‘Green News Report’ – July 20, 2021

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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Catastrophic floods in Germany and Central Europe show nowhere is safe from our worsening climate emergency; Parts of Amazon rainforest now emit more carbon than they absorb; PG&E says its equipment ignited CA’s Dixie Fire; PLUS: High-tide flooding hit a new record in the U.S. last year. NASA warns it’s about to get much, much worse… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!

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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): The Age of Megafires: The World Hits a Climate Tipping Point; Climate-Driven Changes in Clouds are Likely to Amplify Global Warming; How a Powerful US Lobby Group API Helps Big Oil To Block Climate Action; U.S. Wheat Crop Is in Trouble; Schumer Tees Up Bipartisan Infrastructure Vote After GOPers Urge Delay; Dems Propose a Border Tax Based on Countries’ Greenhouse Gas Emissions… PLUS:

… and much, MUCH more! …

STORIES DISCUSSED ON TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…

• Catastrophic floods in Central Europe leave trail of devastation:
• Death toll nearly 200 from Western Europe flooding; search continues for more flooding victims (AP)
• VIDEO: Knee-deep in sewage: German rescuers race to avert health emergency amid floods (The Weather Network)
• Europe’s Floods have Familiar Jet Signature (Climate Crocks)
• VIDEO: Death toll climbs from catastrophic flooding in Europe (CBS News)
• VIDEO: Germany flood survivors dig through piles of mud and debris as flood waters recede (NBC News)
• At German flood site, Merkel pledges financial aid (Reuters)
• German flood alert system criticised for ‘monumental failure’ (Guardian UK)
• Germany’s floods bring climate policy into focus in election year (Deutsche-Welle)
• EU’s green deal plans launched with ‘make-or-break decade’ warning (Guardian UK):
  The dozen draft laws, spanning tighter curbs on industrial pollution, higher renewable energy targets, and the goal of planting 3bn trees, are intended to ensure the EU cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 compared with the levels in 1990.
• Global wave of weather disasters show nowhere is ‘safe’ from climate change:
• VIDEO: Floods, Fires & Heat Waves: Michael Mann on “The New Climate War” & the Fight to Take Back the Planet (Democracy Now!):
  There is still time. Don’t let the doomers convince you it’s too late to do anything about climate change. That leads us down the same path of inaction as outright denial…It isn’t too late, but we have to act, and we have to act now.
• VIDEO: It Tolls for Thee: Climate Impacts Hitting Wealthy Nations Hard (Climate Crocks):
  Maybe you thought climate action would be a nice thing to do, but that there was no realistic chance that global warming would affect you any time soon? A Thousand people missing in Germany. US West shrouded in smoke and a withering heat dome, as a historic mega drought emerges. Is anyone doing a rethink?
• ‘No One Is Safe’: Extreme Weather Batters the Wealthy World (NY Times):
  The extreme weather disasters across Europe and North America have driven home two essential facts of science and history: The world as a whole is neither prepared to slow down climate change, nor live with it. The week’s events have now ravaged some of the world’s wealthiest nations, whose affluence has been enabled by more than a century of burning coal, oil and gas — activities that pumped the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that are warming the world.
• Cascading consequences from wildfires in US West, Canada:
• 80 large fires have consumed more than 1 million acres across western parts of the US (CNN)
• How Bad Is the Bootleg Fire? It’s Generating Its Own Weather. (NY Times)
• California utility PGE says its equipment may be linked to fire (AP)
• ‘Wither away and die:’ U.S. Pacific Northwest heat wave bakes wheat, fruit crops (Reuters)
• Heat Could Kill Nearly All Young Salmon In Sacramento River: Officials (CNN)
• California: A Delta in Distress (Inside Climate News)
• Amazon rainforest tips into becoming a global carbon emitter:
• Southeast Amazonia is no longer a carbon sink (Nature):
  Atmospheric measurements show that deforestation and rapid local warming have reduced or eliminated the capacity of the eastern Amazonian forest to absorb carbon dioxide — with worrying implications for future global warming.
• Climate change: Amazon regions emit more carbon than they absorb (BBC):
  The researchers are worried that the changing climate is also interfering with rainfall, which they argue, has immediate consequences for Brazil. “This is very bad news for everybody but mainly for Brazil,” said Dr Gatti.
• Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs (Guardian UK)
• High-tide flooding hit new record last year, NASA warns much worse to come:
• ‘Sunny Day’ Floods Hit Record Along U.S. Coasts as Seas Rise (Bloomberg/Yahoo News)
• Study Projects a Surge in Coastal Flooding, Starting in 2030s (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory):
  “The new study shows that high tides will exceed known flooding thresholds around the country more often. What’s more, the floods will sometimes occur in clusters lasting a month or longer.”
• NASA predicts a “wobble” in the moon’s orbit may lead to record flooding on Earth (CBS News)
• Greenland suspends all oil exploration:
• Greenland halts new oil exploration (Government of Greenland)
• Greenland suspends oil exploration due to climate change (Axios)
• Greenland suspends oil exploration because of climate change (ABC News)

‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…

For a comprehensive roundup of daily environmental news you can trust, see the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Daily Headlines page

• The Age of Megafires: The World Hits a Climate Tipping Point (Yale e360)
• Scorched, Parched and Now Uninsurable: Climate Change Hits Wine Country (NY Times)
• Climate-Driven Changes in Clouds are Likely to Amplify Global Warming (Inside Climate News)
• How a Powerful US Lobby Group Helps Big Oil To Block Climate Action (Guardian UK)
• The U.S. Wheat Crop Is in Trouble (Earther)
• The Democrat blocking progressive change is beholden to big oil. Surprised? (Guardian UK)
• Biden FWS Rolls Back Trump Rule, Cuts Just 2% Of Spotted Owl Protections (Oregon Public Radio)
• Schumer Tees Up Bipartisan Infrastructure Vote After GOPers Urge Delay (Reuters)
• Dems Propose a Border Tax Based on Countries’ Greenhouse Gas Emissions (NY Times)
• How Might Fish Farms Be Affecting Lobsters? (Hakai Magazine)
• Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared: draft UN report (AFP/France 24):
  Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, according to a landmark draft report from the UN’s climate science advisors obtained by AFP. Species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas — these and other devastating climate impacts are accelerating and bound to become painfully obvious before a child born today turns 30.
• Nations Must Drop Fossil Fuels, Fast, World Energy Body Warns (NY Times)
• Electric cars: What will happen to all the dead batteries? (BBC)
• Climate Fund Choices for Investors Are Multiplying (Bloomberg/Yahoo)
• How climate change could undo 50 years of public health gains (Grist)
• Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration (Pro Publica)
• Exxon’s Snake Oil: 100 years of deception (Columbia Journalism Review)
• What Does ’12 Years to Act on Climate Change’ (Now 11 Years) Really Mean? (Inside Climate News)
• VIDEO: A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (The Intercept)
• SEJ Backgrounder: Green New Deal Proposes Sweeping Economic Transformation (Society of Environmental Journalists)
• Explainer: The ‘Green New Deal’: Mobilizing for a just, prosperous, and sustainable economy (New Consensus)
• What genuine, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like: How to hit the most stringent targets, with no loopholes. (David Roberts, Vox)
• A Global Shift To Sustainability Would Save Us $26 Trillion (Vox)
• Project Drawdown: 100 Solutions to Reverse Global Warming (Drawdown.org)
• An Optimist’s Guide to Solving Climate Change and Saving the World (Vice)
• The great nutrient collapse: The atmosphere is literally changing the food we eat, for the worse. And almost nobody is paying attention. (Politico)
• The world’s bleak climate situation, in 3 charts: We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there. (Vox)
• The Climate Risks We Face (NY Times):
  To stabilize global temperature, net carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero. The window of time is rapidly closing to reduce emissions and limit warming to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the goal set in the Paris climate accord. The further we push the climate system beyond historical conditions, the greater the risks of potentially unforeseen and even catastrophic changes to the climate – so every reduction in emissions helps.
• The Uninhabitable Earth: When will climate change make earth too hot for humans? (New York Magazine):
  Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak – sooner than you think.
• A beginner’s guide to the debate over 100% renewable energy (Vox):
  Clean-energy enthusiasts frequently claim that we can go bigger, that it’s possible for the whole world to run on renewables – we merely lack the “political will.” So, is it true? Do we know how get to an all-renewables system? Not yet. Not really.

FOR MORE on Climate Science and Climate Change, go to our Green News Report: Essential Background Page

• NASA climate change video: This is the U.S. in 2100 (NASA).