14/11/2019

Greta Thunberg Catches Lift To UN COP25 Climate Summit In Madrid With Australian Sailing Couple

ABC News - Rhiannon Shine | James Carmody

Riley Whitelum, Nikki Henderson, Greta Thunberg and Elayna Carausu with her son Lenny on their yacht preparing to set sail. (Facebook: Greta Thunberg)
Key Points
  • Greta Thunberg is one of the world's highest profile environmental activists
  • She was stranded in the US after travelling there to attend a UN climate summit
  • She will travel to the new summit location in Spain with an Australian couple
Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg will make the COP25 UN climate summit after hitching a ride back across the Atlantic with an Australian couple travelling the world.
The 16-year-old had travelled from her native Sweden to California by boat, train and electric car and was planning to continue on to the next round of climate negotiations, originally scheduled to be held in Santiago, Chile in December.
The Santiago summit was cancelled by Chile's government because of political unrest in the South American country and moved to the Spanish capital of Madrid.
Ms Thunberg refuses to fly because of the carbon emissions involved and had been searching for an environmentally-friendly way to travel back to Europe to attend the summit.


Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg lands in New York City following 14-day trans-Atlantic trip (ABC News)

"As #COP25 has officially been moved from Santiago to Madrid I'll need some help," Ms Thunberg tweeted earlier this month.
"Now I need to find a way to cross the Atlantic in November … If anyone could help me find transport I would be so grateful."

Australian couple to the rescue
A week ago, South Australian Riley Whitelum, who travels around the world in a 48-foot catamaran called La Vagabonde with his West Australian partner Elayna Carausu and their son Lenny, responded to the tweet with an offer of help.
Ms Thunberg posted to her Instagram page earlier today saying she had accepted the offer from the couple, who will take her from Virginia to Spain with the help of professional yachtswoman Nikki Henderson.
"So happy to say that I'll hopefully make it to COP25 in Madrid," Ms Thunberg said.
Greta Thunberg (centre) and British sailor Nikki Henderson (second right) are joining the couple on the catamaran La Vagabonde. (Facebook: Sailing La Vagabonde)
"I've been offered a ride from Virginia on the 48ft catamaran La Vagabonde. We sail for Europe tomorrow morning!"
Ms Thunberg said she expected the voyage to take three weeks.
"If I get to the COP25 in time then I will participate in that because I received an invitation to do so. And then I will go home," she said.

A voyage funded by YouTube
Mr Whitelum and Ms Carausu have been sailing around the world since 2014, filming their adventures and posting them to YouTube where they have amassed more than 1 million followers.
"We've suffered terrifying storms, pirate scares, financial breakdowns, equipment failures, water shortages and other interesting mishaps, but we wouldn't trade living on the sea and traveling wherever the wind takes us for anything," their website states.


Sailing La Vagabonde — 'Our TINY HOME on the Ocean'

Ms Carausu posted to Instagram that the crew would set sail from 7:30am US eastern standard time tomorrow.
Ms Thunberg rose to prominence last year after she started spending her Fridays protesting outside Sweden's parliament.


Greta Thunberg angrily denounced world leaders for failing to tackle climate change. (ABC News)

Her action has grown into a global campaign, with an estimated 300,000 Australians taking part in climate change rallies around the country in September.
Ms Thunberg's zero-emissions expedition has been highly publicised and has included travelling by boat, train and an electric car borrowed from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Final preparations underway
Speaking to ABC Radio Perth from aboard La Vagabonde docked in Virginia, Mr Whitelum said he was surprised when he heard back from Ms Thunberg, but he thought they were suitable travel companions.


