Declaration of Rebellion: Civil disobedience in the name of #climatechange #auspol #qldpol #nswpol #springst #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateStrike #TheDrum #QandA

With just nine days until Rebellion Day, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion delivered a ‘Declaration of Rebellion’ to Downing Street warning about upcoming acts of civil disobedience.

The Declaration is a warning to the government against its failure to protect UK citizens from progressing climate change crisis. It is to be followed by protests starting Monday 12th November and leading to direct action on Parliament Square on Saturday 17th November in a national Rebellion Day.

Finn Harries, one of the activists who delivered the Declaration to No. 10, shared on social media: “We have no choice but to resort to civil disobedience in an attempt to protect our future.”

The radical UK-based environmental group states in the Declaration: “When Government and the law fail to provide any assurance of adequate protection, as well as security for its people’s well-being and the nation’s future, it becomes the right of its citizens to seek redress in order to restore dutiful democracy and to secure the solutions needed to avert catastrophe and protect the future. It becomes not only our right, it becomes our sacred duty to rebel.”

The first stage of their campaign of civil disobedience started on Wednesday 31 October and it saw 15 environmental protesters getting arrested. It represented the start of a series of events, including today’s, that will bring key parts of London to a standstill throughout November to draw attention to the “Ecological crisis caused by climate change, pollution and habitat destruction”.

Extinction Rebellion believe climate change is a threat so urgent, it requires people to risk everything to increase awareness and put pressure on policymakers to act on it. With seven in ten people in Britain concerned about climate change according to the National Centre for Social Research, they believe they have a “moral duty to rebel, whatever our politics”.

The move follows several reports calling on urgent action to stop climate change. The WWF warned of plummeting numbers of wildlife, which has decreased by 60 per cent globally between 1970 and 2014. The statement came after the UN warned of a climate change catastrophe in a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It gives humanity 12 years to act and stop the Earth warming beyond 1.5°C, which presents a serious danger, both to humans and wildlife.

In the most recent major assessment by the IPCC, they have reported the world’s oceans have absorbed over 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, 60 per cent more than estimated. The results mean the Earth is more reactive to fossil fuel emissions than previously thought and suggests they must be reduced by 25 per cent more than previously approximated. Researchers involved in the study told the BBC these new findings will make it harder to keep the targets set by governments in the Paris Agreement.

This month marks four years since then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for global action on climate change and two years since the Paris Agreement on climate change, which the UK signed, became effective. In April this year, the British government announced that the Committee in Climate Change would review the possibility of reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050 after the UN report was released in October, but recent results call for a more urgent action.

Words: Maria Campuzano | Subbing: Megan Naylor

Press link for more: The Voice of London

Global Warming is Faster than Scientists Estimated! #StopAdani demand #ClimateAction #ClimateStrike #ExtinctionRebellion #auspol #qldpol #nswpol #SpringSt Join the fight for our children’s future.

31 October 2018: Researchers at Princeton University and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography published a study that warns that global warming may be happening faster than scientists have previously estimated.

The study, published in Nature, suggests that these findings may mean that emitted greenhouse (GHG) gases have generated far more heat than scientists originally predicted, meaning that the Earth is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than scientists thought.

The study titled, ‘Quantification of Ocean Heath Uptake from Changes in Atmospheric Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide Composition’, assesses ocean warmth using “a whole-ocean thermometer” to measure carbon dioxide and atmospheric oxygen, both of which increase as the ocean warms and releases gases.

In other words, the researchers measured the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen lost by the oceans, and then calculated the amount of warming needed to explain that change in gases.

Previous studies have estimated ocean temperature using hydrographic temperature measurements and data, which the authors argue is an “imperfect ocean dataset.”

The findings suggest that achieving the Paris Agreement targets is even harder than previously thought.

The study estimates that the world’s oceans absorbed 60 percent more heat energy between 1991 and 2016 than previous estimates have suggested.

Further, the study suggests, GHG emissions generate more heat than scientists originally predicted, which, the authors argue, may make it harder for the world to limit the global average temperature increases to the targets set in the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In addition, the findings indicate that extra heat will go into the world’s oceans, resulting in implications for marine ecosystems.

Laure Resplandy, the Princeton University researcher who led the study, said the study finds that the planet warmed more than researchers had previously thought. “It was just hidden from us because we didn’t sample it right,” she explained. Resplandy elaborated that the study suggests that achieving the Paris Agreement targets is “even harder because we close the window for those lower pathways” outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recent Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15). [Ocean Action Hub Story] [WEF News Story] [Nature Abstract]

Press Link for more: SDG.IISD.ORG

UN urged to recognize a livable climate as a human right #auspol #qldpol #nswpol #springst #climatechange #StopAdani #EndCoal #TheDrum #ClimateStrike #ExtinctionRebellion

By Ucilia Wang

David Boyd stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Thursday as the new special rapporteur on human rights and the environment and he argued the global organization should recognize the right of people to live in a healthy environment.

“Climate change is one of the top priorities because it threatens the human rights of billions of people in the world, because of declining water supplies and changing agricultural production patterns and increasing storms throughout,” said Boyd, who is also law professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada. 

The idea that everyone deserves a clean and safe environment may seem lofty, but many argue that a formal resolution from the U.N., 193-member assembly of virtually every nation in the world, would produce concrete results, swaying policies and legal opinions on a wide range of environmental issues, including climate change.

David Boyd

Boyd, former executive director of the advocacy group Ecojustice, became the special rapporteur in August.

He could play a critical role in highlighting potential human rights abuses as nations struggle to cut emissions, replant forests, electrify transportation and replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

That energy transformation would need to happen in the next 12 years to minimize catastrophic impacts of global warming, according to the latest report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Boyd is only the second person to hold the job.

He will become a globetrotter over his three-year term as he visits countries to assess governmental actions and investigate environmental harm as human rights violations. He reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The opportunity to address the General Assembly was made possible by a change in the job mandate earlier this year, reflecting a sharper focus by the international community on the responsibility of governments and corporations to safeguard the environment and people’s fundamental rights. 

“David has been an incredible advocate of environmental rights.

He’s also incredibly kind and very down to earth.

I was really happy when I found out he was going to become the special rapporteur,” said Katherine Lofts at the Law, Society and Governance Lab of the McGill University Faculty of Law in Montreal, Canada.

“He’s stepping into this role at a pivotal moment, when addressing the environmental harm from climate change is more urgent than before.”  

The role of the special rapporteur has evolved from a position called the independent expert on the human rights and the environment. It was a three-year post created in 2012 and assumed by John Knox, a professor at the Wake Forest School of Law in North Carolina, who continued for three more years as the special rapporteur before term limits ended his appointment this summer.

As an independent expert, Knox’s primary task was to identify how human rights concerns had been considered by countries or intergovernmental groups in assessing environmental problems. When his title changed to special rapporteur, he became responsible for promoting compliance, conducting country visits and report on conflicts or abuses.

“Clarifying the relationship between human rights and the environment was my proudest accomplishment,” Knox said. “I really tried to amplify the voices of people fighting on the frontline, often at the greatest risk to themselves. “On average, four people are killed every week for their work.”

Knox first advocated for U.N. recognition of a healthy environment as a human right in a report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva in March.

A resolution to connect human rights to a healthy environment could be used to exert public pressure and compel countries to address problems from air pollution to violence against environmental advocates. 

The explicit right to a healthy environment is absent in major global human rights agreements. The language does exist in regional treaties in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. The Paris Climate Agreement also included language on human rights.  

The General Assembly did pass a resolution in 2010 that recognizes the rights to clean water and sanitation and called on its members to provide money and technology to help countries that lack the resources to provide them.

For the General Assembly to take action on Boyd’s request, a member country must put forth a resolution for a vote. Boyd and other environmental advocates will lobby countries to sponsor the action, a process that can take a year or more.

Boyd will hope to find a sponsor from among the 100 countries that recognize the right to a healthy environment in their constitutions. Notably, the U.S. is not among those countries. Boyd, a noted scholar on this topic, said he’s found that 80 percent of those countries also strengthened their environmental laws to carry out that guaranteed protection.

He’s also come across lawsuits in 50 countries so far, including Costa Rica, Argentina and the Philippines, that seek to enforce the right to a healthy environment. One suit in the U.S., Juliana v. United States, features 21 young people suing the government for fostering an energy system that exacerbates climate change and has led to a U.S. District Court judge declaring a safe climate as a Constitutional right. It was stayed by the Supreme Court before the trial even began.

The Commission on Human Rights in the Philippines is currently investigating whether 47 fossil fuel, cement and coal companies violated the human rights of Filipinos.

Lawsuits have also emerged in recent years to hold governments responsible for addressing climate change as a human right. One of them is the landmark Urgenda case in the Netherlands, where an appeals court recently upheld the ruling the government must cut emissions more aggressively.

Boyd said he’s looking forward to traveling the world in his new job. He’s scheduled to visit Fiji in December at the invitation of the government. Some countries will welcome his visit and use it to raise concerns and seek help from the international community, he said.

“Fiji is a small island state and provides an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the impact of climate change,” Boyd said.

He’ll also work on a report, due for delivery next spring, that will focus on air pollution, which kills 7 to 8 million people per year worldwide. 

“John described the role as the amazing experience of his career, and that was a good endorsement from someone whose judgement I trust. I’m just thrilled to have the opportunity,” Boyd said.

Press link for more: Climate Liability News

Mass civil disobedience is the only way to reverse #climatebreakdown #auspol #qldpol #nswpol #SpringSt #ClimateStrike #ExtinctionRebellion #ClimateChange now a #ClimateEmergency #Insiders

A new resistance movement is forming. Husna Rizvi speaks to Extinction Rebellion about why direct action is our last chance to phase-out carbon.

A new climate breakdown resistance movement is forming in Britain. On Wednesday 31 October in Westminster, ‘Extinction Rebellion’ – a nascent mass direct-action group, in the style of Occupy – came together to launch a rolling protest against the UK government’s failure to act to prevent climate change.

In London’s Parliament Square, in front of Gandhi’s statue no less, thousands of people made a declaration of non-violent rebellion in an attempt to force concessions from the government. Their demands include: an immediate reversal of climate-toxic policies, net-zero emissions by 2025 and the establishment of a citizen’s assembly to oversee the radical changes necessary to halt global warming.

Two members of the the recently formed Extinction Rebellion who were arrested yesterday during the group’s “escalating campaign of civil disobedience.”

