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Writer's pictureBelle and Climate Team

SUMMER AND FALL 2024

Dear Friends:

Everything we report on is of election interest.  Be sure to check our events.  We recommend a short and concise book by Carl Young, “Exposing the Radical Agenda – the Hidden Dangers of Project 2025 – for Everyday Americans.”

Belle, Victoria and the Climate Team

Links to Articles

Climate Change for Republicans

At the Republican National Convention, Climate Change Isn’t a Problem

By Lisa Freidman

As the event opens with a focus on energy, former President Trump and other leaders are calling for more oil, gas and coal development.

“It’s real bad.”

By Zoya Teirstein Grist, July 29, 2024

Project 2025 seeks to undo much of that progress by slashing funding for government programs across the board, weakening federal oversight and policymaking capabilities, rolling back legislation passed during Biden’s first term, and eliminating career personnel.

Wildfires

By Kurtis AlexanderWhen a wildfire touched off near Healdsburg on Sunday, quickly advancing across more than 1,000 acres, it wasn’t just grass that was burning. It was oaks and pines.

The blazes produced more planet-warming carbon than almost any country, researchers found. That could upend key calculations on the pace of global warming.

The speed at which the Park Fire consumed an enormous area has stunned even those who live and breathe wildfire, and who have watched other historic blazes rip through the region.

It consumed about 5,000 acres per hour after first igniting Wednesday, scorching 150,000 acres on Friday alone and racing far to the north to threaten towns that earlier seemed well out of reach. As of Sunday morning, it had spread to more than 350,000 acres, with evacuation orders spanning four counties.

Marin fire agencies offer assistance for home wildfire defense.

In Brazil, wildfires have roared across the Pantanal, a maze of rivers, forests and marshlands that sprawl over an area 20 times the size of the Everglades.

Conservation

By Matthew Brown, Associated Press

U.S. wildlife officials beginning next year will drastically scale up efforts to kill invasive barred owls that are crowding out imperiled native owls from West Coast forests, under a plan finalized Wednesday that faces challenges from barred owls returning after they've already been removed.

Home Insurance and Wildfires

Photography by Jamie Kelter Davis, May, 2024

Christopher Flavelle reported from Iowa and spoke with more than 40 insurance experts, officials and homeowners in a dozen states. Mira Rojanasakul analyzed insurance market data for carriers across the country.

By Megan Fan Munce, Reporter

Extreme Weather

People all over the world are facing severe heat, floods and fire, aggravated by the use of fossil fuels. The year isn’t halfway done.

Global temperatures in the first five months of the year have been the highest since modern record-keeping began. That puts 2024 on course to be the hottest year in recorded history, eclipsing last year’s record. It is reported that 1,000 people had died while on the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the holy city in Saudi Arabia. In central Algeria, another oil-rich state, riots erupted over water in mid-June as rising temperatures and a lack of rain dried up drinking-water supplies.

High-pressure systems and atmospheric circulation produce soaring temperatures with potentially deadly consequences

By Jack Lee, John Blanchard

“Climate change is making heat waves more intense, more frequent, more persistent and spatially larger — just about any characteristic you could use to describe them,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the Nature Conservancy.

Climate Policy

Earth’s warming could trigger sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse.

You only need to look at Texas or Florida for the answer: a complete erasure of climate action.

Impact of IRA and Infrastructure Spending in Bay Area

The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provide billions of dollars for nature.

How will that change the Bay Area? And how will we know if it’s money well spent? Bay Nature launched a reporting project called Wild Billions in 2023 to examine the impacts of this huge infusion of money—and the obstacles to keeping the big promises that came with it.

Supreme Court and Climate

Biomass

Leônidas Carrijo Azevedo Melo and Miguel Ángel Sánchez Monedero

Electrification

This Dirty Industry Is Better Off Operating in America

By Stephen Lezak, July 23, 2024

Dr. Lezak is a researcher at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford who studies the politics of climate change.

A United Nations study found that meeting international climate goals by 2030 could require building as many as 80 copper mines, 70 lithium mines and 70 nickel mines to supply the materials for electric vehicles, solar panels and a host of other low-carbon technologies.

By Michael E. Webber

One year after the deadly wildfires on Maui, Hawaii, and a few weeks after Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to millions of Houston-area residents, it has become abundantly clear that our electricity grid is dangerously vulnerable.

 

EVENTS

Saturday, September 7, 11 am to 5 pm, 3501 Civic Center Drive, San Rafael

EMBER STOMP

Visit the Third Annual Ember Stomp Festival - learn how to prepare for wildfire.  Check out the Ember Stomp website for information on booths and events.  If you would like to assist at the ESP/Marin Biomass Project booth, email back or just drop by.

 

Wednesday, September 11, 10 am to noon, Field Trip

Please join Marin Wildfire, San Rafael Fire, Marin County Parks, the Ecologically Sound Practices Partnership, and other project partners for a site visit to see Phase 2 of the San Rafael - San Anselmo Fuel Reduction Zone Project (SRSAFRZ)! Meet us at 10 am on September 11 at the entrance to the Mount Tamalpais Cemetery at Fifth Avenue in San Rafael.  We'll show work in progress for Phase 2 and answer your questions.  Please wear walking shoes sturdy enough to walk on uneven and unpaved trails.  This event will be available via livestream on Facebook.

Please RSVP to acrealock@marinwildfire.org if you would like to participate. To learn more about this project, visit the project webpage HERE.

 

Saturday, September 14, County of Marin Electrification Career Fair at Marin Fairgrounds

The Electrification Career Fair brings together job seekers and employers in the electrification space (contractors: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, the EV sector, solar and battery installers, etc.).  There will be resume and interviewing workshops and other job placement and training resources available for the job seekers.  Event website.

Tuesday, October 8, 2-4 pm, ESP Meeting, Progress Report on the Marin Biomass Project

Presentation by Chad White and Belle Cole.  The Marin Biomass Project has undertaken a comprehensive study of biomass flows generated in Marin and of a utilization system that can make ecologically and economically sound uses of them.  Zoom link for meeting.

 

Contributions for the 2024 elections.  Give Green.

Check out MarinCAN’s new website.  Subscribe and donate at MarinCAN.

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