Lethal Heating: 09/15/19

15/09/2019

Danish Project Aims To Plant 1m Trees Across Nation In TV Fundraiser

The Guardian - Gregory Robinson

Telethon asking viewers to give £2.4m for forests project to help tackle climate crisis

The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, will plant one of the first trees in the live telethon. Photograph: Mads Claus Rasmussen/AFP/Getty Images

People in Denmark will be able to “plant trees” from the comfort of their sofa in what is believed to be the world’s first TV fundraiser for forests.

On Saturday the national broadcaster TV2 will air Denmark Plants Trees, a two-and-a-half hour live benefit event which will ask viewers to donate funds to plant 1m trees across the country.
Planting trees helps to reduce levels of CO₂and is seen as a central part of the climate crisis solution.
The telethon will take place in the middle of Gisselfeld Klosters Skove forest with the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, planting one of the first trees.

Martin Sundstrøm, a producer for the event, said viewers would be encouraged to raise 20m kroner (£2.4m) to help the Danish Society for Nature Conservation plant 1m trees, while 10% of the money raised would go to WWF to help save tropical forests.
Nicolai Hansson, the editor of TV2, said: “We know we won’t solve the climate crisis just by planting trees, but hopefully people will feel that it’s something tangible that they can be an active part of and enjoy afterwards when they visit the new forests and watch them grow and flourish.”
Those who donate to the cause will become a member of a new “folk forests” initiative, which will be created close to Danish cities. The project has 600 hectares (1482 acres) of land ready, and more will be added in the future.
“All potential areas have been evaluated and prioritised based on suitability by forest experts from the Danish Society for Nature Conservation,” Sundstrøm said. “After Saturday there will be a number of tree planting events all over Denmark. The first events will be this autumn and then in spring 2020 a larger number of events will take place depending on how much we raise. If we raise the funds to plant one million trees we expect around 30 events.”
Sundstrøm said he hoped to see Denmark Plants Trees lead to similar events in other countries. “I hope events like this might spread to other countries in order to engage the public, like Live Aid did in 1985.”
Sara Lom, CEO of the UK’s Tree Council charity, said she would welcome a tree planting telethon in the UK. “To plant enough trees to help tackle climate change we will need everyone to get involved – and fast,” said Lom. “A national TV telethon – or a tree-athon if you will – would be a wonderful way of engaging people around the country to raise money to plant and care for more trees.”

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Conflict And Disaster Force Millions From Their Homes

Reuters - Sonia Elks

Natural disasters such as cyclones and floods caused 7 million people to leave their homes, while a further 3.8 million fled conflict and violence

Mariam (Om Salih), a displaced Iraqi woman, who returns to camp after trying to go home and find the conditions in their towns unbearable, with lack of services and destroyed buildings, sits with her sons outside their tent at Hassan Sham camp, east of Mosul, Iraq July 29, 2019. Picture taken July 29, 2019. REUTERS/Abdullah Rashid

LONDON - Conflict and disasters forced nearly 11 million people from their homes in the first half of this year, a global monitoring group said on Thursday, warning mass displacement was becoming "the norm".
Natural disasters such as cyclones and floods caused 7 million people to leave their homes, while a further 3.8 million fled conflict and violence, said the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Yemen suffered the highest levels of displacement due to conflict.
"These numbers are ... at a concerningly high level and the trend overall is that they are not going down," Bina Desai, the IDMC's head of policy and research, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"The number of people exposed to displacement risk is increasing as more people live in poverty or insecurity as well as in areas at risk of flooding or other disasters."
A growing number of people face more than one such threat, from poverty or environmental degradation to political instability, said Desai.
Countries already battered by conflict or disaster are suffering high levels of new displacement, said the IDMC, a Geneva-based monitoring and analysis organisation set up by the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Natural climate patterns usually cause a rise in extreme weather events towards the end of the year, meaning the total displaced by disaster is expected to grow to about 22 million in 2019, said the IDMC.
However, it pointed out that in some cases, high levels of displacement represent success.
Cyclone Fani caused more than 3.4 million new displacements in India and Bangladesh, which saw a huge planned evacuation ahead of the storm. Many of those forced to flee suffered losses but survived and were ultimately able to return home.
The response to the cyclone underscored the need for governments to take early action to protect communities and make them more resilient to disasters, the report said.
"In terms of risk reduction and longer-term comprehensive approaches towards addressing conflict displacement, there are opportunities now because a number of countries have started to recognise the issue as a development issue," said Desai.
"The challenge now on the international community and the donor countries is to really support those opportunities ... rather than just perpetuating a reactive humanitarian system."

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Climate Activist Greta Thunberg On The Power Of A Movement

PBS NewsHour - William Brangham

Covering Climate Now

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of climate change.
These organisations have a combined audience of more than 1 billion people.
From September 15-23, they have committed to emphasizing climate stories.
Their goal is to maximize coverage of the climate crisis and its impacts in the lead up to the United Nations Climate Summit on September 23.
Follow the coverage on social media, with the hashtag #coveringclimatenow.

Since arriving in the U.S. by boat to participate in the UN Climate Action Summit, 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has led crowds in both New York and Washington with a call for greater action against climate change.
Thunberg first captured the world’s attention in August 2018 after she skipped school to sit on the steps of Swedish parliament, demanding that political leaders do more to address the environment.
Since then, Thunberg has successfully spread her eco-activism message on social media and inspired young people all over the world to lead school strikes in protest.
“We are the future. We are those who are going to have to adapt from this crisis,” Thunberg told PBS NewsHour.

More highlights from the interview:

On the urgency of climate change: “Many people seem to have this double moral. They say one thing and then do another thing. They say that the climate crisis is very important and yet they do nothing about it,” Thunberg said. “If I want to do something, then I go all in. I walk the walk. Walk the talk…I want to practice as I preach.”
On the hope that political leaders will address climate change: “I think people are just simply unaware of the situation and people are not feeling the urgency. I think that once we start treating this crisis as an emergency, people will be able to grasp the situation more.” Thunberg added: “All of these climate movements that have played out during the last year, or years, is proof of that. I don’t think anyone could have predicted the school strikes and the Fridays for Future movement to become so big and many other movements as well.”
On the concern that small scale eco-activism will distract from broader policy changes: “Of course, we focus on these isolated problems. We talk about, ‘People need to eat less meat’ …and then someone else says, ‘No, it’s much more effective if everyone stops flying,’ and so on,” Thunberg said. “We need to focus on all of these things. Of course, individual change doesn’t make much difference in a holistic picture…but we need both systemic change and individual change.”
How being on the autism spectrum influences her worldview: “Humans are social animals. We follow the stream and since no one else is behaving like this is a crisis, we see that and we think, then I should probably behave as they do,” Thunberg said. “I’m on the autism spectrum. I don’t usually follow social coding and so therefore I go my own way.”
On what Thunberg wants people to take away from her movement: “Everyone can make a huge difference. We should not underestimate ourselves, because if lots of individuals go together then we can accomplish almost anything. So that’s what I want people to take away from this.”

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