The group says that ‘peaceful, civil disobedience’ is the only way bring about the social change needed to expedite a reversal of fortunes for the human race. Otherwise, we are ‘on course for a next wave of extinction – a human extinction’.

They’re not wrong.

A one-degree rise in global temperature since the industrial revolution has led to a sea-level rise that’s rapidly flooding Bangladesh and other Carribean, Pacific and coastal regions around the world. The group’s action came just a day after the World Wildlife Fund released a report warning that humans have wiped out 60 per cent of animal populations since 1970.

Fittingly, young people are at the heart of the movement.

We spoke to fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg, a Stockholm climate activist best known for starting a popular Friday strike movement in Sweden: Thunberg won’t be going to Friday classes until the Swedish government cleans up its act on climate change.

Thunberg and her parents drove in an electric car to Westminster, where she addressed a crowd of over a thousand people. ‘When I was eight, I found out about something called climate change, or global warming,’ she said. ‘Apparently it was something that humans had created by our way of living. I was told to turn off the lights to save energy and to recycle paper to save resources.

Greta Thunberg

‘I remember thinking it was very strange that humans, an animal species among others could be capable of changing the Earth’s climate.

Because if we were, and it was really happening, we wouldn’t be talking about anything else. As soon as you turned on the TV, everything would be about that.

‘Why wasn’t it [burning fossil fuels] made illegal? To me, that did not add up.’

Teddy Walden, 18, is another member of Generation Z who rejects climate apathy.

‘If everyone consumed like Americans, we’d have gone through five Earths by now. That’s shocking,’ she said.

Australian school kids join the revolution

The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, academic and activist Roger Hallam, believes mass movements like this one are the only way to force the radical changes needed.

‘A hundred years of political sociology shows you can only change entrenched power through creating economic costs for the people who hold that entrenched power,’ he said.

‘Through mass civil resistance, we’re going to create a new global regime that takes our responsibilities seriously towards the next generation.’

He contrasts this mode of organizing to other more technocratic and policy-focused work by NGOs. Extinction Rebellion has occupied the offices of Greenpeace, for example, to critique their ineffectiveness in lobbying governments to reduce emissions

‘The NGOs have been working for 30 years to reduce global carbon emissions and during that time they’ve increased by 60 per cent, which quite possibly has condemned every future generation to a living hell.

‘So in that context it’s probably worth trying something different. We went to Greenpeace to get them to tell their members to join mass civil disobedience, which has been shown to change political regimes rapidly.

But Hallam is frank about the challenges ahead. He expects Extinction Rebellion’s demands to be ignored by government. ‘They’ll ignore us, and then they’ll fight us and we’ll win. We haven’t got to the fight stage – which will be non-violent – but we will in the next two weeks.’

In a taste of what’s to come, soon after, more than a thousand people blocked roads circling Parliament Square, and 15 were arrested.

A large police presence monitored yesterday’s protest

George Monbiot – the notable environmentalist and journalist was among them. Speaking earlier in the day, he made a call to arms. ‘We’ve waited long enough, we are waiting no longer. No one else will deliver it for us, no one is left but us.’

‘We claim to live in a democracy. In many ways it resembles a plutocracy – your votes should count [but] money counts instead.

‘The money of the city, and the fossil fuel industry and the farming lobby and the fishing industry and the auto-manufacturers and the airlines lobby. We are not heard because they are heard.

‘Parliament will not do this for us, corporations will not do this for us and I’m sorry to say that the big NGOs won’t either.’ Monbiot added that though this is the only planet known to support life, the intelligent bit has yet to be demonstrated.

Jonathan Bartley, co-leader of the Green Party said we should embrace non-violent direct action (NVDA) where appropriate.

‘NVDA should be done in a considered way, its not something you do off the cuff, you consider it, you weigh it up strategically and when it’s done in those kinds of ways for the right reasons we’re whole heartedly behind it,’ said Bartley, whose fellow co-leader, MP Caroline Lucas, was arrested in 2013 for direct action against anti-fracking.

‘None of the broadcast media picked up on the fact that the chancellor didn’t mention climate change once in his budget,’ he adds.

‘The YouGov issues tracker is seeing the environment go up and up [as a concern] for people and the politicians haven’t caught up yet.’

As for their plan for mass civil disobedience in the coming weeks, Extinction Rebellion said: ‘If the government does not respond seriously to our demands, civil disobedience will commence from the 12 November’ with a return to Parliament Square programmed for ‘Rebellion Day‘, on Saturday 17 November.

Press link for more: NewInt.org

Young #climatechange activist to strike Friday in Sudbury #Canada #ClimateStrike #auspol #qldpol #nswpol #SpringSt #StopAdani #EndCoal #STRIKE4Climate #FFF

By Donald MacDonald

Starting Friday, and the first Friday of every month, Sophia Mathur will sit near city hall in Sudbury in Memorial Park from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with placards and information about the urgency of the climate crisis. Supplied photo

Following the hottest summer on record in Sweden since records began 262 years ago, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg started cutting classes at school.

Greta Thunberg

Dismayed by lack of real action on the climate crisis, Greta said, “If grown-ups don’t give a <__> about my future, I won’t, either.”

