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A new legal theory suggests that oil companies could be taken to court for every kind of homicide in the United States, short of first-degree murder.
The idea of “climate homicide” is getting attention in law schools and district attorney’s offices around the country. A paper published in Harvard Environmental Law Review last week argues that fossil fuel companies have been “killing members of the public at an accelerating rate.” It says that oil giants’ awareness that their pollution could have lethal consequences solidly fits within the definition of homicide, which, in its basic form, is causing death with a “culpable mental state.” In other words, the case can be made that oil companies knew what they were doing.
“It’s sparking a lot of conversation,” said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel at the advocacy group Public Citizen. After discussing the idea with elected officials and prosecutors, Regunberg said, many of them have moved from “‘Oh, that’s crazy’ to ‘Oh, that makes sense.’”
Starting around the 1970s, oil companies like Exxon understood the dangers that burning fossil fuels would unleash — unprecedented warming that would render parts of the globe “less habitable,” submerge coastal cities, and lead to extensive drought and mass famine. Yet instead of switching away from coal and oil, they doubled down, working to block legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and spreading doubt about the science of climate change. Today, with atmospheric CO2 climbing to levels last seen 14 million years ago, the predicted consequences have begun to arrive. Since the start of the 21st century, climate change has killed roughly 4 million people, according to one conservative estimate.
By 2100, that same number of people could be killed by the effects of climate change every single year, according to the new paper by David Arkush, the director of Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, a law professor at George Washington University. “[T]he scope of the lethality is so vast that, in the annals of crime, it may eventually dwarf all other homicide cases in the United States, combined,” they write.
Criminal law cases are normally brought against individuals, but Regunberg says there’s a strong case for applying it more broadly. “It’s supposed to be about protecting us from dangerous actors that would harm our communities. What if we actually use this system to protect us from dangerous corporate actors that are doing incomprehensible harm?”
Homicide opens up a new flank in the strategy to bring climate change into the courts. Climate litigation is now in its “third wave,” according to Anthony Moffa, a professor at the University of Maine School of Law. The first lawsuits sought to force power companies to limit their emissions by way of federal public nuisance claims, a strategy the Supreme Court shot down in 2011. Then people started suing the U.S. and state governments using the argument that they had a duty to protect their citizens from climate change. The approach bore fruit last year, when young climate activists won a suit against Montana that claimed the state’s failure to evaluate climate risks in approving fossil fuel projects violated their constitutional right to a healthy environment.
That phase also includes a flood of climate lawsuits filed against oil companies in state courts using laws meant to protect people from deceptive advertising, and those cases are finally moving closer to trial after years of delays. Now the strategy has expanded to include racketeering lawsuits, which use the laws that took down the Mafia against Big Oil, and potentially criminal law cases including homicide or reckless endangerment.
Arkush and Braman’s paper suggests that all types of homicide are on the table except for first-degree murder, which requires premeditated intent. One option is “involuntary manslaughter,” or engaging in reckless conduct that causes death, even if it’s unintentional. “Negligent homicide” is similar, but for neglectful behavior. There’s also “depraved heart murder,” which requires engaging in conduct where you knew there was a substantial risk someone would be killed. Other variants include “felony murder” and “misdemeanor manslaughter.” Criminal law differs between states, so an attorney general or district attorney’s approach would depend on the jurisdiction.
Homicide suits could be a powerful force for holding oil companies accountable and forcing them to change their polluting ways. “Where tort law merely prices harmful conduct, criminal law prohibits it — and provides tools to stop it,” Arkush and Braman wrote in the Harvard Environmental Law Review paper. A successful lawsuit could result in courts requiring fossil fuel companies to restructure as “public benefit corporations” that have to balance profits with a commitment to the public good, replace their boards with new members, or make legally binding commitments to forgo certain practices.
To promote the idea of “climate homicide,” Public Citizen has been organizing panel discussions in recent weeks at law schools including Yale, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and the University of Chicago. Another panel will be held at Vermont Law School on Monday. Public Citizen is also looking into staging mock trials to see how jurors might react to these kinds of cases and what evidence they find compelling.
