Environmental lawyers ClientEarth have criticised a leak of Germany’s draft coal phase-out law as put together by the Ministry for Economic Affairs, calling it out of touch and piecemeal, and lambasting the failure to tie it to climate protection goals.

Prof. Dr. Hermann Ott, Head of ClientEarth – Anwälte der Erde, said: “The long-awaited draft of Germany’s phase-out law is a shambles. The policy is riddled with unanswered questions, guarantees an unacceptably tardy coal exit and fails completely to acknowledge how urgently we need to decarbonise to address climate change.

“Those writing the policy seem to be existing in a parallel universe where coal is still profitable, people aren’t being forced out of their homes for mining, and the climate catastrophe isn’t unfolding around us.”

‘Incoherent policymaking’

Ott continued: “We are still faced with the total failure to tackle the phase-out of lignite, the most polluting form of coal, suggesting that Germany is still in thrall to vast energy companies which are still expanding mines and committing major rights infringements.

“And far from a logical approach to securing energy as coal is phased out, we’re actually seeing obstacles to renewable energy growth, which puts the entire phase-out at risk.

“Germany is one of Europe’s leading economies, and it is embarrassing to see such totally incoherent policymaking at a time we’ve never needed strong, solid climate action more.”

Key issues 

The main reason Germany’s ‘Coal Commission’ was formed was to decide how to manage a coal phase-out to cut carbon emissions in order to protect the climate. But this rationale is not made explicit in the law as it stands – and without climate protection as a guiding principle, the law is much less likely to perform against its intended objectives.

The leaked law contains provisions on how to phase out the first Gigawatts (GW) of hard coal to 2026 via tender procedures. If these do not reach the intended GW reduction, no possibility of state-enforced closures is planned in the law, which puts the phase-out path at risk entirely.

The law leaves the GW-reduction path for hard coal for the period from 2027 to 2038 (or earlier) to be determined by a future government by 2022. The already late end date of 2038 will only be assessed for the first time in 2032; earlier assessments by an expert committee, according to the draft, would only result in recommendations to the government and no commitments.

The draft law still needs to pass the cabinet next Monday and only then will pass on to the parliament, but presumably not before the end of this year. The law also does not yet contain any details on how the phase-out of lignite in Germany will take place, which is extremely bad news for those in Germany who stand to lose their villages for coal mining.

The leaked draft of the coal phase-out law contains changes to many other laws, too, among them a provision in construction law that in the future would limit the expansion of wind energy considerably.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth. 

Environmental lawyers ClientEarth have criticised a leak of Germany’s draft coal phase-out law as put together by the Ministry for Economic Affairs, calling it out of touch and piecemeal, and lambasting the failure to tie it to climate protection goals.

Prof. Dr. Hermann Ott, Head of ClientEarth – Anwälte der Erde, said: “The long-awaited draft of Germany’s phase-out law is a shambles. The policy is riddled with unanswered questions, guarantees an unacceptably tardy coal exit and fails completely to acknowledge how urgently we need to decarbonise to address climate change.

“Those writing the policy seem to be existing in a parallel universe where coal is still profitable, people aren’t being forced out of their homes for mining, and the climate catastrophe isn’t unfolding around us.”

‘Incoherent policymaking’

Ott continued: “We are still faced with the total failure to tackle the phase-out of lignite, the most polluting form of coal, suggesting that Germany is still in thrall to vast energy companies which are still expanding mines and committing major rights infringements.

“And far from a logical approach to securing energy as coal is phased out, we’re actually seeing obstacles to renewable energy growth, which puts the entire phase-out at risk.

“Germany is one of Europe’s leading economies, and it is embarrassing to see such totally incoherent policymaking at a time we’ve never needed strong, solid climate action more.”

Key issues 

The main reason Germany’s ‘Coal Commission’ was formed was to decide how to manage a coal phase-out to cut carbon emissions in order to protect the climate. But this rationale is not made explicit in the law as it stands – and without climate protection as a guiding principle, the law is much less likely to perform against its intended objectives.

The leaked law contains provisions on how to phase out the first Gigawatts (GW) of hard coal to 2026 via tender procedures. If these do not reach the intended GW reduction, no possibility of state-enforced closures is planned in the law, which puts the phase-out path at risk entirely.