In August, when 11-year-old Sophia Mathur of Sudbury watched a video about 15-year-old Greta Thunberg striking from school, she asked her mom if she could strike from school, too.

At the time, her mom said, “Let’s think about it.”

Sophia is no stranger to climate activism.

With her family, Sophia took part in the world’s largest climate march in New York City on Sept. 21, 2014, and has been lobbying politicians on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, for climate action since she was nine with the organization Citizens’ Climate Lobby, where her mom works as the International Outreach manager.

In the summer of 2017, at the screening of an Inconvenient, Sequel Sophia met former American vice president Al Gore and gave him one of her drawings thanking him for protecting her future.

At this same event, Sophia also made a pinky-promise to get adults to protect the climate with Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna.

Sophia quickly got to work. In the summer of 2017, she convinced a local restaurant, Eddies, to stop automatically giving out straws and soon after two more local restaurants in Sudbury took up her challenge: Gloria’s and Buzzy Brown’s.

From Oct. 13-16, Sophia and her two of her friends, Salma and Maggie, attended Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada’s fifth annual national conference and lobbying days in Ottawa.

Students in Bendigo, Australia have gone on strike demanding climate action

They brought Parachutes for the Planet to Parliament Hill to show to MPs that they want a soft landing on the climate crisis.

They also watched the Emergency Debate on the United Nations 1.5 C report on the urgency climate crisis in the gallery in House of Commons.

After watching the exchange between the politicians, Sophia’s said, “The MPs need to cooperate more.”

Sophia knows that although Canada is doing a lot to combat the climate crisis, we are not doing enough nor our fair share.

She also knows we don’t have time to wait.

Thus, when she returned home from Parliament Hill last week, Sophia and her mom talked and concluded that they needed to do more to create the political will for climate action. They researched more about Greta and found out that she is only striking on Fridays.

In the movement “Fridays for a Future”, (a.k.a #FridaysforFuture) Greta asks for people to sit outside their parliament buildings or local government buildings on Fridays and strike for the climate.

Sophia agrees with Greta: “If adults don’t care about our future why should I? What is the point of going to school?”

Thus, Sophia has decided to join 15-year-old Greta’s “Fridays for a Future” and strike from school one Friday a month to draw attention to the fact that adults are not doing enough to protect her future.

Starting Friday, and the first Friday of every month, Sophia will sit near city hall in Sudbury in Memorial Park from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with placards and information about the urgency of the climate crisis. Anyone is welcome to join her. Bring a nice chair and a blanket because it is almost winter now in Sudbury.

Sophia’s key message will be: “Adults need to cooperate and listen to the experts. This is a crisis.”

Press link for more: The Sudbury Star

Why we’re striking from school over #climatechange inaction #auspol #qldpol #nswpol #SpringSt #WApol #StopAdani #EndCoal #TheDrum #QandA

By Harriet O’Shea Carre & Milou Albrecht

It seems ridiculous that children have got to the point where they realise that the adults who are supposed to be in charge aren’t doing enough to protect our futures from dangerous climate change.

So, we have decided to strike from school to show them that this simply isn’t good enough.

An emu hen and chicks in drought-stricken northern NSW. 

Photo: Peter Lorimer

There are already so many solutions to climate change but our politicians aren’t doing enough to put them in place.

Instead, they are approving massive new coal mines, such as Adani’s, that will wreck our future.

As children, we are going to be living in this hot world far longer than the adults.

This is just not fair.

We want a world that’s safe to live in, and futures we can look forward to.

We’re scared about ferocious bushfires in the community where we live here in Central Victoria.

Future generations will not marvel at the Great Barrier Reef.

Photo: XL Catlin Seaview Survey

We feel awful for the farmers who are suffering through drought year after year.

We feel sorry for the future generations who don’t even get a say in the world that we’re creating, who will have to deal with even more extreme weather, who will never get to see the Great Barrier Reef and other threatened icons and species.

We want them to be able to experience the beauty of our natural world too.

Why are our politicians allowed to take this away from any child?

By making bad choices about climate change, we feel that the leaders of our country are destroying the chance for us to have a safe and good future.

We believe we have a right to flourish.

We didn’t create this problem, but we are going to do all we can to help fix it. And our politicians should too.

We want them to treat the climate crisis for the emergency that it is.

Climate scientists keep telling us that if we don’t act now it will be disastrous.

We need our government to listen to the wisdom of these experts and then act on their advice.

We have decided to go on strike from school to show our leaders that, right now, tackling climate change feels more important than our education.

Please don’t say that because we are children we can’t think for ourselves and that we’ve been brainwashed. This is an excuse adults use to ignore kids.

What’s the point of learning facts at school if the people in power ignore them?

We have to know that we will have a liveable planet before we can get excited about our future careers.

We are temporarily sacrificing our education in order to save our futures.

Actually, going on a strike seems educational in itself.

We are learning how to use our voices and stand up for what we believe is right.

That’s the point of school anyway.

We can’t vote yet which means we aren’t getting a say in the decisions that our politicians make.

So we must do what we can to be be heard.

Striking is one way.

We feel that our lives have been really lucky so far.

We have grown up surrounded by incredible people who aren’t afraid to speak their minds and stand up for what is right.

They have taught us not to be followers but to be leaders and to go in whatever direction we want.

Now we are putting their teachings to use and passing their wisdom on.