“There are a number of prosecutorial offices that seem interested in giving these legal theories serious consideration,” Regunberg said. “They understand that climate disasters — extreme heat, wildfires, floods, and more — are endangering their communities, and if there’s a way to stop criminally reckless conduct that’s contributing to these threats, they’re going to explore that possibility.”
The idea has been embraced by Sharon Eubanks, who led the United States’ racketeering lawsuit against tobacco companies in 2005, in which the court found that companies had conspired to deceive the public by covering up the health dangers of smoking. “There were a lot of people who said we were crazy to charge big tobacco with racketeering and that we could never win,” Eubanks told The Guardian. “But you know what? We did win. I think we need that same kind of thinking to deal with the climate crisis.”
So why has no one seriously considered suing oil companies for homicide until now? Recent years have brought advances in the science that connects climate change to extreme weather events and quantifies how corporate emissions have fueled disasters like wildfires, paving the way for these types of cases. Still, the need to include attribution science adds a layer of complexity that hasn’t been present for similar litigation against tobacco or opioid companies, according to Moffa.
And then there’s the fact that prosecutors are reluctant to take corporations to court with criminal law charges. The first time that a corporation was charged under a criminal statute for manslaughter was in 1904, when a steamship owner was found guilty after its ship caught fire and 900 passengers drowned, but the legal strategy never really took off. “So then to say, ‘Why haven’t they ever done this in the environmental law?’ They haven’t really done it in almost any context,” Moffa said.
In their paper, Arkush and Braman argued that fossil fuel companies have been acting as if they were above the law. “Under a plain reading of the law in jurisdictions across the United States, they are committing mass homicide,” they conclude. “Prosecutors should act accordingly.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Taking Big Oil to court for ‘climate homicide’ isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds on Apr 19, 2024.
The reality of climate change came home for Dr. Samantha Ahdoot one summer day in 2011 when her son was 9 years old.
An assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Ahdoot and her family were living in Alexandria, when there was a heat wave. Morning temperatures hovered in the high 80s, and her son had to walk up a steep hill to get to his day camp.
About an hour after he left for camp, she received a call from a nearby emergency room. Her son had collapsed from the heat and needed IV fluids to recover.
“It was after that event that I realized that I had to do something,” she said. “That, as a pediatrician and a mother, this was something that I had to learn about and get involved in.”
Dr. Ahdoot made good on that vow. She is the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ newly updated policy statement on climate change, which appeared earlier this year. The statement urges pediatricians to talk about climate change to their patients. But research suggests that’s not happening very much yet, and there are practical barriers in the way.
Back in 2007, the AAP was the first national physicians’ group to make a public statement about climate change. The updated statement covers the growing research on the many ways climate disproportionately affects children in particular. Heat raises the risk of preterm birth; infants are among the most likely to die in heat waves. Because their bodies cool themselves less efficiently than adults, children remain more susceptible to heat-related illness as they grow. Children breathe more air per pound of body weight, making them up to 10 times more affected by toxins in wildfire smoke. Excess heat hurts children’s performance in school, especially low-income children with less access to air conditioning. And research suggests that teens and youth are feeling more climate anxiety than older adults.
The new policy statement’s number one recommendation is that its members “incorporate climate change counseling into clinical practice.” This may seem like a tall order, considering the average pediatrician visit is 15 minutes. A 2021 study found that 80 percent of parents agreed that the impact of global warming on their child’s health should be discussed during their routine visits. But, only 4 percent said that it had actually happened in the past year.
“How do you talk about climate change in a visit where you have to talk about X, Y, Z, do all the vaccines, answer every concern?” said Dr. Charles Moon, chief resident at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York. A member of the AAP Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change, he has been working to build a curriculum at his hospital to start teaching pediatricians and other doctors about this.
“I don’t think we have all the answers to that yet,” he said. “I do a lot of work teaching other pediatricians, and it requires a little bit of a mindset shift.”
Dr. Moon sees patients in the South Bronx, nicknamed “Asthma Alley” for its air pollution. Part of his challenge is putting environmental threats in perspective for families who face many different obstacles in their lives, in a way that doesn’t lead to despair or disempowerment.
Or, as he put it: “If you can’t put food on the table, who wants to hear about climate change?”
