• Dans les Alpes, une « vision apocalyptique » du changement climatique

    Dans le massif du #Mont-Blanc, les #glaciers reculent à marche forcée, les écroulements de parois rocheuses se multiplient, l’#enneigement se réduit et la faune et la flore sont déboussolées.

    https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2021/02/01/dans-les-alpes-une-vision-apocalyptique-du-changement-climatique_6068319_324
    #changement_climatique #climat #Alpes #montagne #apocalypse

  • The Big Thaw: How Russia Could Dominate a Warming World — ProPublica
    https://www.propublica.org/article/the-big-thaw-how-russia-could-dominate-a-warming-world

    no country may be better positioned to capitalize on climate change than Russia. Russia has the largest land mass by far of any northern nation. It is positioned farther north than all of its South Asian neighbors, which collectively are home to the largest global population fending off displacement from rising seas, drought and an overheating climate. Like Canada, Russia is rich in resources and land, with room to grow. Its crop production is expected to be boosted by warming temperatures over the coming decades

    (...) Draw a line around the planet at the latitude of the northern borders of the United States and China, and just about every place south, across five continents, stands to lose out. Productivity, Burke found, peaks at about 55 [F] degrees average temperature and then drops as the climate warms. He projects that by 2100, the national per capita income in the United States might be a third less than it would be in a nonwarming world; India’s would be nearly 92% less; and China’s future growth would be cut short by nearly half. The mirror image, meanwhile, tells a different story: Incredible growth could await those places soon to enter their prime. Canada, Scandinavia, Iceland and Russia each could see as much as fivefold bursts in their per capita gross domestic products by the end of the century so long as they have enough people to power their economies at that level.

  • Debunking myths around the displacement-climate change connection

    Misconceptions about the link between climate change and displacement can hamper humanitarian assistance efforts and protection of people affected by disasters, the head of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said Tuesday.

    IDMC director Alexandra Bilak said her organization has become increasingly concerned about misperceptions around the climate change-displacement narrative, which she said is fueled by “sensationalist” media reports.

    “Increasingly, the different factors driving slow onset environmental as well as social change become difficult to disentangle one from another,” Bilak said during a virtual event Tuesday. “The interaction of social, political, environmental, and economic factors means that climate change must be understood as just one factor in a complex system that generates and perpetuates displacement risk.”

    Too often, she said, the press takes data and figures from studies and reports out of context, oversimplifying what such numbers mean. The domination of these false narratives creates misinformation about the true causes of the challenge, she said, and therefore undermines dialogue about solutions that can be pursued by policymakers.

    “I’m always uncomfortable when I see climate activists making the claim that climate change will displace zillions of people who will become climate refugees, because that claim is just not based in science.”
    — François Gemenne, director of the Hugo Observatory, lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

    There is also too often a perception that displacement caused by disasters are easier to resolve than displacement caused by conflict.

    “The assumption that most people can return, can rebuild their home, and can recover soon after a disaster has struck means that some displaced people may drop off the radar and they will then miss out on some critically important assistance that is needed not just in the immediate aftermath of a disaster but also very much over the longer term,” Bilak said.

    There were more than 50.8 million people internally displaced around the world at the end of 2019, according to IDMC. There were nearly 25 million new displacements from disasters, while there were 8.5 million caused by conflict. Afghanistan, India, and Ethiopia had the largest total numbers of people internally displaced by disasters at the end of 2019, while Syria, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo had the largest total numbers internally displaced by conflict and violence.

    IDMC has tracked disaster displacement for 12 years, and Bilak said its evidence shows that displacement is generally not short-lived — but can be avoided.

    People tend to think of disasters as “inevitable,” she said, which gives the impression that displacement is natural and acceptable. This keeps the focus on preparedness and humanitarian assistance, Bilak said, rather than addressing structural, longer-term disaster risk reduction and sustainable development.

    This is particularly true when it comes to the myth of mass displacement caused by climate change to Europe or other Western countries, Bilak said. Centering the narrative on impact felt by wealthy receiving countries that have shown a tendency to close down their borders prevents any conversation about solutions and long-term resilience building. It also ignores the fact that the vast majority of people affected by climate or environmental events end up internally displaced rather than in another country.

    François Gemenne, director of the Hugo Observatory and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the narrative of “zillions” of people knocking on the door of Europe is “highly problematic.”

    “As lead author of the IPCC I’m always uncomfortable when I see climate activists making the claim that climate change will displace zillions of people who will become climate refugees, because that claim is just not based in science,” Gemenne said. “Most of the estimates that circulate in the press or on social networks are not based on robust estimates or robust models.”

