a dispute raised by the U.S. over the country’s solar power program, requiring the government to offer a level playing field to both foreign and domestic manufacturers of solar panels.

India is likely to appeal against the dispute settlement panel’s ruling, which could give it a two-year breather to implement the program.

The commerce ministry received the ruling last week, a ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

Boulder Weekly: U.S. and India Compete to Have the Largest Solar Power Field in the World

The U.S. Navy is investing in what will be the largest solar farm in the world in order to provide power for 14 of its bases.

In the same week that the U.S. Navy disclosed its plans, the central Indian state of Madya Pradesh announced it was to construct a 750-megawatt plant (1 megawatt is roughly enough to supply 1,000 typical British homes) on barren, government-owned land in the country’s Rewa district.

It is claimed that it would be the world’s largest solar plant, and the state’s energy minister, Rajendra Shukla, says the plan is to have the plant up and running by March 2017.

Tags: arizona, arizona corporation commission, editors news feed, politics

World’s largest fully solar-powered airport will reduce 300,000 tons of carbon emissions in India

by
BY: SWIKAR OLI

It seems India is as sick as we are of hearing about its pollution. Recent studies have linked their pollution to scary health effects and mounting death tolls. While their environmental policies are well overdue, the recent attempts at going clean shows they are heading in the right direction.

The Cochin International Airport (CIAL) is the first airport in the world to run on 100 per cent solar power. The 45 acre facility – the size of about 25 soccer fields – is equipped with 46,000 solar panels and has full energy independence by generating about 52,000 units of electricity daily. The project cost $9.5 million to build.


“When we had realized that the power bill is on the higher side, we contemplated possibilities,” said V.J.Kurian, the energy facility’s managing director, in a recent press release. And numbers show that India will be saving more than just money on its electricity bill. The project is set to reduce 300,000 tons of carbon emissions over the next 25 years, which the report says is akin to planting three million trees.

According to The Telegraph, the airport is the third largest in the country by passengers, and received 6.8 million passengers in the 2014-2015 fiscal year.

India is quickly becoming a leader in harnessing solar energy. Its 750 mega-watt (MW) solar power facility in Madhya Pradesh will become the world’s largest, far exceeding the current 392 MW facility set up in California. For perspective, that is a little more than 60 times the power generated by the CIAL.

Sources: tiozambia.com, ecowanderlust.com, wordlypost.in, archivi.diariodelweb.it

Latin America Green News: 100% renewables in Chile would save lives; climate change costly for agriculture in Colombia and Mexico

by

Posted September 1, 2015

Latin America Green News is a selection of weekly news highlights about environmental and energy issues in Latin America.

Latin America Green News will be taking a break and resume after the Labor Day Holiday. August 22nd – September 1, 2015 Climate Change

A strong climate action plan that puts Chile on a trajectory toward 100% renewables by 2050 would save the country billions of dollars, create jobs and reduce pollution-related deaths, according to a new study launched by the Citizen’s Committee on Climate Change, a coalition of Chilean environmental groups. The new study, prepared by the NewClimate Institute, found that switching to 100% renewable energy would help Chile avoid spending $5.3 billion a year on fossil fuels, create 11,000 green jobs and prevent 1,500 premature deaths from outdoor air pollution in Santiago. Chile released a draft climate action plan, or Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), for public comment late last year, but according to the Citizen’s Committee on Climate Change the proposal does not go far enough. The Committee is urging the government to increase the ambition of its climate action plan to achieve the needed transition toward cleaner and low impact energy sources. (Futaleufú Riverkeeper 09/1/2015)

At a roundtable on financial innovation models held this week by Colombia’s Department of National Planning (DNP), Director Simón Gaviria Muñoz, discussed results of a study conducted by DNP, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and advised the country is in danger of losing 0.5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) annually through 2100 unless it implements actions to mitigate the effects of climate change. The loss would cost the country approximately USD $1.2 billion annually and wreak havoc on several sectors of the economy as well as the poorest 20 percent of the population. Financially, the agricultural sector will be hit hardest with an estimated 7.4 percent decrease in productivity annually. Transportation, fishing and livestock also follow closely behind with similar negative productivity rates. (Departamento Nacional de Planeacion 8/28/2015)