In Oakland, California, Dr. Cierra Gromoff has a lot of experience with families on Medicaid, and she says the pressure on them and their healthcare providers is real. “There are these already incredibly marginalized groups of kids facing other insurmountable things,” she said. “These providers have so little time, they have to focus on the biggest burning fire — whatever systemic problem is going on.”
A clinical child psychologist, Gromoff has been concerned about the environment since her childhood as an Alaskan Native in the remote Aleutian Islands. She thinks that to overcome these obstacles, state and federal insurance providers should require or reward doctors for taking the time to include environmental health in their assessments.
She is the co-founder of a telehealth startup, Kismet Health, which is building a tool that could show local environmental threats that are indexed to a patient’s home or school address.
The tool could help doctors recognize climate risks, by showing if a patient lives near a green space, an urban heat island, or a polluting chemical plant.
Gromoff said she would like to see free resources that pediatricians can give families on everything from the signs of heatstroke in a baby to eco-anxiety.
“We should have a screening question,” she said. “‘Are you worried about what’s happening to our earth?’ And if they say yes, we should be able to provide some type of handout: What you’re feeling is real. These are small steps you can take.”
The good news, say Moon and Ahdoot, is that interest in the topic is picking up in the medical community. Over half of medical schools are covering climate change in the curriculum, a number that’s more than doubled since 2019. And there are state research consortiums on climate and health in 24 states, Ahdoot said. The American Academy of Pediatrics has been creating continuing education materials on the topic as well.
Incorporating climate change into clinical practice is not about adding another item to an already long checklist, Ahdoot said. It’s also not about transforming pediatricians into activists, or talking about factors that families can’t do anything about.
“Pediatricians never want to be proselytizing,” she added. “It always has to be valuable to the individual patient.”
The goal of the new climate policy for pediatricians is to help doctors translate their climate knowledge into solutions and helpful advice for their patients. A few examples from Ahdoot include: running a test for Lyme disease for patients in Maine, which used to be too cold for ticks; beginning allergy medication in February because pollen arrives earlier in the year; or teaching athletes the warning signs for heat exhaustion.
For Ahdoot, it’s also important to be aware of how climate affects a child’s mental health. Part of the answer, she said, is talking about actions that families can take that benefit both people’s health and the planet, like eating more plant-based diets, and walking or biking instead of driving.
“What’s good for climate,” she said, “is generally good for kids.”
This story has been updated.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Pediatricians say climate conversations should be part of any doctor’s visit on Apr 19, 2024.
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN.
In December, Catherine Murupaenga-Ikenn used a power tool to erase the words on a museum display of the Treaty of Waitangi, an 1840 document that asserted British sovereignty over Aotearoa, also known as New Zealand.
For years, many Māori, like Murupaenga-Ikenn, had criticized their national museum for displaying the English-language agreement that their ancestors did not endorse, wrongly suggesting the Māori people had agreed to relinquish their sovereignty. Activists had spent years waiting for the museum to change the display; when nothing happened, they took matters into their own hands. Her case is now in court.
Murupaenga-Ikenn is now in New York City this week, attending the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the largest annual global gathering of Indigenous advocates and leaders. There, she spoke on the United Nations General Assembly floor on Wednesday, drawing a connection between the disillusionment her people feel with their state government and the frustration Indigenous people feel with the United Nations as a whole.
A decade ago, global leaders stood in that same room and agreed to respect and promote the rights of Indigenous peoples. At the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples in 2014, they negotiated a 40-paragraph agreement — known as an outcome document — loaded with promises like providing equal access to health care for Native peoples; respecting their contributions to ecosystem management; and working with Indigenous peoples to address the effects of extractive industries. To date, little has been accomplished, and now many like Murupaenga-Ikenn want the United Nations to urgently course-correct.
“Ten years on from the adoption of the outcome document, what I see is the U.N. is suffering a crisis of Indigenous peoples’ mistrust,” Murupaenga-Ikenn said.
Wednesday’s meeting, where Murupaenga-Ikenn spoke, was particularly important because it featured Dennis Francis, the president of the General Assembly, a high-ranking official of the United Nations, second only to the secretary-general, António Guterres.
But unlike the conference in 2014, this conversation focused heavily on the climate crisis. The original outcome document features the phrase “climate change” only once.
