24/03/2021

(USA) Does Solving The Climate Crisis Require Antiracist Feminist Leadership?

Forbes - Kevin Kruse

Dr. Jennie Stephens

“Climate isolation” is a term coined by Jennie Stephens, Ph.D., Director of Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs, and Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy.

Traditionally, climate change is discussed as distinct from other crises, and potential solutions are focused on technology options. But Dr. Stephens argues that this technocratic focus and its associated language has reduced public engagement.

In her new book, Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy, Dr. Stephens argues that transformation to a just, sustainable renewable-based society requires leaders who connect social justice to climate and energy.

Recently, I was able to ask Dr. Stephens about her new book.

Kevin Kruse: In your book, you make the case that we need more diverse leadership to effectively act on climate and energy.  Why does diversity matter on this topic?  

Jennie Stephens, Ph.D.: Diversity matters in climate and energy policy because for too long, concerns of vulnerable communities have been minimized and dismissed while white-male-dominated-fossil-fuel interests have profited from exploiting marginalized people. Without diverse leadership, the United States has invested in concentrating wealth and power by supporting the “polluter elite” rather than investing in the basic needs of people and communities.

Research shows us that when women, people of color, and indigenous folks show up in leadership spaces where they have been historically excluded, they bring with them different lived experiences and different perceptions of risk that lead to more socially just outcomes. Research also shows that more diverse teams, more diverse organizations, and more diverse sectors are more innovative.

For the transformative changes that are needed to effectively respond to the climate crisis and equitable transition to a renewable-based future, diverse leadership is essential.

Kruse: What does antiracist and feminist leadership look like for climate and energy?

Dr. Stephens: Antiracist, feminist leadership involves constantly acknowledging and resisting the problematic power dynamics associated with conventional patriarchal systems, practices and policies that privilege men and whiteness. Antiracist, feminist leadership focuses on collaborative and inclusive approaches to distributing wealth and power and prioritizing investments in communities, workers’ rights, and public health. 

Anyone – including people of any racial or gender identity, any sexual orientation and any cultural and religious backgrounds - can practice antiracist, feminist leadership. Climate and energy leaders who embrace antiracist and feminist principles are actively resisting the concentration of wealth and power and fossil fuel interests that have been strategically working for decades to prevent a transition to a renewable-based society.

Antiracist, feminist leadership involves connecting climate and energy investments to jobs and economic justice, health and food, housing justice, transit equity and education.

Kruse: How have your own professional experiences informed your views on this issue?

Dr. Stephens: I have been working on climate and energy issues for the past 25 years. My professional experiences as a woman in a male-dominated technical field have taught me that the inadequacy of our efforts to respond to the climate crisis—our inability to end fossil fuel reliance and transition to a renewable-based society—is not due to a lack of technological innovation or scientific expertise.

Rather, our ineffectiveness results from a lack of investment and attention to social innovation and social justice. A narrow technical focus on climate and energy, a male-dominated dangerous belief that technology will somehow save us, has resulted in so many missed opportunities to invest in people and communities. Instead, I believe we need an inclusive approach to climate and energy policy with antiracist, feminist leadership that prioritizes the needs of all people.

We need diverse leadership to advocate for social innovations that center climate action and the renewable energy transformation on social justice, racial justice and economic justice.

Kruse: Some people anchor their hopes for a climate change solution to technological fixes. You don’t believe such “climate isolationism” is the answer, preferring instead energy democracy. How do these two differ?

Dr. Stephens: All too often the climate crisis is framed as an isolated scientific problem that requires a technological fix. With this framing, social justice, social change, and institutional innovation are usually ignored – and then the challenge seems distant to most people.

I coined the term “climate isolationism” to characterize this common but unproductive framing of climate change as a narrow, isolated, discrete, scientific problem in need of technological solutions. 

Energy democracy is an alternative way to frame our response to the climate crisis as an opportunity for investing in communities and redistributing power literally and figuratively. The social changes resulting from investments in a new distributed renewable economy have huge potential to be politically and economically transformative.

Investing in a future powered by renewables including wind (both onshore and offshore), solar power (utility-scale and household scale and community solar), as well as geothermal and maybe micro-hydro, wave and tidal – allows more people, communities, and organizations to benefit and be involved – and could bring widespread benefits by allowing for local and community-owned energy.  

