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Tag: climate change

  • Massive environmental march a prelude to U.N. meeting

    The alarm has sounded for years. Now, a draft U.N. report on the environment warns that global warming is here, caused by people, unquestionably dangerous and possibly irreversible.

    With this news, activists from across the country will converge on New York City on Sept. 21 for what could become the largest climate change march in history — the People’s Climate March.

    “Thousands of people from across the world, from all walks of life, will stand as one calling for global climate action,” said Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This event will show the world’s most powerful leaders that people are united in their support of this cause and want to see ambitious climate action today. It is time for world leaders to rise to the challenge.”

    In late August, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change circulated the draft of a 127-page report on the state and the future of the planet. “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the paper states.

    The report warns that if the world continues to pump greenhouse gases at an accelerating rate, it’s likely that by mid-century temperatures will increase by about another 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit compared to temperatures from 1986 to 2005. And by the end of the century, that scenario will bring temperatures that are about 6.7 degrees warmer.

    “Climate change is the crisis of our times,” said Bridget Burns, advocacy and communications director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization. “For too long now, political posturing, greed and complacency in ‘business as usual’ has taken precedent over justice, equality, action and ambition. But change is not something which you wait for, it’s something that you make happen.”

    WEDO is one of the many organizations involved in the march, which is being held to demand action from world leaders who, in the fal,l will begin 18 months of international negotiations. Climate negotiators will meet in New York and Copenhagen this fall, then head to Peru in December to work on a global climate deal. In September 2015, world leaders will again meet in New York to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals. Three months later, leaders will gather in Paris to negotiate a climate treaty.

    Some 750 groups — from the largest transit workers union in New York City to a coalition of Buddhist monks — are involved in staging the march.

    The scale of organizing rivals a major electoral campaign, with thousands of volunteers, daily phone-banks and canvases in New York City, and a major online operation to turn out people for the march that begins at Columbus Circle.

    Trains and hundreds of buses are bringing people to New York, including dedicated trains from San Francisco and D.C. and buses from multiple points outside of New York, including Madison. Much of the recruitment is taking place on college campuses.

    “Young people are coming to the streets of New York in huge numbers to stand up and say we’ve had enough — we’re not going to sit back and wait for politicians to save our future,” said Adam Hasz of the environmental group SustainUS. “Instead, we’re on the front lines fighting extractive industries and proposing just policies to confront climate change and its impacts on the most vulnerable. The People’s Climate March will show that a better future is not only possible, but underway.”

    In August, at a warehouse in Bushwick, artists were at work creating giant sculptures, floats and banners for the march. Others were designing posters for a subway campaign.

    “The energy buzzing around the march organizing headquarters here in New York is palpable,” said May Boeve, executive director of the activist group 350.org. “Every day, volunteers are hitting the phones, streets and Internet to turn people out. …This effort has already helped build the type of movement infrastructure we need to take the climate fight to the next level.”

    Hundreds of events coincide with the NYC march: 

    • In New Delhi, people will take to the streets on Sept. 20 to demand a renewable energy revolution.

    • In Australia, organizers are expecting hundreds of individual events to take place across the country.

    • In London, groups are planning a march through the city to the steps of Parliament.

    • In Berlin, three parallel marches will combine forces in a festival.

    • In Paris, local groups will create the Paris Marche pour le Climat, with parades, marches and bicycle rides planned across the bridges of the Seine.

    • Events are also being organized in Kathmandu, Rio, Sao Paulo, Jakarta, Dublin, Manila, Seoul, Mumbai, Istanbul, Ghana, Kenya, DRC, Nigeria, Guinea and Johannesburg.

    Marching out of Madison

    Activists with 350 Madison are organizing a Wisconsin contingent for the People’s Climate March in New York on Sept. 21.

    “We will bring our message that Wisconsin is becoming a major battleground in the fight against climate change,” said a statement from the grassroots environmental group.

    350 Madison said utilities in Wisconsin are proposing “billing schemes that are a huge detriment to renewable energy and energy efficiency” and that the Canadian company Enbridge Energy “plans to expand the Line 61 pipeline, which traverses our beautiful state from Superior to Delavan, to carry more toxic tar sands than what the controversial Keystone XL pipeline would carry.”