The YouTube couple landed a million-dollar yacht in a deal with a catamaran manufacturer

"Elayna and I responded [to Ms Thunberg's tweet], and about a week later here we are about to sail 3,000 nautical miles across to Europe," he said.
"It sort of came back through to us through a back channel and they just said, 'are you available, do you think you can do it? We've been let down a couple of times, are you sure you would be able to do it?'"
Mr Whitelum said after confirming they were up for the challenge, he and Ms Carausu had been busy preparing for the trip and getting to know Ms Thunberg.
"When I met her I wasn't ready for quite how young and short she would be," he said.
"We've been hanging out basically for the last five or six days getting the boat prepared.
"She's smart, kind of powerful and independent, she's a good person to have around."
Mr Whitelum said while he and Ms Carausu had crossed the Atlantic twice before as well as the Pacific Ocean, and had about 70,000 nautical miles of sailing under their belts, getting to Madrid would be no mean feat.
"The journey is long and fairly complicated. The northern Atlantic at this time of year is fairly treacherous," he said.
"We're working with some of the best weather routers in the world.
"On this particular trip the first 500 or 600 nautical miles are super important, so it's good that we've been able to choose our window, which is tomorrow morning."

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(UK) A Legal Approach To Fighting Climate Change

New York Times - Farah Nayeri

Gillian Lobo is the senior lawyer for ClientEarth, an environmental law charity. 
Credit...Suzanne Plunkett for The New York Times
LONDON — What does Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour have in common with the London-based environmental law charity ClientEarth?
Quite a lot, as it happens. Mr. Gilmour sold his guitar collection for $21.5 million at Christie’s New York in June — and donated every penny to ClientEarth to help it fight climate change.
For a nonprofit with rock-star benefactors, ClientEarth is fairly low key. It operates in the background, incrementally and strategically, much like the lawyer who set up its climate team four years ago, Gillian Lobo.
Ms. Lobo, a Briton of Indian descent who spent the first six years of her life in Tanzania and Kenya, started her legal career at a private practice in Croydon (outside London), then became an in-house lawyer for Royal Mail, the postal service.
From 2006 to 2015, she worked for the British government, mostly as a litigator in military cases. Starting in 2010, she was part of the team that defended the Ministry of Defense against negligence claims linked to the deaths of three British servicemen and the serious injuries of two others in “friendly fire” episodes in Iraq.
She joined ClientEarth in 2015 and has been busy taking the British government to court pretty much ever since.
While the bulk of her career has taken place in Britain, she also spent six months volunteering for the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda in 2002, eight years after the genocide. In the following conversation, which was edited and condensed, she began by recalling the experience.

 What was Rwanda like?
It was a real eye-opener. I went out to all the projects — schools, medical institutions, places that trained people in agriculture. You could see how local people, given the knowledge and the ability, could actually do a lot for themselves, how effective projects could be.
I also saw how powerless people are treated. The authorities can abuse street children in any way, hit them, and no one can step in.
I saw a little boy being beaten in Kigali. We were trained to be careful not to enter into situations that we didn’t know the outcome of. You can go in and try and protect that child, and once you’re out of there, the police are going to take out any humiliation that you’ve heaped on them on that person. That was really important training.
It’s about being strategic. It’s pointless just tampering at the edges: You need to change important infrastructures.

 Why did you choose climate as a field?
If you don’t get this sorted out, all of the development work that you ever wanted to do is never going to get off the ground. It’s all linked to droughts, water supply, how people work. The places that are being impacted are the ones that can least afford it: the droughts, the rains, the typhoons, the hurricanes, the increased heat that’s going to reduce the nutrient value of food growing in soil.

One could argue that what you do will produce benefits in the future, but won’t put bread on people’s table now.
We should be doing both. If you don’t get the fundamentals right, these problems are going to get worse and worse. If you build carefully and strategically, you can have an immediate impact.
You want to stop subsidies going to companies producing fossil fuels. You want subsidies going to renewables, or for it to be a level playing field — meaning no subsidies. Then renewables can increase, and immediately that money can go to something that’s going to protect the environment. It can also create jobs at a local level. People can be a bit more self-sufficient and have control of their lives.
Credit...Suzanne Plunkett for The New York Times
What is the impact of climate change on women?
The impact is big, because the women most affected are generally poor women. They’re disproportionately impacted by extreme weather events and droughts. They’re usually the ones who have to go and collect water, and if there’s a drought, they have to go further. They’re the ones who collect wood, who feed the children. As the men go to the cities, they’re left on their own. And women, through wars and everything else, are more vulnerable — physically, sexually. It just makes everything a lot worse.