    Although people may have good intentions, the narrative can be used to encourage governments to act against climate change as a deterrent to migration, not as the end goal itself, Gemenne said. Advocating for a reduction in emissions can instead lead to more border controls and restrictive migration policies, using people on the move as scapegoats for problems beyond their control that lead to displacement, he said.

    Trying to disentangle migration caused by climate change from other causes of displacement ignores the complexity of the entire phenomenon, Gemenne said. For example, environmental factors cannot easily be separated from economic ones.

    “The amount of money we are going to have in our bank accounts at the end of the month does not depend on the weather,” Gemenne said of the members of the virtual event panel. “But for most people on the planet, there is a direct linkage between the environmental conditions and their economic resources. And I think that we need to recognize that and that what we would label as an environmental problem is also for most people an economic problem.”

    Climate change is just one facet of the global ecosystemic crises being faced by the globe, said António Vitorino, director general of the International Organization for Migration.

    “We will, however, not be able to understand, let alone address, the different impacts of this environmental crisis unless we account for all its components and causes whether related to climate change or more broadly to the environment,” Vitorino said.

    “We must also remember that this environmental crisis is a social crisis. It is poverty, inequality and marginalization that determine people’s vulnerability.”

    https://www.devex.com/news/debunking-myths-around-the-displacement-climate-change-connection-98737

    #réfugiés_environnementaux #réfugiés_climatiques #changement_climatique #asile #migrations #réfugiés

  • #Bercy taille à la hache dans l’#ONF - Libération
    https://www.liberation.fr/terre/2020/11/29/bercy-taille-a-la-hache-dans-l-onf_1807097

    Mais pour l’ONF, les dégâts sociaux seraient dévastateurs. Le transfert au #privé de ces #missions induirait la suppression de plus de 600 postes, notamment tous les ouvriers #forestiers saisonniers qui travaillent pour le service RTM en dehors de la période hivernale, ou les agents spécialisés dans la prévention incendie, bien souvent des descendants de harkis.

    [...]

    Cette #restructuration à la #hache de l’ONF n’a, en revanche, pas permis d’améliorer la santé financière de l’établissement. Depuis une dizaine d’années et malgré les suppressions d’emplois, l’office est structurellement déficitaire d’une quarantaine de millions d’euros par an en raison du poids excessif du « compte d’affectation spécial des pensions » (le coût de la retraite des fonctionnaires) : une centaine de millions d’euros par an qui ont fait plonger les comptes dans le rouge depuis sa mise en œuvre.

    Cette année, la situation s’est encore dégradée en raison de l’effondrement des prix du #bois, à cause de la dégradation de la santé des forêts (attaques de #scolytes, #sécheresses) et des surcoûts de gestion générés par le #changement_climatique. Selon nos informations, les comptes de l’ONF seraient ainsi déficitaires, cette année, d’environ 100 millions d’euros. Et aucun redressement significatif n’est prévu pour l’année prochaine, la perte prévue pour 2021 s’établissant à 80 millions. Un niveau qui devrait permettre à Bercy de justifier d’autres coupes rases à l’ONF avec l’objectif ultime de fermer cet établissement public et de privatiser la gestion forestière.

  • Human settlement patterns and future climate change
    https://visionscarto.net/climate-risk-patterns

    Title: Human settlement patterns and future climate change Authors: Philippe Rekacewicz & Philippe Rivière Keywords: #migration #climate Projection: Bertin, 1953 Data sources: Data compiled from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; World Meteorological Organization; Dina Ionesco, François Gemenne, and Daria Mokhnacheva, The Atlas of Environmental Migration (London and New York: Routledge), 2017; United Nations Environment Programme. Code: The population layer was computed in (...) #Map_collection

    / #The_Next_Great_Migration

  • (1) « Le #changement_climatique est lié à des enjeux de #pouvoir, de #dette, de #conquête » - Libération
    https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2020/10/07/le-changement-climatique-est-lie-a-des-enjeux-de-pouvoir-de-dette-de-conq

    #interview
    #climat

    C’est un fait : dans le Connecticut comme dans de nombreuses contrées du globe, la #température augmente. Ce constat, cité dans les Révoltes du ciel. Une histoire du changement climatique XVe-XXe siècle par #Jean-Baptiste_Fressoz et #Fabien_Locher, remonte à… 1662. Winthrop, gouverneur de la province du Nouveau Monde, espère convaincre Charles II que la colonisation a adouci le climat grâce aux défrichements. Les deux #historiens de l’#environnement et chercheurs au #CNRS retracent dans cet essai l’intérêt ancien et constant pour le changement climatique et le rôle qu’y jouent les humains, de la découverte de l’Amérique à l’ère industrielle, en passant par la #Révolution française. Seul un « interlude », quelque part entre le XIXe siècle et la fin du XXe, fait exception : le progrès technique permet à l’#humanité d’oublier le climat pendant quelques décennies. Autrement dit, alors que l’ampleur des bouleversements actuels est immense, le regard que nous portons aux #changements_climatiques n’est pas si inédit, ce qui influence la façon dont nous nous attaquons au problème.

