07/11/2019

(US/China) The U.S. And China Need To Put Aside Their Rivalry And Focus On The Common Enemy: Climate Change

TIME - Christine Loh | Robert Gottlieb

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Authors
The U.S. worries that China has become a political and economic threat. China worries that the U.S. is attempting to constrain it. These concerns increasingly resemble a classic Cold War conflict.
Such security threats are misplaced. Trade wars and technology competition notwithstanding, there is one overarching global security concern that by its very nature should lead to collaboration and cooperation rather than Cold War antagonism: climate change.
We are today witnessing a devastating global crisis in the making. It is happening worldwide, even as climate change’s impacts are immediately felt locally, regionally, and nationally. Make no mistake—ferocious climate events are not just causing extensive physical damage and loss of livelihood—they are creating insecurities that will grow each year and subsume all other existing security fears.
In the U.S., the annual average temperature has increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2016 and is expected to continue to rise, possibly doubling in just one or two decades. China’s official climate change assessment is even more sobering. As many as 641 of its 654 largest cities now experience regular flooding and Shanghai, one of the most prone to serious flooding, has already built 520 km of seawalls defending the city.
Around the world, climate change impacts could create destabilizing crises in migrations of climate refugees, water availability, and food production, as well as climate-related disasters from massive and intense storms to fire, flooding, and deterioration of air quality. More and more, climate change will dominate political discourse, economic activity, and people’s well-being.
The U.S. and China are vulnerable because both countries place such a high premium on security. Yet current responses about climate insecurity are minimal, particularly in the U.S. under the current administration. Instead, the U.S. is building walls to keep immigrants and climate refugees out, while heavily promoting fossil fuel development and undermining rather than encouraging decarbonization initiatives. In China, climate concerns have increased substantially in the past ten years and efforts have been made to reduce domestic coal production. Yet, China is also the leading investor in financing coal plants globally that are generating more than 5,000 MW of energy, according to Global Energy Monitoring.
The U.S. and China have a special global responsibility with climate change. The U.S. has been the largest contributor historically to carbon emissions in the past 150 years and remains the largest per capita contributor today. China, meanwhile, is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases by volume. At the same time, the U.S., under the the Trump administration, is in denial about its role, while China, even as it focuses on decarbonization domestically, has not played a leading role globally through its external development policies.
Today, to make matters worse, the U.S. and China—through trade wars, technology disputes, and nationalist rhetoric—are creating a new Cold War environment. The future does not belong to globalists, Trump declared at the U.N., it belongs to patriots. Security, both countries assert, is a domestic priority. Yet, when it involves climate change, the Cold War-type environment precludes what is crucial in this period: global action, collaboration, cooperation, and Earth Care. If security is the goal for the U.S. and China, both countries are undermining that goal through their failure to work together, whether through sharing technologies, or dramatic shifts in energy, food, and development policies (jointly and globally pursued).
Such collaboration could extend beyond government-to-government relations to community and institutional connections, such as the initiative of the University of California at Berkeley and Tsinghua University to form a California-China Climate Institute. It could also involve grassroots collaborations such as those regarding sustainable agriculture programs and shipping emission reductions. And it could include major support and financing of alternative energy and decarbonization projects throughout the developing world, as those countries seek their own transition to a green development future.
The U.S. and China have the capacity to make their own countries more secure; even more importantly, they can make the world a more secure place. Most governments are not ready for the onslaught of severe weather events. When it comes to climate change, everyone needs to be a “globalist,” and a localist as well, to advocate for their own national security.

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(Germany) Beethoven's 'Pastoral': Artists Revisit A Symbol Of Climate Protection

Deutsche Welle -  Reiner Schild

In Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the composer set his romantic understanding of nature to music. Now the "Pastoral" is the starting point for a worldwide art project against environmental destruction.


Paul Barton sets up his piano in the midst of nature. His listeners are massive and have huge ears. The man from Great Britain plays music from Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, known worldwide as the "Pastoral," to pachyderms living in the "Elephants World" sanctuary in Western Thailand.
A concert for elephants only? And why in Thailand? The answer is simple: the unusual concert is part of the global "Beethoven Pastoral Project." And those playing it are artists striving for climate protection and the preservation of nature.
Artists all over the world will be presenting their vision of the "Pastoral," considered to be Beethoven's musical celebration of nature, on the occasion of the Beethoven Anniversary Year in 2020, marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of the German composer.
Pianist Paul Barton is just one of the musicians performing in the context of the "Pastoral Project." For the British pianist, who has lived in Thailand since 1996, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony has a clear message: "It inspires us to find the strength that we need together to preserve our planet — not tomorrow, but now."


