Lethal Heating: 05/28/19

28/05/2019

'Green Wave' In EU Vote Amid Climate Crisis

AFP

German Green party EU candidate Hannah Neumann (left) celebrates with party co-leader Annalena Baerbock and the Greens top candidate Sven Giegold after the exit poll figures were announced. (AFP Photo/Tobias SCHWARZ)

Berlin - With double-digit scores across Europe's biggest countries including a stunning 20 percent in Germany, the Greens bagged record gains in EU elections on Sunday with younger voters leading calls for action to halt global warming.
The environmental party doubled its score in Germany from the last EU elections in 2014, knocking the Social Democrats off their traditional second place.
In France, the Greens were number three with 12 percent, while in Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands, they garnered double-digits.
In Britain, they were on 12.4 percent, nearly double their previous score, and beating the ruling Conservatives into fifth place.
"To see The Green Party beating the Conservatives so far in these elections is truly amazing. Something seismic is happening in British and European politics," said Alexandra Phillips, Green Party candidate for South East England.
With the two main traditional EU blocs -- the conservative EPP and the centre-left Social Democrats projected to lose ground, the Greens could end up as kingmakers in the European Parliament.
"This is a Sunday for Future," said the Greens' lead candidate in Germany Sven Giegold, in a nod to the "Fridays for Future" school strikes by students sounding the alarm on the climate crisis.
His counterpart in France, Yannick Jadot, also hailed it as a "green wave in which we are the main players".
France's Prime Minister Edouard Philippe acknowledged the "message about the ecological emergency".
"Everywhere in Europe, our citizens and in particular the youngest are asking us to act with determination and that's what we'll do in France and in Europe," he said.
In Ireland, Green Party candidate Ciaran Cuffe was on course to top the first preference tally in Dublin on 23 percent of the vote, with the Greens also seen in contention in the country's two other constituencies.
Congratulating the Greens, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the election was about Brexit and climate action.
"It's a very clear message from the public that they want us to do more on climate action -- and we've got that message. That's going to require lots of changes on individual level, community level and Govt level," he said on Twitter.

'Prove you mean business'
"The big story tonight is that the far right didn't rise in Europe, those numbers didn't come in," said Irish Green Party leader Eamon Ryan.
"What actually happened is the Greens came in, the counter to that. In Germany they're the second biggest party, and right across Europe and including here at home I'm so glad that green wave hit home -- we're part of that story."
The momentum for the Green surge had been building up over months as the strikes started last November by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, 16, not only refused to lose steam but caught the imagination of youth across the world.
In a major mobilisation on Friday, tens of thousands of students rallied, with some calling on their parents to tick the box for the environment at European polls this week.
Cheering Sunday's results, a leading student activist in Germany Luisa Neubauer wrote: "The European elections show that we're not only bringing the climate crisis to the streets but also to the ballot boxes. This should give food for thought to those who have in the last month laughed at 'youth engagement'."
Under the 2015 Paris deal to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the 28-nation EU has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030, compared with 1990.
But many scientists and climate activists say Europe and all other major economies must sharply raise their ambition.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change warned in October that warming is currently on track towards a catastrophic 3C or 4C rise.

Biggest challenge
In Germany, the climate crisis has exposed a generational split, with adults and the elderly accused of hanging on to their polluting diesel cars while youngsters are urging change by going on school strikes.
Stunned by the Greens surge, the parties in Germany's governing coalition vowed to take on the challenge.
Markus Soeder, who heads Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies CSU, declared the environmental party as its main competitor.
"The biggest challenge of the future is the intensive debate with the Greens," he said, adding that "old measures that we had before, are no longer valid".
Underlining that his party is struggling to win over young voters, he added that "we must work to be younger, cooler and more open".
Early results suggest around one in three under-30s voted Green, while only 13 percent picked the CDU.

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As Extinctions Loom, Biodiversity Warnings Fail To Resonate With Governments, Media

Deutsche Welle

Ecological collapse and species loss threaten humanity as much as climate change. Conservationists say we're not listening.

