Seeing her brother sitting in a wheelchair in front of the White House day after day, declining all food and most liquids, Karen Campion felt worried, but also proud of him.

“It is incredibly difficult to watch your little brother go on a hunger strike,” Campion, 32, who lives in Rockville, Maryland, told EarthBeat. “It’s been a high stress time for our family.”

Her brother, Paul Campion, 24, and four other young climate activists from the Sunrise Movement began a hunger strike Oct. 20, calling for President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats to keep their pledge to include strong climate action in domestic spending bills before Congress. Paul Campion held a sign that read, “Hunger striking for my future children.” 

He broke his fast Oct. 30, after 11 days, because of health complications, and the others suspended the hunger strike Nov. 2, a day after Biden announced at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, that the United States would achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In a tweet, they said, “Today, we end our strike. But our survival still depends on Joe Biden and other Democrats like him.”

The day before the strike ended, the action by Campion and the other strikers inspired more than 250 people to join a 24-hour All Saints’ Day solidarity fast organized by Catholic Climate Covenant and the Ignatian Solidarity Network.

Participants pledged to fast from sunrise Nov. 1 until sunrise Nov. 2. Some posted videos on social media explaining why they were taking part.

In her message of solidarity with her brother, Karen Campion drew a connection between migration and climate change.

“I work with children, many of whose families have migrated from Central America, and I don’t want them to become refugees again,” she said.

Jesuit Br. Mark Mackey of Loyola University Chicago said he was fasting in solidarity with Paul Campion, an alumnus of the university, as well as other fasters, those gathered for the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, and “with Jesus, who showed us in his time on Earth that fasting was a good way of using our bodies prayerfully.”

Besides fasting, participants in the day of solidarity were also encouraged to lobby their legislators on climate action, especially the measures that triggered the hunger strike.

A $1 trillion infrastructure and jobs bill has passed the U.S. Senate but still faces a vote in the House of Representatives, while opposition from two Democratic senators is holding up a vote on a $1.75 trillion budget reconciliation bill that includes around $550 billion for climate-related measures.

Organizers of the solidarity fast said that during the day, 61 people reported having called their congressional representatives, with many saying it was the first time they’d ever done so. The Ignatian Solidarity Network is organizing another day of virtual advocacy Nov. 16.

In Washington, D.C., Paul Campion joined other Catholics who showed up at the White House during the fast to express support for the remaining hunger strikers, singing songs, presenting roses and praying together.

“These young people are really steadfast in their pursuit for justice,” said Franciscan Br. Cristofer Fernández, a conservation biologist and climate justice coordinator for Catholic Climate Covenant, who visited the hunger strikers.

Molly Sutter, 24, who lives at Bethlehem Farm, a Catholic community in southern West Virginia, was among those who joined the solidarity fast.

Sara Meza, a student at San Diego State University who is a member of the San Diego Diocese’s creation care ministry, offered a prayer for “those in the halls of power, that the heart might be transformed, that they might take bold action to protect our common home.”

The 24-hour fast coincided with the gathering of around 120 heads of state for a two-day leaders’ summit at the start of COP26. Pope Francis sent a message to the summit, urging the heads of state to stop delaying the measures needed to stem global warming, while faith groups descended on Glasgow to press for bold climate action and for climate justice, especially for those already suffering from the impacts of global warming.

For Karen Campion, there is no question that her brother is leading her family to fight for climate justice. 

After the virtual vigil, she said she sees her brother’s hunger strike as a logical step in the development of his commitment to climate justice, from working to reduce his individual climate footprint to taking a public stand on the global climate crisis.

Campion said she was moved to tears during the virtual vigil, especially by prayers for the species and ecosystems that already have been lost and the people, especially the most vulnerable, whose lives have been upended by a warming climate. 

While climate action has both political and scientific dimensions, only a spiritual dimension can “capture the enormity of this period we are in,” she said. “It’s sort of beautiful that we are doing this on All Saints’ Day.”

https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/more-250-people-fast-solidarity-climate-hunger-strikers-dc

Nations vulnerable to climate change have warned they are on the “edge of extinction” if action is not taken.