Artists for climate protection

The concert pianist is joined by musicians all over the world within the framework of the "Beethoven Pastoral Project," presenting their renditions and interpretations of the composer's Sixth Symphony: a visual artist illustrates Beethoven's "Nature" Symphony using graphics on the computer. A DJ samples motifs from the "Pastoral" and assembles them into new tracks. A dancer moves energetically to the fourth movement, which Beethoven called "Thunderstorm." A sextet boils down the orchestral piece into chamber music. A jazz clarinettist interprets the piece together with nightingales, cicadas and humpback whales. A filmmaker uses it as inspiration for a short film. All of this flows into the project, and what unites the artists is their fascination with Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and their desire to send out a signal for the preservation of nature.

Andrea E. Sroka's illustrated impression of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony
Inspired by Beethoven for climate preservation
The idea for the project arose in the run-up to the Beethoven anniversary. The initiators of the "Beethoven Pastoral Project" — the Beethoven Anniversary Society, the United Nations World Climate Change Secretariat and the global Earth Day Network movement — aim to draw attention via Beethoven's music to one of the most critical issues of our time, calling on people around the world to protect the environment and work toward the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Malte Boecker has helped to develop the project. The director of the Beethoven House in Bonn and the artistic director of the Beethoven Anniversary Society, which was founded especially for the birthday celebrations, is pursuing a plan that goes far beyond music: "People all over the world are preoccupied with the question of how we can ensure the coexistence of the nearly nine billion people on this planet, and that has social and ecological aspects, and the sustainability movement is becoming increasingly tangible," Boecker said.

What's so special about the 'Pastoral'?
Beethoven loved nature, offering the musical genius both a place of relaxation and a source of inspiration. As a teenager, he embarked on hikes from his German hometown of Bonn to the surrounding area. His longing for country life accompanied him throughout his life, also after he moved to Vienna, Austria. In the summers, he regularly sought out the countryside to find peace and quiet for composing — including for his Sixth Symphony, which he composed in the years 1807 and 1808. During the composition work, Beethoven first called it "Sinfonia characteristica" or "Sinfonia pastorella," and did not change it to the "Pastoral Symphony" until it went to press, "pastoral" meaning "rural" or "relating to the countryside." To the title he made the addendum in brackets: "More the expression of feeling than painting."
Beethoven was less concerned with depictions of nature than with the reciprocal relationship between humans and nature. After all, even in Beethoven's time, this was influenced by environmental experiences.
At the beginning of the 19th century, for example, the drinking water supply was very poor, which meant that wine and beer were often preferred over dirty water. The air was also polluted at that time. In a letter, Beethoven lamented "the bad air in the city." The stench in the alleys and canals largely contributed to those who could afford it leaving Vienna during the summer months. During Beethoven's lifetime, industrialization also began — the consequences of which we feel today more than ever.

A lithograph from 1834: 'Beethoven by the brook, composing the Pastoral Symphony'
On the lookout for participating artists
The organizers of the "Beethoven Pastoral Project" are still looking for participants: Creative people who want to speak out against environmental destruction and who aim to support measures against climate change. Now, 250 years after Beethoven's birth, people want to re-vitalize his love of nature and make it more tangible. The "Beethoven Pastoral Project" is open to everyone around the world:  orchestras, ensembles, soloists, rock and jazz musicians, DJs, dancers, photographers and visual artists, whether professionals or amateurs. Registration is easy online via the project website: pastoralproject.org.

Everything is possible
The most important goal of the "Beethoven Pastoral Project," however, is for the participants to communicate their ideas not only through their statements on the website, but also through a new work of art that they create for the project. There are no formal boundaries. Musicians can improvise on motifs from the "Pastoral" or compose a new piece of music. Other creative minds can create a photo series, shoot a film or choreograph a dance. All participants are free to decide how they want to deal creatively with the grand theme of nature and allow themselves to be inspired by Beethoven.
The finished work, the new product, the contemporary interpretation should then be documented and uploaded onto the project page —whether as video file, photo series, audio recording or graphic. This is how you can become part of the "Beethoven Pastoral Project."
Between Earth Day on April 22, 2020 and the UN World Environment Day on June 5, 2020, as many performances of the Pastoral Symphony as possible are to take place worldwide. The works of other art genres will also be published during this period as part of the "Beethoven Pastoral Project."


