The Banner, Vol. 5, No. 37 – Varieties of Hope During the Great Turning

Despairing about the Climate Crisis? Read This.

Despairing about the Climate Crisis? Read This.

Perhaps you are depressed about last year’s IPCC report, which said we have about a decade to head off catastrophic climate change. Or you are reeling from the UN’s recent warning that we may doom one million species to extinction. These days, the relentless tide of bad news can take a toll on our mental health — and on our motivation to stay in the fight. How can we find that sweet spot between denial and despair?

Susanne Moser has given it some thought.

In fact, Moser has been thinking about climate change since the mid-1980s, when — as a high school student in Germany — she read an article on the subject in one of her mother’s magazines. She came to the US to complete a doctorate on climate-related issues, and her long resume includes stints at the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, as well as academic postings at Harvard and Stanford universities. Moser has always been ahead of the curve: she was writing about climate adaptation back in the early 1990s, before that was a thing. Today, in addition to advising governments, nonprofits, foundations and others on climate change adaptation and the transformational changes required to maintain the kind of conditions that allow for a functional society, much less one in which all people and nature can thrive, Moser spends a lot of time thinking about the psychological demands of this fraught moment.

In a conversation with Earth Island Journal and Island Press, Moser talks about communicating bad climate news, the benefits of “functional denial,” the varied flavors of hope, and the better world we can build in the wreckage of life as we know it.

So you’ve been trying to get people to pay attention to climate change for decades now. We always hear in the communications field that fear is not motivating, that scaring the bejesus out of people is not productive. But personally, I feel quite motivated by fear. And the science is fearful. Should we pull our punches on that?

Well, there is no doubt that fear is motivational, or else we would not be here as a species. Right? If we were not afraid of the lions coming out of the grass, we’d be eaten by them. But if you only scare people without telling them what the hell they can do with their fear and how to translate that into protective or remedial action, then you lose them. There are two reactions we have to a threat: we either deal with the threat, or we deal with the feeling about the threat.

The first option actually reduces the threat. You reduce it, you run away from it, or you build a seawall against it. The other one is, I don’t want to look this awful issue in the face because I don’t know what to do. So I’m going to stick my head in the sand.

The same is true with shame, which can sometimes move some people. Guilt can, anger can, love can, but if you don’t know how to translate them into anything, then even positive feelings won’t do any good.…

I’ve come to the conclusion we have very little hope literacy in this country, and in the world, actually. There are many different flavors of hope.

One is sometimes called grounded hope, active hope, or authentic hope. That’s where you are not at all convinced that there is a positive outcome at the end of your labors. It’s not like you’re working towards winning something grand. You don’t know that you’ll able to achieve that. But you do know that you cannot live with yourself if you do not do everything toward a positive outcome.

And then there’s ‘radical hope,’ a term coined by a man named Jonathan Lear, an anthropologist. With radical hope, you don’t know at all whether the outcome is positive or negative. Neither the means nor the ends are clear, and you have to reinvent yourself completely to come to peace with whatever that new future is. Between grounded hope and radical hope, that’s what we’re going to need for climate change.

It sounds like radical hope is useful in times of great uncertainty.

Oh, absolutely. Lear came up with that term in the context of studying a Native American tribe that had lost everything: their land, their livelihoods, their culture, their freedom — they had to completely remake themselves in order to survive.

They had a great leader in helping them make that transformation. We don’t currently have anyone in this country or in this world that I see who understands what radical cultural transformation requires in terms of leadership.…—Laurie Mazur, “Despairing about the Climate Crisis? Read This.” Flipboard, 7/22/19

Judge allowing more tribes, groups to weigh in on DAPL lawsuit

Judge allowing more tribes, groups to weigh in on DAPL lawsuit

The federal judge overseeing a tribal lawsuit against the Dakota Access Pipeline is allowing nine groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Congress of American Indians to

The federal judge overseeing a tribal lawsuit against the Dakota Access Pipeline is allowing nine groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Congress of American Indians to weigh in on whether federal officials who permitted the pipeline properly consulted tribes.

Texas-based pipeline developer Dakota Access unsuccessfully opposed the groups’ request, arguing that the issue of tribal consultation has already been resolved.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, in Washington, D.C., also is allowing 14 other tribes from Washington state to Florida to provide input in the lawsuit filed by four Sioux tribes in the Dakotas. Those tribes fear a spill from the $3.8 billion pipeline that’s moving North Dakota oil to Illinois could contaminate the Missouri River, which they rely on for drinking water, fishing and religious practices.

The Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Oglala and Yankton Sioux all recently filed what amounts to their final legal arguments in the three-year-old case. They want Boasberg to order the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to shut down the pipeline and do more environmental study.

The group of intervenors that includes the ACLU and the 14 other tribes argues that the Corps has not adequately considered tribal views. The agency “ignored the extensive body of materials amassed by the tribes regarding the potential impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice,” attorney Michael Sklaire wrote.…—Blake Nicholson, “Judge allowing more tribes, groups to weigh in on DAPL lawsuit,” Bismarck Tribune, 9/6/19

Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy

Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy

An Extinction Rebellion protest on Blackfriars Bridge in London, November 17, 2018. CREDIT: Julia Hawkins

“When it’s a fight for your life, you’re willing to throw down.”

New York police recently arrested 66 protestors who rallied outside The New York Times building to compel the newspaper to make climate change a front-page issue. The demonstrators belonged to Extinction Rebellion, a movement born in the United Kingdom that is committed to nonviolent resistance. In addition to protesting outside of The New York Times, U.S. members have taken to the streets against Amazon in Seattle and NBC in Los Angeles, calling on those organizations to treat the climate crisis with the seriousness it deserves.

It may seem strange that Extinction Rebellion would target The New York Times, Amazon and NBC, three companies nominally committed to dealing with climate change, as opposed to, say, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and ExxonMobil, which have abysmal track records on the issue. And it may appear self-defeating to block traffic and mob public spaces, which might alienate potential supporters.

“We have finite energy, and spending energy trying to win over the people who are absolutely not going to be won over to your side is peanuts compared to mobilizing the people who would be active or passive supporters,” said Leah Francis, an organizer with the Extinction Rebellion U.S. national team. “We really want to shift people’s perspective on what constitutes normal, socially acceptable behavior around responding to climate change.”

It aims to push governments to make the rapid, large-scale transformation needed to prevent the collapse of human civilization. This means massive, disruptive protests that render climate change too inconvenient to ignore — protests that will rouse progressives to the cause, even if they turn away centrists or conservatives.

Big green groups, by contrast, have devoted a lot of time and energy to winning over conservatives with the goal of making incremental progress on climate change. Environmental campaigns ask for small donations or push supporters to call their members of congress, always with the promise that change is just around the corner.

“I just want it to be clear that the mainstream environmental movement has been asking very little of people for decades. They’ve been using a strategy of not trying to scare people,” said Bea Ruiz, also an organizer with the U.S. national team. “There’s no element of, ‘We are in an emergency. We all need to do more than what we’re doing.’ There’s a lot of emphasis on positivity and hope.”…—Jeremy Deaton, “Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy,” ThinkProgress, 7/22/19

The Battle for a Paycheck in Kentucky Coal Country

The Battle for a Paycheck in Kentucky Coal Country

At a protest camp in Harlan County, Kentucky, coal miners fighting for better wages have attempted to dispense with contemporary political divisions, at least momentarily. Illustrations by Edward Steed

On a cloudy morning in late August, about a dozen coal miners, their families, and a few young labor activists were gathered in a protest encampment, which they had built together, on a set of train tracks that ran through the steep green hills of eastern Kentucky. An air of weariness was descending. The group had been there for about a month, since five miners had stopped an outbound train that was loaded with a million dollars’ worth of metallurgical coal. The company that owned the mine, Blackjewel, had failed to pay the miners for their work, and, in turn, the miners had pledged to block the coal train until they got the money they were due. They were still waiting. Stacy Rowe, the wife of a miner named Chris, was at the camp, wearing a red T-shirt printed with a crossed pickaxe and shovel and the words “No Pay, No Coal.” “I think everybody is tired,” she said. “Physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

Seated next to Rowe was Lill, a twenty-nine-year-old transgender activist, whose feet were soaking in a basin of warm water sprinkled with bath salts. “You gotta take care of your body, even out here,” they said, with a thick Kentucky drawl. “You only get one.” Lill and their friend Nico, who both use gender-neutral pronouns and requested that I not use their last names, had recently bought a house for their collective in the coal fields of West Virginia, and have been involved in many protest camps over the years—against natural-gas pipelines, mountaintop-removal mining, and the prison system. Lill quit their job at a Starbucks when they heard about the miners’ action; they and Nico arrived on day two of the blockade. They set up social-media accounts to post about the miners’ fight, and to crowdfund from activists around the country and the world. “Our sort of gimmick is that we’re just really honest about who we are,” Lill said. “We’re mostly a collective of trans anarchists, and a lot of people want to throw money at the kind of solidarity that can be built between us and coal miners.” Nico added, “It’s almost like they’re shocked by it.”

