Happy Friday everyone! In today's episode of ClimateRoots, you'll get to hear from our featured writer Hugh as he shares some thoughts from his time in Madagascar.  Next up we have our headlines of the month, including more broken records and a terrifying stat on deforestation.  Lastly we'll bring you through the next era of environmental policy, the early 80s, a.k.a the beginning of the Environmental Justice movement. Enjoy the read, and be sure to check out the full version of everything on our blog!

Image courtesy of Hugh Gabriel

Featured Writer - Hugh Gabriel

Hugh Gabriel is currently a junior at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, where he’s pursuing a double major in Environmental Studies and English. He’s abroad in Madagascar for the spring semester, where he has been studying biodiversity from some of the top names in Madagascar conservation. Hugh loves to operate in the space between creative writing and the environment, and he’s been describing his experience in Madagascar with a blog on his website; check it out at hughgabriel.com. Hugh has worked in the past on prairie restoration and environmental outreach, and he is looking forward to a career in conservation after graduation. We’re super excited for you to check out the blog (and awesome photos) that Hugh has shared with us today! Make sure to read his short piece to get a glimpse into his life abroad and the environmental hardships that are currently facing the island of Madagascar.

Click below to read the piece on our blog.

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Weekly Headlines

Humanity Must Act Yesterday to Prevent an Unlivable World (AP, Boston Globe, Axios, NPR, CNBC, Reuters, The Guardian, USA Today)

• The world must act swiftly and completely eliminate fossil fuels to prevent the worst of climate fueled disasters.

• Even if fulfilled, pledges by the world’s governments will not limit warming below 1.5 degrees.

• The report, released in early April is a ‘litany of broken climate promises… a file of shame’ said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

• Despite the stark findings, the report laid a guideline of action in which transitioning to renewable energy would only impact global GDP by a tenth of a percent; and that is before accounting for the damages from climate fueled disasters.

• Additionally, plugging old gas wells, pipelines and stoves are very easy ways to eliminate huge swaths of fossil fuels.

Global Methane Emissions Trending in the Wrong Direction; Break Records Second Year Running (AP, Axios, CNBC)

• Methane emissions increased by more than ever before in recorded history, breaking the previous record set in 2020.

• While Carbon Dioxide emissions also saw a huge jump in 2021, Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas and traps eighty times more heat than Carbon Dioxide over an eight year period.

The World will Lose Five Soccer Fields Worth of Forest by the Time You Read this Headline (Thomas Reuters Foundation, CNN, Axios, NewScientist, BBC)

• Nearly 30 million acres of tropical tree cover was lost in 2021, as well as another 16 million acres of Northern Boreal forest; that’s an astonishing rate of ten soccer fields per minute of forest loss.

• This figure includes almost 10 million acres of primary, or old growth, forest which released 2.5 billion metric tons of CO2; equivalent to the emissions from India in the same time frame.

• While much of this forest loss is caused by human deforestation, wildfires also play a part.

To read more headlines from this week, click below.

Baobabs in the spiny forest of Ifafy, Madagascar/ Image Courtesy of Hugh Gabriel

Environmental Policy 1980-84

Hello ClimateRoots Readers!
 

We hope that May flowers have sprung wherever you are! In this month's issue we are covering the domestic environmental policies enacted between 1980 to 1984. 

In addition to the approval of critical environmental policies, the 1980s are colloquially known as the beginning of the environmental justice movement. While environmental injustice has been a part of American history since its colonization, the environmental justice movement is said to have begun in 1982 with the Warren County PCB protests. Following the illegal spraying of ​polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the state of North Carolina decided to build a toxic waste landfill to bury the PCBs in Afton, NC. Warren County was a predominantly black, lower income community and had been targeted before by the state of North Carolina as a potential site for industry and waste facilities (BLUM and WILSON). 

The health risks proposed by the PCB landfill, however, were drastic. Citizen action through the Warren County Citizens Concerned (WCCC) board was initially unsuccessful in their protests against the landfill, prompting the board to commission the help of prominent local civil rights activists, Reverend Luther Brown and Reverend Leon White (Lehmann). The intersection of the environmental movement and the civil rights movement in the Warren County case, “loosened the boundaries between environmental and civil rights cases”(McGurty) and set the precedent that the environmental movement was not just a white space.

In the end, the landfill was built despite the adverse health effects but the Warren County case kicked off a string of action from the Chesapeake Bay pollution clean up, to the Olin Corporation paying for the healthcare of residents they endangered with DDT, to the myriad of policies that were passed. Much of what the EPA did in the 1980s was connected to cleaning up toxic environmental waste that was so frequently the culprit of environmental injustice. Let's get into the policies from 1980-1984.

1980- The Superfund Program 

Picking up on precedence set by The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1975, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 and the Love Canal incident of 1979, Congress passed the Superfund Program in 1980. Officially known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), this program addresses “... the dangers of abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste dumps by developing a nationwide program for: emergency response; information gathering and analysis; liability for responsible parties; and site cleanup” (Superfund History). This emergency response is funded by a trust, or rather, a “superfund” of money that until 1995 was “...financed primarily by taxes on crude oil and certain chemicals, as well as an environmental tax assessed on corporations based upon their taxable income” (Government Accountability Office). This is generally known as a “polluter pays” method and was the main source for the trust until 1995, after which Congress let the tax expire.  From 1996 onward the EPA relied on funding from general taxpayers and the remnants of the polluter pays trust, but the money ran out and by 2003, Superfund clean up projects significantly decreased (Funding the Future of Superfund).

To read this full piece with works cited, check it out on our blog!

Ring Tailed Lemur, Isalo National Park  / Image Courtesy of  Hugh Gabriel

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