The warning by a group of developing countries comes after a landmark UN report argued that global warming could make parts of the world uninhabitable.

World leaders including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson have called the report a “wake-up call to the world”.

But some of the strongest reaction to its findings has come from countries that are set to be the worst hit.

“We are paying with our lives for the carbon someone else emitted,” said Mohamed Nasheed, a former Maldives president who represents almost 50 countries that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The Maldives is the world’s lowest-lying country and Mr Nasheed said the projections by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would be “devastating” for the nation, putting it on the “edge of extinction”.

According to the latest IPCC report, heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts will become more common and extreme. The UN’s chief has labelled it a “code red for humanity”.

The report says there is “unequivocal” evidence that humans are to blame for increasing temperatures. Within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, it adds.

That could lead to sea levels rising by half a metre, but a rise of 2m by the end of the century cannot be ruled out.

That could have a devastating impact on low-lying coastal countries, said Diann Black-Layne, ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda, and lead climate negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States.

“That is our very future, right there,” Ms Black-Layne said.

The report comes less than three months before a key climate summit in Glasgow known as COP26.

• What do world leaders need to agree to stop climate change?

Boris Johnson, who is hosting the conference, said the report showed help was needed for countries bearing the brunt of climate change.

“Today’s report makes for sobering reading, and it is clear that the next decade is going to be pivotal to securing the future of our planet,” he said.

“We know what must be done to limit global warming – consign coal to history and shift to clean energy sources, protect nature and provide climate finance for countries on the frontline.”

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, more than 190 governments agreed the world should limit global warming to 2C or ideally 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

But the new report says that under all scenarios, both targets will be broken this century unless huge cuts in carbon take place.

US Climate Envoy John Kerry said that to reach the targets, countries urgently needed to change their economies.

“This is the critical decade for action, and COP26 in Glasgow must be a turning point in this crisis,” Mr Kerry said.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg, who confirmed on Monday that she will attend the COP26 talks, said the report “confirms what we already know… that we are in an emergency”.

“We can still avoid the worst consequences, but not if we continue like today, and not without treating the crisis like a crisis,” she said on Twitter.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58064485

An aerial view shows a single tree seen on land that was previously jungle in Mato Grosso, one of the Brazilian states suffering from deforestation. (Reuters/Bruno Domingos)

There was a time when Br. Jaazeal Jakosalem had little success when he asked bishops in the Philippines to join campaigns against mining or coal-fired power plants endangering communities as well as the land.

It wasn’t that the bishops were ignoring the issues facing the environment — they’d written a half-dozen statements on the topic since the late 1980s. They just weren’t as visible in the struggle to do something about them, said Jakosalem, a lifelong environmental activist and a member of the Order of Augustinian Recollects.

 

 

 

https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/five-years-ago-pope-francis-asked-us-care-earth-have-we-listened

A child walks through floodwaters near a pier in California. The climate crisis can expose millions to flooding. Photograph: Ana Venegas/AP

The Guardian: 25 September 2019 – Extreme sea level events that used to occur once a century will strike every year on many coasts by 2050, no matter whether climate heating emissions are curbed or not, according to a landmark report by the world’s scientists.

The stark assessment of the climate crisis in the world’s oceans and ice caps concludes that many serious impacts are already inevitable, from more intense storms to melting permafrost and dwindling marine life.

But far worse impacts will hit without urgent action to cut fossil fuel emissions, including eventual sea level rise of more than 4 metres in the worst case, an outcome that would redraw the map of the world and harm billions of people.

The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and approved by its 193 member nations, says that “all people on Earth depend directly or indirectly on the ocean” and ice caps and glaciers to regulate the climate and provide water and oxygen. But it finds unprecedented and dangerous changes being driven by global heating.

Sea level rise is accelerating as losses from Greenland and Antarctica increase, and the ocean is getting hotter, more acidic and less oxygenated. All these trends will continue to the end of the century, the IPCC report said.

Half the world’s megacities, and almost 2 billion people, live on coasts. Even if heating is restricted to just 2C, scientists expect the impact of sea level rise to cause several trillion dollars of damage a year, and result in many millions of migrants.