The law leaves the GW-reduction path for hard coal for the period from 2027 to 2038 (or earlier) to be determined by a future government by 2022. The already late end date of 2038 will only be assessed for the first time in 2032; earlier assessments by an expert committee, according to the draft, would only result in recommendations to the government and no commitments.

The draft law still needs to pass the cabinet next Monday and only then will pass on to the parliament, but presumably not before the end of this year. The law also does not yet contain any details on how the phase-out of lignite in Germany will take place, which is extremely bad news for those in Germany who stand to lose their villages for coal mining.

The leaked draft of the coal phase-out law contains changes to many other laws, too, among them a provision in construction law that in the future would limit the expansion of wind energy considerably.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth. 

Environmental lawyers ClientEarth have criticised a leak of Germany’s draft coal phase-out law as put together by the Ministry for Economic Affairs, calling it out of touch and piecemeal, and lambasting the failure to tie it to climate protection goals.

Prof. Dr. Hermann Ott, Head of ClientEarth – Anwälte der Erde, said: “The long-awaited draft of Germany’s phase-out law is a shambles. The policy is riddled with unanswered questions, guarantees an unacceptably tardy coal exit and fails completely to acknowledge how urgently we need to decarbonise to address climate change.

“Those writing the policy seem to be existing in a parallel universe where coal is still profitable, people aren’t being forced out of their homes for mining, and the climate catastrophe isn’t unfolding around us.”

‘Incoherent policymaking’

Ott continued: “We are still faced with the total failure to tackle the phase-out of lignite, the most polluting form of coal, suggesting that Germany is still in thrall to vast energy companies which are still expanding mines and committing major rights infringements.

“And far from a logical approach to securing energy as coal is phased out, we’re actually seeing obstacles to renewable energy growth, which puts the entire phase-out at risk.

“Germany is one of Europe’s leading economies, and it is embarrassing to see such totally incoherent policymaking at a time we’ve never needed strong, solid climate action more.”

Key issues 

The main reason Germany’s ‘Coal Commission’ was formed was to decide how to manage a coal phase-out to cut carbon emissions in order to protect the climate. But this rationale is not made explicit in the law as it stands – and without climate protection as a guiding principle, the law is much less likely to perform against its intended objectives.

The leaked law contains provisions on how to phase out the first Gigawatts (GW) of hard coal to 2026 via tender procedures. If these do not reach the intended GW reduction, no possibility of state-enforced closures is planned in the law, which puts the phase-out path at risk entirely.

The law leaves the GW-reduction path for hard coal for the period from 2027 to 2038 (or earlier) to be determined by a future government by 2022. The already late end date of 2038 will only be assessed for the first time in 2032; earlier assessments by an expert committee, according to the draft, would only result in recommendations to the government and no commitments.

The draft law still needs to pass the cabinet next Monday and only then will pass on to the parliament, but presumably not before the end of this year. The law also does not yet contain any details on how the phase-out of lignite in Germany will take place, which is extremely bad news for those in Germany who stand to lose their villages for coal mining.

The leaked draft of the coal phase-out law contains changes to many other laws, too, among them a provision in construction law that in the future would limit the expansion of wind energy considerably.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth. 

Environmental lawyers ClientEarth have criticised a leak of Germany’s draft coal phase-out law as put together by the Ministry for Economic Affairs, calling it out of touch and piecemeal, and lambasting the failure to tie it to climate protection goals.

Prof. Dr. Hermann Ott, Head of ClientEarth – Anwälte der Erde, said: “The long-awaited draft of Germany’s phase-out law is a shambles. The policy is riddled with unanswered questions, guarantees an unacceptably tardy coal exit and fails completely to acknowledge how urgently we need to decarbonise to address climate change.

“Those writing the policy seem to be existing in a parallel universe where coal is still profitable, people aren’t being forced out of their homes for mining, and the climate catastrophe isn’t unfolding around us.”

‘Incoherent policymaking’

Ott continued: “We are still faced with the total failure to tackle the phase-out of lignite, the most polluting form of coal, suggesting that Germany is still in thrall to vast energy companies which are still expanding mines and committing major rights infringements.