Please don’t say that because we are children we can’t think for ourselves and that we’ve been brainwashed.

This is an excuse adults use to ignore kids.

Being children may mean that we are less mature, less educated and less articulate, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t think for ourselves and make our own decisions. Please see past our age, and hear what we have to say about the climate crisis.

We know that what is happening to the climate is wrong, and if our politicians won’t recognise that on their own, thenyoung Australians are here to make them.

Harriet O’Shea Carre and Milou Albrecht are year 8 students in Castlemaine.

Press Link For More: The Age

Protesters Arrested Outside UK Parliament In ‘Extinction Rebellion’ Against Climate Inaction #auspol #qldpol #nswpol #SpringSt #StopAdani #EndCoal #ClimateChange can’t be ignored!

Hundreds of people staged a peaceful sit-in and blocked the road in front of the UK Parliament in a symbolic act of rebellion against the UK government, accusing it of inaction in the face of climate breakdown and ecological crisis. The Metropolitan Police said 15 people have been arrested.

This was the first large scale public action of the environmental group Extinction Rebellion, which calls for mass and nonviolent civil disobedience as a means to put pressure on the government to take rapid and unprecedented action to tackle the climate crisis.

Campaigners and concerned citizens, including families and elderly people, joined the protest in Parliament Square in London today to demand radical change in the light of climate scientists’ warning that humanity has 12 years to take rapid and transformative action to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

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‘Rising up’

In an emotional atmosphere, there were songs, hymns and poetry calling for an end to the devastation of the planet. While some participants had long been involved in the environmental protection movement, others were taking part for the first time.

Abi Burdess, a writer and a mother of two, told DeSmog UK that reading the report by scientists from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had been a wake-up call.

The report, published earlier this month, warned that the global economy has to move away from fossil fuels by 2030 if countries are to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels – a target which could still have significant impacts but which scientists say is the top-end of a safe limit of warming.

Burdess accused the UK government of “criminal negligence” over the lack of response to the report.

“We need leadership that will confront the problem directly and explain to people that they will have to choose between their cars or their kids. There is a window of opportunity to do something about the climate crisis but it has to happen now. We need the equivalent of a World War II effort, where everyone pulls together”, she said.

“I have realised that the threat won’t be faced just by my grandchildren but by my children too,” she said tearful.

Burdess said she supported peaceful civil disobedience action, adding “this is the only way to shift the discourse and to get the government to take notice”.

Image credits: Chloe Farand

Support

A number of high profile writers, commentators and politicians came out in support of the movement.

Greta Thunberg, a 15 year-old activist from Sweden who is refusing to go to school in protest against the Swedish government’s lack of action to tackle the climate crisis, travelled to London for the event.

“If I live until I am 100, I will live until 2103. We have to think about the future beyond 2050,” she said, adding: “You can’t save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to be change. Everything has to change and it has to start today. It is now time for civil disobedience. It is now time to rebel.”

Green MP Caroline Lucas and Green MEP Molly Scott Cato also attended the rally to support the Extinction Rebellion movement.

“I can’t stress enough how important it is that you stand-up for what you believe in. Thank you for what you are doing and it is so important that politicians inside Parliament listen to what you have to say,” she said.

Addressing the crowd, Labour MP Clive Lewis, the shadow minister for sustainable economics, said he supported the movement and said that as the father of a seven-month-old daughter, “I often ask myself what she will one day think about what I have done and not done in Parliament to solve this crisis”.“I don’t want you to break the law but I want to change the law so that the people who destroy the climate end up behind bars,” he added.

Civil Disobedience

Guardian columnist and environmentalist George Monbiot also stood in front of the block traffic telling the crowd that the rebellion had started.

Monbiot joined protesters as the crowd of several hundred staged a sit-in front and blocked the road in front of Parliament.

Police officers surrounded the protesters and repeatedly demanded they moved back onto Parliament Square because they were obstructing traffic.

A handful of protesters lay down on the ground in front of Parliament, refusing to move.

Lying on the ground, Felix, 28, who did not want to give his last name, told DeSmog UK that direct action affects change and that this movement behind Extinction Rebellion was going to grow.

Taking part in his first civil disobedience action, Felix said he felt “a bit shaken” but that he was ready to be arrested and would stay on the ground for “as long as it takes”.

“This is going to be a non-violent rebellion, that’s our hope. It should engage as wide a range of people as possible, including activists and every concerned citizen,” he said.

Lying beside him, Bissera Ivanova, 24, said: “It is time for radical action because I feel like my voice hasn’t been heard. And it hasn’t been heard for too long and there hasn’t been an adequate response from our governments.

“It is time for us to be heard and if it takes lying on the floor then I will do that.” Although Ivanova said she wasn’t quite ready to be arrested, she said she felt “slightly tensed”.

Ivanova said that although civil disobedience was not the only form of action to tackle climate change and put pressure on government, evidence has shown it to be effective.

Police officers eventually moved in on protesters who refused to clear the road. The Met Police told DeSmog UK 15 people had been arrested for obstructing the highway.

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Demands

In its declaration of rebellion against the UK government, the campaign group Extinction Rebellion accused the government of being “wilfully complicit” in “casting aside the common interest in favour of short-term gain and private profits”.