“It is thanks to Indigenous peoples, as guardians as 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity, that the sophisticated traditional knowledge and practices they employ, that we have seen gains in the conservation and sustainable use of our increasingly threatened biodiversity,” Francis said in his remarks to attendees. “We must harness the potential of Indigenous knowledge and innovations to mitigate the effects of climate change.”
A decade ago, the world hadn’t yet experienced month after month of record-shattering heat. Global leaders hadn’t met in Paris to sign international agreements to prevent catastrophic warming. Far fewer people drove electric cars and relied upon renewable energy. The European Union and the U.S. had yet to sign their landmark climate laws.
Now, the United Nations’ weather agency is warning that the world is close to surpassing 1.5 degrees of warming. Scientists are proving that climate change is already exacerbating extreme weather events like heavy rainfall. And leaders say now is more important than ever for U.N. member states to take seriously both the concerns of Indigenous peoples and the potential for their traditional knowledge and practices to provide much-needed solutions.
“So many brothers and sisters have come to this meeting year after year to call to humanity, to states, to multinationals, to ask them to comply with these agreements,” said Leonidas Iza Salazar, a Kichwa-Panzaleo activist from Ecuador, who spoke on behalf of Central and South America and the Caribbean region at Wednesday’s meeting.
In the 2014 outcome document, such promises include recognizing Indigenous peoples’ knowledge when creating national climate change response plans and protecting Indigenous rights, which include “free, prior and informed consent” to projects on their land. This would mean giving Indigenous peoples the opportunity to agree to energy developments like pipelines and lithium mining on their land before such projects are underway.
“However after 10 years of having established these mechanisms and having this declaration, the states — rather than creating conditions to meet the commitments they have made to the Indigenous peoples of the world — they have forged ahead with economic policies, mining, extraction, despoiling Mother Earth without limits,” Salazar said. “All of that has brought with that terrible consequences.”
Throughout Wednesday’s meeting, Indigenous peoples took turns sharing their frustration and disappointment with the lack of follow through from state governments, whose officials intermittently stood up to describe their progress and restate their commitments to Native peoples and nations.
Some state governments were more willing to embrace reform than others: A representative from Colombia said the country would support enhanced participation of Indigenous peoples in the U.N. system through the creation of a separate status for them. Right now, Indigenous nations are lumped in with non-governmental organizations in the U.N. system like advocacy groups, and can’t serve on key committees where important conversations happen between U.N. member states.
Many Indigenous advocates spoke up about the need for such enhanced participation in United Nations processes, which states promised to consider in the outcome document. Indigenous peoples’ status at the U.N. still hasn’t changed in the last decade.
Ghazali Ohorella, an Alifuru Indigenous rights advocate from the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, spoke on behalf of the Pacific region and was one of several advocates who urged Francis, president of the General Assembly, to schedule a high-level meeting in 2027 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the signing of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Those meetings, Ohorella said, are a key part of Indigenous advocates’ efforts to hold states accountable for their promises. And while there’s no way to actually hold states accountable, a major event can help Indigenous advocates shine a light on failures, highlight any successes and ensure their concerns are not forgotten.
“The thing is, with Indigenous peoples, because we’re like a mighty mouse fighting an 800-pound gorilla, you need to keep the pressure on,” Ohorella said. “What we’re here to do is definitely to challenge the status quo and make sure that we’re not just participating in the system, we’re changing it.”
That optimism resonates with Murupaenga-Ikenn from Aotearoa. Murupaenga-Ikenn used to attend the Permanent Forum frequently but then got disillusioned by the lack of progress and stopped attending.
But recently she decided it was time to come back. A new right-wing government elected last fall in Aotearoa pledged to roll back many of the progressive Indigenous policies that Māori peoples spent decades fighting for. Already, the new government abolished the Māori health agency, despite entrenched health disparities, is minimizing the use of the Māori language, and exploring how to withdraw the country’s support of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Thousands have taken to the streets to protest the changes.
Murupaenga-Ikenn feels like this is the time to speak out again, and to find allies internationally. Yet halfway through the first week of the Permanent Forum, she’s already frustrated with how repetitive the gathering has been as Indigenous advocates ask state governments over and over to respect their rights.
