The Kids Are Taking the State to Court: Climate News Roundup
This week's climate change news: 6/11-6/16
Hello hello and welcome back to The Doomer Dispatch, weekly climate content to spur doomers into doers.
How are you today, steadfast reader or suspicious newcomer? Well, I hope. It is stormy and grey here in northern Virginia, so I’m feeling a sense of exuberant coziness as I sip my coffee. There is something about a storm that makes me feel like a kid again. How topical! Call me Daniel Day-Lewis, because I am clearly a method creator.
Why climate change work can be suffocating
I’ve been struggling for a long time with a peculiar, looming sense of dread. Dread not about the climate crisis itself, but about working in the industry that contends with it. “Climate World” is what I call th…
Did you see the essay I dropped on Wednesday? It’s the first piece of creative content on the Dispatch! In it, I discuss my experience working in Climate World and how the responsibility associated with the work can feel restrictive to a creative. Check it out to see how I'm learning to deal with it all. Keep an eye out for future releases, too. Shooting for a biweekly publishing rate right now.
Top stories this week
Earlier this week, a coalition of young people ages 5-22 made their case against the Montana state government in a landmark climate change trial. They argue that the state’s continued support for the fossil fuel industry and lacking carbon emissions reductions are in violation of the Constitution of Montana, which mandates that the government “maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.”
Greta Thunberg, the intrepid Swedish climate activist, is ending her school climate strikes after 251 weeks. Undoubtedly the world’s most influential climate activist, Greta will still be protesting, just no longer as a student as she graduates high school this year.
In their latest annual report tracking global climate pledges, non-profit Net Zero Tracker found that while the total number of global net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets increased 25% this year, less than 5% of them are credible. The lack of credibility among the greater majority of these public and private pledges undermines the ambitious national commitments to net-zero emissions that many leading countries — including the United States — have made.
Building on a burgeoning global movement, Black and Indigenous activists called for legal rights to be endowed to the Mississippi River. The “Rights of Nature” is an environmental movement gaining popularity around the world that seeks to grant human rights to rivers, trees, and wildlife so they may have legal standing in a court of law.
The White House unveiled new energy programs funded by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act that they claim will provide “the largest investment in rural electrification since the New Deal.” The new programs will provide a combined $11 billion in grants and loans to rural electric co-ops for the development of renewable energy like wind and solar as well as projects like energy storage and carbon capture.
The head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company will lead this year’s United Nations climate summit, known as COP28. This executive decision was made by the United Arab Emirates, this year’s hosting country, as they plan to roll out a “game changing” plan to fight the climate crisis — a plan that lets the polluters call the shots.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that last month was the warmest May for the world’s oceans since record-keeping began in 1850. Last May was also the third warmest on record, and North and South America had their warmest Mays ever.
New Jersey, the only state to require climate change topics be taught in their schools, is standing behind its commitment to climate education, even as a small far-right contingent call it “indoctrination.”
A flood of tens of thousands of dead fish washed ashore on the Gulf Coast of Texas earlier this week. Experts suspect that higher ocean temperatures, a product of global climate change, squeezed the oxygen out of the region’s water, killing the fish en masse.
Further reading
Emily Sanders discusses the potential legal ramifications for fossil fuel companies as a result of the Montana case in ExxonKnews.
Online climate conversation surged this week as people buzzed about the wildfire smoke, according to data presented by Climate Monitor.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s roundup! I hope you enjoyed it.
Did you catch my recent essay? Got any thoughts on it? I want to hear them!
OK doomers, see you next week.
Joey
Fascinated by the human rights for trees, etc. if I’m not mistaken, animal rights activists are trying to do the same thing to help protect animals as more than just property. Question though: would granting those rights to the natural world make it more difficult for native tribes trying to get their land back?