The declaration states: “When government and the law fail to provide any assurance of adequate protection, as well as safety and security for its people’s wellbeing and the nation’s future, it becomes the right of its citizens to seek redress in order to restore dutiful democracy and to secure the solutions needed to avoid catastrophe and protect the future. It becomes not only your right, it becomes our sacred duty to rebel”.

Extinction Rebellion demands that the UK government reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 – a demand well in above the existing government target of reducing emissions by 80 per cent compared to 1990s level by 2050.

The movement is calling on the government to “admit the truth about the ecological emergency” and to reverse all policies “inconsistent with addressing climate change” and work with the media to communicate with the public.

The group also calls for the creation of a national Citizens’ Assembly to oversee “the changes necessary for creating a democracy fit for purpose”.

Extinction Rebellion argues that despite scientific evidence that shows society has to move away from an extractive growth model, the UK government is carrying on with business as usual.

The group accuses the government of “criminal negligence” for failing to act on the immediate climate and ecological crisis face by humanity.

It is launching a week of peaceful action and civil disobedience from November 12 culminating in a sit-in protest in Parliament Square on November 17.

The group said it has plans to bring large sections of London to a standstill and that almost 500 people have signed up to be arrested as part of the campaign.

Stuart Basden, from Extinction Rebellion, said the group “did not take the step of disrupting the lives of Londoners lightly” but that “given the inaction by successive governments to respond to the climate crisis we face, we have to raise the alert”.

He added: “We feel deeply that if we come together as ordinary people and communities in the limited time we have available to affect change, we can face this crisis together. The first step is to ensure people are fully informed of the extreme gravity of the situation.”

Extinction Rebellion’s declaration of rebellion comes a day after a report by the WWF found that many species’ populations have declined on average by 60 percent between 1970 and 2014 largely due to human activity.

The report said: “Decision makers at every level need to make the right political, financial and consumer choices to achieve the vision that humanity and nature thrive in harmony on our only planet.”

The WWF called for “a new global deal for nature and people” to halt wildlife decline, tackle deforestation, climate change and plastic pollution and is backed by “concrete commitments from global leaders and businesses”.

Press link for more: Desmog

Earth’s carbon dioxide levels are likely the highest they’ve been in 15 million years #auspol #qldpol #nswpol #SpringSt Driving #ClimateChange #StopAdani #EndCoal

By MARK KAUFMAN

We’ve entered some profoundly unfamiliar planetary territory.

Amid a backdrop of U.S. politicians still questioning whether the changing climate is attributable to humans (it is), it’s quite likely that we’ve actually boosted Earth’s carbon dioxide — a potent greenhouse gas — to the highest levels they’ve been in some 15 million years.

The number 15 million is dramatically higher than a statistic frequently cited by geologists and climate scientists: That today’s carbon levels are the highest they’ve been on Earth in at least 800,000 years — as there’s irrefutable proof trapped in the planet’s ancient ice.

Though scientists emphasize that air bubbles preserved in ice are the gold carbon standard, there are less direct, though still quite reliable means to gauge Earth’s long-ago carbon dioxide levels. These measurements, broadly called proxies, include the chemical make-up of long-dead plankton and the evidence stored in the breathing cells, or stomata, of ancient plants.

Scientists have identified this 15 million number by measuring and re-measuring proxies all over the world.

Ancient air stored in ice core bubbles.

“It’s a good scientific documentation, but it’s an indirect measure,” Michael Prather, a professor of earth system science at the University of California Irvine, said in an interview.

“And there’s several lines of evidence,” Prather, a lead author on UN climate reports, added, citing the carbon dioxide evidence in fossilized marine life. “It’s not just one person’s crazy number.”

Direct measures of the air show carbon dioxide levels have recently hit 410 parts per million, or ppm, the highest-recorded number in human history.

“For the most part, carbon dioxide was below 400 ppm for the last 14 million years or so,” Matthew Lachniet, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said in an interview.

SEE ALSO: This scientist keeps winning money from people who bet against climate change

There may have been a time, roughly 3 million years ago during an extremely warm period called the Pliocene Epoch — when sea levels were between 16 and 131 feet higher than today — during which carbon concentrations could have approximated present levels.

“However, the concentration of CO2 currently in Earth’s atmosphere is higher or is nearly as high as it has been over any time period during the past 15 million years,” Daniel Breecker, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences, said over email.

The critical difference today, however, is that carbon emissions are expected to continue rising. With the unprecedented burning of fossil fuels, carbon accumulations will simply keep going up.

Different proxies, like phytoplankton (red), give scientists a good range (blue background) of past atmospheric carbon dioxide estimates.

“Of course, C02 concentrations aren’t stopping today,” said Lachniet. “We’re probably going to blow through 550 to 600 ppm.”

Those sorts of high carbon concentrations haven’t been experienced on Earth in well over 20 million years, noted Lachniet.

“That makes this conversation even more stark,” he said.

Some folks in the climate community, though, have even argued that today’s climate has the highest concentration of total greenhouse gases — when gases like methane (natural gas) and nitrous oxide are added to the mix — in 20 million years.

This idea, called the “carbon dioxide equivalent” has some support in the climate community, though a variety of climate scientists we reached out to weren’t aware of research supporting this 20 million-year claim.

In the end, it’s not just the actual concentration of carbon dioxide that matters — it’s how sensitive the planet ends up being to this dramatically rising carbon accumulation, noted Breecker.