Rising temperatures caused by climate change and increased industrialization of rural areas in Mexico have forced the country to have to import 80 percent of its legumes. Agricultural areas are becoming unsuitable for production and some are being encroached by growing urban areas leaving only three million of the twenty five million available hectares for legume production. Experts from the International Research Network on Sociourban, Regional and Environmental Problems warn that federal, state and local governments are not doing enough to contain urban sprawl and protect the agricultural sector from the effects of climate change putting in danger food supplies for communities. (El Occidental 8/26/2016)

A new giant has risen in the middle of the Amazon jungle in Brazil seeking to study the effects of climate change in a region that has been dubbed “the earth’s lungs.” The USD $7.4 million, 325 meter-tall orange and white tower, referred to by some as the “Eiffel Tower” of the Amazon, is the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) and it has the unique mission of saving the world. Scientists hope that by closely studying this incredible region which produces half of the world’s oxygen and stabilizes the planet’s climate through carbon capture, they can solve a key piece of the global warming puzzle. Though it won’t start collecting data until later in the year, its strategic location far from civilization is expected to produce relatively pure data. (La Nacion 8/23/2015)

Conservation

Peru and Chile are joining forces against the trafficking of flora and fauna between the two countries. This new collaboration stems from meetings prompted by commitments made during the third meeting of the Committee on Frontier Integration and Development between Peru and Chile last year. Representatives from both countries discussed areas of potential collaboration to protect trafficked wildlife on the border, particularly as they relate to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). (Andina 8/24/2015)

Deforestation

A new monitoring study by the World Wildlife Fund Mexico (WWF) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) revealed that illegal logging degraded 19.9 hectares in Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, the highest figure since 2009. According to the study, 96 percent of the illegal logging occurred in the community of San Felipe de los Alzati, one of the 33 communities located within the reserve. Omar Vidal, director of WWF in Mexico, urged the government to work with the community to address the illegal activity and noted the need to increase strategic investments to improve conservation in the area. (Milenio 08/26/2015)

Data from Colombia’s Department of National Planning (DNP) raised concerns over the increase in illegal mining in the country, one of the biggest contributors to the country’s deforestation rate. The practice of illegal mining in the country has become so lucrative that it rakes in profits 3.5 times higher than drug trafficking. The federal government has committed to reducing deforestation form illegal mining from 120 thousand hectares a year to 90 thousand hectares by 2018, a plan which they revealed in their National Development Plan 2014-2018. The Ministry of the Environment has also pledged to crack down on the illicit activity by joining forces with prosecutors and police. (Caracol 08/25/2015)

This Dad Found a Wonderful Use for Restaurants’ Leftover Crayons

by

In 2011, Bryan Ware was enjoying his birthday dinner at a restaurant with his wife and two sons. He was watching his kids draw on the paper tablecloth with crayons their server had given them. A thought struck him.

“I wondered, ‘What happens to these crayons after we leave if we don’t take them with us?'” Ware, who lives in the San Francisco area, told The Mighty.

He later questioned a restaurant employee and was dismayed to learn that every crayon put out on the table had to be thrown away after the table’s customers left – whether it’d been used down to a nub or left completely untouched. Convinced the crayons’ lives didn’t have to end so early, Ware started taking restaurant crayons with him. He made it his mission to come up with a way to get the unwanted crayons into as many children’s hands as possible.

Two years later in 2013, Ware founded The Crayon Initiative, a nonprofit organization that repurposes old unusable crayon wax into new crayons and distributes them to children’s hospitals across California.

Photo from The Crayon Initiative Facebook page

First, Ware collects old crayons from restaurants, schools and acquaintances. He separates them by color, melts down the wax and molds the melted wax into new crayons.

Photo of the crayon melting process via The Crayon Initiative Facebook page
Photo of the melted crayon wax via The Crayon Initiative Facebook page

Next, Ware puts the melted wax into a one-of-a-kind crayon mold. The mold, which is large and triangular rather than small and circular, was specifically designed with help from an occupational therapist to be easier to grip for small children and kids with special needs.

Photo of the crayon mold via The Crayon Initiative Facebook page

The company then puts the new crayons in boxes and delivers them to children of all ages who are in the hospital for any reason.