“The future for low-lying coastal communities looks extremely bleak,” said Prof Jonathan Bamber at Bristol University in the UK, who is not one of the report’s authors. “But the consequences will be felt by all of us. There is plenty to be concerned about for the future of humanity and social order from the headlines in this report.”

The new IPCC projections of likely sea level rise by 2100 are higher than those it made in 2014, due to unexpectedly fast melting in Antarctica. Without cuts in carbon emissions, the ocean is expected to rise between 61cm and 110cm, about 10cm more than the earlier estimate. A 10cm rise means an additional 10 million people exposed to flooding, research shows.

The IPCC considers the likely range of sea level rise but not the worst-case scenario. Recent expert analysis led by Bamber concluded that up to 238cm of sea level rise remains possible by 2100, drowning many megacities around the world. “This cannot be ruled out,” said Zita Sebesvari at the United Nations University, a lead author of the IPCC report.

Even if huge cuts in emissions begin immediately, between 29cm and 59cm of sea level rise is already inevitable because the ice caps and glaciers melt slowly. Sea level will rise for centuries without action, Sebesvari warned. “The dramatic thing about sea level rise is if we accept 1 metre happening by 2100, we accept we will get about 4 metres by 2300. That is simply not an option we can risk.”

Extreme sea level impacts will be felt in many places very soon and well before 2050, Sebesvari said. The IPCC report states: “Extreme sea level events that [occur] once per century in the recent past are projected to occur at least once per year at many locations by 2050 in all scenarios.”

The heating oceans are causing more intense tropical storms to batter coasts, the IPCC report found, with stronger winds and greater deluges of rain. For example, Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented deluge, which caused catastrophic flooding, was made three times more likely by climate change.

Ocean heating also harms kelp forests and other important ecosystems, with the marine heatwaves that sear through them like underwater wildfires having doubled in frequency in the last 40 years. They are projected to increase by at least 20 times by 2100, the IPCC reported.

Extreme El Niño events, which see heatwaves in some regions and floods in others, are projected to occur twice as often this century whether emissions are cut or not, the report said. Coral reefs, vital nurseries for marine life, will suffer major losses and local extinctions. Across the ocean, heat, acidification and lower oxygen is set to cut fisheries by a quarter and all marine life by 15% if emissions are not slashed.

The IPCC report also records the large reduction in Arctic ice. This loss exacerbates global heating, because the exposed darker ocean absorbs more heat from the sun than highly reflective ice. On Monday, scientists announced that the Arctic sea ice in 2019 shrank to its second lowest extent in the 41-year satellite record.

The world’s high mountain glaciers, upon which almost 2 billion people rely for water, are also melting fast, the IPCC found, while landslides are expected to increase. A third of the great Himalayan range is already doomed, with two-thirds projected to vanish if emissions are not cut.

One of the most worrying alarms sounded by the IPCC report is about melting tundra and increasing wildfires in northern latitudes: “Widespread permafrost thaw is projected for this century and beyond.” A quarter is already near certain to melt, it said, and 70% or more would go if emissions are not curbed. In the latter case, hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane could be released, supercharging the climate emergency.

“That risks taking us beyond the point where climate change could be easily constrained,” said Richard Black, at the UK’s Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. “Nevertheless, the IPCC’s 2018 report concluded that governments can shrink emissions quickly enough to keep global warming to 1.5C if they choose. None can claim to be unaware of both the dangers of untrammelled climate change nor the feasibility of preventing it.”

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris and chair of the C40 Cities climate coalition, said the IPCC report was shocking. “Around 1.9 billion people and over half of the world’s megacities are all in grave danger if we don’t act immediately. Several cities, home to hundreds of thousands of people, are already disappearing underwater. This is what the climate crisis looks like now.”

Taehyun Park, of Greenpeace East Asia, said: “The science is both chilling and compelling. The impacts on our oceans are on a much larger scale and happening way faster than predicted. It will require unprecedented political action to prevent the most severe consequences to our planet.”

As well as cutting fossil fuel emissions, preparing for the inevitable impacts is also vital, said Sebesvari, especially in poorer nations that lack the funds to build sea walls, move settlements or restore protective coastal marshes.

