(USA) Fighting Climate Change Could Define Kamala Harris’ Vice Presidency. Watch Our Interview With Her.

Mother Jones - Rebecca Leber

In an exclusive 2019 chat with Climate Desk, Harris laid out her plans.

MSNBC, Zuma

Kamala Harris represents a series of historic firsts—she will be the first woman vice president, the first Black vice president, and the first Asian American vice president.

She’ll also be the first-ever vice president who has devised a comprehensive plan to address climate change—and as the tie-breaking vote in the evenly split Senate, she’ll have plenty of opportunity to fight for the environment. 

Harris’ home state of California has been hammered by longer wildfire seasons, blackouts from extreme heat, and drought.

Harris doesn’t shy away from connecting these events to manmade climate change. When I sat down with her in Dubuque, Iowa, a year before she joined the presidential ticket, she was still in the midst of her own presidential campaign.

“For me this issue of the climate crisis relates to every aspect of what we do,” she said.

In 2019, Mother Jones' @rebleber sat down with @KamalaHarris when she was on the presidential campaign trail to talk about tackling the climate crisis. "We need to do a lot," Harris said. "And we can. It's achievable." https://t.co/2Ejcg213S4 pic.twitter.com/trA1O80vvU

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 19, 2021

Her remarks to me in October 2019 captured some of the themes that are starting to define the Biden administration’s all-hands-on-deck approach to the climate crisis: It’s not something the Environmental Protection Agency can address alone. “Every branch has a role in this responsibility.” 

The Biden administration will need an all-hands-on-deck approach to the climate crisis.

“For me this issue of the climate crisis relates to every aspect of what we do,” Kamala Harris told us in 2019. “Every branch has a role.” https://t.co/2Ejcg213S4 pic.twitter.com/4ol5ORseub

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 19, 2021

Harris’ climate plan didn’t get much attention during her presidential run, but it was impressive: Her vision of the Green New Deal included a staggering economic investment in clean energy and infrastructure.

She spoke about the importance of including low-income and communities of color in the fight against pollution and climate change; her Climate Equity Act, introduced first in 2019 with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2019, requires that any environmental legislation receive an equity score to assess its impact on frontline communities.

As the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, Kamala Harris can use her vice presidency to hold polluters accountable.

In 2019 she pledged: “Let’s get them not only in the pocket book, but let’s make sure there are serious penalties for their behaviors.” https://t.co/2Ejcg213S4 pic.twitter.com/t99kvgpaHZ

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 19, 2021

Another theme from my interview with Harris was her insistence that the Department of Justice should investigate and rein in manipulative oil and gas industry practices.

Her actual record on that is more mixed: As California attorney general, Harris led an investigation into whether ExxonMobil misled consumers about climate change, but she did not go as far as to issue subpoenas.

And although she has at times embellished her history of suing and winning against Big Oil, she has spoken forcefully about holding polluters accountable.

“Let’s get them not only in the pocket book, but let’s make sure there are serious penalties for their behaviors,” she said.

That means taking aim at the “whole apparatus built around them” that’s built to protect the dominance of fossil fuels. And, she emphasized, that may not just mean the major oil companies, but other players, like gas-reliant utilities.

“I think everyone who is part of misinforming the public, misleading the public and false advertising should be held accountable,” she said.

Fighting climate change could define Kamala Harris’ vice presidency.

In 2019 @rebleber sat down with Harris when she was on the presidential campaign trail to talk about tackling the climate crisis. Here are some highlights. https://t.co/6mB13TPcZY pic.twitter.com/90Myarl9sc

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 19, 2021

Links

• Here’s the Team Tasked With Carrying Out Biden’s Incredibly Ambitious Climate Plans
• (US) Meet Biden’s Climate Crisis Army
• (US) Biden Plans To Fight Climate Change In A Way No U.S. President Has Done Before
• (USA) Joe Biden Takes Climate Change Seriously
• (USA) Biden Calls Climate Change ‘Existential Threat of Our Time’
• US To Hold World Climate Summit Early Next Year And Seek To Rejoin Paris Accord
• (USA) With John Kerry Pick, Biden Selects A ‘Climate Envoy’ With Stature
• Biden Needs to Hit the Ground Running on Climate—or Else
• Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement Is the Easy Part
• 22 Disasters, 262 Dead, $95B in Damages: 2020 Set Records for US Climate Mayhem
• Batteries Power Your Car. Now How About Your City?
• Global Temperatures Could Stabilize, Scientists Say, If We Do the Following

(AU) Lessons From The Past

Cosmos - Natalie Parletta

Could Indigenous wisdom help us create a “good Anthropocene”?

Warlpiri people burning spinifex to promote new growth; Tanami Desert, Northern Territory, Australia. Credit: Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Author Natalie Parletta is a freelance science writer based in Adelaide and an adjunct senior research fellow with the University of South Australia.

The Anthropocene marks relentless and increasingly grave environmental degradation as the Earth faces tipping points for climate change, biodiversity and survival. To address these ills, scientists say we can learn valuable lessons from the past.