Photo from The Crayon Initiative Facebook page

So far, The Crayon Initiative has donated more than 2,000 boxes of crayons to children’s hospitals. In September 2015, Ware will make his first out-of-state delivery to a hospital in New York City. He hopes The Crayon Initiative can continue to expand and bring crayons to kids in hospitals all over the country.

Ware also hopes these crayons can help children in hospitals express themselves artistically, continue normal childhood development and communicate through drawing what they may not be able to say verbally. But more than anything, he hopes he can play some part in making their hospital stays a little easier.

“From my perspective, the biggest goal is to give them an escape,” Ware told The Mighty. “I can’t even fathom what these kids are going through. If these crayons give them an escape from that hospital room for ten minutes, we did our job.”

Photo courtesy of Bryan Ware
Photo courtesy of Bryan Ware
Photo courtesy of Bryan Ware

To learn more about The Crayon Initiative, visit the organization’s website and Facebook page.

Things you should know about Fertilizers!

by

What exactly is fertilizer? And, why do plants benefit from it?

Fertilizer is simply a material added to soils or directly to plant tissues that contains nutrients essential to the growth and health of the plant. Usually, this means Phosphorous, Nitrogen, and Potassium. These basic elements are usually in the form of chemical compounds that can be converted by the plant to access the needed elements. For instance, plants require Nitrogen, but use it in the form of larger compounds like ammonia (NH4) or nitrate (NO3-). Soils naturally contain these required chemical compounds, but often there is an imbalanced ratio. Fertilizers are inputs that farmers and gardeners can use to increase the amounts and balance the ratios of these essential chemical compounds.

Soil is not dirt. Soil is very much a living, breathing, organic system of nutrients and matter, which plants draw from to build themselves. When you look at a plant, and think of all the matter making up that plant, you realize that all of it came from three places: air, water, and soil. In nature, those plants will die and decompose back into the soil, helping to return much of that matter. In farming and gardening, the plants are removed from their location, to be consumed. This means that all of that matter has now exited the soil permanently. Over years of use, soils become less nutritious. To mend this, we add inputs back into the soil. Often times, this is in the form of a fertilizer.

Replacing and fortifying nutrient levels is key to maintaining healthy soils. Check out our awesome infographic below for a visual guide to understanding some fertilizer basics!

fertilizer-facts-what-when-how-often.jpg

Staring Into Someone’s Eyes For 10 Minutes Leads To Altered State Of Consciousness

by

A psychologist in Italy has figured out how to induce a drug-free altered state of consciousness by asking 20 volunteers to sit and stare into each other’s eyes for 10 minutes straight.

Not only did the deceptively simple task bring on strange ‘out of body’ experiences for the volunteers, it also caused them to see hallucinations of monsters, their relatives, and themselves in their partner’s face.

The experiment, run by Giovanni Caputo from the University of Urbino, involved having 20 young adults (15 of which were women) pair off, sit in a dimly lit room 1 meter away from each other, and stare into their partner’s eyes for 10 minutes.

The lighting in the room was bright enough for the volunteers to easily make out the facial features of their partner, but low enough to diminish their overall color perception.

A control group of 20 more volunteers were asked to sit and stare for 10 minutes in another dimly lit room in pairs, but their chairs were facing a blank wall.

The volunteers were told very little about the purpose of the study, only that it had to do with a “meditative experience with eyes open”.

Once the 10 minutes were up, the volunteers were asked to complete questionnaires related to what they experienced during and after the experiment. One questionnaire focused on any dissociative symptoms that the volunteers might have experienced, and another questioned them on what they perceived in their partner’s face (eye-staring group) or their own face (control group).

is a term used in psychology to describe a whole range of psychological experiences that make a person feel detached from their immediate surroundings. Symptoms such as a loss of memory, seeing everything in distorted colors, or feeling like the world isn’t real can be brought on by abuse and trauma; drugs such as ketamine, alcohol, and LSD; and now, apparently, face-staring.

“The participants in the eye-staring group said they’d had a compelling experience unlike anything they’d felt before,” Christian Jarrett writes for the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest.

Reporting in journal , Caputo says the eye-staring group out-scored the control group in all the questionnaires, which suggests that something about staring into another human being’s eyes for 10 uninterrupted minutes had a profound effect on their visual perception and mental state.

