Catastrophic Floods in Pakistan, Hope for a Plan to Protect Nature at COP15 and an Exposé on the Destruction of the Amazon
Hello Climate Conscious fans,
Welcome to the latest edition of The Current Climate newsletter!
In case you’re new to the publication, our goal with this monthly newsletter is to not only highlight the amazing work of our writers, but also to bring you important climate- and environment-related current events from around the world that you may have missed.
We hope that this newsletter serves as an additional resource to ensure the climate crisis remains at the forefront of our minds, rather than an afterthought.
Top Stories from Climate Conscious
From each prior month, we highlight some of the top stories from the publication based on the number of views/reads, editors’ picks, and relevance to current events.
Dr. Erlijn van Genuchten writes, “In the scientific community, major flaws are prevented by peer-reviewing articles.[…] The goal of this feedback is allowing the author(s) to improve the article before publication or — in case of major flaws — rejecting the article. It is striking that many more scientists who deny climate change have decided to skip this review phase and report their results directly in the media than non-denying scientists.”
Erlijn explores how we can recognize common causes and sources of misinformation such as fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry picking and conspiracy theories, so we don’t inadvertently help spread them.
Learn how you can separate fact from fiction and effectively counter misinformation in Erlijn’s article: Shocked By Climate Change Denial? How To Deal With Misinformation
Dan Blue writes about Dahab, a small town nestled between Egypt and Saudia Arabia, “Scientists say the corals here are unique because they are less susceptible to temperature spikes and could be key to protecting the oceans from climate change. Ecologically this place is important. That’s also why we thought the oil spill would be a big deal. We were wrong.”
Dan explores how an oil spill in the port of Aqaba this August went almost completely unnoticed — while volunteers desperately tried to prevent the worst. Dan takes the incident as an example to show how we collectively deal with environmental disasters and what lessons we can learn in addressing climate change.
Check out the full article here: Paradise Lost? Climate Change Lessons from an Oil Spill
Paul Abela, MSc writes, “We are knowingly continuing on a path leading to failure […] because the underlying causes of the climate crisis remain unquestioned. What’s required is a radical rethink of how we do things. Considering failure isn’t an option, here are three radical policy changes that would give us a fighting chance of success.”
Paul explores the concept of a steady state economy which would entail a move away from a growth economy and toward an interest-free money system. He also advocates for changing the metrics with which we measure social success, arguing that “GDP says nothing about the environmental impacts of growth; it says nothing about whether growth comes at the cost of increasing emissions, or destruction of habitats, or the extinction of wildlife.”
Read the full article here: 3 Policies That Would Change the World (And Solve the Climate Crisis)
Current Climate News
Important climate-related news from the past month:
Officials and Volunteers Struggle to Respond to Catastrophic Flooding in Pakistan (NPR)
In Pakistan, deadly flooding from an unprecedented monsoon season has destroyed lives, livelihoods and infrastructure, in what its climate minister has called “a serious climate catastrophe.”
More than a million homes, 2 million acres of crops and some 3,000 miles of roads have been damaged. Half a million people are now in displacement camps and many others are without shelter at all, scrambling just to get to higher ground.
Imran Lodhi, a climate activist and university teacher who led a group of students to deliver tents and food in Punjab province says, “there is no electricity here, and there is no internet connectivity. People are trying to call for help. The water level has gone down a bit. But the problem is it has already submerged hundreds of villages in this area, and people are out of their homes.” There are concerns that the flooding could lead to a humanitarian crisis as thousands of people have lost everything and are in need of basic support.
It is 100 Days until Cop15 — and the Omens are Good for a Global Plan to Protect Nature (The Guardian)
This year, for the first time the “big brother” climate meeting, Cop27, and the “little brother” nature meeting, Cop15, will converge within days of each other before Christmas, albeit 5,600 miles apart, in Egypt and Canada.
John Vidal writes that despite many challenges, December’s meeting in Montreal may set a new path for humans to live with nature.
Central to an agreement but highly sensitive is what is known as “30 x 30”, the ambitious proposal that countries agree to formally protect 30% of the Earth’s land and sea by 2030 — well beyond the 17% of land and 8% of sea that is now officially protected.
It is an eye-catching, easy-to-understand plan that has been pushed by many western conservation and wildlife groups. Scientists are adamant that increasing the area of protected land and sea offers the greatest chance for nature to recover and flourish.
Nothing is signed or sealed yet, but because it has taken so long to bring negotiations to this point, and with the climate and nature agendas converging, an agreement is now more likely than ever. If so, it will be far from perfect, but it may just set a new path for humans to live with the rest of nature.
The Amazon, Undone — A Failure of Enforcement (The Washington Post)
The Amazon rainforest plays a critical role in maintaining global and regional climate, yet under the regime of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, this vitally important ecosystem is destroyed at increasingly alarming rates — with losses jumping to 21% in 2020.
In August, The Washington Post dedicated the topic an entire feature series, diving deep into issues such:
Why a highway is speeding the destruction of the vital global resource.
How Americans’ love of beef is helping destroy the Amazon rainforest
How deforestation is pushing the Amazon toward a tipping point
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Thank you for reading, and we’ll see you next month!
Sincerely,
Sarah Woodams, Editor
Raunaq Nambiar, Editor
Brad Zarnett, Editor
Michael Robert, Editor
Alysha Grace, Editor
Andrea Hoymann, Editor
Eszter Brhlik, Editor
Alan Miller, Editor
Anthony Signorelli, Editor
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