“As our planet emerges into a new epoch in which humans dominate the Earth system, it is imperative that societies initiate a new phase of responsible environmental stewardship,” researchers write in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

“Maintenance of the Earth’s current ecological trajectory threatens not only countless other species but also critical ecosystem services that support human societies.

“Here we argue that information from the past has a valuable role to play in enhancing the sustainability and resilience of our societies.”

As well as learning from past mistakes, Nicole Boivin and Alison Crowther, both affiliated with Germany’s Max Planck Institute and the University of Queensland, stress how historical success stories can be integrated with contemporary solutions.

In doing this, they say that archaeology, history and palaeoecology offer a vast resource that we should tap into to build on efforts to create a better future and a “good Anthropocene”.

“We have at our fingertips a huge amount of information about how humans in the past have tried to solve many of the same problems we face today,” says Crowther. “Many of these solutions have been tried and tested over millennia; we know which ones worked and which ones failed, and why.”

The review explores how historical data can be mined to improve biodiversity, conservation, fire management, carbon sequestration, soil sustainability, food security and agricultural sustainability, as well as mitigating pollution, building more sustainable cities and boosting resilience to climate change.

For conservation, archaeology and palaeoecology offer insights into ecological baselines to understand how change occurred naturally before humans plundered onto the scene. 

“Work in restoration ecology requires understanding of the degree of change that has occurred from baseline conditions, the natural, climate-driven shape of ecosystems prior to human intervention,” write Boivin and Crowther.

In some instances, they note, past human activity added value to the planet, such as Canada’s Garry oak ecosystem, the formation of which has been attributed to indigenous peoples’ burning regime.

“Accordingly, conservationists are increasingly embracing novel ecosystems and recognising that ecosystems created via long-term human management are equally valid targets for conservation.”

Archaeology also tells us about past removal of species and successes or failures of efforts to reintroduce them, which can help us understand those species’ ranges and endemic status.

In Australia and elsewhere, Indigenous and prehistoric fire-management practices are increasingly recognised by forest and land managers as effective ways to create fire-resilient communities and ecosystems – a burning issue with looming threats of longer, hotter dry spells and more intense fires.

Agricultural practices also pose a major problem as “humans today control a vast and disproportionate share of the planet’s resources,” contributing to climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss and groundwater depletion.

Modern agriculture destroys forests and ecosystems and humans’ unbridled population growth threatens food security. For this we can again turn to indigenous cultures for insights.

Some of their practices include sustainable irrigation, terracing and systems such as raised-field agriculture. The latter, once used across South and Central America before the Spanish came along, has been attributed to better drainage, soil aeration, moisture retention and fertility.

Already, people have tried to rehabilitate prehistoric agricultural methods, for example in the Peruvian Andes where pre-Hispanic terraces have been reintroduced. Many lessons can be learned from these efforts, note Boivin and Crowther, such as the importance of engaging local communities and observing markets.

Other insights come from the eastern Amazon up to 4500 years ago, such as complex agroforest practices – rather than modern unsustainable monocrops – that grew multiple crops while creating edible forests.

Archaeology can also help explore ancient resilient crops such as millet, a heat-tolerant cereal that colonists replaced with thirsty, labour-intensive maize. 

“By reviving local crops and other forms of local agriculture we can better address the food crises that we face globally with population growth and climate change,” says Crowther.

All of this relies on healthy soil, she and Boivin note. “Soil lies at the base of all human subsistence systems,” they write, “and soil retention and improvement were key foci of human activity in many regions of the world for thousands of years.”

Historically, humans created soils that were rich in organic matter, had better capacity to hold nutrients and moisture and were “remarkable” at sequestering carbon. Soil enrichment methods included adding algae to Maya gardens in Mesoamerica, and seaweed to topsoils surrounding the Baltic Sea, in Europe. African savannah soils were unintentionally enriched by prehistoric animal droppings.

We can also learn from past patterns of air pollution, a major health hazard that confronts us and reportedly impacted historical populations; how levels are estimated and how it accumulates and breaks down, for instance.

Ancient tropical cities in places such as Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia and the Amazon offer insights for sustainable cities. In Maya culture, for instance, households and domestic gardens were interspersed with agriculture in the city itself. 

“These proximate food staple sources probably contributed to the longevity of many Maya cities,” write Boivin and Crowther.

Another example of urban agriculture they note is Byzantine Constantinople, which sustained people even during prolonged sieges.

“These early dispersed agrarian cities offer more sustainable, food-secure models of urbanism that are less dependent on fossil fuel and more resilient to food-supply shocks resulting from, for example, pandemics, conflict or climate change.”

Such cities also featured cultivation by smallholders, empowering local communities to control their activities and foster food security. Importantly, they included impressive water-conservation technologies.

Last but certainly not least, the researchers say we can learn from the past to build greater climate-change resilience, a topic that has long captivated archaeologists who seek to understand past human responses to climate changes. Peruvian archaeology, for instance, offers a window into El Niño patterns.

The authors urge that archaeology, in particular, be embraced by and take part in multi-disciplinary efforts to address modern challenges, as well as engaging with policy makers, Indigenous peoples and other stakeholders such as farmers, conservationists, rangers and local communities.