“On the dissociative states test, they gave the strongest ratings to items related to reduced color intensity, sounds seeming quieter or louder than expected, becoming spaced out, and time seeming to drag on. On the strange-face questionnaire, 90 percent of the eye-staring group agreed that they’d seen some deformed facial traits, 75 percent said they’d seen a monster, 50 percent said they saw aspects of their own face in their partner’s face, and 15 percent said they’d seen a relative’s face.“

The results recall what Caputo when he performed a similar experiment with 50 volunteers staring at themselves in a mirror for 10 minutes. The paper, entitled Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion, reports that after less than a minute, the volunteers started seeing what Caputo describes as the “strange-face illusion”.

“The participants’ descriptions included huge deformations of their own faces; seeing the faces of alive or deceased parents; archetypal faces such as an old woman, child or the portrait of an ancestor; animal faces such as a cat, pig or lion; and even fantastical and monstrous beings,” Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik write for Scientific American. “All 50 participants reported feelings of ‘otherness’ when confronted with a face that seemed suddenly unfamiliar. Some felt powerful emotions.”

According to Jarrett at the British Psychological Society , while the eye-staring group of this most recent experiment only scored on average 2.45 points higher than the control group in their questionnaires (which used a five-point scale where 0 is “not at all” and 5 would be “extremely”), Caputo says the effects were stronger than those experienced by the 2010 mirror-staring volunteers.

So what’s going on here? Martinez-Conde and Macknik explain that it’s likely to do with something called neural adaptation, which describes how our neurons can slow down or even stop their responses to unchanging stimulation. It happens when you stare at any scene or object for an extended period of time – your perception will start to fade until you blink or the scene changes, or it can be rectified by tiny involuntary eye movements called microsaccades.

Information’s and image from : Science Alert

We in Alaska see that climate change is real. The time to act is now | Othniel Art Oomittuk

by

How can we say no to drilling in the Arctic when we use oil every day? We use it for heating our houses, fueling our four-wheelers and cooking our meals. But saying no to oil does not mean we have to go back to old times.

When I grew up in Point Hope, 50 years ago, we used dog sleds for transportation, seal oil for warmth, whale bones and sod for shelter. All these energy sources came from our land and our ocean through the animals to us.

We were an independent sovereign culture. Fossil fuel was introduced to us. We weren’t looking for it. It changed our way of living; it made life easier, more comfortable, it afforded us luxuries – but it certainly came at a price. We have become dependent on an outside energy source; just like any other modern community in the world.

Shell believes there is oil in our ocean. But extracting it comes at too big a risk for the indigenous people of the Arctic. The Inupiaq culture is centered around the harvest of marine mammals. We are who we are because the animals give themselves to us on their yearly migration.

We exist because they feed us with their body and their spirit. We don’t hunt for fun or for trophies, we hunt to subsist, to sustain what is left of our sovereign way of life. An oil spill will destroy the Arctic and it will destroy our subsistence way of life.

The US government predicts a 75% chance of an oil spill happening. Even in the small likelihood there is no spill, the drilling itself will disturb our animals. Shell itself estimates in its last environmental permit application that drilling activity will harass 13% of endangered species like bowhead whale, grey whale and ringed seals.

Using the oil locked in the Arctic Ocean will accelerate climate change.

Climate change is already here for us. The ice has changed. It comes late, it leaves early. It has become unreliable and hard to read, making it dangerous to cross during hunting. Our ice cellars are melting and eroding, making it difficult to store our subsistence food. It rained this past winter, it never rains in the winter. The ice in the fall used to protect our coastline from heavy waves. Now the waves wash away our shores.

To keep climate change from destroying the Arctic any further, Arctic Ocean oil needs to stay in the ground. According to a recent study funded by the UK Energy Research Centre a third of the oil reserves should remain in the ground and not be used before 2050 if global warming is to stay below 2C (3.6F). A temperature rise limit set for this century that will hopefully prevent catastrophic climate change.

There is energy in the Arctic other than oil. Solar and wind power is available for everyone here. What we need is the affordable technology to develop and store these natural unlimited energy sources. There certainly is enough room for wind farms and solar farms. We can make a different choice now – just look at Hawaii’s recent commitment to become completely fossil fuel independent by 2045.

“Alarm Bells are ringing”, says president Obama about climate change in an infomercial announcing his visit to the Arctic. Here in the Arctic, those sirens have been sounding for decades. Shell is drilling in our ocean, threatening our way of life with its noise and probable oil spills. Climate change is happening in the Arctic, with the Arctic ice pack melting faster than ever. The rest of the world is in the same boat, they just don’t know it yet.

President Obama, time changed and it will change again. It is now that we have to make the transition to new energy sources for the world. Moving away from oil is not going back into time, it is moving forward. There will be a time that talking about fossil-fueled car will sound as old as dog sled transportation sounds now.

For the sake of the Inupiaq and for the sake of the earth, leave the oil in the Arctic and put the government’s money and energy into perfecting the technology to unlock natural renewable energy sources that are available to everyone. We need energy sources that can be used locally and that will give us back our independence – and we need it now.

EPA Urged by Nearly 100,000 Americans to Redo Highly Controversial Fracking Study

by

The public comment period for the highly controversial U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) fracking study ends today. Food & Water Watch, Environmental Action, Breast Cancer Action and other advocacy groups delivered nearly 100,000 comments from Americans asking the U.S. EPA to redo their study with a higher level of scrutiny and oversight.

The study produced significant controversy due to the discrepancy in what the EPA found in its report and what the agency’s news release title said. The study stated that “we did not find evidence” of “widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources,” but the title of the EPA’s news release said, “Assessment shows hydraulic fracturing activities have not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources”-a subtle but significant difference that led to most news coverage having headlines like this one , “EPA Fracking Study: Drilling Wins.”

In addition to the misleading EPA headline, the groups were also quick to point out that the study had a limited scope and was conducted with a lack of new substantive data. “Concluding that fracking is safe based off a study with such a limited scope is irresponsible,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch. “How many more people must be poisoned by the oil and gas industry for the EPA to stand up and protect people’s health? It’s time for the agency to do its job and stop letting industry shills intimidate it.”

The groups emphasize that despite the limitations of the report, the agency still found numerous harms to drinking water resources from fracking. For instance, the EPA found evidence of more than 36,000 spills from 2006 to 2012. That amounts to about 15 spills every day somewhere in the U.S.

“By downplaying its findings of water contamination from fracking, the EPA ultimately provided cover for the fracking industry to continue to poison our drinking water with chemicals linked to a variety of health problems, including breast cancer,” said Karuna Jaggar, executive director of Breast Cancer Action. “When the EPA finalizes its study, they need to focus on protecting public health-not the fracking industry-by highlighting and condemning drinking water contamination from fracking.”

But still, groups claim that there was huge oversight in the report. “The EPA’s report clearly shows that fracking pollution harms our water supplies, but the agency also turned a blind eye to some of the biggest risks of this toxic technique,” said Clare Lakewood of the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s bizarre and alarming that the EPA report refused to look at the harm caused by the disposal of toxic fracking waste fluid into unlined pits and underground injection wells. The EPA needs to get serious about the threat of fracking and look at every pathway to water contamination.”

Jennifer Krill, Earthworks ‘ executive director, agrees. “In its June study on fracking’s impacts on water, EPA cited more than 140 waste spills alone that contaminated water. And they found those instances despite industry obstruction, and despite not looking in places where community complaints and EPA’s own investigations suggested such pollution was occurring.”

Big Bank Says It’s Going To Cost A Lot To Do Nothing On Global Warming

by

Climate

by

CREDIT: Courtesy Citibank

A new report from Citibank found that acting on climate change by investing in low-carbon energy would save the world $1.8 trillion through 2040, as compared to a business-as-usual scenario. In addition, not acting will cost an additional $44 trillion by 2060 from the “negative effects” of climate change.

The report, titled Energy Darwinism, looked at the predicted cost of energy over the coming decades, the costs of developing low carbon energy sources, and the implications of global energy choices.

“What we’re trying to do is to take an objective view at the economics of this situation and actually look at what the costs of not acting are, if the scientists are right,” Jason Channell, Global Head of Alternative Energy and Cleantech Research at Citi, told CNBC. “There is a cost to not doing this, and although there is a cost to acting, what we’re trying to do is to actually weigh up the different costs here.”

The report includes analysis of the cost of stranded assets – the idea that in order to prevent 2ºC of warming, a third of the world’s oil reserves, half of its gas reserves, and more than 80 percent of its coal reserves need to stay in the ground.

