As Protests Rage Over George Floyd’s Death, Climate Activists Embrace Racial Justice: Insideclimatenews

#climatejustice

'When New York Communities for Change helped lead a demonstration of 500 on Monday in Brooklyn to protest George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis, the grassroots group's activism spoke to a long-standing link between police violence against African Americans and environmental justice.

Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn's oldest Latino community-based organization, said she considers showing up to fight police brutality and racial violence integral to her climate change activism. 

Bronx Climate Justice North, another grassroots group, says on its website: "Without a focus on correcting injustice, work on climate change addresses only symptoms, and not root causes."

Read the Inside Climate News article

5 Principles for Just COVID-19 Relief and Stimulus

"(4) MAKE A DOWN PAYMENT ON A REGENERATIVE ECONOMY, WHILE PREVENTING FUTURE CRISES

While we urgently need a large, short-term stimulus to protect the health and economic security of those on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis, it is imperative that policymakers also plan for a large, medium-term stimulus to counteract the economic downturn and ensure a just recovery. This stimulus should create millions of good, family-sustaining jobs with high-road labor standards; counter systemic inequities by directing investments to the working families, communities of color, and Indigenous communities who face the most economic insecurity; and tackle the climate crisis that is compounding threats to our economy and health. All three goals can be achieved simultaneously with public investments to rebuild our infrastructure, replace lead pipes, expand wind and solar power, build clean and affordable public transit, weatherize our buildings, build and repair public housing, manufacture more clean energy goods, restore our wetlands and forests, expand public services that support climate resilience, and support regenerative agriculture led by family farmers. Critically, no stimulus package should support any corporations whose actions exacerbate climate change - the response to one existential crisis must not fuel another. Instead, stimulus money should reward efforts that help advance climate progress."

Read the original article

Prepare for more threats to authentic democracy

As the climate crisis worsens and conflict increases over scarce resources expect more threats to authentic democracy.

In The Maldives

President Abdulla Yameen of the Maldives. AFP/Getty

"According to a 2017 study published in The Lancet, extreme weather could displace up to a billion people around the world by the middle of the twenty-first century—an unprecedented human migration will undoubtedly influence the politics of wealthy countries, pushing them to the right.

The best way to counteract this phenomenon is naturally to halt, or at least slow, the effects of climate change. So far, the Paris agreement is the only tangible result of those efforts, and its fate is far from certain .............  But this might change, if the problems caused by climate change—not just stronger hurricanes, droughts, and rising seas, but political rupture—keep washing up on the disappearing shorelines of wealthy governments."

Go to The New Republic article



Around the world

"In its 5th Assessment Report (2014), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) unequivocally confirmed that climate change is real and that human-made greenhouse gas emissions are its primary cause. The report identified the increasing frequency of extreme weather events and natural disasters, rising sea-levels, floods, heat waves, droughts, desertification, water shortages, and the spread of tropical and vector-borne diseases as some of the adverse impacts of climate change. These phenomena directly and indirectly threaten the full and effective enjoyment of a range of human rights by people throughout the world, including the rights to life, water and sanitation, food, health, housing, self-determination, culture and development."

Go to the ohchr.org story



In Australia

"Scott Morrison (Australia's Prime Minister) has signalled a crackdown on “selfish, indulgent and apocalyptic” environmental activists."

Go to The New Daily story 

"It takes some chutzpah to stand up with a straight face and deliver a speech foreshadowing a government crackdown on protest activity while in the same breath declaring that a new insidious form of progressivism is intent on denying the liberties of Australians."

Go to The Guardian story
 

Our democratic freedoms are under threat in Australia and around the world.

Australian Federal Police raid the ABC offices

"Source confidentiality is one of journalists’ most central ethical principles. It is recognised by the United Nations and is vital to a functioning democracy and free, independent, robust and effective media. 

Go to The Conversation article

"If the major parties and politicians want to rebuild trust with voters, they will need to change the way they do politics: stop misusing their entitlements, strengthen political donations laws, tighten regulation of lobbyists, and slow the revolving door between political offices and lobbying positions."

Go Grattan Institute article 

Let's safeguard our democratic institutions such as free speech, restrictions on overwhelming amounts of corporate donations to political parties, freedom to protest, freedom to privacy, freedom to gather.
 

In the USA

Go to The Atlantic article: David Goldman / AP

"As heat, disaster risks, and rising seas bombard local governments, the ability of those governments to fulfill their basic functions—the delivery of services, the maintenance of the safety net, and managing civil, familial, and educational institutions—could be degraded, too. This could manifest in three distinct phenomena that are already on display in disaster-affected areas: the increased dominance of private and developer-class interests in local politics, the acceleration of existing wealth inequality, and the collapse of institutions dedicated to disaster response."

Go to The Atlantic article

Prominent media corporations are supporting climate deniers, fossil fuel dependent corporations and corporations whose profits depend on degrading the human environment.

Let's care for our vulnerable. 

Lets support action plans (see below) to tackle climate change.

Go to World Bank document