“We must work towards solutions that bring together the best of the past, present and future, integrating traditional and modern approaches to find the best way forward.”

Links

• (AU) What Is Cultural Burning?
• Why Land Rights For Indigenous Peoples Could Be The Answer To Climate Change
• How An Indigenous Renewable Energy Alliance Aims To Cut Power Costs And Disadvantage
• How Indigenous Philosophy Could Help Us Understand Climate Change
• (AU) Australia Will Continue To Burn Unless Indigenous Voices Are Heard 
• CSIRO: A national framework to report on the benefits of Indigenous cultural fire management (pdf)
• Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements: Cultural burning practices in Australia (pdf)
• Firesticks Alliance
• Right Country – Right Fire: Podcast Series
• Fire Country – how Indigenous fire management could help save Australia
• Fighting Fire With Fire Australian Story ABC Television
• Cultural Burning on Yuin Country South Coast NSW
• Indigenous leaders say Australia’s bushfire crisis shows approach to land management failing
• What Can We Learn From Indigenous Groups About Safeguarding The Environment?
• (AU) Too Hot For Humans? First Nations People Fear Becoming Australia's First Climate Refugees 

The New Climate War Review: Reasons To Be Optimistic About The Future

New Scientist - Richard Schiffman

The forces fighting climate science have not been defeated, just changed tactics. But Michael Mann, a key figure in the fightback, argues for hope in his new book

A wind, solar and fishing base in Dongtai, Jiangsu province in China. Alex Plavevski/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

MOST people accept that climate change is happening, but that doesn’t mean the war against climate science is over. The denialists have just changed their tactics, argues Michael Mann in his book The New Climate War.

Mann should know. A climatologist at Penn State University, he has been a target since his “hockey stick” graph was published in 1999. The graph shows the rapid rise in temperature globally since industrialisation caused heat-trapping carbon dioxide to spew into the atmosphere.

This dramatic visual, featured in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, earned Mann decades of harassment and death threats. This was part of a war against climate research that has been waged since the 1970s, first to cover up and then to contest the growing evidence that shows our planet is warming.

However, as data about rising sea levels, higher temperatures and megafires mounted, the climate sceptics shifted to “a kinder, gentler form of denialism”, says Mann. They now mostly concede that, yes, there is some warming and human activity plays some role, but it’s not nearly as bad as those “alarmist” scientists say.

This new effort (bankrolled by the same polluting interests that funded the old one) no longer disputes climate change, but tries to block the action needed to move towards a low-carbon future. It is being fought by the successors to climate change denialists, who Mann calls the “inactivists”. They lobby against effective carbon pricing programmes and subsidies for renewable energy that would imperil big energy’s bottom lines.

According to Mann, central to this strategy is a campaign to shift culpability for climate change from the corporations selling fossil fuels to those who use them. Fossil fuel companies aren’t to blame, “it’s the way people are living their lives”, Chevron argued in court in 2018.

“Doomism and the loss of hope can lead people down the very same path of inaction as outright denial”

Some environmentalists have bought into this argument. While Mann agrees it is good to eat less meat, travel less and recycle more, such actions alone aren’t enough. We need to decarbonise the economy, he says. Focusing on personal responsibility takes our eyes off that prize.

Another thing inactivists do, Mann says, is to support divisive films like Michael Moore’s recent documentary Planet of the Humans that purported to show that renewable energy is ineffective and polluting.

The film was condemned by environmental activists and climate scientists. But the pro-fossil fuel American Energy Alliance spent thousands to promote a film it hoped would take the wind out of the sails of the push for clean energy.

“Doomism and the loss of hope,” writes Mann “can lead people down the very same path of inaction as outright denial. And Michael Moore plays right into it.” Despair is counterproductive.

Fossil fuel interests also cynically push “non-solution solutions” like natural gas, carbon capture and geoengineering, whose inadequacies Mann details. Again, the effort is to distract from the real task of weaning the world off fossil fuels.

But in the end, Mann says he is optimistic, heartened by the upswell of youth activism and the rapid development of green technologies. Even investors are beginning to flee from fossil fuels. Moreover, botched responses to covid-19 underline the peril of ignoring science and failing to act.

With the major COP26 UN climate summit due to be held later this year in Glasgow, UK, Mann’s call to get serious about climate change couldn’t be more timely. Let’s hope he is right that the tide is finally about to turn.

Links

• THE NEW CLIMATE WAR: the fight to take back our planet
• Michael E. Mann - Wikipedia
• 6 Must-Read Climate Books That'll Inspire You To Take Action In 2021
• The Ministry For The Future: A Novel By Kim Stanley Robinson
• It’s Kids Vs. Parents In This Award-Nominated Climate Novel
• Welcome To The Feminist Climate Renaissance
• The 10 Hottest Climate Change Books Of Summer
• 13 Major Climate Change Reports Released So Far In 2020
• Lethal Heating: Book Posts

(US) Meet Biden’s Climate Crisis Army

The Independent - Louise Boyle

‘I believe in this team, and together, we will show the world that America is once again ready to take a leading role in the fight against climate change,’ Mr Biden said.

Incoming president, Joe Biden, has assembled a team who he calls “a tested cohort of bold thinkers” to tackle the climate crisis. (Getty/AP)

The hopes of millions of Americans demanding climate action now rest with president-elect Joe Biden and after four years of Donald Trump’s rampant regulatory rollbacks and cynical climate misinformation, the list of priorities is a long one.

The new president’s executive orders on day one are expected to include instructions to rejoin the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and cancel the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit. 

Mr Biden has  outlined the most ambitious climate plan in US history including an injection of $2trillion into clean energy to shift the country to carbon-free electricity by 2035 and overhauling transport, building and manufacturing, creating new jobs along the way.

It’s a staggering to-do list on which there’s no time to waste. The impacts of the climate crisis are striking more rapidly, and scientists estimate that roughly a decade remains in which to prevent a runaway catastrophe. 

While no single government - let alone one leader -  can solve the global crisis, Mr Biden’s approach, both at home and abroad, could lead to a sea change in driving down the greenhouse gas emissions heating the planet. 

To achieve the goal, Mr Biden has assembled a team which he’s called “a tested cohort of bold thinkers who know how to pull every lever of government”.“I believe in this team, and together, we will show the world that America is once again ready to take a leading role in the fight against climate change,” Mr Biden said.

The list has been largely welcomed by climate scientists and activists. “We're pleased that Biden's nominees support renewable energy, climate justice and keeping fossil fuels in the ground so that they can work with him to really come through on his climate agenda,” Denali Nalamalapu, from 350.org told The Independent.

Here we take a closer look at the megawatt names, trusted Obama alum, and diverse newcomers on the team who will lead climate action.

►Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary

Janet Yellen

If confirmed, Ms Yellen will be the first woman to hold the post in US history.  And with the economy “spiraling down” as another Biden adviser said on Sunday, the president-elect has turned to a trusted and seasoned operator to right the ship.

Ms Yellen is the first person to have held all three top economic posts, having served as lead in the Council of Economic Advisers and Federal Reserve chair before being nominated for Treasury.

She was appointed as Fed chair, the central banking system which adjusts interest rates, by President Obama in 2014 to help rehab the still-lagging economy after the 2008 recession.

Early on she made it clear that “our goal is to help Main Street, not Wall Street", placing greater emphasis on alleviating historically-high unemployment than on price inflation.

Brooklyn-born Ms Yellen, 74, has spoken of her parents - father Julius Yellen,  doctor and son of Polish immigrants, and her mother Anna, an elementary-school teacher, as greatly influencing her world-view.

The Senate Finance Committee will hold Ms Yellen’s confirmation on Tuesday before the Inauguration. Respected on both sides of the aisle, Ms Yellen is expected to be a shoo-in.

Ms Yellen has long viewed climate change as a threat to the financial system and supported an international climate treaty in the 1990s which President George W Bush ultimately got rid of.

The incoming treasury lead “has backed the idea of taxing carbon emissions and returning the proceeds to Americans as a quarterly check — an idea popular with many economists”, the Washington Post reported. 

However in a recent paper with Mark Carney, UN special envoy on climate and finance and former Bank of England governor, she wrote that “the scale of the challenge means that carbon prices alone are not enough”.

Ms Yellen will be at the heart of how the climate crisis and the pandemic are handled, overseeing the spending of any new economic recovery package.

Mr Biden has promised to end subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, also falling under Ms Yellen’s remit. And as the treasury department controls tax credits, she could direct incentives towards renewables and carbon capture systems, that draw down emissions from the atmosphere.

►John Kerry, climate czar

John Kerry

John Kerry, who served as secretary of state when Mr Biden was vice president, has been nominated for perhaps the most senior climate job in US history.

Mr Kerry, 77, will have a seat on the National Security Council, the first time it has an official dedicated to climate. It makes the issue a core consideration in major foreign and domestic policy decisions by the president, VP and Cabinet.

The dyed-in-the-wool Democrat from Massachusetts was among the architects of Paris deal and a familiar face in geopolitics.

A longtime friend and ally of Mr Biden, Mr Kerry is likely to be viewed as reliable and in lock-step with the president by foreign leaders left with lingering distrust towards America after the Trump years, marked by mistreatment of allies and erratic exiting of global agreements.

Mr Kerry will likely take on big-ticket issues. In September, he spoke to Salon about the importance of getting China on board to tackle the climate crisis, and focusing on the global issue of climate migration which will impact borders and security.

But Mr Kerry’s high-profile also makes the wealthy and well-connected elder statesman a familiar punching bag for conservatives wishing to undermine climate action.

“We look forward to the anti-carbon lectures from a guy who travels the globe on private jets and luxury yachts,” the New York Post wrote after Mr Kerry was nominated.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who has repeated misleading statements on climate change, tweeted: “John Kerry thrilled at prospect of returning to his dream job of living in Central European luxury hotels while negotiating deals that are bad for America."

►Congresswoman Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior

Deb Haaland

The congresswoman from New Mexico makes history as the first-ever Native American Cabinet Secretary. 