“You just want to keep on doing this for another 100 years?” she said. “Good on you, but not me. And certainly not our young people. Because there will be nothing left, nothing left to salvage if we keep on doing this, and only this.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline At UN conference, Indigenous peoples say little has changed after promises made a decade ago on Apr 19, 2024.
By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes and Olivia Rosane
This year marks the 54th year of Earth Day! What better way to celebrate than to explore opportunities to join others in helping combat the climate crisis and make our planet cleaner, greener and more sustainable? Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
EARTHDAY.ORG, a global environmental group that grew out of the first Earth Day in 1970, has announced that the official theme of Earth Day 2024 is Planet vs. Plastics. The organization hopes to mobilize its worldwide network to demand a 60 percent cut in plastic production by 2040, with a view toward eliminating the toxic petroleum products entirely.
“The word environment means what surrounds you. Now plastics do more than surround us; we have become the product itself — it flows through our blood stream, adheres to our internal organs, and carries with it heavy metals known to cause cancer and disease. Now this once-thought amazing and useful product has become something else, and our health and that of all other living creatures hangs in the balance,” EARTHDAY.ORG President Kathleen Rogers said in the press release announcing the theme. “The Planet vs. Plastics campaign is a call to arms, a demand that we act now to end the scourge of plastics and safeguard the health of every living being upon our planet.”
To help anyone join the campaign, EARTHDAY.ORG has published an Earth Day 2024 Action Toolkit that includes a petition for an ambitious Global Plastics Treaty, resources to learn about the relationship between plastic pollution and fast fashion and advocate for a sustainable clothing industry and an invitation to take the #PlasticDetox Challenge on social media and reduce your reliance on single-use plastics.
You can also either search for or create your own Earth Day event or tackle plastic pollution directly by organizing or joining a Great Global Cleanup near you. If you want to go even deeper, you can sign up to Dive for Earth Day and remove trash from vulnerable ocean ecosystems like coral reefs or marine protected areas.
Earth Day 2024 follows closely on the first 12-month period on record in which global temperatures breached 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. While some of this heat likely comes from an ongoing El Niño event, it’s exacerbated by global heating caused chiefly by the burning of fossil fuels. Several youth climate organizations including Sunrise Movement, Fridays For Future US and the Campus Climate Network are using Earth Day as a chance to pressure President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.
“Congress grants the president various national defense powers that can be deployed during times of genuine emergency,” the groups explain in a petition. “Since the National Emergencies Act was enacted in 1976, every president has declared at least one national emergency during their term of office. By declaring a national climate emergency, Biden can unlock these emergency executive powers to aggressively combat the crisis.”
Declaring a climate emergency would allow Biden to take steps including pausing oil exports and oil and gas drilling, using the Defense Production Act to bolster renewable energy installations and create green jobs and provide free healthcare and housing to people impacted by extreme weather events.
To add your voice to their call, you can sign the petition to Biden; join the Global Climate Strike on Friday, April 19; or sign up for a Sunrise Movement Earth Day teach-in taking place from April 19 to 23. If you’re a university student, you can also attend a Reclaim Earth Day protest calling on schools to divest from fossil fuels, sever any connections with the fossil fuel industry and eliminate their greenhouse gas emissions.
If you find yourself in Washington, DC this Earth Day weekend, the Earth Day DC 2024 Concert to End Fossil Fuels will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 20, at the National Mall.
“This Earth Day weekend we are coming together to continue the fight to End the Era of Fossil Fuels! Communities around the globe are plagued by severe storms and weather events, and politicians have been ignoring the scientific warnings for decades,” Action Network said in its press release on the event. “But we have the solutions. We know that we need an immediate just transition to renewable energy. We’re fighting back against green washing and false solutions that fail to address the root cause of the climate crisis. We demand that giant fossil fuel companies be held accountable and pay for the harm they have caused. Our future lies in the will to pass bold policies and make systemic change.”
The concert will feature local bands, artwork and speeches from community and youth activists.
“We are gathering this Earth Day weekend with music and art to continue this fight, to strengthen our movement and hear from youth voices. We will also be hearing from youth in the constitutional climate lawsuits around the country, such as Juliana vs. Gov and Held vs. Montana as part of Our Children’s Trust!”
What better way to celebrate Earth Day than to get your groove on in the nation’s capital while being inspired by others at the forefront of the climate fight.