Already, Earth has proven quite sensitive

Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1 degree Celsius.

Major consequences have already been regularly observed in Earth’s water cycle — bringing greater odds of extremes in deluges and drought. The most easily-predicted results, record-breaking heat waves and historic wildfires, are manifesting globally, as well as more complex atmospheric changes.

“It [global warming] raises sea levels and makes storm surges worse, it makes the atmosphere wetter, leading to flooding from extreme rainfall, and warming ocean temperatures provide extra energy to tropical storms,” climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said in September.

“The polar ice is melting, in the ocean the Gulf Stream System is weakening, and in the atmosphere the jet stream is getting weird,” Rahmstorf added.

Unlike previous geologic epochs, the defining circumstance today isn’t just notably high carbon in the air — it’s how fast it’s all accumulating.

The natural world both loads and removes carbon from the atmosphere over long periods of thousands to tens of thousands of years.

For example, a warm period called the Eemian, which ended around 120,000 years ago, slowly melted a significant portion of Greenland’s ice sheets — even with profoundly lower carbon concentrations of around 280 ppm.

But these days, the climate hasn’t yet caught up.

“We’re warming so fast that we haven’t even begun to let Greenland melt,” noted UC Irvine’s Prather.

Where civilization ultimately ends up, carbon-wise, is contingent upon how quickly global societies transition to clean energy, and generate electricity without a deep reliance on fossil fuels.

“I would argue what’s really relevant is where we stabilize out,” said Lachniet. “Over the next hundred years we really set the next 10,000 years of climate history.”

Press link for more: Mashable.com

Polluted Air Affects More than 90% of Children | UNFCCC #auspol #qldpol #nswpol#SpringSt #wapol #TheDrum #QandA

What sort of society poisons the air their children breathe?

Putting the cost of energy above the health of their children.

WHO

UN Climate Change News, 29 October 2018 – A new report by the World Health Organization on air pollution and child health, launched on the occasion of their first Global Health Conference on Air Pollution and Health, shows that almost all of the word’s children are exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution.

The report also finds that in an increasingly populated and warmer world, still heavily dependent on carbon-based technologies, the air we breathe has serious effects on our health, accounting for a third of deaths from stroke, lung cancer and heart disease. Air pollution is a major environmental health threat, and children are the most vulnerable to it.

“Polluted air is poisoning millions of children and ruining their lives,” says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This is inexcusable. Every child should be able to breathe clean air so they can grow and fulfil their full potential.”

Every day, around 93% of the world’s children under the age of 15 years (1.8 billion children) breathe air that is so polluted it puts their health and development at serious risk, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Tragically, many of them die: WHO estimates that in 2016, 600,000 children died from acute lower respiratory infections caused by polluted air.

The Air pollution and child health: Prescribing clean air report reveals as well that pregnant women that are exposed to polluted air are more likely to give birth prematurely, and have small, low birth-weight children. Air pollution also impacts neurodevelopment and cognitive ability and can trigger asthma, and childhood cancer. Children who have been exposed to high levels of air pollution may be at greater risk for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease later in life.

“Air Pollution is stunting our children’s brains, affecting their health in more ways than we suspected” says Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at WHO.

One reason why children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of air pollution is that they breathe more rapidly than adults and so absorb more pollutants. They also live closer to the ground, where some pollutants reach peak concentrations – at a time when their brains and bodies are still developing.

Newborns and young children are also more susceptible to household air pollution in homes that regularly use polluting fuels and technologies for cooking, heating and lighting.

The fact that smog is not visible in the air does not mean that the air is healthy. Microscopic pollutants in the air can slip past our body’s defenses, penetrating deep into our respiratory and circulatory system, damaging our lungs, heart and brain.

There are two main types of air pollution –ambient air pollution (or outdoor pollution) from fuel combustion from mobile sources, power plants, industry or biomass burning; and household air pollution (or indoor pollution), generated by household’s combustion of fuels like coal, wood or kerosene, using open fires or basic stoves in poorly ventilated spaces. Independently of where it is produced, both contribute to each other, as air moves from inside buildings to the outside, and vice versa.

“But there are many straight-forward ways to reduce emissions of dangerous pollutants”, added Dr Maria Neira, “WHO is supporting implementation of health-wise policy measures like accelerating the switch to clean cooking and heating fuels and technologies, promoting the use of cleaner transport, energy-efficient housing and urban planning. We are preparing the ground for low emission power generation, cleaner, safer industrial technologies and better municipal waste management”, she added.

Report’s key findings:

• Air pollution affects neurodevelopment, leading to lower cognitive test outcomes, negatively affecting mental and motor development.

• Air pollution is damaging children’s lung function, even at lower levels of exposures

• Globally, 93% of the world’s children under 15 years of age are exposed to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) levels above WHO air quality guidelines, which include the 630 million of children under 5 years of age, and 1.8 billion of children under 15 years

• In low- and middle-income countries around the world, 98% of all children under 5 are exposed to PM2.5 levels above WHO air quality guidelines. In comparison, in high-income countries, 52% of children under 5 are exposed to levels above WHO air quality guidelines.

• More than 40% of the world’s population – which includes for 1 billion children under 15 –  is exposed to high levels of household air pollution from mainly cooking with polluting technologies and fuels.