A member of the Laguna Pueblo people, if confirmed Rep. Haaland will oversee America’s land and natural resources, and is keeper of the government’s legally-binding obligations to hundreds of tribal nations.

As vice-chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, she’s had to sharpen her skills in bipartisanship. But her nomination has also given heart to progressives as sheis a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.

“I’ll be fierce for all of us, for our planet, and all of our protected land,” Rep. Haaland, 60, said in her nomination speech. 

She also paid emotional tribute to what her nomination meant for Indigenous peoples.

“This moment is profound when we consider the fact that a former secretary of the interior once proclaimed it his goal to, quote, ‘civilize or exterminate’ us. I’m a living testament to the failure of that horrific ideology,” she said.

At the Department of Interior, Rep Haaland would oversee one-fifth of all America’s land, more than 450 million acres. This includes national parks, wildlife refuges and resources like gas, oil and water.

She will almost certainly do a 180 on the Trump’s administration’s agenda which attempted to sell-off public lands for fossil fuel development and removed regulations to protect natural resources and wildlife.

Last year Rep Haaland sponsored a bill that would commit the US to protect 30 per cent of the nation’s land and oceans by 2030. Mr Biden has vowed to make this a priority via execution action.

Among her first priorities as secretary, it is believed that she will restore the protections stripped from Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante in southeast Utah by Mr Trump. The vast areas of public land are full of sacred meaning for Indigenous peoples.

►Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Pete Buttigieg

In “Amtrak Joe” Biden’s climate platform, transportation plays a vital role in tackling emissions. Ahead of electricity production and industry, transport generates the most greenhouse gas emissions in the US (28 per cent).

Mr Buttigieg, 38, will be tasked with implementing the new president’s ambitious clean public transport plan which includes expanding dedicated bicycle paths and implementing “the second great railroad revolution” of high-speed trains and new tracks across the midwest and western states.

The openly gay former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he ended his own White House campaign in March and was a passionate supporter for president-elect Biden on the campaign trail. 

And Mr Buttigieg is not the only one in the Cabinet with city hall experience, an indication of Mr Biden’s faith in those who can get things done in local government. Marty Walsh, nominee for Labor, was mayor of Boston and Rep. Marcia Fudge for Housing and Urban Development, was formerly mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio. 

►Governor Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Energy

Jennifer Granholm

A two-term Governor of Michigan, if confirmed Ms Granholm will be the second woman ever to hold the top energy job. As governor, she was credited with helping save the auto industry in Detroit.

Like many Cabinet picks, Gov. Granholm, 61, goes back a long way with Mr Biden. The former governor worked with him on the 2009 bailout of automobile manufacturers General Motors Co and Chrysler when he was vice president.

She has advocated for US development of zero-emission vehicles in recent years, arguing to pull the industry ahead of its international competitors.

She currently teaches law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

In 2015 Ms Granholm launched the American Jobs Project, to focus on promoting state policies to create middle-class jobs in batteries and other forms of advanced energy technology. A bulk of the Energy Department’s budget, more than $27bn, is focused on maintaining the nation’s nuclear program, but it oversees more than a dozen labs tasked with developing renewable energy production. 

The department also plays a role in developing standards for building emissions and appliances, areas that the Biden administration will also target in its emissions battle. 

►Gina McCarthy, national climate advisor

Gina McCarthy

With decades of public service at state and federal level, Gina McCarthy, former administrator of the EPA under President Obama, will become the first-ever National Climate Advisor.

The idea is for Ms McCarthy, 66 to drive an “all government” approach to the climate crisis, in tandem with Sec. Kerry’s efforts internationally.

During the Obama era, Ms McCarthy was a driving force behind the Clean Power Plan - to curb emissions from power plants and vehicles -

which President Trump went on to reverse. 

She was a key player in the US brokering of the Paris Agreement as well as the 2016 Kigali agreement, signed by nearly 200 countries, to phase out potent substances known as hydrofluorocarbons which drive global heating.

Ms McCarthy comes to the job from her role as head of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which sued the Trump administration more than 100 times over environmental rollbacks.

While regulations from the EPA, Interior and Energy departments will be the framework for tackling emissions and pollution, Ms McCarthy’s role at the newly-installed “White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy” will focus on how to tackle the climate crisis via other avenues like in agriculture, transport, treasury, housing, for example.

►Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Michael Regan

Mr Regan has been North Carolina’s top environmental regulator for the past three years, and will be the first Black man to run the EPA.

The 44-year-old’s role will focus on the Biden environmental justice plan, tackling how the burdens of pollution and climate change disproportionately impact poorer Americans and communities of color.

“Growing up as a child, hunting and fishing with my father and grandfather in eastern North Carolina, I developed a deep love and respect for the outdoors and our natural resources, but I also experienced respiratory issues that required me to use an inhaler on days when pollutants and allergens were especially bad,” said Mr Regan in his nomination speech.

One of Mr Regan’s greatest achievements in North Carolina was negotiating a multibillion-dollar payout from Duke Energy, the largest settlement in US history for the clean up of hazardous coal ash. 

High on his agenda will be tackling vehicle fuel-efficiency standards, emissions from plants running on fossil fuels, and oil and gas sector pollution.

The Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations and protections over four years, plowing ahead with as many as possible in his final days in office. Some have been overturned after court battles with environmentalists but the EPA under Mr Regan will likely try to unwind the decisions as part of the strategy to reduce GHG emissions.

►Brenda Mallory, Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality

Brenda Mallory

A longtime environmental attorney, Ms Mallory is returning to lead a department she was part of during the Obama era. She is currently the director of regulatory policy at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which also sued the Trump administration over climate change rollbacks. 

If confirmed, she will be the first African-American to run the council - which oversees how the public are informed about projects which can cause pollution in their communities.

With a lower-profile than some of the other climate hires, Ms Mallory is viewed as one of America’s leading experts on environmental regulations, including in-depth knowledge of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA is one of the country’s landmark environmental laws which low-income and minority communities have used for decades to fight back against potential polluters. President Trump significantly weakened the act last year. 

Environmental group, NRDC, said that “Mallory is in an excellent position to work with President Biden to untangle the mess that Trump has made of NEPA—and to return the White House Council on Environmental Quality to its proper role as an agency that places the interests of people and the environment above the interests of corporate polluters”.

►Ali Zaidi, deputy national climate advisor

Ali Zaidi

Currently New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s top climate adviser, Mr Zaidi has been driving the state’s effort to decarbonize along with prioritizing environmental justice projects. The 32-year-old will be Ms McCarthy’s deputy.

Mr Zaidi was born in Pakistan and moved to the small town of Edinboro, Pennsylvania on the shore of Lake Erie when he was a child. He worked on the Obama administration’s climate action plan and was also part of Paris negotiations.

During the Obama years, Mr Zaidi warned that climate change was already impacting the US taxpayer, from costs associated with rising sea levels, more extreme weather and intensifying wildfires.

“But the costs we are incurring today will be dwarfed by the costs that lie ahead. Without action, taxpayers will face hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs every year by late in this century as the effects of climate change accelerate,” he wrote in a white paper.

In a podcast with Columbia University this summer, Mr Zaidi backed the idea of creating clean energy jobs in communities that have long suffered from pollution, a suggestion in line with Mr Biden’s climate plan.

“You're talking about all these really cool jobs and wind and solar, where the hell you're going to hire those people from,” he said.

“You're going to hire them from the same old, same old, or you're going to create new roads of opportunity into the communities that have been taxed in six different ways from this pollution over the years.”

Links

• What Is the Paris Climate Agreement That Joe Biden Will Rejoin, Why Did Donald Trump Leave?
• The Biden Administration and International Climate Change Policy and Action
• President-elect Biden to end Keystone XL pipeline in fight on climate change 
• Biden’s focus on climate change could turn up the pressure on China’s mega infrastructure program
• Japan welcomes expected U.S. return to Paris climate accord under Biden
• (US) Biden Plans To Fight Climate Change In A Way No U.S. President Has Done Before
• (USA) Joe Biden Takes Climate Change Seriously
• (USA) Biden Calls Climate Change ‘Existential Threat of Our Time’

The Biggest Coalition Conspiracy Theory Is Climate Change Denial

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

MPs’ unfounded claims about the US Capitol attack and Covid treatments pale next to the granddaddy of misinformation

‘Remember when climate change deniers would proclaim that “the world has not warmed since 1998”? Since then there have been 16 years when it has been hotter – including nine of the past 10 years. ’ Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

NASA announced this week that 2020 – a year which included a La Niña event normally associated with lower temperatures – was the hottest year on record.

It was also the week in which the Morrison government used racist tropes to distract and excuse conspiracy statements made by its MPs.

Remember the good old days when climate change deniers would proclaim that “the world has not warmed since 1998”? Since then there have been 16 years when it has been hotter – including nine of the past 10 years.


NASA confirmed what other agencies have found – last year was (depending on your measurement) either the hottest, equal hottest or close second-hottest year on record.

The previous record holder, 2016, experienced a strong El Niño, which usually means it is abnormally hotter than other years. But the latter part of last year was affected by La Niña.

In effect, in five years the impact of climate change has been so great that cooler years are now equivalent to previously warmer years.

So, God help us when the next El Niño hits.

As it is, we are already well on our way to 1.5C and 2C above pre-20th century levels.

Climate change deniers and the Morrison government (apologies for the repetition) better hope the past 10 years don’t reflect what is about to come.

The trend of the past 20 years has us reaching 2C above pre-industrial averages by 2054, but if we go by the past decade, we’ll get there by 2036.

Pity that the federal government is utterly bereft of the ability to face up to this.

This week Australia’s acting prime minister, Michael McCormack, when asked by ABC’s Sally Sara whether Donald Trump should be removed from office before his term ends, answered that “it is unfortunate that we have seen the events at the Capitol Hill that we’ve seen in recent days, similar to those race riots that we saw around the country last year”.

When he was challenged the next day he went further, referring to human rights groups as “bleeding hearts” and said that “all lives matter”.

The “all lives matter” line has been used for more than five years now by racist groups and political parties to belittle and criticise the Black Lives Matter movement.