“It’s, ‘Oh, my God, these coal miners aren’t homophobic! Can you believe it?’ ” Lill said.

Rowe nodded. “Southeast Kentucky gets stereotyped,” she said. “We’re stereotyped to hate all different kinds of people, and we don’t. I don’t care if you’re different from me. So I do like that we’re kind of proving that people can come together.”

Further reading: Bankrupt coal company Blackjewel hit with class action lawsuit

The origin of the blockade dates back to Monday, July 1st, when about a hundred men arrived to work at a mine, known as Cloverlick No. 3, up a narrow hollow in the small town of Cumberland. The miners were suited up, ready to go underground, when their superintendent informed them that Blackjewel had declared bankruptcy that morning. The men were untroubled. They were, at this point, accustomed to mass layoffs, to coal companies going belly-up. Apart from Blackjewel, half a dozen other coal companies have filed for bankruptcy since Donald Trump took office. In the last three decades, Kentucky has shed eighty per cent of its coal-mining jobs. (At last count, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, about sixty-six hundred coal-mining jobs remained in Kentucky, and fifty-three thousand remained nationwide.)

But three hours after the miners started their shifts they were unexpectedly called back outside and sent home. By Wednesday, their bank balances were negative. They had cashed their paychecks from the previous Friday to pay mortgages, utility bills, and medication costs, and to buy food and gas. When banks realized that the checks were cold, they deducted the money from the miners’ accounts.

Some miners discovered that the checks had bounced when they heard from ex-spouses that their child-support contributions—withheld automatically from their paychecks—had evaporated.…—Carolyn Kormann, “The Battle for a Paycheck in Kentucky Coal Country,” The New Yorker, 9/9/19

Why Are Hurricanes Like Dorian Stalling,
and Is Global Warming Involved?

Why Are Hurricanes Like Dorian Stalling, and Is Global Warming Involved?

Hurricanes Harvey and Florence also stalled, leading to extreme rainfall. Research shows it’s a global trend.

Hurricane Dorian’s slow, destructive track through the Bahamas fits a pattern scientists have been seeing over recent decades, and one they expect to continue as the planet warms: hurricanes stalling over coastal areas and bringing extreme rainfall.

Dorian made landfall in the northern Bahamas on Sept. 1 as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, then battered the islands for hours on end with heavy rain, a storm surge of up to 23 feet and sustained wind speeds reaching 185 miles per hour. The storm’s slow forward motion—at times only 1 mile per hour—is one of the reasons forecasters were having a hard time pinpointing its exact future path toward the U.S. coast.

With the storm still over the islands on Sept. 2, the magnitude of the devastation and death toll was only beginning to become clear. “We are in the midst of a historic tragedy in parts of our northern Bahamas,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis told reporters.

Recent research shows that more North Atlantic hurricanes have been stalling as Dorian did, leading to more extreme rainfall. Their average forward speed has also decreased by 17 percent—from 11.5 mph, to 9.6 mph—from 1944 to 2017, according to a study published in June by federal scientists at NASA and NOAA.

Further reading: The Strange Future Hurricane Harvey Portends

The researchers don’t understand exactly why tropical storms are stalling more, but they think it’s caused by a general slowdown of atmospheric circulation (global winds), both in the tropics, where the systems form, and in the mid-latitudes, where they hit land and cause damage.

Hurricanes are steered and carried by large-scale wind flows, “like a cork in a stream,” said Tim Hall, a hurricane researcher with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and author of the study. So, if those winds slow down or shift direction, it affects how fast hurricanes move forward and where they end up.…—Bob Berwyn, “Why Are Hurricanes Like Dorian Stalling, and Is Global Warming Involved?” InsideClimate News, 9/3/19

As the Brazilian Amazon Burns, Indigenous Peoples Take a Stand

As the Brazilian Amazon Burns, Indigenous Peoples Take a Stand

In August, 2019, Amazon Watch visited the Munduruku people in the Amazonian state of Pará, whose nation stretches the vast Tapajós River basin. Our stay in the contested Sawré Muybu territory was illustrative of the spiraling threats faced by indigenous peoples in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.

