Tag Archives: climate change

DL Opinion columns

No, Climate Change is Not a Hoax – by Deborah Levine

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

I don’t often use AI, but I made an exception over the weekend when severe storms were expected and schools announced closings for Monday. The report echoed the storms of a few weekends ago when 60 tornadoes and 40 deaths came close to us. Was this the new norm?  I couldn’t resist going to my computer and asking AI if this weather was unusual. Here’s the AI response: “Yes, Chattanooga’s weather has a high risk of severe storms, including damaging winds, tornadoes, and large hail…” Unnerved, I asked a native Chattanoogan friend her thoughts on this unusual weather. “There was nothing like this growing up. These severe storms and tornadoes are relatively recent. Same for Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi.” When I whispered “Climate Change is real”, we both nodded in agreement.

Agreement that climate change is real science is growing. Earlier this year, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication published the results of a survey on global warming. The national average of believers in global warming is 72%. And 71% of those surveyed worry about the effects on future generations. Some may doubt that the global warming is caused by human action, but even before these storms, 75% of respondents supported funding research into renewable energy.

Unfortunately, the current administrations  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it’s starting the process of undoing 31 environmental regulations. Check out these media blasts: “Trump administration aims to eliminate EPA’s scientific research arm”,“E.P.A. cancels climate grants, intensifying battle over $20 billion”, “Climate group (Breakthrough Energy) funded by Bill Gates slashes staff in major retreat”, and “Trump has fired the scientists who monitor the ocean”.

Does the EPA have regrets over these changes that put our planet at risk? Hardly! This is what EPA administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.”  Supposedly, this “kill” will usher in a new Golden Age.

That “climate-change religion” phrase is intended to demean and is part of the new goal to dismiss the many religious leaders emphasizing our responsibility to take care of the planet. Don’t let that happen! One of my favorite climate-change religious leaders is The Rev. Dr. John Pawlikowski who reported how The Chicago Council of Global Affairs in 2019 brought together 51 mayors & staff to develop a flexible mayoral covenant on climate change. 

Four years later, Pawlikowski wrote about the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) where governments discussed how to prepare for future climate change, including transitioning away from fossil fuels. But given the complex politics over the COP28 which was controversially held in oil-rich Dubai, it’s obvious that our planet’s stability is in the hands of a small group of rich entrepreneurs and their political supporters. Follow the money! 

The EPA now wants to reject saving the planet and humanity in favor of cheaper cars and unregulated industries. But the EPA’s own 2009 endangerment findings block that move.  The findings concluded that human-produced greenhouse gases did threaten public health and welfare and must be regulated. So now what? The EPA will no doubt discredit its own endangerment policies and denigrate its supporters. Are you ready for a vicious storm of attacks on climate change believers and environmental projects?

We must remain strong and persevere. Religious leaders and community organizations must come together regardless of one’s political party affiliation. Reject the “hoax” conspiracies and embrace our responsibility to protect the future of this planet and ourselves. If not us, then who?

Authors I-Q, Go Green

Coming together in our climate crises – by Papa Balla Ndong

climate crises After a full work week, I am volunteering with my daughter to help people and villages impacted by the devastating floods in Spain’s city of Valencia, representing SIETAR Europa,  (a nonprofit organization: Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) SIETAR España, and Valencia.

Intense rainfall in eastern Spain produced deadly and destructive flash floods in the province of Valencia. On October 29, 2024, more than 300 millimeters (12 inches) of rain fell in parts of the province, reported Spain’s meteorological agency, AEMET. In the town of Chiva, nearly 500 millimeters (20 inches) fell in 8 hours. ~ NASA Earth Observatory

But just days ago, I was in Madrid, participating in the United Nations International Day for Care and Support( October 29th), discussing the migrant diaspora in Spain. Little did I know that on my return, I would encounter such profound evidence of climate change in my own community. Due to road closures, I spent two nights in my car just 80 kilometers from home, witnessing firsthand the growing intensity of our planet’s climate crises.