Craig Kelly (top) and George Christensen.;Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

This is not a secret. Even someone of McCormack’s capacity for ignorance could not claim to be unaware of the meaning of his words – after all, just last year Pauline Hanson attempted to move a motion in the Senate that “all lives matter”.

And yet, while that implication must not be ignored and let pass, we need to realise his response may have been more about deflecting from the comments made by Craig Kelly and George Christensen.

Both have been variously posting unfounded claims on Facebook that the attack on the US Capitol building was done by members of “antifa”, promoting the use of unproven drugs for treating coronavirus, and pushing the conspiracy theory of “the great reset” – which falsely suggests “global elites” are using the pandemic to usher in a radical socialist or environmentalist new order.

Before he went on holidays, Scott Morrison refused to criticise Christensen, and this week McCormack has done the same.

It’s not surprising, for criticising Christensen and Kelly as conspiracy theorists would mean pulling on a thread that would threaten to unravel the Coalition.

For it quickly leads to the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories – climate change denial.

If you are calling out your members for refuting the FBI or health authorities around the world, then why are you not calling them out for suggesting the UN, Bureau of Meteorology, NASA and government agencies around the world are involved in what would be the greatest conspiracy in history?

If Morrison and McCormack start doing the right thing now, they’ll be challenged to keep doing it – and there are many more within their parties willing to push the lie of climate change denial than just Kelly and Christensen.

Indeed, climate change denial remains at the core of their economic policy of more fossil fuels through a “gas-led recovery”.

Alas, for them – and us – reality keeps happening and the planet keeps warming.

Links

• 2020 was hottest year on record by narrow margin, NASA says
• Climate crisis: record ocean heat in 2020 supercharged extreme weather
• Carbon capture is vital to meeting climate goals, scientists tell green critics
• Climate change pushed ocean temperatures to record high in 2020, study finds
• Climate change saw the world's oceans absorb 20 zettajoules of heat in 2020, driving seas to record temperatures
• Human activity is responsible for nearly all global warming, new research says
• An international team of researchers has found nearly all global warming can be directly contributed to human activity.
• Top judge urges lawyers to take stand on climate change
• Lawyers should take a 'Good Samaritan' approach to climate change, says Justice Brian Preston
• Scientists warn climate change is harming children's diets
• Climate change could undo decades of work reducing malnutrition
• Peat bogs: restoring them could slow climate change – and revive a forgotten world
• The UK's marshes, bogs and fens provided the bare necessities of daily life for many centuries.
• One, two, tree: how AI helped find millions of trees in the Sahara
• Efforts to map the Earth's trees are growing – and could change our understanding of the planet's health.
• Outdated carbon credits from old wind and solar farms are threatening climate change efforts

Annual Heat Records Tumble As Global Warming Trend Continues

Sydney Morning Herald - Miki Perkins

Was 2020 the record hottest year on earth or did it tie with 2016?

The answer lies in tiny differences in how scientific agencies collect data, but their results all reveal the same urgent reality: the past seven years on earth have been the hottest on record, a global warming trend that is driven by climate change and set to continue.

Data shows 2020 was a year of record temperatures. Credit: Getty

New temperature analysis from NASA reveals Earth's 2020 global average surface temperature effectively tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record, despite the cooling La Nina weather pattern.

The globally-averaged temperature last year was 1.02 degrees warmer than the NASA baseline (1951-1980) and edged out the record set in 2016 by a tiny amount.

Earth's average temperature has risen more than 1.2 degrees since the late 19th century, according to NASA.

"The last seven years have been the warmest seven years on record, typifying the ongoing and dramatic warming trend," said Gavin Schmidt, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA.

NOAA: 2020 the second warmest year on record
Average 2020 temperature compared to the 1981-2010 average

Note: 0 degrees Fahrenheit is equivalent to -17.78°C. Source: NOAA climate.gov, NCEI

"Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important – the important things are long-term trends. With these trends, and as the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will continue to be broken."

In a slight contrast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released its own results, which show the rise in temperature for 2020 was just 0.02 degrees shy of 2016's record.

NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis as NASA, but have a different baseline period (1901-2000) and methodology. Similarly the United Kingdom Met Office ranked 2020 as the second-warmest year on record.

Climate change is driving rapid global warming and worsening the impacts of natural variability, said Climate Council expert Will Steffen.

China has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060. Credit: Getty

"Right now, we are on track for catastrophic climate change of 3 degrees celsius of heating and maybe more," Professor Steffen said.

"At just over 1 degree of heating, we are already paying a serious price, as we have seen with the recent Black Summer bushfires, prolonged drought and the third mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in five years. 

"Year after year, decade after decade, temperature records continue to tumble because we continue to burn coal, oil and gas. It must stop."

In 2020, the Australian bushfires burned 46 million acres of land, and smoke and particles in the atmosphere blocked sunlight and probably cooled the atmosphere slightly, NASA's analysis found.

Year after year, decade after decade, temperature records continue to tumble because we continue to burn coal, oil and gas.
Professor Will Steffen

However, the agency also said global shutdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic reduced air pollution in many areas, allowing more sunlight to reach the earth's surface and producing small but potentially significant warming.