Another opportunity for community connection is the Earth Day 2024 Virtual Stage, presented by Earth Day Initiative and March for Science New York City. Programming begins at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Earth Day itself.
This online collaboration features activists, filmmakers, artists, authors, actors and podcasters engaged in conversation about climate action, environmental justice and green living.
Some of the presenters scheduled to grace the Earth Day 2024 Virtual Stage include:
Past segments of the virtual stage can be viewed here.
Whatever you choose to do to celebrate our planet this Earth Day, we hope it includes time in the outdoors, inspiration and community!
The post From Cleanups to Concerts, EcoWatch’s Guide to Earth Day 2024 appeared first on EcoWatch.
Climate change damage worldwide will cost approximately $38 trillion annually by 2050, according to a new study by Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
The impacts will be felt all over the world, but will most affect countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis.
“Our study highlights the considerable inequity of climate impacts: We find damages almost everywhere, but countries in the tropics will suffer the most because they are already warmer. Further temperature increases will therefore be most harmful there. The countries least responsible for climate change are predicted to suffer income loss that is 60% greater than the higher-income countries and 40% greater than higher-emission countries. They are also the ones with the least resources to adapt to its impacts,” said co-author of the study Anders Levermann, PIK’s head of research department complexity science, in a press release from PIK.
The study, “The economic commitment of climate change,” was published in the journal Nature.
“Our analysis shows that climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, also in highly-developed ones such as Germany and the U.S., with a projected median income reduction of 11% each and France with 13%,” said study co-author Leonie Wenz, a PIK climate scientist and economist, as The Associated Press reported.
The severity of the impacts will almost definitely increase as humans continue to burn fossil fuels, reported Reuters.
“These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions. We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them. And we have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately – if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60% on global average by 2100. This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering non-economic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity,” Wenz said in the press release.
The research team used empirical models along with climate simulations and also examined the persistence of climate impact effects on the past economy. In assessing how changing climatic conditions would affect future economic growth, the researchers looked at 40 years worth of data from more than 1,600 regions across the world.
“Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected. These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labour productivity or infrastructure,” said Maximilian Kotz, a PIK climate scientist and first author of the study, in the press release.
The range of economic damages is estimated to be from $19 to 59 trillion by mid-century. The cause will mainly be rising temperatures, with additional impacts from rainfall changes and variations in temperature. Additional weather extremes like wildfires and storms could also increase the economic costs.
“[W]e find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices,” the researchers wrote in the study. “These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2°C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices.”
Levermann emphasized the need for a rapid shift away from fossil fuels.
“It is on us to decide: structural change towards a renewable energy system is needed for our security and will save us money. Staying on the path we are currently on will lead to catastrophic consequences. The temperature of the planet can only be stabilized if we stop burning oil, gas and coal,” Levermann said in the press release.
Wenz said the extent of the inequity of the impacts was unexpected.
“It’s devastating,” Wenz said, as The Guardian reported. “I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking.”
The post Climate Damage Costs Could Total $38 Trillion per Year by 2050, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.
A new report from Consumer Reports has found pesticide residue at levels that posed significant risks on about 20% of the foods analyzed. Among the foods with the highest risks are popular produce like strawberries, green beans and potatoes.
Consumer Reports evaluated 59 common produce items using seven years’ worth of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pesticide Data Program (PDP) to compile the nonprofit organization’s most comprehensive study on pesticides in food.
Of the nearly 30,000 samples from 59 types of fruits and vegetables analyzed, about 20% were found to have significant risks from pesticides. Green beans, one of the produce types identified with the most significant risks, even had residues from a pesticide, acephate, and one of its breakdown products, methamidophos, both of which have been banned from use on vegetables for at least 10 years, Consumer Reports noted.
“When you grab a handful of green beans at the supermarket or pick out a watermelon, your chance of getting one with risky pesticide levels may be relatively low,” James Rogers, food safety expert at Consumer Reports, said in a statement. “But if you do, you could get a much higher dose than you should, and if you eat the food often, the chances increase.”
Risks from pesticides weren’t just found in fresh produce — the analysis revealed risks for frozen, canned and even organic produce, The Guardian reported.