The day scientists warned one million species face extinction and nothing short of "transformative" action will stop ecosystem damage wrecking our way of life, British journalists went into overdrive. Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, had just given birth.
In the battle for public attention, the royal baby was king. It relegated next-day coverage of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report from the front pages of all but two of Britain's national newspapers. Globally, Google searches for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were 14 and 31 times higher than biodiversity the day the report came out.
"Where [is] the breaking news?" said Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, in a tweet the next evening, referring to the lack of biodiversity coverage. "The extra news broadcasts? The front pages? Where are the emergency meetings? The crisis summits? What could be more important?"
The IPBES report, the most comprehensive study of life on earth ever undertaken, lays out stark threats from biodiversity loss: one million species face extinction; the soil, forests, oceans and rivers we rely on have been devastated by humans; and climate breakdown can only be prevented through better stewardship of nature. Its summary for policymakers, published on May 6, was hailed as a landmark moment for conservation.
Yet faced with an accelerating extinction crisis, environmentalists despaired of media outlets burying — or ignoring — the most significant alarm bells to date.

Scientists warn humans are destroying nature at an "unprecedented" and "accelerating" rate

But the people behind the report are cautiously optimistic.
"I really believe that for the first time we've triggered a global awareness, and I don't say this lightly," said Anne Larigauderie, IPBES executive secretary, adding she had recently seen graffiti warning of a "sixth mass extinction" in the suburb of Paris she lives in. Scientists say there have been five previous mass die-offs on Earth.
"We've been [talking about biodiversity] for several decades and I really sense for the first time that it's starting to pick up."
More than 20,000 unique articles were written about the report across 45 languages, according to IPBES's own data. Its presence on TV screens and in radio waves was hard to track, said Patrick Tonissen, an IPBES communications officer, but the report led national broadcast news bulletins including a BBC News show.
In government, the report was cited by local and national administrations declaring climate emergencies. IPBES representatives met with environment ministers from G7 member states earlier this month to sign a biodiversity charter and are scheduled to testify before US congress on 22nd May, the UN's international day for biological diversity. Myanmar voted to become the 133rd member of IPBES shortly after the report was published, according to local media.
"I would not say the response was perfect or by any means ideal," said Tonissen. "But it was a major step forward in raising awareness of biodiversity."

Indonesia's orangutan population has plummeted

Getting people to care
When it comes to nature, the fight for attention is an uphill struggle.
Dynamic, simple and urgent language helped the report resonate with the average person, said Joyce Msuya, acting executive director of UN Environment. This helped it break into a competitive news cycle. "I was [also] one of those people checking my phone every two minutes for news of the royal baby," she added, "so I felt the excitement."
But attempts to push conservation into the public consciousness have so far stalled.
People care about biodiversity loss but face barriers to engaging with it, said Kathryn Williams, environmental psychologist at the University of Melbourne. This, she says, is because we may not recognize plants, animals and places we love in the words "biodiversity" and "species"; the scale of extinction and loss can feel so overwhelming that we distance ourselves emotionally; and, on an individual level, we don't know how to stop it.

Bees — what are we without them? What can be seen here is probably the first thing that comes to mind when we think of bees — honey! Here the sugar crystals have been magnified 100 times with the help of a polarized light. For one jar of honey, bees have to visit between 450,000 and 3 million flowers.

More than with climate, scientists and journalists have struggled to communicate the importance of nature. In an effort to connect better with readers, the Guardian newspaper last week updated its style guide to prefer the word "wildlife" to "biodiversity". Biodiversity loss receives up to eight times less media coverage than climate change, Canadian researchers found last year.
The reason? Nature's unprecedented decline, which has quietly sped up, is, in isolation, less dramatic than extreme weather events brought by global warming — such as flash floods and wildfires. Its contributions to humans are also hard to grasp. An obscure earthworm may form part of an ecosystem that keeps soil fertile and helps put food on our plates. But its death rarely stirs hearts the way a polar bear on melting ice does.
That has kept conversations about biodiversity focused around charismatic mammals, such as orangutans and elephants, at the expense of wildlife whose utility is less visible, such as fungi and bacteria.
The Canadian researchers also observed a 10 to 15-year delay between the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a rise in media interest in climate change. IPBES, which spent three years and 2.4 million dollars compiling its global assessment on biodiversity, was founded in 2012.
"When you look at history, I think this is the first time ever that a biodiversity or nature report was the theme of main headlines globally," said Msuya. "We could not have asked for a better time to talk about biodiversity."