Overall, carbon dioxide concentrations continued to increase, and since warming is related to cumulative emissions, the overall amount of avoided warming will be minimal, according to NASA.

Professor Steffen said he was encouraged to see state and territory governments stepping up their climate commitments: "2021 needs to be a year of climate action because failure is not an option."

Land and ocean temperatures

Source: NOAA climate.gov, NCEI

Links

• (AU) Climate Change Pushed Ocean Temperatures To Record High In 2020, Study Finds
• Climate Crisis: Record Ocean Heat In 2020 Supercharged Extreme Weather
• (AU) Australia Records Fourth-Warmest Year In 2020, Despite La Niña
• This Year Was A Disaster For The Planet
• 2020 Closes Hottest Decade On Record Due To Climate Change
• (AU) Record Spring Heat A One-In-500,000 Chance Without Climate Change
• (AU) BOM Says Australia Just Had Its Hottest November On Record
• The State Of The Climate In 2021
• (AU) Last Decade Hottest On Record For Australia With Temperature Almost 1c Above
• (AU) 2020 Annual Climate Statement - Bureau of Meteorology
• 10 Steamy Signs In 2020 That Climate Change Is Speeding Up
• 2020 Was A Year Of Climate Extremes. What Can We Expect In 2021?
• Black Summer bushfires made worse by climate change, risk to 'rapidly intensify'
• National parks get $400 million boost to help recover from Black Summer bushfires

(AU) Climate Change Pushed Ocean Temperatures To Record High In 2020, Study Finds

ABC Weather | Ben Deacon

Oceans warmed to record levels in 2020, which is likely to have serious impacts on marine ecosystems.(Supplied: Grant Thomas, The Ocean Agency)

Key Points Last year the world's oceans absorbed 20 zettajoules of heat Higher ocean temperatures can lead to an increase in extreme weather Seas are warming at twice the global average in Australia's south-east

The world's oceans absorbed 20 sextillion joules of heat due to climate change in 2020 and warmed to record levels, a study has found.

That quantity — expressed numerically as 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules — is equivalent to the energy from 10 Hiroshima atomic bombs being released every second of the year.

Report co-author Kevin Trenberth, from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, said oceans absorbed more than 90 per cent of the solar energy trapped by greenhouse gases.

"There's a tremendous amount of energy that's actually involved in this — it's not surprising that it has consequences," he said.

"Since about the mid-1990s, at least, the oceans have been warming very steadily.

"In fact, they are the best single indicator that the planet is warming."

The mercury has been rising steadily since the 1990s.(Supplied: Kevin Trenberth)

Danger by degrees

The study came as scientists confirmed that global air temperatures in 2020 were equal to 2016 — the hottest on record — and as Australia experienced its fourth hottest year on record.

"The ocean is a key controller of the climate that we see on the continent of Australia," CSIRO oceanographer Bernadette Sloyan said.

She said warmer oceans could lead to increases in extreme weather.

The seas to the north-east of Australia (yellow and red) are warmer than average water because of La Niña. (Supplied: earth.nullschool.net)

"That heat is actually providing the fuel that can bring in monsoons, rains and tropical cyclones," Dr Sloyan said.

"We've already dialled in what we're going to see over the next 20, 30, 40 years.

"That's because the oceans have the heat and will slowly release it back to the atmosphere and impact weather and severe weather events."

She said increased heat was also directly affecting ecosystems like coral reefs.

"Corals live within a really small temperature range," Dr Sloyan said.

"Once we exceed those temperature ranges – and if we exceed them for long periods of times – we have significant coral bleaching."

Coral bleaching is a direct result of increased ocean temperatures. (Supplied: The Ocean Agency)

Simmering south-east

Australia's south-east has been identified as an ocean surface warming hotspot, according to Jessica Benthuysen, an oceanographer with the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

"We've had a number of dramatic marine heat waves in the Tasman Sea over the past five years, including in 2016," she said.

"That was the longest, most intense marine heat wave on record — and that was associated with a shift in fish species and Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome for the first time."

Sea surface temperatures to the south-east of Australia are increasing at twice the global average. (Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)

In its State of the Climate 2020 report, the Bureau of Meteorology said the average sea surface temperature in the Australian region had warmed by more than one degree Celsius since 1900.

Eight of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2010.

Links

• Warm Arctic temperatures drive 2020 to equal world's hottest year record
• BOM's preliminary 2020 data is in and it was the fourth hottest year on record
• Climate Crisis: Record Ocean Heat In 2020 Supercharged Extreme Weather
• More Than Half Of World's Oceans Already Being Affected By Climate Change
• Climate Change Will Make World Too Hot For 60 Per Cent Of Fish Species
• Rising Tides, Troubled Waters: The Future Of Our Ocean
• (AU) Unwelcome Sea Change: New Research Finds Coastal Flooding May Cost Up To
• 20% Of Global Economy By 2100
• (AU) We Can't Beat The Planet Into Submission. We Can Retreat
• (AU) Wamberal Beach Erosion: Seawall Would Deliver No Net Benefit, Study Finds
• (AU) How Coastal Communities On Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula Are Dealing With The Reality Of Sea Level Rises