Weekly Ingest Newsletter: Ninth Edition

Each week I curate a newsletter for all my listeners that are comprised of articles 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 overlooked, forgotten about, or is unheard of to the community I serve.

Climate Change and Psychology

Flight-shaming: The campaign that made Swedes give up flying for good

From Inverse: Avit K Bhowmik

EUROPE’S MAJOR AIRLINES ARE LIKELY TO SEE their turnover drop by 50 percent in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, while European airports expect to welcome 700 million fewer passengers. It’s a brutal shock to a global industry that, in the previous decade, grew by more than 5 percent a year on average.

Civil aviation – which includes all passenger and cargo flights – accounts for 2 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. This might look pretty small, but this comes from only 5 percent of the global population who can afford to fly. A transatlantic round trip can emit greenhouse gases equivalent to 1.6 tonnes of CO₂ per person. In other words, someone’s entire carbon allowance for the year.

As lockdowns are loosened, emissions are rebounding from many sectors. Aviation may follow the same path. After all, we live in a hyperconnected world and people still want to explore it, traveling as fast and as cheaply as possible, forgetting the cost this incurs to the climate.

But recent history suggests our attitudes may be more malleable. The Swedish flygskam(meaning, “flight shame”) movement of 2018 was led by a small group of celebrities, including Olympic winter gold medallist Bjorn Ferry and the musician Malena Ernman, who also happens to be climate activist Greta Thunnberg’s mother.

An Ecological and Psychological Perspective On the Year 2020

From Thrive Global: Dr. Ian McCallum

A reflection on the year in which our basic assumptions about our future would be challenged.

“The truth is that “I can’t breathe … hints at the apocalypse of human values”–Ben Okri

Who would have thought that the human species would one day, be held to ransom by a microbe? And yet, here we are in a year we will never forget – 2020 – a year in which the human world not only stood still, but in which any convictions of human superiority over all living things, would be seriously questioned. It would be a year in which our basic assumptions about our future would be challenged. For those most severely affected by the Covid-19 viral infection, the presenting symptom was one of increasing respiratory distress. Their plea is one that haunts every human being … “I can’t breathe.”

How ironic that 2020 is the symbol of perfect vision. If we had such vision, then we must have seen it coming. And we did. Deep down we knew that something like this had to happen. The so-called “black swan” – the creature that no one believed existed – a metaphor for events that not only catch us by surprise but have a major impact on our lives – suddenly pitches up? No. It did not arrive unannounced. The ‘black swan’ dynamics of rising human populations, high density urbanisation, habitat fragmentation, plastic and biochemical pollution, the burning of forests and fossil fuels, climate instability and with it, the zoonotic consequences of the way we treat, eat, farm, corral, transport and trade domestic and wild animals – legally and illegally, has come home to roost. The swan was staring us in the face. Its call was the warning cry of the Earth itself: “I can’t breathe” … Watch out!”

Climate Denialism and The Media

Climate deniers get twice the news coverage of pro-climate messages, study finds

From The Independent: Louise Boyle

The opinions of big business and opponents of climate action were given 'outsize opportunity to sway this debate'

Opponents of battling the climate crisis have had twice the media coverage of those advocating to take action, according to a study published on Monday.

The new report looked at more than 1,700 climate-related press releases over a 30-year period, and news articles including the information which were published in the US's largest-circulation newspapers.

Researcher Rachel Wetts, an assistant professor at Brown University's sociology department, found that approximately 14 per cent of press releases in opposition of climate action, or denying the science behind the climate crisis, were more likely to grab headlines compared to roughly 7 per cent of those in support of climate action.

The surprising reasons why people ignore the facts about climate change

From Grist: Kate Yoder

Picture yourself giving nearly the same speech hundreds of times, filled with rock-solid facts, detailed charts, and impassioned moral pleas. Despite years of these efforts, you’re hoarse and exhausted and can’t shake the sense that people still aren’t listening.

“It’s a very hollow feeling,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, told journalists after giving his 200th speech on climate change on the Senate floor in 2018. He felt like he was talking to an “empty chamber.” His addresses, detailing the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the climbing costs of floods and wildfires, and the flow of “dark money” to block climate legislation, had become a weekly tradition, but there wasn’t much evidence that the hundreds of hours he spent on them had changed his fellow senators’ minds.

While only a sixth of Americans dismiss the scientific consensus that the planet is heating up, a larger chunk — one-third — still doubt that humans are responsible. Two new studies dig into the reasons why so many people resist accepting the facts on climate change and offer some insight into how to talk to them about our overheating planet in a way that might be more compelling. The takeaway: Evidence alone isn’t enough.

“People routinely ignore facts on a whole host of issues, including climate change,” said Deborah Lynn Guber, an associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont. “So if Democrats base their strategy on facts, then that’s a problem.”

‘Serious debates about what to do about the climate crisis are turning into action. The deniers have nothing to contribute to this.’ Signs of global warming on the Mer de Glace glacier in the French Alps. Photograph: Konrad K/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock

The four types of climate denier, and why you should ignore them all

From The Guardian: Damian Carrington

The shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool: each distorts the urgent global debate in their own way

A new book, described as “deeply and fatally flawed” by an expert reviewer, recently reached the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for environmental science and made it into a weekly top 10 list for all nonfiction titles.

