The World’s Oceans Are in Danger, Major Climate Change Report Warns

Climate change is heating the oceans and altering their chemistry so dramatically that it is threatening seafood supplies, fueling cyclones and floods and posing profound risks to the hundreds of millions of people living along the coasts, according to a sweeping United Nations report issued Wednesday. MORE

Honda is among a growing number of big companies turning to renewables as wind and solar become two of the cheapest sources of power available and as customers and investors push them to fight global warming. Corporate clean-energy purchases hit an all-time high of 13.4 gigawatts in 2018, according to BloombergNEF. They’re on track to break that record this year. MORE

Saul Alinsky launched the Campaign Against Pollution (CAP) in 1969 with a column written by Mike Royko in the Chicago Daily News.  Included was a tear out form seeking names, addresses and phone numbers of individuals interested in combatting air pollution generated by the electric company, Commonwealth Edison.

Several hundred individuals responded.  They were contacted by representatives of Alinsky’s non-profit the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and invited to a public meeting. That meeting happened on January 15, 1970.  It was attended by 400 (as reported in the Chicago Tribune).   Taking off from there, a full blown  IAF organizing project of a distinctly different character from past efforts emerged.  The other IAF inspired organizations had either foundered after making major impacts (Rochester; Buffalo), split away from IAF connections (CSO in California)  or lost a citizen organizing focus (The Woodlawn Organization; Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council). In the absence of live exemplars, invention was the order of the day.   Alinsky believed CAP embodied a turn towards the middle class where a wealth of opportunities for building and exercising citizen power resided.  

Something called Earth Day was in the works for April 25, 1970.  It was an idea dreamed up by Senator Gaylord Nelson to highlight environmental issues.  CAP’s plan was to capitalize on the energy provoked by those concerns.   

Electric vehicles could make up nearly half the fleet of passenger cars and trucks by 2040. But oil and gas companies are striking back.
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The oil industry is trying to crush the booming electric car movement.
Groups backed by industry giants like Exxon Mobil and the Koch empire are waging a state-by-state, multimillion-dollar battle to squelch utilities’ plans to build charging stations across the country. Environmentalists call the fight a reprise of the “Who Killed the Electric Car?” battles that doomed an earlier generation of battery-driven vehicles in the 1990s.  Full story by Gavin Blade in Politico.

This April, for the first time ever, renewable energy supplied more power to America’s grid than coal—the clearest sign yet that solar and wind can now go head-to-head with fossil fuels. In two-thirds of the world, they’ve become the cheapest forms of power.
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Solar and wind will power half the globe by 2050, based on BloombergNEF forecasts. By that time, coal and nuclear will have all but disappeared in the U.S., forced out by cheaper renewables and natural gas.  Story here.

Phoenix, one of the hottest and fastest-warming cities in the US, could be hit by “a [Hurricane] Katrina of extreme heat” with temperatures peaking in the 120s and lingering for two weeks...
Southern California could see a wildfire that burns a total of 1.5 million acres. Smoke from the blazes could carry at least 100 miles west into Los Angeles and 100 miles south to San Diego, leading to hazardous air quality throughout the region and thousands of hospitalizations...
Tampa Bay is one of the areas in the US most at risk when hurricanes arrive because of its location, growing population, and the geography of the bay. If a Category 5 hurricane makes a direct hit on the bay, parts of Pinellas County — which is home to St. Petersburg — will temporarily become an island... Full story HERE (Vox)

“The Right to a Future” kicks off a week of climate coverage, starting September 15, by Intercept reporters working across our beats. The effort is part of Covering Climate Now, a project co-founded by The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review, in partnership with The Guardian, that “aims to convene and inform a conversation among journalists about how all news outlets can do justice to the defining story of our time.”  More here.