Bell peppers, blueberries, potatoes, strawberries, collard greens, celery and green beans were all found with very high risks from pesticides, although risk level varied by fresh or frozen produce, conventional or organic, and whether the produce was grown in the U.S. or imported. For instance, U.S.-grown conventional celery and collard greens revealed moderate risks, but imported varieties came with very high risks; organic versions of these two vegetables posed very low risks.
Many of these findings align with the popular Dirty Dozen list for 2024 by Environmental Working Group, which has named produce such as strawberries, collard greens and green beans as the produce with the most pesticide contamination.
Other produce, including apples, peaches, grapes, spinach and tomatoes, revealed a moderate risk in the Consumer Reports study; apples, grapes, spinach and peaches are all named in the Dirty Dozen 2024 list.
So what do the risk levels mean? Consumer Reports based risk levels on chronic toxicity of pesticides as well as the amount of produce a 35-pound child could safely consume per day. According to Consumer Reports, most people should limit consumption of foods ranked with very high risks, and children and pregnant people should eat less than half of a serving a day of the very high risk foods. Further, the organization recommended that children and pregnant people consume less than one serving per day for high-risk produce.
“When possible, replace a food rated high or very high with a lower-risk one, or choose organic. Keep in mind that the risk comes from repeated servings over time,” wrote Catherine Roberts, associate editor of health at Consumer Reports. “If you usually choose produce with the best ratings, you can reduce the chance of future harm.”
The report also noted that while about 20% of the foods analyzed posed risks from pesticides, most of the popular produce we consume had low risks, especially for organic varieties. These lower-risk foods can be consumed at three or more servings per day safely, according to the report.
Further, the analysis reveals that many of the higher risks come from only a small group of pesticides, which could help inform government policy on pesticide regulations in the future.
The post 20% of Common Produce Contains ‘Risky Pesticide Levels’: Consumer Reports Study appeared first on EcoWatch.
This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN.
When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For years, the Tanzanian government has systematically attacked Maasai communities, imprisoning Maasai leaders and land defenders on trumped-up charges, confiscating livestock, using lethal violence, and claiming that the Maasai’s pastoralist lifestyle is causing environmental degradation—a lifestyle that has shaped and sustained the land that the Maasai have lived on for centuries. This rise in criminalization, especially in the face of mining, development, and conservation is being noted in Indigenous communities around the world and was the key focus of a report released this week at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, the largest gathering of Indigenous activists, policymakers, and leaders in the world.
“It’s a very serious concern because the Indigenous people who have been resisting the taking over of their lands and territories, they are the ones who most commonly face these charges and criminalization,” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples told a packed panel on the topic on Tuesday. “There is a need to focus on criminalization because this is what brings fear to Indigenous communities and it is also what curtails them in their capacity to assert their right to self-determination.”
The report “Criminalization of Indigenous Peoples’ human rights” lays out the mechanisms by which Indigenous Peoples around the world are increasingly facing criminalization and violations of their rights with impunity. Indigenous land, subsistence and governance rights are often poorly implemented if at all, leading to violations when they intersect with government and third party interests, especially in extractive industries and conservation. In addition to historical discrimination, a lack of access to justice for Indigenous rights holders—including environmental and human rights defenders, journalists, and communities—leads to higher rates of arrests and incarcerations. The report provides recommendations for UN bodies, states, and other relevant actors to better address this growing threat.
The use of criminal law to punish and dissuade people from protesting or speaking out is typically the way people understand criminalization, said Fergus Mackay, a Senior Legal Counsel and Policy Advisor to Indigenous Peoples Rights International, an organization that works to protect Indigenous Peoples rights defenders. But the bulk of criminalization Indigenous Peoples face actually stems from the inadequate recognition or non-recognition of their rights by governments. “The lack of recognition of Indigenous rights in national legal frameworks is at the heart of this issue,” Mackay said.
This is especially prevalent when those rights intersect with public or protected lands, or areas that overlap with extractive interests, conservation, or climate mitigation measures. For example in Canada, First Nations Fishermen are being arrested and harassed by federal fisheries officers for fishing–rights protected by treaty. In the Democratic republic of the Congo, Baka Indigenous peoples have been beaten, imprisoned, and prevented from using their customary forest by eco guards hired to protect wildlife. A 2018 study estimated that more than a quarter million Indigenous peoples have been evicted due to carbon-offset schemes, tourism, and other activities that lead to the creation of protected areas.