Kruse: Do you believe the Biden/Harris Administration will have an antiracist, feminist leadership approach to climate and energy issues?

Dr. Stephens: I am optimistic about the Biden/Harris Administration’s commitment to a “whole-of-government” approach to transformative change on climate and energy. The appointment of Gina McCarthy, a feminist leader who has been advocating for decades to link climate and energy policy with investments in public health, as the first White House National Climate Advisor, demonstrates an innovative approach that centers on social justice. 

I am also inspired by the appointment of other antiracist, feminist leaders like my friend and colleague, Shalanda Baker, who is now serving in the newly created position of Deputy Director for Energy Justice within the Department of Energy where she is designing and implementing policies and practices that ensure that at least 40% of all climate and energy investments benefit frontline and marginalized communities.  

At the same time, I am a bit concerned about some senior members of the Biden/Harris administration who are supporting public investment in dangerous technological approaches to climate including solar geoengineering research. 

Advancing the idea of injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to reduce global warming by blocking incoming solar radiation further concentrates wealth and power exacerbating existing injustices and creating additional risks in climate governance.

Kruse: Why did you title chapter one of your book “Growing the Squad”?

Dr. Stephens: I am so inspired by the four junior Congresswomen known as The Squad who demonstrate hope through a new kind of leadership. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Talib of Michigan have transformed the national discourse on climate and energy since coming on the national stage just two and a half years ago.

By explicitly linking the climate crisis with economic justice and jobs, health and wellbeing, the criminal justice system, and the need for public investments in housing, these four leaders demonstrate the power of centering social justice and linking our responses to the interconnected crises that we face.

By centering climate action on the need for public investments in people and communities, the Squad has demonstrated how to build multiracial and multigenerational coalitions in climate and energy policy. 

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(AU) ‘One-In-100 Year’ Rain Could Become Norm, Say Climate Watchers

NEWS.com.au - Benedict Brook

The extreme rain is being called a once in a century event, but there are warnings similar deluges could happen far more often due to climate change.

Several areas of NSW are suffering under intense rains and flooding in what has been dubbed as a one-in-one-hundred-year event.

The extreme weather walloping NSW has been described as a “one-in-100 year” event.

In some areas, a metre of rain has fallen while the Bureau of Meteorology has flood alerts in place for every river in the state from the Queensland border to Victoria.

But we might need to get used to there being far less than a century gap between the next deluge, climate watchers have said.

Short, sharp episodes of extreme rain amid drought and rising temperatures could be the new weather normal for Australia.

“It’s very conceivable that we could get average rainfall decreasing, but extreme rainfall events where it just dumps in a single day,” Dr Ailie Gallant from the Monash University Climate Change Communication Research Hub told news.com.au.

On Sunday, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian spelled out the seriousness of the current rain event that has seen mid north coast towns flood as well as several Sydney suburbs.

“One in 50 year floods (are being seen) in the Sydney metropolitan area, one in 100 year floods in the mid-north coast,” Ms Berejiklian said.

“So this is a very serious storm and flood event, and there will be a big clean-up operation on the other side.”

A cow seeks high dry ground in the Gold Coast after it was swamped by flood water from torrential rain fell which on the city overnight. NCA NewsWire/Scott Powick
The BOM describes a one-in-100 year weather event as one in which there is statistically only a 1 per cent chance of it be equalled or exceeded in the year after it occurs.

But that doesn’t meant it won’t happen for another century – it could happen again the very next week. After a decade, for instance, there is a 10 per chance that the same extreme weather could rear its head again.

NSW has seen several major floods over the last few decades. A major Sydney flood in 1986 killed six people. Northern NSW experienced major floods in 2013 and 2012.

Fresh rain is marching across NSW and the east coast. Picture: Sky News Weather

But Dr Gallant cautioned about assuming all these events, extreme as they all were, were the same.

“Every weather event is unique in its spatial signature in how much rain falls,” she said.

For instance, the current weather is remarkable for its vast geographic spread across the east coast.

“But there is some evidence that particularly in northern Australia extreme rain events are increasing,” she added.

Yet, it’s often assumed that climate change means drier conditions. That was true, said Dr Gallant, but extreme rainfall can also be a by-product of a warming planet.

“A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour and scientists calculate that this can increase moisture in the atmosphere by approximately 7 per cent per degree of global warming.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean more rain neatly spread out through the year gently watering crops.