    The grassroots group also raised concerns for “trains, carrying the potentially explosive Bakken oil,” traveling through many Wisconsin communities.

    Get connected

    For more information, details on travel scholarships or to purchase tickets for the bus trip from Madison to New York City, go online to http://350madison.wordpress.com/upcoming-events/peoples-climate-march-nyc/.

  • Climate change imperils major U.S. landmarks

    The president marked the centennial of Harriet Tubman’s death a year ago by designating 25,000 acres on Maryland’s Eastern Shore as a new national monument. By 2050, if sea levels in the Chesapeake Bay continue to rise at twice the global rate because of climate change, the monument to the legendary abolitionist could be largely underwater.

    A report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, released on May 20, lists 30 at-risk national landmarks and details the effects of rising sea levels, worsening wildfires and more frequent and severe floods.

    “You can almost trace the history of the United States through these sites,” said Adam Markham, the report’s co-author and the director of climate impacts at UCS. “The imminent risks to these sites and the artifacts they contain threaten to pull apart the quilt that tells the story of the nation’s heritage and history.”

    Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, is likely to be submerged by rising seas by the end of the century, according to UCS.

    Other sites may become inaccessible.

    “Fort Monroe in Virginia, which played a crucial role in the fall of slavery, will become an island unto itself within 70 years,” said Markham. “Castillo de San Marcos, in St. Augustine, Florida, also is extremely vulnerable.”

    The fort faces increasing risks from flooding and projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that, without major engineering feats, the grounds surrounding the fort will become permanently inundated with three feet of sea level rise by the end of the century.

    Rising seas and the threat of worsening storm surges also are endangering historic districts in Annapolis, Maryland, and Charleston, South Carolina, as well as native Hawaiian structures on the Big Island and archaeological remains in Florida.

    “Early Floridians constructed highly elaborate structures out of oyster and clam shells in the Ten Thousand Islands, dating back to 1,000 B.C.,” said Markham. These sites in the Everglades face an imminent threat from climate impacts.”

    Across the peninsula in the northern part of Canaveral National Seashore, a more than 1,200-year-old shell mound thought to be the highest in North America, is endangered. The National Park Service and the University of Central Florida have created a “living shoreline” of oyster mats, Spartina grass and mangroves to try to protect the mound from erosion.

    In the West, climate change is increasing the risk of large wildfires in the Sierra Nevada mountains by driving up temperatures, reducing winter snowpack and drying out forests for longer periods. USC said that it threatens historically significant structures in former Gold Rush country.

    Up north, in Alaska, melting sea ice and thawing permafrost allowed winter storms to erode the coastlines of Cape Krusenstern National Monument and the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Kotzebue Sound. The report said the damage is occurring at an unprecedented rate. “Irreplaceable prehistoric artifacts are actually crumbling out of the shorelines in these Alaskan sites and washing out to sea,” said Markham.

    Meanwhile, in the Southwest, there have been intense fires followed by heavy rains during the past 15 years.

    “Massive fires have swept through Mesa Verde National Park and Bandelier National Monument and other southwestern sites, damaging ancient pueblo masonry, petroglyphs and pottery,” said Markham. “Heavy rains and the extraordinary floods that have followed some of these fires have caused even more damage, destroying trails, damaging adobe buildings and washing away vital archaeological resources.”

    The report, said UCS press secretary Lisa Nurnberger, is meant to be illustrative rather than exhaustive, “since we know it doesn’t capture every important at-risk historic and cultural site. If it had, it would be far, far longer than it is.”

    The researchers came across other sites where climate change is taking a toll, she said. “One of those places is the Apostle Islands,” a group of 22 islands in Lake Superior, off the Bayfield Peninsula in far northern Wisconsin. The National Park Service refers to the Apostle Islands as the “jewels of Lake Superior.”

    The Society for American Archaeology, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting archaeological heritage, stated, in conjunction with the report’s release, that more attention should be paid to preserving endangered archaeological sites. It’s the first time the group has sought to draw attention to the damage caused by climate change.

    To slow the rate of change and give archaeologists, historic preservationists and land managers time to protect the sites, scientists say carbon emissions must be reduced, said Angela Anderson, director of the Climate and Energy Program at UCS. “Cutting carbon emissions significantly and quickly can slow the pace of sea level rise … and slow the expansion of the wildfire season.”