“The criminalization of Indigenous People could also be considered the criminalization of the exercise of practicing Indigenous rights,” said Naw Ei Ei Min, a member of Myanmar’s Indigenous Karen peoples and an expert UNPFII member at Tuesday’s panel.
Defamation and smear campaigns through social media are often used in the lead-up to false criminal charges, especially when Indigenous peoples speak up against government-supported private companies investing in large-scale projects on their traditional lands, said Tauli-Corpuz. Berta Cárceres, the renowned Indigenous Lenca environmental defender who opposed the development of the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras, had previously been detained on fabricated allegations of usurpation of land, coercion and possession of an illegal firearm before she was killed in 2016. Tauli-Corpuz, the former Special Rapporteur, along with around 30 other Indigenous leaders, was herself placed on a terrorist list in 2018 by the Philippine government, a move that was criticized harshly by the UN.
Criminalization comes with serious consequences. In 2021, of the 200 land and environmental defenders killed worldwide, more than 40 per cent were Indigenous. According to Indigenous Peoples Rights International, an organization founded in part to address the growing concern over criminalization of Indigenous Peoples, despite representing only 6% of the global population, Indigenous defenders suffered nearly 20% of attacks between 2015 and 2022 and were much more likely to experience violent attacks.
The UN report also pointed to the high rates of incarceration of Indigenous People, and their disproportionate risk of arrest. In Canada, dozens of members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, who have long protested the creation of the Coastal GasLink pipeline that will cross their unceded territory, have been arrested and await trial in Canada. That trial is currently on hold because of allegations of excessive force and harassment of the police.
In countries like New Zealand and Australia, Indigenous peoples are already massively overrepresented in prisons. In Australia, despite making up only 3% of the population, Aboriginal Australians make up almost 30% of the incarcerated population. “This really speaks about the racism and discrimination that exists, which is the foundation for filing the criminalization cases against them,” said Tauli-Corpuz.
Indigenous journalists were included in this year’s report as being increasingly at risk of criminalization. In 2020 Anastasia Mejía Tiriquiz, a Guatemalan Kʼicheʼ Mayan journalist was arrested and charged with sedition after reporting on a protest against the municipal government. And just this year, Brandi Morin, an award-winning Cree/Iroquois/French journalist from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta was arrested while covering an Indigenous-led homeless encampment in Edmonton.
Indigenous Peoples are also affected by the growing use of criminal law to deter free speech and protests. Since the Indigenous-led protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock reservation in 2016 lawmakers in two dozen states in the US have taken up bills that ratchet up penalties for pipeline protesters. Globally, laws targeting everything from anti-terrorism, national security, and free speech only add to the ability for states to lay criminal charges on Indigenous activists.
Olnar Ortiz Bolívar, an Indigenous Baré lawyer from Venezuela who works to defend the rights of Indigenous communities, has been the target of both physical violence and harassment for his work in the Amazon, an area where illegal miners, criminal organizations, and the government are competing for control of resources, especially gold. He has been an outspoken critic of the Government-designated mining area in southern Venezuela known as the Orinoco Mining Arc. Now he fears that a new bill introduced by the Maduro regime into congress, that effectively turns dissent against the government and protesting into a criminal act, will severely affect his ability to continue to speak out against such projects.
“It’s a contradiction because we have rights in theory, but we don’t have the right to practice those,” he said. “What they are doing is taking away the freedom of expression of Venezuelans and, evidently, of the Indigenous People, who are increasingly vulnerable.”
As countries attempt to reach their goals of protecting 30% of their lands and waters by 2030 along with growing demand for transition minerals, criminalization of Indigenous Peoples is likely to grow, say experts. A survey of more than 5000 existing “energy transition mineral” projects found that more than half were located on or near Indigenous Peoples’ lands; for unmined deposits, that figure was much higher.
The report set forth a series of recommendations to counteract criminalization, emphasizing the importance of revising national laws, improving measures to protect Indigenous human rights defenders and access to justice, and promoting efforts to prevent, reverse and remedy criminalization and its consequences.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN puts spotlight on attacks against Indigenous land defenders on Apr 18, 2024.
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