Conference To Transition Away From Fossil Fuels, Zach Galifianakis Gardens, & Big Night

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In Pop Culture:

Actor and comedian Zach Galifianakis has a new documentary show on Netflix called “This Is A Gardening Show”. He finds peace and calm in his own gardening practice, and how cool of him to share this passion of his with the world, showing his fans and anyone who has a preconceived idea about him that he is a person who pays attention to nature. Scientific studies back up his observation that tending to, paying attention to, and spending time in nature is calming, for anyone who needs that data-backed push. I live in a city and have not experienced gardening myself, but I do have a house plant that is in the process of sprouting its first new leaf, and let me tell you, it’s a joy to experience this tiny miracle up close and personal. Guess I’ll be getting Netflix again soon to watch Zach’s show.

Philanthropy At Work:

🗣️ Last week, Surfrider Foundation held their largest advocacy event of the year, where chapter leaders across the country met with Congress people on Capital Hill to advocate for the EPA’s BEACH act which ensures water testing across our oceans and lakes for safety, to demand funding for NOAA, and to fight to block offshore oil and gas leases.

🙇 The Climate Reality Project is kicking off a new initiative this month to train even more people to be climate leaders, which means you feel empowered to make change in your world. Their strategy has been to hold 3 day trainings in cities around the world that bring together hundreds of people each time. Al Gore being at them and leading sessions is quite the treat. This new initiative is to hold several local half day trainings all over the country, likely to make the special experience even more accessible. See if there’s a training happening near you.

🧴 I attended NRDC’s town hall last week discussing their campaign and legal efforts to raise awareness for and fight the two omnipresent toxic substances of microplastics and PFAS chemicals that our government has failed to protect us from, while instead protecting corporate profits of the polluters. After looking at NRDC’s map that indicates detected levels of PFAS across the country, I am further alarmed. Take a look to see how your region fares, and please take measures to filter your water as one way to reduce exposure. Also reach out to your representatives to tell them you demand for safety thresholds on PFAS levels to be upheld. On the microplastics side of toxins, here’s the NRDC campaign page offering tips on how to avoid bodily contamination, such as never heating up food in plastic containers. They worked with a French illustrator, who might’ve made the little “micromonsters” too cute, and they have launched a nationwide public service campaign to heighten awareness and build support for political pressure to hold corporate polluters accountable. These efforts go alongside NRDC’s ongoing court battles to protect us from these toxins.

Environmental News:

✊ We’ll start with the best news of the week. I was pleased to see wide coverage from climate journalists of last week’s Conference for Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels, hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, held in Santa Marta, Colombia. It’s important to make a big deal out of this. It’s purely coincidental that this meeting of 57 countries happened amidst the backdrop of a war that could very well be a pivotal event in the energy transition. The conference gathered together the “coalition of the willing”, or all the serious players in the transition to a clean energy future.

Ahead of the main conference, a group of 24 scientists, newly named the Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition, worked for two months to put together a synthesis report that used the latest climate science to inform a list of 12 action insights, plus action recommendations based on the science that countries can (and should) consider in their roadmaps to phase out and phase down fossil fuels. Suggestions include halting new fossil infrastructure, ending fossil subsidies…you know, the very obvious, very direct action items required to meet the moment, but that are largely avoided in most official meetings. These roadmaps to end the use of fossil fuels are a main goal of this conference, and aim to pick up and move forward where the UN COP process has failed. This structure for the meetings, where scientists compile the latest evidence, then provide recommended action, then countries adopt these actions tailored to their specific needs, all to actually end fossil fuel burning and to electrify and clean up their economies is so refreshingly logical.

This is set to be an annual conference, so we all hope to see progress reported and more countries joining in on the coalition of not only the willing, but the able. So far, here’s what we know. Three workstreams were created for countries to make concrete plans to phase out fossil fuels, decarbonize trade balances, and reform financial systems. France came prepared and released a national roadmap with plans to end coal by 2030, end oil by 2045, and end gas by 2050. This is exactly the kind of public statement the world needs to see and to see achieved (earlier though). More to be reported as roadmaps are released, but the point is, this is the beginning of a new era of action.

💨 Trump continues his offshore wind killing spree by offering more companies a refund on their lease purchases, which allow them to build their clean energy projects. The companies are also required to promise they’ll invest in dirty energy projects in the US instead. At least some Democrats are investigating this greasy tactic, but it’s unprecedented to use taxpayer dollars to directly refund companies in this way, so unfortunately these payoffs may stand and will certainly further hinder the offshore wind market, while preventing predominantly blue states from building this important source of clean power.

👩‍🔬 Trump’s EPA has effectively killed the decades-rich scientific research and ecosystem that studied the links between environmental pollution and human health. Studying this topic and all its underlying sub-topics is arguably one of the most important human activities that can and should be done. Hard stop. But the truth is “burdensome” to most industries, and therefore its burdensome to the Trump administration. So they have erased a critical scientific research center for not only our country, but for the world. This Times article goes into detail about what has been lost at the EPA since this administration has reduced the Office of Research and Development down to 124 scientists from 1,500, with plans for those remaining to be reassigned under Trump appointees vs their historically independent structure. This is truly one of this administration’s most grotesque acts of slaughter. Without data, we cannot regulate, which makes it easier to let polluters pollute. Many of our most serious human health issues are caused by human activities, things like burning fossil fuels and inventing toxic chemicals as inputs into commercial products, all of which release foreign substances into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. The EPA was created to protect us from these harms, but serious systemic damage has been done by this dismantling. We must stay aware and spread this truth until we can restore what has been lost.

🐸 Let’s end on a heartwarmingly positive note. We often talk about bird migrations, but amphibians have their own special migration that happens once annually during a short period of time in March or April, depending on weather conditions. It’s an event called Big Night, when on the first warm, wet night of spring, a figurative starting gun shoots off and the frogs and salamanders are off to the races from their winter hibernation spots to the vernal pools of their origins to lay their eggs. It’s a dangerous trek now, with roads cutting through their ancestral routes, and, sadly, 8 out of 10 of these creatures are killed by cars. Climate change is a major threat to them as well, with its erratic weather patterns that can bring them out of hibernation too early, only to be killed by a subsequent frost, as just one example. Well, here’s a wonderful story about how in Maine, Big Night is a biodiverse event, where hundreds of humans-on-call drop what they’re doing and spend the night helping these creatures reach their destinations safely by blocking roadways, escorting them, and also collecting data on the numbers and species types, which can help conservation efforts down the road. It’s a beautiful thing when we simply love each other.

Just Look Up