In these dark times we need solutions that inspire, and that match the enormity of our collective challenges. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Brazilian Amazon, where irreplaceable forests and their indigenous guardians face severe crisis. With deforestation now reaching three football fields per minute and murderous invasions of indigenous territories spiking, the Bolsonaro regime has created a perfect storm that is pushing the world’s largest rainforest toward an irreversible tipping point, with drastic implications for us all.  

Last week’s assassination of Chief Emyra Waiãpi by illegal miners in Amapá state indicates the deadly climate faced by Amazonian Earth Defenders. It is also emblematic of a wave of violent criminality spreading across the region’s protected forests, as the Brazilian government abandons its duty to enforce environmental law and uphold human rights.

Brazil’s indigenous peoples effectively stand between Bolsonaro’s reckless agenda and global climate chaos. And as his regime unleashes fury on the Amazon by slashing governance and inspiring lawlessness, indigenous communities are placed on the front lines of resistance, increasingly defending lands and rights on their own. 

The Munduruku Resistance

Last month I visited the Munduruku people in the Amazonian state of Pará, whose nation stretches the vast Tapajós River basin. My stay in the contested Sawré Muybu territory was illustrative of the spiraling threats faced by indigenous peoples in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. The Munduruku people have long fought to officially title this 440,000 acre territory, while the federal government has continually reneged on its constitutional duty to finalize this arduous process, leaving their ancestral domain in legal limbo and increasingly vulnerable to destructive invasions and land grabbing. In short, the Munduruku of Sawré Muybu live precariously in a deteriorating conflict zone.   

Traveling with Munduruku Chief Juarez and a group of observers along the Tapajós River and its tributary the Jamanxim, I witnessed dozens of clandestine roads entering Sawré Muybu from the riverbanks and leading to illegal logging and mining sites. We walked miles up an active, well-maintained road penetrating deep into Munduruku land that showed years of sophisticated selective logging operations that degraded surrounding forests. We departed under the watchful gaze of the local logging mafia, made keenly aware of daily intimidation faced by indigenous communities confronted with criminal invaders.

Further reading: South America leaders gather to discuss protection of Amazon

The following day we traveled further upstream and past a stunningly beautiful Munduruku sacred site. Known as Daje Kapap, the broad Tapajós suddenly narrows here, with tall verdant hillsides plunging into the river. Yet only ten minutes upstream from this cosmological center we encountered a major mining road that twisted into the forest, past various wastelands of prior mining activity, and finally to a gigantic swath of devastation, where excavators and high-powered hoses had blasted away entire hillsides in search of diamonds. While officially considered an irregular, “wildcat” mining site I was struck by the scale and sophistication of such an operation, which the Bolsonaro government tacitly allows to flourish in remote Amazonian locations.…—Christian Poirier, “As the Brazilian Amazon Burns, Indigenous Peoples Take a Stand,” Amazon Watch, 8/1/19

What if We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse
Can Be Stopped?

What if We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped?

The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.

“There is infinite hope,” Kafka tells us, “only not for us.” This is a fittingly mystical epigram from a writer whose characters strive for ostensibly reachable goals and, tragically or amusingly, never manage to get any closer to them. But it seems to me, in our rapidly darkening world, that the converse of Kafka’s quip is equally true: There is no hope, except for us.

I’m talking, of course, about climate change. The struggle to rein in global carbon emissions and keep the planet from melting down has the feel of Kafka’s fiction. The goal has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.

If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.

Even at this late date, expressions of unrealistic hope continue to abound. Hardly a day seems to pass without my reading that it’s time to “roll up our sleeves” and “save the planet”; that the problem of climate change can be “solved” if we summon the collective will. Although this message was probably still true in 1988, when the science became fully clear, we’ve emitted as much atmospheric carbon in the past thirty years as we did in the previous two centuries of industrialization. The facts have changed, but somehow the message stays the same.

Psychologically, this denial makes sense. Despite the outrageous fact that I’ll soon be dead forever, I live in the present, not the future. Given a choice between an alarming abstraction (death) and the reassuring evidence of my senses (breakfast!), my mind prefers to focus on the latter. The planet, too, is still marvelously intact, still basically normal—seasons changing, another election year coming, new comedies on Netflix—and its impending collapse is even harder to wrap my mind around than death. Other kinds of apocalypse, whether religious or thermonuclear or asteroidal, at least have the binary neatness of dying: one moment the world is there, the next moment it’s gone forever. Climate apocalypse, by contrast, is messy. It will take the form of increasingly severe crises compounding chaotically until civilization begins to fray. Things will get very bad, but maybe not too soon, and maybe not for everyone. Maybe not for me.