“Action is needed now to secure the coast for our children and coming generations,” she said. The pressure now being exerted by the global school strikes for climate was important, she said. “I have very strong motivation. I have two kids and we are really being tested by our kids on our actions.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/25/extreme-sea-level-events-will-hit-once-a-year-by-2050

 

 

Extinction Rebellion protesters on Waterloo Bridge, London, April 2019. ‘This is what we have been waiting for, yet strangely the reaction within the scientific community has been muted.’ Photograph: Niklas Halle’n/AFP/Getty Images

As scientists, we tend to operate under an unspoken assumption – that our job is to provide the world with factual information, and if we do so our leaders will use it to make wise decisions. But what if that assumption is wrong? For decades, conservation scientists like us have been telling the world that species and ecosystems are disappearing, and that their loss will have devastating impacts on humanity. Meanwhile, climate scientists have been warning that the continued burning of fossil fuels and destruction of natural carbon sinks, such as forests and peatlands, will lead to catastrophic planetary heating.

We have collectively written tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers, and shared our findings with policymakers and the public. And, on the face of it, we seem to have done a pretty good job: after all, we all know about the environmental and climate crises, don’t we?

But while we’re now well informed, we haven’t actually changed course. Biodiversity loss proceeds apace, to the extent that a million species face extinction in the coming decades, and we continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere at ever faster rates. We have emitted more greenhouse gases since 1990, in full awareness of its impacts, than we ever did in ignorance. It seems that knowledge alone cannot trigger the radical global changes we so urgently need.

It was this realisation that incited us both to embrace activism, and to take to the streets and engage in non-violent civil disobedience as members of Extinction Rebellion. The refusal to obey certain laws has a long and glorious history: from the suffragettes to Rosa Parks and Gandhi, many of the 20th century’s greatest heroes engaged in non-violent civil disobedience to win their rights.

Today, civil disobedience is again on the rise. And it is working. The protests that shut down four sites in London in April raised the climate crisis rapidly up the political agenda, and into the public consciousness. The environment is now the third most pressing issue for British voters, above the economy, crime and immigration: the UK parliament and half the country’s local councils have declared a climate emergency, and a zero-carbon target has been enshrined into law. We don’t know what policy change will follow, but it is an encouraging start.

Alongside this are the Greta Thunberg-inspired school strikes and our sister movements worldwide. This is what we have been waiting for. And yet, the reaction within the scientific community has been strangely muted. In conversation, our conservationist colleagues (and we imagine climate scientists, too) have long bemoaned the fact that environmental issues remain so marginal in the public consciousness. “If only conservation was mainstream,” we lament, “and if only people would take action to fight for our world.” Well, now they are, yet few of us seem to have joined them.

Young people have embraced the movement, and grandparents, too. So have doctors and lawyers, farmers and unemployed people. But not many scientists, which is odd given we probably know more about the severity of the problems we face than anybody. Perhaps it’s related to an unspoken assumption that if our job is to provide information, then adopting a position will weaken our authority. In fact, research shows it doesn’t.

Alternatively, scientists may be reluctant to rise up because there are “proper” channels for influencing policy: you can vote, you can write letters and sign petitions, and if things get really desperate you can walk from A to B on a sanctioned march. The trouble is, these avenues aren’t working, and lobbyists for fossil-fuel industries have far greater access to political decision-makers. In 2018, for example, oil and gas lobbyists alone spent more than $125m (£100m) lobbying politicians in just one country, the United States.

Worse, these lobbyists and the corporations they work for have invested heavily in an anti-science agenda, all with the aim of convincing the world that we can carry on as normal. They are endangering our very survival in pursuit of profit, and undermining the faith in truth, rationality and the scientific method that – surely – will be critical to surviving these crises. This is why we have taken a break from our usual areas of research to publish an article in the prestigious journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, urging our fellow scientists to rise up and embrace rebellion.

As scientists we have spent years telling policymakers that we must change course, but they haven’t taken action. They may be starting to now, but only because people have engaged in open rebellion, making it clear that we will no longer accept inaction. Surely scientists have a moral duty to join the masses, and rebel for life.

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/06/scientists-climate-crisis-activism-extinction-rebellion