“And far from a logical approach to securing energy as coal is phased out, we’re actually seeing obstacles to renewable energy growth, which puts the entire phase-out at risk.

“Germany is one of Europe’s leading economies, and it is embarrassing to see such totally incoherent policymaking at a time we’ve never needed strong, solid climate action more.”

Key issues 

The main reason Germany’s ‘Coal Commission’ was formed was to decide how to manage a coal phase-out to cut carbon emissions in order to protect the climate. But this rationale is not made explicit in the law as it stands – and without climate protection as a guiding principle, the law is much less likely to perform against its intended objectives.

The leaked law contains provisions on how to phase out the first Gigawatts (GW) of hard coal to 2026 via tender procedures. If these do not reach the intended GW reduction, no possibility of state-enforced closures is planned in the law, which puts the phase-out path at risk entirely.

The law leaves the GW-reduction path for hard coal for the period from 2027 to 2038 (or earlier) to be determined by a future government by 2022. The already late end date of 2038 will only be assessed for the first time in 2032; earlier assessments by an expert committee, according to the draft, would only result in recommendations to the government and no commitments.

The draft law still needs to pass the cabinet next Monday and only then will pass on to the parliament, but presumably not before the end of this year. The law also does not yet contain any details on how the phase-out of lignite in Germany will take place, which is extremely bad news for those in Germany who stand to lose their villages for coal mining.

The leaked draft of the coal phase-out law contains changes to many other laws, too, among them a provision in construction law that in the future would limit the expansion of wind energy considerably.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth. 

The concept of a canary in a coal mine – a sensitive species that provides an alert to danger – originated with British miners, who carried living canaries underground through the mid-1980s to detect the presence of deadly carbon monoxide gas.

Today another bird, the Emperor Penguin, is providing a similar warning about the planetary effects of burning fossil fuels.

As a seabird ecologist, I develop mathematical models to understand and predict how seabirds respond to environmental change. My research integrates many areas of science, including the expertise of climatologists, to improve our ability to anticipate future ecological consequences of climate change. 

Warming planet 

Most recently, I worked with colleagues to combine what we know about the life history of Emperor Penguins with different potential climate scenarios outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement, to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.

We wanted to understand how climate change could affect this iconic species, whose unique life habits were documented in the award-winning film “March of the Penguins.” 

Our newly published study found that if climate change continues at its current rate, Emperor Penguins could virtually disappear by the year 2100 due to loss of Antarctic sea ice. However, a more aggressive global climate policy can halt the penguins’ march to extinction. 

As many scientific reports have shown, human activities are increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere, which is warming the planet. Today atmospheric CO2 levels stand at slightly over 410 parts per million, well above anything the planet has experienced in millions of years. 

If this trend continues, scientists project that CO2 in the atmosphere could reach 950 parts per million by 2100. These conditions would produce a very different world from today’s. 

Living indicators 

Emperor Penguins are living indicators whose population trends can illustrate the consequences of these changes. Although they are found in Antarctica, far from human civilization, they live in such delicate balance with their rapidly changing environment that they have become modern-day canaries. 

I have spent almost twenty years studying Emperor Penguins’ unique adaptations to the harsh conditions of their sea ice home.

Each year, the surface of the ocean around Antarctica freezes over in the winter and melts back in summer. Penguins use the ice as a home base for breeding, feeding and molting, arriving at their colony from ocean waters in March or April after sea ice has formed for the Southern Hemisphere’s winter season. 

In mid-May the female lays a single egg. Throughout the winter, males keep the eggs warm while females make a long trek to open water to feed during the most unforgiving weather on Earth.

When female penguins return to their newly hatched chicks with food, the males have fasted for four months and lost almost half their weight. After the egg hatches, both parents take turns feeding and protecting their chick. In September, the adults leave their young so that they can both forage to meet their chick’s growing appetite. In December, everyone leaves the colony and returns to the ocean. 

Emperor Penguin fathers incubate a single egg until it hatches.

Throughout this annual cycle, the penguins rely on a sea ice “Goldilocks zone” of conditions to thrive. They need openings in the ice that provide access to the water so they can feed, but also a thick, stable platform of ice to raise their chicks. 