Indigenous peoples have taken better care of the planet that most, but are among the most at-risk from biodiversity loss

Whose problem?
The increasing awareness of biodiversity — whether sufficient to save it or not — may be partially down to lessons learnt from climate change communication. By emphasizing humanity's dependence on nature for food, water, energy and medicine, the report's press briefing drew journalists towards the effects of biodiversity loss on people. The research field of ecosystem services, which the report drew on, puts a price tag on these contributions.
That framing has come under fire from environmentalists who say it ignores the intrinsic value of nature highlighted in the report.
Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a tweet: "There's no reason, no authentic emotional motivation to pivot to a "greater" problem [than mass extinction]. Most people can see the simultaneous tragedy of what we're doing to ourselves and other earthlings without needing to immediately declare one to be more important."
The report's more shocking figures dominated headlines, said IPBES, with only a small proportion of articles covering the intangible benefits of biodiversity. Nature's non-material contributions to people, such as learning from the diversity of life and solidifying cultural and spiritual identities, are decreasing globally.
For people to engage with biodiversity you have to show how it affects them, said Williams, the environmental psychologist. "One of the great things about the report is that it highlights... the different ways we value nature. Not just tangible ways like food and clear air, but also the ways that we relate on a more emotional level."
The sluggish response from governments has put pressure on scientists and journalists to find new ways of communicating the urgency of biodiversity loss.
The morning after IPBES released its global assessment and Meghan Markle gave birth, German daily Tageszeitung, anticipating a shift in public priorities, splashed the biodiversity story next to a picture of the British royal family, the Windsors. It was captioned: "Windsors saved from extinction!"

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War On Wind And Renewable Energy Must End

Canberra Times - Andrew Bray*

Six years ago Australia's climate policy went from global leader to laughing stock.
Prior to 2013, an effective Clean Energy Bill had been in place, but it was repealed when Tony Abbott came to power.
Two years later, he underlined his hostility to wind energy, calling wind turbines "visually awful".
Two prime ministers later and Australia remains without a coherent national climate or energy policy. With sections of the Government still openly hostile, wind energy continues to be the focus of facile scare campaigns.
This has occurred alongside a rise in emissions that were once falling under the previous legislation. With the election decided, the incoming government has an opportunity to flick the switch on climate policy.
The war on wind and renewable energy must end for Australia to genuinely tackle our emissions problem.
Wind farm construction has delivered a jobs and investment boost of $5 billion to regional Australia in the last two decades.
A further 15 new wind farms being built now have created 3,200 direct local jobs and 7,600 indirect jobs in local businesses that supply to the projects.
Alongside the boom in new wind farms, there has been a dramatic increase in public concern over climate change with a large majority calling for climate action.
A recent survey by the Australia Institute found that two in three want a rapid transition to 100 per cent renewable energy and a majority support the statement that "Australia is facing a climate change emergency and should take emergency action".
The public sentiment matches the call from the international science community for rapid emissions reduction. The key to speeding up our transition away from fossil fuels is dependable, evidence-based policy.
A clear 100% Renewable Energy Target, modernisation of the electricity grid and reform of our electricity markets can deliver a low-cost, clean energy grid.
Best practice community engagement and community investment will make sure new wind and solar farms deliver tangible economic benefits for rural and regional Australians.
There also needs to be thorough planning for coal communities that encourages retraining in long term renewable energy industries of the future.
Hopefully 2019 will be a turning point which will see leadership that matches the science and the community, to end the climate wars and embrace wind energy.

*Andrew Bray is the National Coordinator of the Australian Wind Alliance.

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