Some of the denial, however, is more willful. The evil of the Republican Party’s position on climate science is well known, but denial is entrenched in progressive politics, too, or at least in its rhetoric. The Green New Deal, the blueprint for some of the most substantial proposals put forth on the issue, is still framed as our last chance to avert catastrophe and save the planet, by way of gargantuan renewable-energy projects. Many of the groups that support those proposals deploy the language of “stopping” climate change, or imply that there’s still time to prevent it. Unlike the political right, the left prides itself on listening to climate scientists, who do indeed allow that catastrophe is theoretically avertable. But not everyone seems to be listening carefully. The stress falls on the word theoretically.…—Jonathan Franzen, “What if We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped?” The New Yorker, 9/8/19

There is no ‘right’ v ‘left’: it is Trump and the oligarchs against the rest

The president is the puppet master so Americans of all persuasions must look behind him, to where the real danger lies

I keep hearing that the Democratic party has moved “left” and that Democratic candidates may be “too far left”.

But in an era of unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power at the top, I can’t help wondering what it means to be “left”.

A half-century ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, those on the “left” sought stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the free market.

But as wealth and power have concentrated at the top, everyone else – whether on the old right or the old left – has become dis-empowered and less secure.

Safety nets have unraveled, public investments have waned and the free market has been taken over by crony capitalism and corporate welfare cheats. Washington and state capitals are overwhelmed by money coming from the super rich, Wall Street and big corporations.

So why do we continue to hear and use the same old “right” and “left” labels?

I suspect it’s because the emerging oligarchy feels safer if Americans are split along the old political battle lines. That way, Americans won’t notice they’re being shafted.

In reality, the biggest divide in America today runs between oligarchy and democracy. When oligarchs fill the coffers of political candidates, they neuter democracy.…—Robert Reich, “There is no ‘right’ v ‘left’: it is Trump and the oligarchs against the rest,” The Guardian, 7/7/19

Indonesian court cancels dam project
in last stronghold of tigers, rhinos

Indonesian court cancels dam project in last stronghold of tigers, rhinos

Brief

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — A court in Indonesia has annulled a permit allowing the development of a $3 billion hydropower plant in a forest that’s home to critically endangered tigers, rhinos and orangutans.

The court in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra, issued the ruling Aug. 28, in a lawsuit filed in March by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the country’s biggest green NGO. The respondents in the suit are the Aceh provincial government, which issued the permit, and PT Kamirzu, the Indonesian subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Prosperity International Holding, the recipient of the permit.

The ruling orders the developer and the provincial government to stop the project to build a 443-megawatt plant on 4,407 hectares (10,890 acres) straddling the three districts of Gayo Lues, Aceh Tamiang and East Aceh. The Aceh government violated prevailing regulations, the court found, by permitting the development of forest land greater than 5 hectares (12 acres). Earlier during the hearings, the judges visited the site of the planned Tampur hydropower plant.

Walhi welcomed the court’s decision.

“This means that, besides being objective in assessing and making the decision, the presiding judge has given a new legal lesson for the people of Indonesia,” said Muhammad Reza Maulana, the legal counsel for Walhi’s Aceh chapter.…—Junaidi Hanafiah, “Indonesian court cancels dam project in last stronghold of tigers, rhinos,” Mongabay, 9/2/19

Scientists Are Wrong About Climate Change.
They’ve Been Underestimating the Pace of It

Scientists Are Wrong About Climate Change. They’ve Been Underestimating the Pace of It

Recently, the U.K. Met Office announced a revision to the Hadley Center historical analysis of sea surface temperatures (SST), suggesting that the oceans have warmed about 0.1 degree Celsius more than previously thought. The need for revision arises from the long-recognized problem that in the past sea surface temperatures were measured using a variety of error-prone methods such as using open buckets, lamb’s wool–wrapped thermometers, and canvas bags. It was not until the 1990s that oceanographers developed a network of consistent and reliable measurement buoys.

Then, to develop a consistent picture of long-term trends, techniques had to be developed to compensate for the errors in the older measurements and reconcile them with the newer ones. The Hadley Centre has led this effort, and the new data set—dubbed HadSST4—is a welcome advance in our understanding of global climate change.

But that’s where the good news ends. Because the oceans cover three fifths of the globe, this correction implies that previous estimates of overall global warming have been too low. Moreover it was reported recently that in the one place where it was carefully measured, the underwater melting that is driving disintegration of ice sheets and glaciers is occurring far faster than predicted by theory—as much as two orders of magnitude faster—throwing current model projections of sea level rise further in doubt.

These recent updates, suggesting that climate change and its impacts are emerging faster than scientists previously thought, are consistent with observations that we and other colleagues have made identifying a pattern in assessments of climate research of underestimation of certain key climate indicators, and therefore underestimation of the threat of climate disruption. When new observations of the climate system have provided more or better data, or permitted us to reevaluate old ones, the findings for ice extent, sea level rise and ocean temperature have generally been worse than earlier prevailing views.

Consistent underestimation is a form of bias—in the literal meaning of a systematic tendency to lean in one direction or another—which raises the question: what is causing this bias in scientific analyses of the climate system?…—Naomi Oreskes, Michael Oppenheimer, Dale Jamieson, “Scientists Are Wrong About Climate Change. They’ve Been Underestimating the Pace of It,” Reader Supported News, 8/21/19

Brazilian environment official murdered in Amazon

Brazilian environment worker killed in Amazon

Police in Brazil are investigating the murder of an official who had worked to protect indigenous people from farmers and loggers attempting to seize land.

Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was reportedly shot twice in the head in the city of Tabatinga, near Brazil’s borders with Colombia and Peru.

Union officials said Mr Santos was shot in front of members of his family.

The killing comes amid international outrage over the rate of destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

At least 80,000 fires were recorded there between January and August this year – more than double the number in the same period last year

Brazil’s populist President Jair Bolsonaro has drawn intense domestic and international criticism for failing to protect the region.

He has often stated support for farmers and loggers working in the region, while criticising environmental campaigners and slashing the budget of the country’s environmental agency.

Murder on a busy street

The union which represents staff at Brazil’s indigenous protection agency, Funai, said Mr Santos had been shot twice in the head as he drove his motorcycle down a busy street.

INA officials said he was killed in retaliation for his work at the Vale do Javari reserve, where for years he helped prevent hunters, farmers and loggers illegally entering the area.

The reserve is said to be home to the world’s highest concentration of uncontacted indigenous tribes.…—”Brazil worker who protected indigenous tribes killed in Amazon,” BBC News, 9/9/19

It may feel like the world’s ending
but America has reason to hope

It may feel like the world’s ending – but America has reason to hope

Inequality, the climate crisis, and Trump in the White House may cause despair. But the country is poised to bounce back

If stagnant wages, near-record inequality, climate change, nuclear buildups, assault weapons, mass killings, trade wars, opioid deaths, Russian intrusions into American elections, kids locked in cages at our border, and Donald Trump in the White House don’t at least occasionally cause you feelings of impending doom, you’re not human.

But I want you to remember this: as bad as it looks right now – as despairing as you can sometimes feel – the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We will again.

Not convinced?

First, come back in time with me to when I graduated college in 1968. That year, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. Robert F Kennedy was assassinated. Our cities were burning.

Tens of thousands of young Americans were being ordered to Vietnam to fight an unwinnable and unjust war, which ultimately claimed more than 58,000 American lives and the lives of over 3 million Vietnamese.

The nation was deeply divided. And then in November, Richard Nixon was elected president. I recall thinking this nation would never recover. But somehow we bounced back.…—Robert Reich, “It may feel like the world’s ending – but America has reason to hope,” The Guardian, 9/7/19

Elizabeth Warren’s Classic ‘Oh Give Me a Break!’

Elizabeth Warren Gives A Very Good Answer On Straws And Light Bulbs

The fossil fuel industry wants us fighting about cheeseburgers rather than noticing their culpability.

This answer from the CNN Climate Change Forum is gaining traction. (The other was Pete Buttigieg’s answer on Trump “living in a different reality.”)

Host Chris Cuomo asked Warren if the government should regulate what kind of light bulb Americans buy.

“Oh, give me a break,” said the Massachusetts Senator.

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And That’s A Wrap! Thanks to everyone who sent in news, action announcements and comments this week. Send kudos, rotten tomatoes and your story ideas, your group’s action events, and news of interest to intrepid climate change and environmental justice warriors! Send to editor@thebanner.news.