3 May 2016, New York times, Resettling the First American ‘Climate Refugees’. ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. — Each morning at 3:30, when Joann Bourg leaves the mildewed and rusted house that her parents built on her grandfather’s property, she worries that the bridge connecting this spit of waterlogged land to Louisiana’s terra firma will again be flooded and she will miss another day’s work. Ms. Bourg, a custodian at a sporting goods store on the mainland, lives with her two sisters, 82-year-old mother, son and niece on land where her ancestors, members of the Native American tribes of southeastern Louisiana, have lived for generations. That earth is now dying, drowning in salt and sinking into the sea, and she is ready to leave. With a first-of-its-kind “climate resilience” grant to resettle the island’s native residents, Washington is ready to help. “Yes, this is our grandpa’s land,” Ms. Bourg said. “But it’s going under one way or another.” In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems. One of those grants, $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles, is something new: the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the impacts of climate change. The divisions the effort has exposed and the logistical and moral dilemmas it has presented point up in microcosm the massive problems the world could face in the coming decades as it confronts a new category of displaced people who have become known as climate refugees. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2016
2 May 2016, Renew Economy, Australia heads back to bottom of barrel on climate, clean energy. Last Friday, ACT Environment Minister Simon Corbell stood up at the Local Energy and Micro-Grids conference in Sydney to announce that the ACT was going to accelerate its push to renewable energy, and would supply 100 per cent of its electricity needs from renewable energy by 2020, almost all of it from wind and solar. The new target will be achieved at no added cost to the previous target of 90 per cent, and the ACT will still retain its ranking as the city with the cheapest electricity in Australia. In fact, if Canberra households embrace the energy efficiency measures on offer from the government, they will hardly see a rise in their bill at all. Corbell told the conference, co-hosted by RenewEconomy, that not only are such targets achievable and affordable, they have to happen. “The science tells us that and the decisions at the COP (conference of the parties, or Paris climate conference) tell us that. We have to keep global temperature rises well below 2°C.” So Corbell and his government have decided to do something about it. And that makes Corbell and his government unique in Australia. No other Australia political leader, in a position of actual power, has implemented energy and industry policies that actually fit with the science. Yes, others, including the Greens, have equally ambitious policies. But Corbell is the only one who has dared take on the incumbents and walked the walk, as well as talking the talk. In doing so, he has single-handedly kept the large-scale renewable energy industry alive as federal policy fights brought the sector to a standstill.Read More here
April 2016 GrowthBusters: Great news about progress in questioning the worship of perpetual economic growth! The UK Parliament has officially convened an “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Limits to Growth.” This collection of members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords will “create the space for cross-party dialogue on environmental and social limits to growth; assess the evidence for such limits, identify the risks and build support for appropriate responses; and contribute to the international debate on redefining prosperity.” This should be headline news around the world. I’ve always said elected officials will be the last to adopt 21st century thinking about true sustainability – especially the unsustainability of economic growth; it appears they are finally getting on the bus. This is a truly significant step. Be sure to check out the new publication prepared for this launch, Limits Revisited: A Review of the Limits to Growth Debate.
28 April 2016, Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil”. In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood, two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule. Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the Saudi royals, increasingly unnerved, have been steering their country erratically into the region’s chaos. The kingdom is now led by a decrepit 80-year-old monarch who, in commonplace meetings, has to be fed his lines by teleprompter. Meanwhile, his 30-year-old son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has gained significant control over both the kingdom’s economic and military decision-making, launched a rash anti-Iranian war in Yemen, heavily dependent onair power. It is not only Washington-backed but distinctly in the American mode of these last years: brutal yet ineffective, never-ending, a boon to the spread of terror groups, and seeded with potential blowback. Meanwhile, in a cheap-oil, belt-tightening moment, in an increasingly edgy country, the royals are reining in budgets and undermining the good life they were previously financing for many of their citizens. The one thing they continue to do is pump oil — their only form of wealth — as if there were no tomorrow, while threatening further price-depressing rises in oil production in the near future. And that’s hardly been the end of their threats. Read More here