Beethoven to save the planet

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(US) Climate Change Lawsuits Ask Whether Fossil Fuel Companies Are Responsible

Houston Chronicle - 

Protesters rally outside State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019. After four years of legal sparring and finger-pointing, oil-industry giant Exxon Mobil went to court on Tuesday to face charges that the company lied to shareholders and to the public about the costs and consequences of climate change. JEFFERSON SIEGEL, STR / NYT
Just 20 energy companies account for one-third of greenhouse emissions since 1965, according to a new study.
The Climate Accountability Institute’s Richard Heede tallied up all the fossil fuels extracted by every company through 2017 and calculated the emissions. The data is public, the math is straightforward and the emissions are indisputable.
The top 10 companies, in order, are, predictably, Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Gazprom, Exxon Mobil, National Iranian Oil Co., BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Coal India and PEMEX. More details are available online at http://climateaccountability.org/carbonmajors.html.
Heede chose 1965 as his start date because the Johnson administration released a report that year warning that the nation risked warming the planet by 2000 if it did not cut carbon dioxide emissions. The president of the American Petroleum Institute, the leading industry association, responded a few months later by calling for more lobbying to head off damaging regulations.
What is surprising in the Heede report is that 50 percent of greenhouse emissions have come since 1985, and that speaks to the energy industry’s culpability in contributing to climate change.
Companies may claim that climate change was not well understood in 1965, but by 1985 scientists knew humans releasing growing concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride were trapping heat in the atmosphere and warming the planet.
National leaders meeting at the 1992 Rio Summit agreed to slow emissions. They signed a legally binding treaty in 1997 called the Kyoto Protocol. Yet today, some well-financed political forces are still trying to suppress the obvious evidence of human-man climate change.
How Exxon Mobil responded to climate change is the subject of a New York prosecution for securities fraud. The state attorney general alleges that Exxon executives misled investors by misrepresenting the potential financial impact of climate regulation on the company’s stock value.
The top 20 companies have contributed to 480bn tonnes
of carbon dioxide equivalent since 1965
Billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent 
Guardian graphic | Source: Richard Heede, Climate Accountability Institute.
 Note: table includes emissions for the period 1965 to 2017 only
“The company failed to manage the risks in the ways it promised,” prosecutor Kevin Wallace told the court. “The cost of that failure is staggering.”
New York alleges in court papers that Exxon’s behavior cost shareholders between $476 million and $1.6 billion. Exxon’s attorney Ted Wells responded by saying: “Exxon Mobil did nothing wrong.”
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed another lawsuit against Exxon on Oct. 24. That case alleges that executives misled investors about climate risks and deceived consumers about the role fossil fuels play in causing climate change.
“Our goal here is simple: to stop Exxon from engaging in this deception and penalize it for this conduct,” Healey told reporters.
Exxon replied in a statement: “We look forward to refuting the meritless allegations in court.”
Exxon scientists, though, have accepted climate change as fact since at least the mid-1980s. At the same time, the company supported political action groups that questioned the reality of climate change to deter environmental regulations.
The New York and Massachusetts cases will set precedents for a slew of climate lawsuits working through the courts. States, cities and environmental groups have dozens of legal angles they intend to test.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected a motion by BP, Chevron, Exxon and other companies to move climate change lawsuits brought by Baltimore, Oakland, Calif., and Boulder, Colo. out of state courts and consolidate them in federal court.
The cities want compensation for damage caused by climate change.
The federal government is also fighting lawsuits, including one brought on behalf of young Americans demanding more significant federal action on climate change.
 The Sierra Club wants an explanation for why the Securities and Exchange Commission has allowed corporations to quash proxy votes on climate-related issues.
These fights over responsibility for climate change are staking out new legal ground and will undoubtedly end up at the Supreme Court. The current makeup of the Court, though, casts reasonable doubt on whether it will accept these novel legal theories that could have dramatic impacts on the global economy.
If any of these lawsuits are successful, though, expect attorneys to cite the Climate Accountability Institute’s allocation of responsibility to inform how courts should assess actual and punitive damages. The higher the rank, the higher the potential liability.
The bigger question for fossil fuel companies is what the courts and government will expect them to do for climate damage going forward. Every significant oil, gas and coal company acknowledges that carbon dioxide is changing the planet’s climate.
The question our fuel suppliers will reasonably ask is what did consumers know, and when did we know it? Yes, these companies extracted the carbon, but we burned it, and we continue to burn it. How much responsibility rests with us?

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