• About 600’000 deaths in children under 15 years of age were attributed to the joint effects of ambient and household air pollution in 2016.

• Together, household air pollution from cooking and ambient (outside) air pollution cause more than 50% of acute lower respiratory infections in children under 5 years of age in low- and middle-income countries.

• Air pollution is one of the leading threats to child health, accounting for almost 1 in 10 deaths in children under five years of age.

Press link for more: UNFCCC

5 Major Crops In The Crosshairs Of #ClimateChange #Agriculture #Drought #Auspol #Qldpol #NSWpol #SpringSt #StopAdani #EndCoal

By Dan Charles

Climate change is coming like a freight train, or a rising tide. And our food, so dependent on rain and suitable temperatures, sits right in its path.

The plants that nourish us won’t disappear entirely. But they may have to move to higher and cooler latitudes, or farther up a mountainside. Some places may find it harder to grow anything at all, because there’s not enough water.

Here are five foods, and food-growing places, that will see the impact.

Wheat

Wheat, source of bread and a foundation of life in much of the world, will suffer from hotter temperatures — and the country where the impact may be greatest also is among least well-equipped to cope with a shortfall. India is likely to see a large drop in wheat production due to heat stress — about 8 percent if average global temperatures rise by 1 degree Celsius, according to one recent study. Temperatures are expected to rise more than that; according to a recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius will require heroic and dramatic action. It will take significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions within 15 years, plus efforts to recapture some of the carbon that’s already been emitted, perhaps by planting new forests.

Globally, though, wheat may not be in short supply in a warmer world. Russia, which is already a major wheat exporter, may be able to expand the amount of land devoted to this crop.

Mary Mathis and Heather Kim/NPR

Peaches 

Despite Georgia’s claim to be the Peach State, California is the country’s biggest peach producer. Farmers there grow about half of the country’s fresh peaches, and almost all of the fruit that’s canned and processed in other ways.

Many fruit trees, including peaches, have a peculiar requirement. If they don’t experience enough chill during wintertime, they get confused and don’t bloom properly. No bloom, no harvest. The peach trees currently grown in California’s Central Valley require about 700 “chilling hours” during the winter. But scientists are predicting that by the end of the century, only 10 percent of the valley will reliably see that much chilling. And even if plant breeders create peach varieties that need less chilling, there’s another problem: Peach trees also yield less fruit when it gets too hot in summertime.

Heather Kim/NPR

Coffee

Coffee can’t take freezing temperatures, but it doesn’t like extreme heat, either — at least the highly prized Arabica type doesn’t. So it’s mainly grown on relatively cool mountainsides in the tropics. Brazil is the biggest coffee producer in the world, by far, but as the globe warms up, most of its main coffee-growing regions probably won’t be suitable for growing this crop anymore, due to heat as well as more frequent rainstorms. Coffee could move to cooler parts of the country, but researchers don’t think those new growing areas will make up for what’s lost.

Meanwhile, rising temperatures could threaten native coffee trees that grow wild in the forests of Ethiopia and central Africa. The wild trees represent an irreplaceable storehouse of coffee’s original genetic diversity. The world’s commercial coffee trees are genetically very similar to each other, and those genetically diverse wild trees could be the source of genetic traits that plant breeders may need in order to create commercial trees that can thrive in tomorrow’s climate. Some of the wild trees, however, are preserved in “gene banks” in Ethiopia and Latin America.

Mary Mathis and Heather Kim/NPR

Corn

Nothing says Iowa quite like fields of corn. Climate models, though, see a different future. They’re predicting that a warming climate will bring several changes, most of them bad for growing corn. Rain will come less often, and when it comes, the storms will be more intense — neither of which is helpful for a crop that demands frequent rains, but doesn’t do a good job of preventing soil erosion. In addition, corn suffers when it gets too hot — especially when it’s too hot at night. Add it all up, and one study estimates that corn yields in Iowa will fall substantially, anywhere from 15 percent to an astounding 50 percent. “By 2100, the Corn Belt is going to be in Canada, not in the United States,” says Jason Clay, senior vice president for food and markets at the World Wildlife Fund.

So what will replace corn on Iowa’s fertile land? According to one study, by the end of the century this part of the Midwest will be more suited for growing cotton, soybeans, grass and forests.

Mary Mathis and Heather Kim/NPR

Almonds

California, the biggest single source of America’s fresh vegetables and nuts, and the primary source of almonds for the entire world, is a dramatic illustration of how subtle shifts in climate can have huge effects. California’s farms rely heavily on snow that piles up in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter, and then slowly melts during the summer, delivering a vital flow of water to the state’s irrigation canals. As the climate warms, though, winter precipitation will arrive more often as rain, and the snow that does fall will melt much more quickly, leaving farmers scrambling for water to keep crops alive in late summer. Also, there will be more variation from year to year; wet years will be wetter, and dry years will be even dryer.

Both trends increase the chances that from time to time, farmers will face catastrophic shortages of water. And that’s especially bad for tree crops, of which almonds are the biggest, because losing an orchard is much more devastating than losing a single crop of, say, tomatoes. California’s farmers may be forced to reduce the amount of land devoted to orchards, since there there’s a chance that they will not survive a major drought.

Press link for more: NPR