Population trends

For more than sixty years, scientists have extensively studied one Emperor Penguin colony in Antarctica, called Terre Adélie. This research has enabled us to understand how sea ice conditions affect the birds’ population dynamics.

In the 1970s, for example, the population experienced a dramatic decline when several consecutive years of low sea ice cover caused widespread deathsamong male penguins. 

Over the past ten years, my colleagues and I have combined what we know about these relationships between sea ice and fluctuations in penguin life histories to create a demographic model that allows us to understand how sea ice conditions affect the abundance of Emperor Penguins, and to project their numbers based on forecasts of future sea ice cover in Antarctica.

Once we confirmed that our model successfully reproduced past observed trends in Emperor Penguin populations around all Antarctica, we expanded our analysis into a species-level threat assessment.

Global community

When we used a climate model linked to our population model to project what is likely to happen to sea ice if greenhouse gas emissions continue on their present trend, we found that all 54 known Emperor Penguin colonies would be in decline by 2100, and 80 percent of them would be quasi-extinct.

Accordingly, we estimate that the total number of Emperor Penguins will decline by 86 percent relative to its current size of roughly 250,000 if nations fail to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. 

However, if the global community acts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and succeeds in stabilizing average global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Faherenheit) above pre-industrial levels, we estimate that Emperor Penguin numbers would decline by 31% – still drastic, but viable.

Less-stringent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, leading to a global temperature rise of 2°C, would result in a 44 percent decline. 

Our model indicates that these population declines will occur predominately in the first half of this century. Nonetheless, in a scenario in which the world meets the Paris climate targets, we project that the global Emperor Penguin population would nearly stabilize by 2100, and that viable refuges would remain available to support some colonies. 

Curbing emissions

In a changing climate, individual penguins may move to new locations to find more suitable conditions.

Our population model included complex dispersal processes to account for these movements. However, we find that these actions are not enough to offset climate-driven global population declines.

In short, global climate policy has much more influence over the future of Emperor Penguins than the penguins’ ability to move to better habitat.

Our findings starkly illustrate the far-reaching implications of national climate policy decisions. Curbing carbon dioxide emissions has critical implications for Emperor Penguins and an untold number of other species for which science has yet to document such a plain-spoken warning.

This Author 

Stephanie Jenouvrier is an associate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

This article was first published The Conversation. Image: Christopher Michel, Flickr. 

Winter is coming. Millions of zombie-like gas boilers are roaring into life as we attempt to ward off the cold in our draughty homes.

For a country that moans more about the weather than Jon Snow in the Game of Thrones, our homes are poorly prepared for the seasonal chill. Worse still we have ignored the predictions of scientists and continued to build homes whose worth is measured in granite worktops and Zoopla estimates rather than warmth, comfort and energy efficiency.

The average UK home has a net energy demand of 18,800 KwH – for heat and power. The current standard for new build homes would reduce that by about half. But there’s still a long way to go before our homes make a positive contribution to net zero by 2050. 

Real culprit

The average household pays £1,385 per year in energy costs. Current standards make quite a dent in that bill but what if we could reduce that energy demand not by 50 percent but by 93 percent? 

Instead of blaming rising energy bills on renewables, we should recognise that the real culprit is a lack of investment in greener, better homes that need less energy in the first place.

The dichotomy is often seen in terms of consumer choice versus cost. For most people buying or building a green home is like buying a Tesla; rare, green bling for the few not the many.

The assumption is that being green doesn’t pay and that a world of cheap green measures is still a way off. Developments like Goldsmith Street in Norwich are lauded because they are the exception that proves the rule.

Not unlike Jon Snow, we know nothing. 

Greener homes

The real problem stopping us building greener homes now, rather than at varying future dates now being promised in different parties’ election campaigns, is money.

Specifically, the way developers make money from financing new homes. Since the middle of the twentieth century the pace of house building has been largely driven not by market demand but by the cost and availability of credit based on the current and future market value of homes. 

For developers, every second counts once a home has been built to get it sold and book the profits to move onto the next development.

Anything that is perceived to be a cost (rather than creating long term value) is avoided in the name of profit – whether that is greener building standards or percentages of affordable homes haggled over in planning negotiations. 