Instead, it can mean less moisture concentrated in intense and damaging one or two day downpours that wash the crops away.

“The evidence is for really extreme events, with several days of heavy rainfall which cause floods,” she said.

Aerial images over Sancrox near Port Macquarie areas as NSW flood waters rise. Picture: Luke Bullus

A study led by Dr Nicholas Herold from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment on future climate projections over south eastern Australia found that extreme rainfall events for Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane – that now occur roughly once every 20 years – are expected to occur every 10 years or so, or double the frequency, in the second half of this century.

The emphasis is on one or two day rain events. The long running prolonged extreme weather outbreaks – like we’re having now – may not be as common. We may get the same one-in-50 or 100-year rainfall, but over a shorter period.

Dr Gallant said climate models were pointing to overall less rainfall in Australia.

Those drier conditions would be concentrated in southern Australia with heavy rainfall events focused in the northern half of the country, where tropical moisture is more prevalent.

The current rain in NSW was a combination of factors, Dr Gallant said. The La Nina climate driver had led to wetter conditions anyway, and then two weather systems had combined to pour rain onto the east coast.

However, it might not be 100 or even 50 years until we see a similar damaging burst of intense weather in the future, she said.

“We should expect increases in extreme rainfall events – we can say that with high confidence. But by how and where those events are, the jury is still out on that.”

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(AU) Is NSW Flooding A Year After Bushfires Yet More Evidence Of Climate Change?

The Guardian -

Experts say it’s unusual to see so many places with such high rainfall across such a wide area. But identifying the cause is complicated
The return of another extreme weather crisis so soon has some asking if this is another display of force from the long arm of the climate crisis. Photograph: Jason O’Brien/EPA
Life-threatening floods have washed away homes and businesses with a deluge of rain inundating hundreds of kilometres of the New South Wales coast.

Falling on already soaked soils, the rains sparked dozens of flood warnings, with residents in parts of Sydney’s north and west also fearing for their homes and their lives.

The floods come a little over a year after the same areas were ablaze from unprecedented bushfires fueled by global heating that burned entire towns and killed billions of animals.

The return of another extreme weather crisis so soon has some asking if this is another display of force from the long arm of the climate crisis. The answer is a complex and nuanced one.

How wet has it been?

The extreme rainfall came after three weather systems combined, the Bureau of Meteorology has said.



NSW floods bring new misery to community devastated by black summer bushfires. Read more
A tropical low over the Kimberley coast in Western Australia drove moisture across the continent, hitting a coastal trough off the east coast. Further east in the Tasman sea, an area of stationary high pressure was holding the rain event in place.

Senior climatologist at the bureau Dr Blair Trewin is still crunching the rainfall numbers from recent days, but he says two things stand out.

While it is not unusual to have places with very high daily rainfall totals, it is unusual to see so many places with such extreme totals across such a wide area.

“Really the only area that’s missed out is the south coast so far,” he said, adding even that area is predicted to get good rainfall by the middle of the week.

He said the daily rainfall totals seen in some areas of the mid-north coast were not, on their own, unusual.

The highest reading of 406mm in one day fell near Kendall, south of Port Macquarie, on 20 March. But Trewin said in five of the last 12 years, a location in that area had recorded similar totals.

The focus, he said, was on analysing four-day totals, which would give a clearer picture of the sustained nature of the deluge.

The highest so far was at Comboyne, west of Port Macquarie, that saw 843mm in the four days up to 9am on Monday morning.

Kate Fotheringham and Wayne Bell on their wedding day on Gloucester Road Wingham. Photograph: Amanda Hibbard

Trewin said he was seeing numerous sites with four-day drenchings above 600mm.

The reason the rains of recent days were causing flooding, he said, was it was falling on areas that have just had a wetter-than-average summer.

The bureau was still analysing the data, but Trewin said there were other unusual factors to the event.

While a La Niña weather pattern is generally associated with wetter-than-average conditions, he said usually this had more impact in inland areas of NSW, not all the way along the coastline.

So what about climate change?

Whenever Australia experiences extreme weather events, the inevitable question arises: was this caused by climate change?

Some climate scientists will argue all weather events are influenced by human activity because we’ve rapidly changed the composition of the atmosphere.