“Overall, we find that the incremental costs of action are limited (and indeed ultimately lead to savings), offer reasonable returns on investment, and should not have too detrimental an effect on global growth,” the report’s authors write. In fact, they found that the necessary investment, such as adding renewable energy sources and improving efficiency, might actually boost the global economy.

“We believe that that solution does exist,” the report states. “The incremental costs of following a low carbon path are in context limited and seem affordable, the ‘return’ on that investment is acceptable and moreover the likely avoided liabilities are enormous. Given that all things being equal cleaner air has to be preferable to pollution, a very strong ‘Why would you not?’ argument begins to develop.”

Indeed, Citibank is not the first organization to call attention to the fact that inaction on climate change comes with a big price tag.

The Obama administration has repeatedly recognized this. A report released earlier this summer by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers found that the longer the United States waits, the more expensive mitigation will be. In his first speech as the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Shaun Donovan emphasized the budgetary importance of climate action.

“From where I sit, climate action is a must do; climate inaction is a can’t do; and climate denial scores – and I don’t mean scoring points on the board,” Donovan said. “I mean that it scores in the budget. Climate denial will cost us billions of dollars.”

Climate change has been tied to increased severe weather, such as droughts and floods. This extreme weather can be extremely expensive. Superstorm Sandy, for instance, caused $65 billion in damage.

It’s a common trope that environmental action – whether it’s reducing carbon, protecting water, or curbing smog – costs too much.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, finalized earlier this month, is one example of the false debate between economic benefits and addressing climate change. The EPA estimated that the plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent will result in $25 to 45 billion in climate and health benefits by 2030.

But several republicans said that the plan would be an economic disaster. “We’ll all be left to suffer while the President scrambles to carve out a legacy for himself, leaving a ruined economy in his wake,” said John Tidwell, director of the Oklahoma chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-funded action group. Even presidential contenders got in on the action, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), saying the plan “will cause Americans’ electricity costs to skyrocket at a time when we can least afford it.”

The Citi report was released in advance of December’s meeting of the United Nations Climate Conference on Climate Change in Paris. The conference is “the first real opportunity to reach a legally binding agreement to tackle emissions,” according to the report.

Climate Change has Become Something All Religions Agree On

by

Pope Francis acknowledged, first of all, that climate change is real. He also said that technology alone would not solve the problem and human behaviour must change to ensure that the world’s poor don’t suffer due to the consumption of the rich. The Islamic Climate Declaration recognises the scientific consensus on climate change is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere so that global warming does not exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The declaration is clear that a 1.5 degree Celsius warming would be preferable. It calls on people and leaders of all nations to aim to phase out greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and commit themselves to 100% renewable energy at the earliest possible.

In a recent interview to American science magazine Popular Science, climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe explained why religion is backing the fight against climate change. “Science can tell us why climate change is happening, and what might happen next,” she said. “But what we should do about it isn’t a science question. It’s a question of values.”

The Holy See and Islamic leaders have not been the first moral authorities to caution against climate change. Ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2014, the World Council of Churches and Religions for Peace, both prominent interfaith organisations, held their own summit to push for progress at the negotiations in Lima that December and after. In previous years Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh leaders have declared their war on climate change.

Hindu Declaration on Climate Change

Issued at the Parliament of World Religions in Australia in 2009, the Hindu Declaration on Climate Change drew on the Hindu tradition that links man to nature through physical, psychological and spiritual bonds. “The nations of the world have yet to agree upon a plan to ameliorate man’s contribution to this complex change,” the declaration stated. “This is largely due to powerful forces in some nations which oppose any such attempt, challenging the very concept that unnatural climate change is occurring. Hindus everywhere should work toward an international consensus.” Issued just as the Copenhagen round of the Conference of Parties was beginning, the declaration had little impact on the talks that ended with a weak agreement and little binding action.

Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change

In 2009, the Dalai Lama was the first person to sign the Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change that endorsed the catastrophic tipping points of global warming. NASA climatologists had predicted that the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 350 parts per million, a line that has already been breached. In May this year, atmospheric carbon crossed 400 ppm for the first time.

“We are challenged not only to reduce carbon emissions, but also to remove large quantities of carbon gas already present in the atmosphere,” the Buddhist declaration said. It also emphasised the need to change the priorities of the world economies. “The key to happiness is contentment rather than an ever-increasing abundance of goods. The compulsion to consume more and more is an expression of craving, the very thing the Buddha pinpointed as the root cause of suffering.”

