| |  | | Brought to you by USATODAY.com | | Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. Lots of bad news (again) this week, so let's start with something positive: Karen Chávez at the Asheville Citizen-Times profiled 33-year-old Daniel White, aka the "Blackalachian," who grew up in a historically black neighborhood and had never spent much time outdoors - until he decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail on his own. Now he's working to introduce children of color, and their parents, to the outdoors. | | My name is Sammy Roth, and I'm a reporter based in Southern California. Here are some other things you might want to know: | MUST-READ STORIES: | | Don't dismiss the dangers of extreme heat: Much of the western U.S. is sweltering right now, in the kind of heat wave that climate change is making more likely. We're all feeling it, but the people most at risk are outdoor workers. The Arizona Republic published a powerful story about the construction workers, air-conditioner technicians, minor league baseball players and others whose jobs require them to keep working in extreme heat, and what they do to stay safe. In a related (and upsetting) story, a new study finds rising temperatures could lead to tens of thousands of additional suicides in the U.S. and Mexico in the coming decades, as USA TODAY's Doyle Rice reports. |  | | Rising temperatures are even more dangerous in the developing world: As bad as the impacts of climate change may be here in the United States, they're almost certain to be far worse in less-affluent countries, which don't have the same resources for helping people survive dangerous conditions. Take Pakistan, which emits less than 1 percent of planet-warming gases globally but is likely to suffer some of the worst consequences of climate change, as Abdul Salam reports for USA TODAY. Pakistan just experienced the hottest April day ever recorded anywhere on Earth. And more than 60 people have already died from extreme heat in the country's capital, Karachi, this year. | EMISSIONS AND IMPACTS: | | Wildfire scars don't just go away: In addition to heat, the other climate-related topic that's big in the news this week is fire. Wildfires are raging outside Yosemite National Park, across Oregon, inside the Arctic Circle, in Greece, and here in the mountains bordering Palm Springs, California , where a fire is spewing smoke over the Coachella Valley. And these are more than temporary disasters. The ecological impacts are long-lasting, as are the human impacts. The Ventura County Star's Cheri Carlson has been following the story of a woman whose home was destroyed in last year's Thomas Fire in Southern California. Her life is still dominated by the struggle to find a new home. | | Food waste is a climate change story: If it sometimes seems like everything is either causing climate change or being caused by climate change...well, that's not quite true. But truly, climate stories are everywhere. Take food waste. James M. O'Neill wrote a powerful story for NorthJersey.com about the absurd amounts of food Americans waste every day , and this quote stood out to me: "If you look at food waste globally, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and China." So when you're thinking about driving less or eating less meet to reduce your climate impact...maybe also think about saving your leftover food, or buying less to begin with. | POLITICAL CLIMATE: | | It's make-or-break time for the Endangered Species Act: With midterm elections on the horizon and various prognosticators suggesting the Democrats could take back the House of Representatives, Republicans are getting serious about one of their top priorities: overhauling the Endangered Species Act, which they've long argued is too economically burdensome. Congressional Republicans are introducing all sorts of bills to strip protections from certain species and preemptively block protections for others, as Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman report for the New York Times. The Interior Department has also proposed "the most sweeping set of changes in decades" to the act, as Friedman, Kendra Pierre-Louis and Livia Albeck-Ripka report for the Times. | | A surprise appearance from Ryan Zinke: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke made an unannounced visit to my neck of the woods, visiting Mojave National Preserve (at least if his Twitter account is to be believed). I had heard Zinke might be coming and asked the Interior Department press office to confirm; alas, they did not reply. The department later told a reporter there was "no press component" to Zinke's visit. It's a shame, because I would have loved to ask the secretary about this report from the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin , about how Zinke and his aides dismissed evidence of the benefits of national monuments during their monuments review last year, and instead "tailored their survey of protected sites to emphasize the value of logging, ranching and energy development that would be unlocked if they were not designated national monuments." |  | AND ANOTHER THING: | | OK, let's end with something inspiring. | | USA TODAY's Trevor Hughes wrote a beautiful story about dark skies - where we can find them, why they matter to our health and well-being, and what we can do to reduce the light pollution that hides the stars from our eyes. Amid the turmoil of the daily news cycle, it's comforting to remember that in some special places, the night sky is alive - that the rest of the universe is still out there, and if we want to, we can go see it. | | That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me on Twitter @Sammy_Roth. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox here. |  | |
Invite others to enjoy Climate Point newsletter.
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment