Weekly Ingest: Newsletter
Each week I will curate a newsletter for all my listeners that is comprised of article that are of interest to the topics I talk about the podcast. This newsletter also brings national and international news about sustainability and climate change they may often get over looked, forgotten about, or is unheard of to the community I serve.
Green Recovery and Stimulus
Illustration by Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz.
How to Fund a Just Economic Recovery
From Yes! Magazine: Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz
The five principles of the “People's Bailout”.
Congress so far has allocated $2.5 trillion in emergency stimulus funding. Economic and climate justice advocates are pushing for distribution that will address immediate needs of communities, but also lay the groundwork for a more resilient and just economy.
“This pandemic has unveiled the interdependent crises of classism and racism, economic decline, and climate destruction. COVID-19 is magnifying the ills of normalizing profits over people,” says a 350.org statement.
Young Black men working for the Civilian Conservation Corps dig holes to build a fence in Greene County, Georgia, circa May 1941. Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images.
It’s Time For a Black New Deal
From Yes Magazine: Chris Winters
It’s been two weeks since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes until he died. It’s been almost as long since protests erupted in all 50 states and numerous countries across the continents of Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America—amid a global pandemic—calling for an end to police violence against Black people in the United States.
But surrounding the central demands of the moment—of stopping police killings, and holding officers accountable when they do kill—there are systemic issues of racism and poverty that, if not addressed comprehensively, will ensure that any “reform” effort today will be short-lived.
Source: Rosevelt Institute
A Green New Deal architect explains how the protests and climate crisis are connected
From MIT Technology Review: Jason Temple
The Roosevelt Institute's Rhiana Gunn-Wright says the events of 2020 underscore the need for broader coalitions to push for sweeping economic, environmental and criminal justice reforms.
Demands for climate action have largely faded into the background as the covid-19 pandemic, the economic meltdown, and widespread protests over police brutality have seized the world’s attention.
But for Rhiana Gunn-Wright, the director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute and one of the architects of the Green New Deal, the issues are inextricably intertwined. You can’t appreciate the real toll of the fossil-fuel sector if you’re not looking at it through the lenses of racial justice, economic inequality, and public health, she says in an interview with MIT Technology Review.
People of color are more likely to live near power plants and other polluting factories, and they suffer higher levels of asthma and greater risks of early death from air pollution. The coronavirus death rate among black Americans is more than twice that of whites. And global warming and factory farming practices will release more deadly pathogens and reshape the range of infectious diseases, Gunn-Wright argued in April in a New York Times op-ed titled “Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming.”
Source: Grist
Can a green economy make me rich?
From Grist: Eve Andrews
Photo by John Fedele/Getty Images
We Need a Green New Deal for Farmland
From Yes! Magazine: Liz Carlisle
As the coronavirus crisis has laid bare, the U.S. urgently needs a strategic plan for farmland. The very lands we need to ensure community food security and resilience in the face of crises like this pandemic and climate change are currently being paved over, planted to chemically raised feed grains for factory farm animals, and acquired by institutional investors and speculators. For far too long, the fate of farmlands has flown under the radar of public dialogue—but a powerful new proposal from think tank Data for Progress lays out how a national strategic plan for farmland could help boost economic recovery while putting the U.S. on a path to carbon neutrality.
A bicyclist on an embankment in front of wind turbines in Norderney, Germany. LINO MIRGELER/GETTY IMAGES
Building Back Better: Why Europe Must Lead a Global Green Recovery
From Yale Environment 360: David G. Victor
With the global economy reeling from the pandemic, most nations are focusing stimulus programs on reviving employment. But Europe is moving forward with a Green Deal initiative that provides a framework for decarbonizing its economy and spurring the rest of the world to follow.
As governments spend massively to revive economies, a huge battle has emerged around whether the economic recovery should also achieve other goals, particularly cutting the emissions that cause climate change. Those advocating green spending say the $10 trillion that governments have already committed to stimulus should be just the beginning, and an even bigger pile of cash is now needed for expansive “green new deals.”
In most countries, the political forces are blowing against green recovery. Distant, abstract goals like global warming have fallen far down the list of priorities while paychecks and health loom much larger than they did six months ago. Some have actually relaxed pollution control standards and will take growth at any cost. While there are many policies that could deliver economic growth and lower emissions, most of them don’t work quickly — and thus don’t deliver what most citizens expect from government today. With global markets and societies in chaos, our ability to forecast has gone down; risks for investors in long-lived technologies, which is most of what’s needed for deep decarbonization, have gone up. Unlike the last financial crisis, when nations spent up to 15 percent of their stimulus money on clean energy, few have such forward-looking plans this time.
Germany Just Unveiled the World’s Greenest Stimulus Plan
From Bloomburg Green: Laura Millan Lombrana and Akshat Rathi
Fossil-fuel cars receive no funding in $145 billion package
Electric cars, renewable power and hydrogen are big winners
Germany’s 130 billion euro ($145 billion) recovery budget puts the focus on climate-friendly industries and technologies, underscoring Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pledge to reboot the economy and wean it off fossil power and cars that laid the foundation of the country’s export prowess.
The plan unveiled late on Wednesday after 21 hours of intense negotiations is the most ambitious yet by any government to support green initiatives. Divided into 57 different points addressing sectors from taxes to families to agriculture, the budget allocates about 41 billion euros to areas like public transport, electric vehicles and renewable energy, according to calculations by Bloomberg News.
