Myrna Green

Children to Sue Trump over Climate Change

Children Sue Trump

Children shall inherit….Our future is our children. And this group of children may take that saying to a now reality that will possibly change our poletics as well as our world. This article published in Mother Jones shows hope where daily its hard for us to find hope.

The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration’s effort to stop a climate change lawsuit spearheaded by 21 youth plaintiffs. The plaintiffs, all between 11 and 22 years old, argue that the United States government has violated their constitutional rights by allowing fossil fuel production to continue—despite knowing its effects on the planet.

In a brief order, the high court denied the federal government’s application for a stay, calling it “premature.” The order comes on the heels of a July 20 decision by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that also refused to throw out the lawsuit.

According to a press release from Our Children’s Trust and Earth Guardians, two organizations behind the lawsuit, Juliana v. the United States accuses the federal government of “creating a national energy system that causes climate change, is depriving them of their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property and [failing] to protect essential public trust resources.” Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel of Our Children’s Trust, praised the Supreme Court’s order, saying, “We look forward to presenting the scientific evidence of the harms and dangers these children face as a result of the actions their government has taken to cause the climate crisis.” Read More Here…

Heat Wave Strikes The Arctic, And The Climate Enters The Twilight Zone

By Myrna GreenGlobal Climate Change

The Arctic is getting hot

Almost the entire Northern Hemisphere has been hotter than normal this summer

I noticed today that I really needed more sun screen! The sun was so incredibly strong. I also realized I needed my hat. That brings us to this news item from the Huffington Post. If we don’t get permanent laws in place to try to roll back the damage of carbon we will all be toast very soon.

We pause now in our ongoing coverage of the end of Western democracy for a brief consideration of the end of the world. Along with Robert Frost, we can say that the question of fire versus ice as the agent of destruction has been settled in favor of fire, and we even know where the fire is likely to start: above the Arctic Circle, where an unprecedented heat wave has sent temperatures in the far north of Sweden as high as 86 F. The Washington Post’s climate writer, Jason Samenow, recently reported that the temperature (calculated by extrapolation) in a part of northern Siberia reached 90 degrees earlier this month, 40 degrees above normal. “It is absolutely incredible and really one of the most intense heat events I’ve ever seen for so far north,” wrote meteorologist Nick Humphrey. And after years of increasingly hot, dry summers, the great forests in the far north, all around the globe, are starting to burn.

A forest fire, like virtually all fires, releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating the greenhouse effect that drives global warming. This is especially true of wildfires at high latitudes, where trees grow back slowly, and where there are the additional risks of carbon-dense peat bogs drying and burning, and also of melting permafrost releasing huge quantities of methane. This illustrates one of the perverse facts about climate change, that almost all the feedback effects are positive (in the technical sense of self-reinforcing, not as in “good.”) As one example, global warming melts ice and snow cover, which tends to reflect the sun’s radiation out to space, while bare earth and seawater absorb it.