How did this happen? Because, as Brendan Behan put it, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. In an article promoting his book, Michael Shellenberger – with jaw-dropping hubris – apologises on behalf of all environmentalists for the “climate scare we created over the last 30 years”.

Shellenberger was named a hero of the environment by Time magazine in 2008 and is a loud advocate of nuclear power, but the article was described by six leading scientists as “cherry-picking”, “misleading” and containing “outright falsehoods”.

The curse of ‘both-sidesism’: How climate denial skewed media coverage for 30 years

From Grist: Joseph Winters

Ever wonder why Americans have been so slow to support climate action? A new study lays some of the blame on media bias —for 30 years, three of the country’s most influential sources of news gave too much credence to arguments that the world shouldn’t take decisive action to mitigate climate change.

“Opponents of climate action have been given an outsize opportunity to sway this debate,” said Rachel Wetts, the author of the study. Her results were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wetts analyzed 1,768 press releases from business, government, and social advocacy organizations from 1985 to 2013, categorizing them by their stance on climate action. She then ran the press releases through plagiarism detection software to see how often they were featured in the country’s largest-circulation newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

Climate Crisis

Mt Cook on New Zealand’s south island. The study looked at changes to 10 of the country’s glaciers after scientists noticed significant loss of snow during monitoring flights. Photograph: Dave Allen/Lauren Vargo

'There’s still a choice': New Zealand's melting glaciers show the human fingerprints of climate change

From The Guardian: Graham Readfearn

New research has found extreme melting of the country’s glaciers in 2018 was at least ten times more likely due to human-caused global heating

Twice a year, glaciologist Lauren Vargo and her colleagues set up camp beside two small lakes close to New Zealand’s Brewster glacier. Each time the trek to carry the measuring stakes takes a little bit longer as the glacier’s terminus gets further away.

Dr Vargo, a native of Ohio now working at the Antarctic Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington, is studying New Zealand’s glaciers from the air and on the ice.

New research just published in the journal Nature Climate Change has found that extreme melting of the country’s glaciers in 2018 was at least ten times more likely to have happened because of human-caused global heating.

Loss of ice across New Zealand’s glaciers in 2011, which was another extreme melt year, was six times more likely because of the planet’s warming, the study found, caused by an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere mostly from burning fossil fuels.

Vargo, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “As scientists we know that theoretically warm temperatures should melt ice, but the goal of the research was to formally show that link between melting and climate change.”

Climate change: 'Huge' implications to Irish climate case across Europe

From The BBC

A ruling by the Irish Supreme Court on climate change policy could have "huge ramifications" across Europe, the group which took the case has said.

On Friday the Supreme Court quashed the government's 2017 National Mitigation Plan. Judges ruled that it did not give enough detail on the reduction of greenhouse gases.

The case was brought by the environmental group Friends of the Irish Environment.The Irish government welcomed the ruling and said it would "carefully examine the decision".

Friends of the Irish Environment spokeswoman Clodagh Daly told BBC News NI the verdict was "crystal clear" and would have implications across Europe. She said: "It shows governments have to do more to protect their citizens from the worst impact of the climate crisis."We know that the transition to the low-carbon economy is technologically feasible - there is no legal basis for a lack of political will."Governments around the EU have no excuse now." She said she hoped it would put pressure on the Northern Ireland Executive to follow a similar approach.

Ms Daly added that while "climate change knows no borders" and emissions were counted on an all-island basis, she noted "how we respond to the climate crisis is separate".

Climate Policy and Legislation

*Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said during remarks on July 30 that the Pittsburgh region must not repeat “mistakes we made in the past” in contributing to the fossil fuel industry. (Screenshot)*

Pittsburgh leaders say we’re at the ‘fulcrum point’ for the future green economy

From Public Source: Jon Moss

The Pittsburgh-area economy has slowly become less reliant on heavy industry since the steel collapse of the 1980s, but environmental advocates said Thursday that Southwestern Pennsylvania is at a “fulcrum point” in deciding what its future economy will look like.

“Addressing which future narrative the region will proceed along is really a planet-level impactful decision, and it’s why we’re going all in in trying to transition to a greener economy,” said Matt Mehalik, the executive director of the Breathe Project*, a local environmental group.

Mehalik and Grant Ervin, the City of Pittsburgh’s chief resilience officer, spoke about building a new green economy at a Thursday afternoon event held by the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis, a think tank that advocates for accelerating the transition to renewable energy. Steve Carbó, the head of progressive policy consulting firm Carbó Strategic Consulting, moderated the event.

To help the transition into a cleaner economy, Ervin said it is important that communities realize the power of the financial assets they hold. Pittsburgh’s pension board formed a three-person committee in February to study fossil fuel divestment, after Mayor Bill Peduto requested last year that the board “develop and execute” a divestment strategy.

Governor Cuomo Signs Legislation Regulating Oil and Gas Related Waste

From The Office of Govenor Andrew Cuomo

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed legislation (S3392/A2655) regulating waste from oil or natural gas in New York as hazardous waste.

"New York has taken an aggressive approach to protecting our natural resources by banning hydrofracking and advancing a nation-leading environmental agenda that is accelerating our transition to a carbon-neutral green economy," Governor Cuomo said. "As we do everything possible to reduce our reliance on polluting fossil fuels, we have to make every effort to diminish the impact of the hazardous waste they produce and by signing this legislation we are enacting smart, necessary regulations that will protect both our environment and New Yorker's health."