New construction site with roof solar panels. Rüdesheim, Germany. Credit: KH-Pictures / Alamy Stock Photo
Coronavirus: Tracking how the world’s ‘green recovery’ plans aim to cut emissions
From Carbon Brief: Simon Evans and Josh Gabbatiss
The coronavirus pandemic has had devastating consequences for lives and livelihoods around the world, while also dramatically cutting CO2 emissions.
In many countries, governments are now looking towards recovery as the pandemic’s first wave slowly recedes, with plans for economic stimulus worth trillions of dollars.
Yet as economies pick up pace, emissions are beginning to rebound. And huge stimulus plans will have consequences for CO2 emissions, even if they do not explicitly target climate change.
As a result, voices from the International Energy Agency (IEA) through to the UK’s prime minister and leading economists are among those calling for a “green recovery” that “builds back better”, by cutting CO2 emissions as well as boosting the economy. But what is actually being proposed?
Flower meadows at Hever Castle in Kent. The national nature service would plant more meadows across England. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
‘National nature service’ needed for green recovery in England, groups say
From The Guardian: Damian Carrington
Exclusive: government must ‘seize the day’ to create jobs and tackle wildlife and climate crises
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, must “seize the day” and create a national nature service to restore wildlife and habitats in England, say a coalition of the country’s biggest green groups. It said the move would create thousands of jobs, a more resilient country and tackle the wildlife and climate crises.
The coalition has drawn up a list of 330 projects that are ready to go, including flower meadows, “tiny forests” in cities and hillside schemes to cut flooding. It said a service to fund the projects and train workers would create 10,000 jobs and be part of a green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Climate Change and Racism
Black Environmentalists Talk About Climate and Anti-Racism
From The New York Times: Somini Sengupta
It’s impossible to live sustainably without tackling inequality, activists say.
This week, with the country convulsed by protests over the killing of a black man named George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, we decided we’d talk to leading black climate activists about the connections between racism and climate change.
A clear theme emerged from those discussions: Racial and economic inequities need to be tackled as this country seeks to recalibrate its economic and social compass in the weeks and months to come. Racism, in short, makes it impossible to live sustainably.
Here’s what three prominent environmental defenders had to say in interviews this week about how the climate movement can be anti-racist.
In the highlands of western Guatemala, in an area affected by deforestation, a man cuts firewood for cooking. Photography by Mauricio Lima
How Climate Change Is Fuelling the U.S. Border Crisis
From The New Yorker: Jonathan Blitzer
In the western highlands of Guatemala, the question is no longer whether someone will leave but when.
In the center of Climentoro, in the western highlands of Guatemala, a dozen large white houses rise above the village’s traditional wooden huts like giant monuments. The structures are made of concrete and fashioned with archways, colonnaded porches, and elaborate moldings. “Most of them are empty,” Feliciano Pérez, a local farmer, told me. Their owners, who live in the U.S., had sent money home to build American-inspired houses for when they returned, but they never did. Pérez gestured to a three-story house topped with a faux-brick chimney. “No one lives there,” he said. The family of twelve had migrated a few years ago, leaving the vacant construction behind. “Vecinos fantasmas,” Pérez called them—ghost neighbors.
Pregnant women on a climate march in Sydney in December last year. Researchers found a strong link between air pollution and heat exposure and the risk of pre-term birth or stillbirth. Photograph: Jenny Evans/Getty Images
Climate crisis poses serious risks for pregnancy, investigation finds
From The Guardian: Emily Holden
Air pollution and heat exposure linked to negative outcomes
Researchers discover ‘pretty scary health burdens’
More than a decade of overwhelming evidence links air pollution and heat exposure with negative pregnancy outcomes in the US, according to a new review of dozens of studies.
The investigation, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, identified 57 studies since 2007 showing a significant association between the two factors and the risk of pre-term birth, low birth weight and stillbirth.
Black mothers were particularly at risk, as were people with asthma.
The review analyzed 32m births tracked across 68 studies. Of those, 84% found air pollution and heat to be risk factors.
Erik McGregor
A pipeline, a protest, and a polluted past
From Grist: Emily Pontecorvo
Bike Messengers. A small pipeline poses big questions about the future of natural gas in New York.
On Saturday, as protests demanding racial justice and an end to police violence took over New York City, a separate but related demonstration wound its way through Brooklyn echoing those cries and adding a few more. This other protest took place on bikes, as a few dozen New Yorkers rode the route of a partially constructed natural gas pipeline. As they pedaled through neighborhoods between Brownsville and Greenpoint, the cyclists drew attention to the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards in the predominantly black and brown communities that live along the pipeline’s path, calling on state regulators to put an end to the project.
Having a racist and violent police force in your neighborhood is a lot like having a pollution-emitting factory in your neighborhood. Photograph by Jim West / Alamy
Racism, Police Violence, and the Climate Are Not Separate Issues
From The New Yorker: Bill McKibben
I find that lots of people are surprised to learn that, by overwhelming margins, the two groups of Americans who care most about climate change are Latinx Americans and African-Americans. But, of course, those communities tend to be disproportionately exposed to the effects of global warming: working jobs that keep you outdoors, or on the move, on an increasingly hot planet, and living in densely populated and polluted areas. (For many of the same reasons, these communities have proved disproportionately vulnerable to diseases such as the coronavirus.) One way of saying it is that money buys insulation, and white people, over all, have more of it.