What is women’s role in fighting climate change?
Fundamental. They need to be part of the discussion, because they’re the ones on the ground. They’re seeing what’s happening. They can feed in far more valuable information about what’s happening to the land, what’s happening to the water, what improvements can be done, and how things are changing around them.
These women have cultural knowledge. They have practical, actual knowledge on the way to deal with climate change. That’s what you need.

What do you see as your own role in the world?
I can help develop the lawyers of the future, to work with these lawyers who are so bright but not necessarily experienced enough, and give them the tools and empower them.

To do what?
My aim is to make the world a fairer place. I believe in fairness, I believe in justice. I do recognize that the law is about tactics, strategies, doing the right thing at the right time. It can be seen as game playing. Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoy it. But it’s not always about justice.
I believe in the rule of law and the need to maintain it. So much is being stripped from it across different states.
I also work on access to justice in the U.K. We’re trying to ensure that the cost for N.G.O.s and individuals bringing claims in order to protect the environment are kept as low as possible.

Where would you like to be in 10 or 20 years?
I’d like to have left a legacy where the law is safeguarded from fickle arbitrary executive decisions; where people can access and protect their environment, which is so important; and where we protect the world as much as we can from climate impacts.

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Climate Visuals Photography Award 2019: Winners And Shortlisted

The Guardian

Climate Visuals is a project that aims to create a new visual language for climate change. Images of polar bears, melting ice and factories do not convey the urgent human stories at the heart of the issue. Based on international social research, Climate Visuals provides insights for a more compelling visual language for climate change. It has recognised existing and outstanding images with impact for its inaugural photography awards. The project is run by Climate Outreach, Europe’s leading climate communication organisation, which celebrated its 15th anniversary on 7 November
Winner
2019 Climate Visuals Photography Award
Solar Power
Ann Johanssen
Shohida Begum poses for photographs lit by a solar powered lantern in a slum where she lives in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. Date taken: 11/11/2018
Shortlisted
2019 Climate Visuals Photography Award
High on Tide Mousuni Island
Sumit Sanyal
A man collecting water from a hand pump while huge waves caused by high tides strikes the edges. Where the pump is located, the wall has been destroyed due to erosion from tidal flooding. Date taken: 11/10/2018
Shortlisted
2019 Climate Visuals Photography Award
Destroyed Shoe Shop
Kianoush Saadati
Severe floods struck Golestan province of Iran in March and affected 10 cities: Gorgan, Bandar Turkman, Azad Shahr, Aq Qqala, Gonbad-e Kavus, Bandar-e Gaz, Ali Abad, Kalaleh, Kordkuy, and Minodasht. The heavy rain in Golestan was unprecedented, with 70% of average annual rain falling in the first 24 hours. In Golestan and Mazandran provinces, 11 people were confirmed dead and an estimated 20 people injured. Over 60,000 people were affected by the flooding, with at least 10,000 people are provided emergency shelter in stadiums, exhibition areas, schools. Date taken: 21/03/2019
Shortlisted
2019 Climate Visuals Photography Award
Looking Through The Doorway

Greta Rybus
A man looks through a doorway, which just hours before lead to another room in his home. The sea, which has been rising and eroding the shore, chewed into the home’s foundation and it crumbled into the sea. The United Nations named Saint Louis as the area most at-risk from climate change in Africa. Guet Ndar, where this family called home, is highly populated fishing community. The fishermen have noticed huge changes. They say the ocean used to be a long distance across the beach during low tides; now it laps at their homes. And, they’ve seen an increase in strange winds and storms, making their work at sea more dangerous and volatile. Many people have lost their homes. Date taken: 19/03/2015
Shortlisted
2019 Climate Visuals Photography Award
Water World Child
Jashim Salem
In the past few years, tidal surge – water levels rising significantly above the tide levels that astronomy predicts – has begun to affect the Bangladeshi port city of Chittagong as much as twice a day, resulting in frequent flooding of residential and business areas. If things continue to worsen, most areas of Chittagong could become completely submerged in the near future. Here we see Saraf, eight, sitting on a submerged car at their home flooded by the tidal surge. Date taken: 29/08/2015
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