Changing the rules

A pioneering housing developer, Octevo, has decided to change the rules of the ‘game of homes’ and build affordable homes for rental using a finance model based on long term value rather than short term speculation.

Their latest project Liverpool Community Homes will build 37 affordable homes incorporating a raft of green measures, including ground source heat pumps, solar panels, water efficiency and energy efficiency improvements, that reduce each home’s energy use by 80 to 93 percent compared with the average.

So not only is the rent affordable but the bills are too. Savings of a thousand pounds a year can make a real difference to families and add up to a lot over the life of a home. 

My company Abundance has a long term relationship with Octevo; we helped them raise funds for two previous social housing developments in the Liverpool area. This is their greenest yet and is a response to feedback from our customers as well as their financial support. It shows we can create affordable homes that make low carbon living possible for everyone. 

This Author 

Bruce Davis is managing director of Abundance Investment, which advertises with The Ecologist.

I met up with Polly Higgins about ten years ago. I couldn’t have guessed that one day a large pink boat named for her would be parked in my spare room. 

Today Polly is revered for her work as an international environment lawyer, memorialised by climate rebels as a forerunner and heroine for defining ecocide. She died tragically young in 2018.

Back then she was working for an alliance linking European, North African and Middle Eastern countries (EUMENA) that aimed to share an effective, cheap and zero carbon solar technology that harvests heat from the sun to create steam that generates industrial quantities of electricity. 

Mystery cancellations

Since then, that technology (Concentrating Solar Power or CSP) has proved itself well, producing gigawatts of clean power in every single continent and from China to Chile.

But the technology still encounters setbacks: a contract for cable linking production in Algeria with the German grid didn’t happen, apparently because of “geopolitics”. India’s leader Narendra Modi grandly announced that the sub-continent would lead an International Solar Alliance. This also came to nothing, with no explanation given.

There are plans now for Singapore to import this grid-scale solar power from Northern Australia. An under-sea cable project (“TUNUR”), is set to run from Tunisia to Italy. But will these meet the same fate?

CSP has met mysterious cancellations of plans since its inception in 1983, as well as withdrawal of promised investment, reluctance of governments to agree to trade this solar power, and outright sabotage as when the outstanding Spanish R&D centre was forbidden to spend EU grant funding.  

Duty of care

Polly may have already seen this coming when we first met: the problem is, and was, not lack of invention or technology but lack of the will to stand up to the fossil fuel lobby or to stop the plunder of the planet for corporate profit. 

She told me she was moving on and would instead be working to get the UN to outlaw Ecocide. 

Using existing international environmental and human rights law (such as the right to clean air or to a livelihood secure from avoidable disasters) she defined Ecocide as “Extensive damage to, destruction or loss of eco-systems of a given territory…” 

The adoption of Ecocide as a planetary law is still to happen, but it would impose a duty of care to lessen destructive events, and would establish actionable criminal culpability. 

Penalties could be levied­ against individuals, companies and states, and maybe also against  trade in commodities based on ecocidal degradation, such as beef products from the deforested Amazon or palm oil and soy-bean that are flattening rain forests.

Criminality in law

Such products would then be marked out as tainted by crime and denied market access. That could affect investors, make insurance more costly and lead to reputational damage and “stranded assets” if projects are declared unlawful and abandoned.

The taint of “criminality” may stop public bodies or pension funds being invested in fossil fuels if such use of funds breaks their rules.

In the context of the climate crisis, actions that are deliberate, reckless or negligent and cause serious, extensive or lasting ecological damage could undoubtedly add up to ecocide. 

Even without such criminal definition these acts can already undermine or undo efforts to meet zero carbon targets agreed by international treaty. This could in theory be actionable in civil law, but may need to prove financial loss. Making ecocide an international crime can change the balance of forces and is long overdue. 

As part of the Green New Deal motion moved by the Fire Brigades Union at Labour’s 2019 Conference, it resolved to “press for heavy UN penalties on ecocide damage to climate-sensitive habitats internationally”. As an exemplary move the next government could enact this as a crime within UK, which could assist divestment and anti-fracking campaigns here.

Crossing a line

How can it be enforced? Like tech advances, legal measures can’t solve the climate emergency on their own. Genocide has been illegal since 1945, but is still rampant and accelerating in tandem with ecocide.

But legal statute can give rise to and support targeted economic and political measures: South Africa’s apartheid regime incurred effective boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) that hit at trade, sports and status and eventually defeated apartheid.

If climate BDS was applied by FIFA, threatening to exclude Brazil from world football, could it perhaps start to counter the terrible destruction of the Amazon and the genocide of its people? 

It may not be easy to enforce, but making ecocide an internationally recognised criminal act is in itself a game-changer. It shifts the boundaries of acceptability and opens up new avenues to prevention. It is no longer a matter of contestable differences in policy, or national or commercial choices and targets, but an unarguable and clear crossing of a line that risks incurring sanctions and boycott.

This is not a substitute for campaigning. Rather, it would put a powerful weapon into the hands of campaigners fighting to save their own lands from climate crimes, or those calling on their pension funds or public bodies to divest. It would help to pressure governments to enforce UN sanctions.

Louder voice

While civil matters and decisions are diffused around huge organisations and may at best impact on a company’s share price, defining a criminal act can target individual CEOs and heads of companies personally. Even if intent is hard to prove, as with dangerous driving, criminal recklessness is also actionable.

While the International Criminal Court may be slow to move, at the UN General Assembly (which can initiate action and sanctions) the small island countries facing extinction have an equal vote with the US, China or Brazil, and maybe a much louder voice.

These issues and stories of community campaigns feature in this half-hour international conversation on Al Jazeera’s The Stream.

This Author

Rachel Lever has been a writer and activist on the left for some 60 years, starting with the Sharpeville massacre and anti-apartheid, through CND, the Vietnam war, the Troubles in Ireland, the miners’ strike, women’s liberation and the fight for democracy and women’s rights in the Labour Party and now the revival of Labour.

Carol Dyer climbed into her car and headed two hours north to see what was left of a home she had left in a panic exactly a year earlier.

“I want to see if the land has been cleared. If it has then I will see if I can dig out some sculptures my spouse made me. After that, I will leave my old house key behind some Ponderosa pines. I don’t plan to return so I guess it will be my last goodbye.” 

Carol is a 30-year-old artist and former care-giver living in Woodland. Up until 8 November 2018, she was a resident of Paradise, California, in the United States, a small town in the Sierra foothills devastated by an unprecedented fire that swept through it, leaving 85 people dead, 18,000 buildings erased and an entire community displaced. It was the deadliest and most destructive fire in the state’s history.

Burying the trauma

As we mark the first anniversary, the articles in the media seem to follow a pattern, sharing stories of the residents who have returned and the ways the town is emerging from the ashes. “Paradise regained: a resilient town rebuilds” says NBC news. ‘The air feels different: Paradise isn’t giving up,” says The Guardian.

The stories attest to a human desire to find meanings in tragedy and the determination of some its residents to rebuild. But these stories perhaps also seek to bury the trauma created by such a disaster – a trauma that we are reluctant to face when such disasters in a time of climate crisis may be “the new normal.”

Like many of the stories shared after the fire, Carol’s story of escape is a harrowing one. She had woken early that morning to a beautiful sunrise with no idea that at the same time a fire had ignited several miles to the northeast of her.

Carol was due to visit a care client that morning. As she drove into Paradise, she realized it was getting darker and darker and that ashes and embers were falling onto her car hood. “People were driving erratically and I ended up rear-ending another car. That’s when I called 911 and was told for the first time that there was a mandatory evacuation. Up until then I had received no texts, no messages, no warnings, nothing.”

She rushed home to grab a few personal things: “By the time I left, about 9am, I could barely see the sun, and by the time I hit the traffic on Pearson Road, it was pitch black with a glowing redness silhouetting the trees. I thought I am probably going to die and was very scared, but I tried to take deep breaths, thinking if this is it, being scared would not help.”

Safety and support

Carol made it out alive. But many didn’t, including one of her care clients, Evva Holt, who was 85. Evva succeeded in getting out of her assisted-living facility but died in the truck when it took the wrong turn and got swept up in the fire.

For those who did survive, it wasn’t just a case of starting again. Carol’s husband was studying and working in Davis, so she at least had a house to go to, but it wasn’t the same as home – even after she and her spouse moved from his small flat to a house in Woodland:  “The life I used to know is gone. I lost everything and it’s very hard to find a new starting point when you are starting from nothing. The fire destroyed my home but also my sense of safety and my support.”

Carol tells of how she loved her home in Paradise: “Where I lived, it was so nice. It was a quiet, peaceful, healthy place to be. It was dark at night, you could see stars. You could leave your doors unlocked and not worry about it.

“But it’s gone, the soil is completely contaminated, the black oak trees are all gone and many of the Ponderosa pines too. Most people have moved elsewhere.”

She still struggles to see Woodland as a long-term home. “People honestly are not even aware they have people from Paradise living in their town. Most Paradise residents ended up in Butte County, and most of the emotional support I get is from older friends in Sacramento and elsewhere.”

Climate refugees

As one way to respond to the trauma and make sense of her experience, Carol initially threw herself into campaigning for climate action.  She had been concerned about climate change before, but she felt speaking out was something concrete she could do to make a difference.

Fewer than three months after moving to Davis, she joined 70 others demanding Congressman Garamendi recognise the climate emergency and spoke at a number of subsequent events, contributing to Garamendi’s eventual decision to come out in support of the Green New Deal.

Carol explained: “I think there is a huge level of denial here in California at the level of  extreme natural disasters we are witnessing. I was aware of it before the fire. In Paradise, we were getting much less rain – I hadn’t even seen snow in the town for several years, which had always been the case before. It’s not normal to see all these fires or to be so dry so late in the year as we are experiencing again this year.”

Indeed, some commentators have called the 27,000 Paradise displaced residents, California’s first “climate refugees.” 

Carol says at first she balked at the term: “I didn’t see myself as a refugee, as California is my home. I felt that applied to people outside California, like those in Honduras or Guatemala who have had to leave their home due to habitat destruction or droughts. But the reality is I lost a home and do feel like a nomad, so now I think the term makes more sense.”

Carol is also angry at the inaction of PG&E, which California’s fire authorities in May officially determined as responsible for the fires due to faults in its transmission lines: “They purposely decided to prioritise their shareholders and executives rather than investing properly in infrastructure. We need to take them over and not force taxpayers to pay for their mistakes.”

Rebuilding home

Carol has had to be careful, though, in how much she campaigns: “I try to be helpful and supportive as much as you can if I can be a voice, but being very active can be a little too stressful for me.”

As an artist, Carol also uses her creative skills with drawing or bead work to process her experience. She speaks about a recent painting of a polar bear, a classic climate change meme, but one now invested with a double meaning as she has used it to reflect on the bear’s loss of home in the Arctic while Carol  processes her own loss.

Carol’s experience a year on from the Paradise fires speaks to the challenges of rebuilding and recovering in a time of climate change. It also attests to the profound difference between house and home.

Rebuilding a house is hard enough – especially if you aren’t wealthy or aren’t insured – but it is far more challenging to rebuild a sense of home, given how homes are tied to memories, to a community, to a time and place.

When those threads are torn apart through a profoundly traumatic experience like the Camp Fire, it requires a long process of weaving to recreate home. Even more so in a society that has long prioritized individualism and personal success over community and solidarity.

Carol admits that as much as she tries to live in a positive spirit, she finds it hard now “to be attached to anything, to connect to where I live or to attach to the community I am part of because it could all be gone tomorrow.”

She says she thinks “home is still somewhere in the mountains,” but doesn’t yet know where.

This Author

Nick Buxton is an author, researcher and former communications coordinator of the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth that the Bolivian government hosted in 2010. He is the executive director of Movement Rights and tweets @nickbuxton.

This article was first published in the Davis Vanguard. 

Rapid and widespread changes are needed across the world’s energy systems to tackle climate change and ensure sustainable development, experts have said.

In its annual World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that in a scenario based on countries’ stated intentions, targets and existing measures, the rises in greenhouse gases slow but do not peak before 2040.

It would leave hundreds of millions of people still without access to electricity, early deaths due to pollution would remain at today’s raised levels, and carbon emissions would lock in severe impacts of climate change, the IEA warned.

Sharp

It would also see high output of shale gas and oil in the US, which has launched the process of pulling out of the global Paris Agreement to cut emissions to prevent temperature rises of more than 1.5C or 2C.

There would also be an increase in solar power, a flattening of oil demand and reduction in coal use, alongside countries driving change with plans to reach net zero emissions.

But the momentum behind clean energy would not be enough to offset the effects of an expanding global economy and growing population.

A scenario which delivers sharp emissions cuts and meets the goals of curbing rising temperatures would need rapid and widespread changes across all parts of the energy system, the IEA report said.

Global

A key part of this is delivering energy efficiency improvements, from retrofitting existing buildings to save energy on heating and lighting to more efficient design and recycling of materials such as aluminium, steel and plastic.

Under this sustainable development scenario, electricity would overtake oil by 2040 as the leading source of energy, as electric vehicles take off, and most of the increase would come from wind and solar power.

And with so much recently-built coal power on the system globally, plants will need to be fitted with technology to capture and store carbon emissions or to burn biomass, re-purpose them to provide backup to other sources or retire them early.

Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said: “What comes through with crystal clarity in this year’s World Energy Outlook is there is no single or simple solution to transforming global energy systems.

Massive

“Many technologies and fuels have a part to play across all sectors of the economy. For this to happen, we need strong leadership from policy makers, as governments hold the clearest responsibility to act and have the greatest scope to shape the future.”

And he urged: “The world urgently needs to put a laser-like focus on bringing down global emissions.

“This calls for a grand coalition encompassing governments, investors, companies and everyone else who is committed to tackling climate change.

“Our Sustainable Development Scenario is tailor-made to help guide the members of such a coalition in their efforts to address the massive climate challenge that faces us all.”

This Author

Emily Beament is the PA environment correspondent.

Antidepressants are making their way into freshwater ecosystems and changing the way fish behave while hunting for food, according to biologists.

Researchers have found that fluoxetine, the main ingredient in Prozac, can disrupt the foraging behaviour of mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki), a species of freshwater fish found in the US and Australia.

Like most small freshwater fish, mosquitofish tend to hunt in social groups – shoals – to forage more efficiently and reduce the risk of predation.

Pollutants

In their study, published in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers found that fluoxetine had no apparent impact on solitary fish.

But in the case of mosquitofish shoals, exposure to high doses of the drug affected their overall food consumption and altered their foraging behaviour.

The team said its findings suggest that “social context may be an important, but underappreciated, factor influencing the ecological impacts of chemical pollutants on wildlife”.

Fluoxetine, along with many other drugs, is often passed through urine and makes its way into freshwater bodies such as lakes and rivers because water treatment systems cannot filter it out.

These psychoactive pollutants have been shown to influence behaviour in animals – with a recent study by King’s College London reporting that cocaine contamination in the River Thames was making eels hyperactive.

Confounded

Previous studies have shown how antidepressants affect individual animals but few have questioned whether “the impacts seen in social isolation are reflective of those in a social context”, the researchers said.

To find out whether fluoxetine affected group dynamics, the team from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, exposed 206 fish in the lab to fluoxetine levels found in freshwater bodies.

The low-fluoxetine group was given 30 nanograms per litre (ng/L) of the drug while the high-dose group was exposed to 300ng/L of fluoxetine.

The team said it only used female mosquitofish in the experiments to “control for any effects of sexual behaviour that may have confounded the results”.

Risk

This is because previous research by the team has shown that when exposed to fluoxetine, male fish end up spending much more time pursuing female fish for sex than they would normally.

After being exposed to fluoxetine for 28 days, the behaviour of the solitary fish remained unchanged by the drug.

However, the groups of fish that were exposed to high levels of fluoxetine were less aggressive and consumed less prey compared with shoals exposed to none, or low levels, of the drug.

The researchers wrote in their paper: “Our results suggest that behavioural tests in social isolation may not accurately predict the environmental risk of chemical pollutants for group-living species and highlight the potential for social context to mediate the effects of psychoactive pollutants in exposed wildlife.”

This Author

Nilima Marshall is a PA science reporter.