The Dalai Lama has gone even further to say that the focus in Tibet, which is stuck in a losing battle for independence, should be climate change and not politics.

Sikh Statement on Climate Change

“Our Mother Earth, Mata Dharat, has gone through undeniable changes at the hands of humans. It is abundantly clear that our action has caused great damage to the atmosphere and is projected to cause even more damage if left unhandled,” said a statement released by a group called EcoSikh in September 2014. Calling on Sikhs to be the frontrunners of change and inviting the tenet of selfless service, the group asked Sikhs to reduce their carbon footprints, recycle, invest in renewable technologies and also put pressure on governments to take action to mitigate carbon emissions.

Orthodox Christians, Protestants, Baha’I and Jewish leaders have, in their turn, accepted the science of climate change and called on the faithful to save the earth. What the Pope and Islamic leaders have added is the influence of over 1.2 billion Roman Catholics and 1.6 million Muslims worldwide, which is almost half the world’s population. For now, climate change seems to be the one science that world religions don’t seem to have a problem with, whether it will make a difference or not at the “make-or-break” Paris negotiations in December.

When Pope Francis chose to champion the battle against climate change via papal encyclical in June this year, the act was lauded as the one that could galvanise the world community far more than 30 years of pleading by climate scientists. Now Muslim leaders across the world have echoed the moral call against climate change with their Islamic Climate Declaration issued last week calling for a fossil-fuel phase-out.

Hurricane Katrina proved that if black lives matter, so must climate justice

by

Those of us from low-income communities of color are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. US cities and towns that are predominantly made up of people of color are also home to a disproportionate share of the environmental burdens that are fueling the climate crisis and shortening our lives. One has only to recall the gut-wrenching images of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath to confirm this.

At a time when police abuse is more visible than ever thanks to technology, and our communities continue to get hit time and time again by climate catastrophe, we can’t afford to choose between a Black Lives Matter protest and a climate justice forum, because our survival depends on both of them.

As a young woman, I started organizing against racial violence and police misconduct. For the last 20 years, I have been struggling for environmental and climate justice. As descendants of slavery and colonization, our communities have lived and continue to live at the intersection of all these challenges. Both have a long history rooted in the extraction and abuse of our labor and later the extraction and abuse of our resources. Both involve people who are the descendants of historical trauma and are now faced with the catastrophe of a changing climate.

Over the years, as we were fighting for housing, jobs and better schools, decisions were being made to site some of the most toxic industries in communities with a large proportion of people of color: power plants, waste transfer stations, landfills, refineries and incinerators. As a result, communities of color have become cancer clusters and have the highest rates of asthma. In response, we in the environmental justice movement have said there is not anything more fundamental than the right to breathe – and that includes the right to clean air.

The environmental justice and Black Lives Matter movements are complementary. Black lives matter in the Gulf, where most of the fatalities resulting from Hurricane Katrina were black people, and which was home to the largest marine oil spill in history five years later. Black lives matter in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where hundreds of black families waited for weeks for electricity, heat and in some cases, running water, to be turned back on after Superstorm Sandy. Black lives matter in Richmond, California, home to the largest oil refinery on the West Coast. Black lives matter in Detroit, home to the largest solid waste incinerator in the US. The list goes on of cities and towns that are predominantly made up of people of color and are also home to a disproportionate share of this nation’s environmental burdens.

We as people of color people now face the effects of a changing climate neither our ancestors nor we are responsible for creating. Climate change demands another rhythm. The current dig, burn and dump economy is no longer acceptable. Similarly, a climate movement led by people of traditional power and privilege will not relieve the crises we face. Our communities know another way. As people of African and Indigenous ancestry, we come from societies and ways of life that protect and nurture Mother Earth. Now is the time to reconnect with our old ways. The knowledge is there – it is in our historical memory, and we are doing this work. Environmental and climate justice activists are working at the grassroots level to develop indigenous leadership around local climate solutions.

This redefines the face of the climate movement and provides a just and necessary alternative to the racial and ecological structures that have led us to where we are. It will be through this process of living and working and struggling with one another that we guarantee our children and grandchildren the right to breathe free.

+ More