These experiences have brought questions to my mind that I’d like to share with you:

Continue reading Coming together in our climate crises – by Papa Balla Ndong →

Authors A-H, Go Green

Uncovering the Green Truth: The Role of Espionage in Environmental Politics – by Ainesh Dey and Jhanvi Jain

The Geo-strategic Premise of Environmental Espionage – Abstract

In current times with the rise in environmental crises like global warming, deforestation, and wildfires in the geopolitical scenario, it becomes imperative to collaborate and cooperate with other nations to find solutions to such crises at the global level. However, with every nation’s ulterior motive being involved, sharing environment or resource-related information can prove to be hazardous for the various nations and states especially in the international sphere.

The larger relationship between environment-related information, global partnership, and the possibility of espionage then becomes intertwined. Moreover, this delicate intertwining of these seamlessly connected dynamics of international relations, yet the divergently different motives with which each nation-state might be cooperating highlights the transition in international relations, the changing nature of espionage and the need to keep pace with these spaces.

Continue reading Uncovering the Green Truth: The Role of Espionage in Environmental Politics – by Ainesh Dey and Jhanvi Jain →

Advisors, Authors I-Q, Go Green, Trends 2024: Divisive World

New Climate Inflection Point in our Axial Age – by The Rev. Dr. John Pawlikowski

In my contribution to American Diversity Report at the beginning of 2023, I argued that we are living in an axial era where fundamental structures of human society are undergoing profound change. As we enter 2024, I would maintain with others such as former Senator John Kerry, now the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Issues, that the final communique from the recent COP 28 conference in Dubai may represent an axial moment.

Special Envoy Kerry believes the Dubai decision to commit to a movement to eliminate the reliance on fossil fuels by the global community (as well as methane gas) signals a  fundamental shift in the way we provide power for the human community. Such a wholesale shift in the generation of necessary power throughout the world, if successful, would represent a fundamental reordering of our life together as a global community. It would insure the sustainability of our planet and firmly implant the right to a the right to a healthy environment for all living creatures proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2023.    

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Advisors, Authors I-Q, Go Green, Trends 2023

Bridging the Choice Chasm – by Dr. Shalini Nag and Surya Guduru

A path to a sustainable future

As we get look ahead to 2023, sustainability takes center stage, yet again. Can we really achieve a sustainable future? Today, we posit that we can, if we are able to apply the equity and inclusion lens to the problem and bridge the Choice Chasm – the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the haves and the have-nots, between developed and developing nations, between incumbent practices and emerging norms.

Aftershocks from the Covid19 pandemic exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, combined with climate chaos made 2022 a chronicle of global challenges. These include the intermittent resurgence of Covid variants, the mental health epidemic, continued supply chain disruptions, internal displacement in Ukraine, worsening food crisis in the world’s most vulnerable regions, and a global energy crisis. By October 2022, weather disasters alone cost nearly 20,000 lives and 30 billion dollars, refocusing governments and organizations alike on sustainability. 

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Go Green, Social Issues

Environmental Justice: Apocalypse Now? – by Marc Brenman

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The topic of environmental justice (EJ) has become popular. We find it expressed in President Biden’s equity program, for example. I’ve been working with a group of advocates on the topic for about twelve years. Before that I helped write one of the first EJ programs for a federal agency while at the US Department of Transportation in the late 1980’s. At the time I knew nothing about the issue. I mentioned my ignorance to Bob Bullard, one of the fathers of the concept. He told me to read his books. Now I’ve become an expert, with books and essays, including one on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

EJ has been overtaken by events, and today is sometimes called “environmental racism.” We now recognize the climate as a problem, and not as benign Mother Nature. EJ is the confluence of environmental issues with civil rights, resulting in health disparities for many people of color and low income people. They tend to live in lower marshy areas that are more subject to ocean level rise, flooding, and extreme storms. Even today, many lack air conditioning and are therefore more endangered by extreme heat. Many farmworkers live in rural towns in the West under extreme drought conditions. African-Americans own cars at the lowest level of any demographic group in the United States, and hence can’t escape in an evacuation order. Many African-Americans in Southern and Border states live near hog and chicken waste ponds and power stations and dumps that spew noxious fumes.

Continue reading Environmental Justice: Apocalypse Now? – by Marc Brenman →