Australia's summer the wettest in four years amid cooling La Niña. Read more
Burning fossil fuels and deforestation has increased the amount of climate-warming CO2 in the atmosphere by about 50% since the start of the industrial revolution.

And while the rainfall totals experienced over recent days are not yet confirmed as record-breaking, this does not mean that climate heating has had no effect at all.

Professor Steve Sherwood, of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, says that basic physics shows a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture – about 7% for each degree of warming.

“So we know that something like 5-10% of the rain we are getting now [in the current downpours] is from global warming and the rest would have happened anyway.

“It’s not a game changer, but it is making things worse and that gets worse still as emissions keep going up.”

How much extra rain could climate warming deliver?

As some climate scientists have said in relation to previous extreme events, a question that gets us closer to understanding what’s going on is how might climate heating have made an event worse than it would otherwise have been?

Australia’s latest State of the Climate report, released in 2020, says there has already been an increase in the intensity of heavy rainfall events in Australia. More warming will make things worse in the future, the report says.

One study Sherwood helped to carry out has suggested that 2C of warming in Australia could add between 11% and 30% more rain to the heaviest daily downpours.

‘Horrific’: swarms of spiders flee into homes – and up legs – to escape NSW floods. Read more
Australia has already warmed by about 1.4C.

Climate scientists carry out formal studies and have them peer-reviewed before they’re willing to say how climate heating has affected individual events.

But these “attribution studies” are especially challenging when it comes to rainfall because of all the different factors that can influence the systems that deliver rain.

One study on the 2010/11 floods in the north-east of Australia found the extra heat in the oceans had likely increased the amount of rain that fell. A study of extreme rainfall in the south-east of the country the following year failed to detect any human influence.

Extracting the fingerprint of human influence amid all that noise is a major challenge, says Dr Michael Grose, a climate projections scientist at CSIRO.

13 year old Ella Saul has braved the floodwaters on horse back to help save her family’s cows. 85 of Gavin Saul’s cattle were swept away in Kempsey, NSW. Photograph: Gavin Saul

He says in simple terms, the oceans and the atmosphere are already warmer and so there’s more moisture available to fall as rain.

He said climate change could also be affecting the frequency of the weather systems that tend to deliver downpours, but this was “trickier to get at”.

He said: “The effect of climate change on the dynamics of the kind of weather patterns bringing the current flooding rains, including the high in the Tasman Sea and troughs creating ‘atmospheric rivers’, is a subject of ongoing research. It may be that this influence offsets or enhances the first effect.”

What about that one-in-100-years flood?

The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has said the mid-north coast is facing a “one-in-100-year event”.

Describing extreme flood events in this way – as the probability of an event happening in a given timeframe – is common but potentially misleading, argues Thomas Mortlock, a senior risk scientist at Risk Frontiers – a risk management and catastrophe modelling consultancy.

“We really need to get away from that terminology,” he said.

“People think that if it’s a one-in-100 year flood, that the chances of them experiencing that in their lifetime is practically zero. And it’s not.”

He said it is entirely possible to get three or four “one-in-100-year floods” coming along in close proximity.

Often, he said, these statements were based on incomplete data and were calculated presuming that other factors – such as flood mitigation or the climate – were stationary, which they are not.

“We need instead to talk about the probability of an event happening each year, or say, within the life of a mortgage,” he said.

In an unpublished briefing prepared by Risk Frontiers before the current floods, Mortlock writes: “To generalise, if you’ve experienced a large natural hazard event yesterday, it doesn’t necessarily lessen the chance of you experiencing the same or higher magnitude event tomorrow.

“You’re not safe for another 100 years if you’ve just been flooded by the 100-year event today.”

Andrew Gissing, a general manager at Risk Frontiers and an emergency management expert with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, said it had been long known that Sydney’s Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers often flooded (the New South Wales governor general Lachlan Macquarie wrote to settlers in 1817 warning them of the flood risk in that area.)

“Floods in Australia are more damaging than bushfires and they kill more people in the historical record. They are often an under-appreciated hazard,” Gissing said.

Climate heating was adding urgency to the need to improve flood mitigation, he said, and the current floods should add focus to actions like building flood levees, raising houses, voluntary acquisition of homes in at-risk regions or raising dams and weirs.

“The more we can invest in flood mitigation, the better,” he said.

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