  • A #Volvic, #Danone puise et épuise l’eau

    À Volvic, Danone assure « ne pas prendre à la nature plus que ce qu’elle est capable de nous donner ». En réalité, la multinationale augmente ses prélèvements pendant les mois les plus chauds, portant atteinte aux riverains et aux eaux de surface. En toute connaissance de cause et sous le regard bienveillant des autorités.

    Tapie derrière l’image verte de son « eau des volcans », la #Société_des_eaux_de_Volvic (#SEV) se targue d’« encourager des pratiques d’hydratation plus saines et durables dans le respect de notre écosystème ». Cette communication cache pourtant une vérité dérangeante : la SEV a augmenté le débit de ses forages en pleine période de sécheresse, en 2015, 2017 et 2018, comme le montrent des documents confidentiels que Mediapart a pu obtenir. Loin de porter le fer contre la multinationale, les services de l’État ont fermé les yeux sur ces pratiques et permis à l’entreprise de doubler ses prélèvements en vingt ans. L’entreprise consomme aujourd’hui dix fois plus d’eau que la population locale.

    En plein mois de juillet 2015, alors que la sécheresse ravage le Puy-de-Dôme, obligeant la préfecture à constituer une mission d’enquête sur l’étendue des dégâts, le minéralier français appuie sur l’accélérateur. Plus de 250 millions de litres d’eau sont extraits de la nappe en quatre semaines, soit 15 % de plus que la moyenne annuelle. De quoi continuer à remplir plusieurs millions de bouteilles par jour, exportées ensuite vers des dizaines de pays à travers le monde.

    Ce comportement, en contradiction totale avec toutes les affirmations de la multinationale, se reproduit en juillet et en août 2017. Dans un compte-rendu du comité de suivi de « l’aquifère de Volvic », qui réunit services de l’État, syndicat des eaux et représentants de la multinationale, il est question de « légère augmentation » des prélèvements pendant ces deux mois. Sans que les représentants de l’État présents n’y trouvent à redire. L’été 2017 est pourtant une période particulièrement chaude qui pousse la préfecture à prendre des mesures drastiques de réduction de la consommation d’eau pour tous les usagers du département… à l’exception notable de la SEV*.

    Interrogé sur cette pratique, Danone nie en bloc. « Dans le contexte de sécheresse, depuis 2017, nous réduisons chaque année nos prélèvements lors des mois d’été », affirme une agence spécialisée dans la communication de crise, au nom du géant de l’agroalimentaire, avançant même le chiffre invérifiable de « 500 millions de litres d’eau économisés entre 2017 et 2020 ». Une affirmation contredite par les chiffres en possession de Mediapart.

    En 2018, c’est bien en janvier, puis de juin à août, que les forages de Danone ont été les plus performants, comme le montre un document confidentiel de la Direction départementale des territoires du Puy-de-Dôme. Encore une fois, cette augmentation des prélèvements intervient pendant un été particulièrement aride, au point que la préfecture du Puy-de-Dôme reconnaît l’état de catastrophe naturelle sécheresse pour 75 communes du département. Et, encore une fois, les services de l’État en sont informés et ne réagissent pas, ces prélèvements respectant de justesse les limites autorisées par la préfecture. « Les prélèvements sont plafonnés mensuellement, dans l’arrêté d’autorisation. Chaque année le service police de l’eau s’assure du respect de l’intégralité de l’arrêté, notamment des prélèvements réalisés en été », se contente de préciser la préfecture.

    Pour Jacky Massy, de l’association environnementale Preva*, l’appétit du géant français de l’eau met directement en danger les cours d’eau qui dépendent de la nappe exploitée, dont le Gargouilloux. « Tout type de prélèvements opérés sur la nappe impacte l’aval (et les cours d’eau) », explique-t-il. Pour réduire son empreinte écologique, l’activiste aimerait que Danone se limite « au marché national » et ne produise plus que des bouteilles en verre. « Aujourd’hui, avec cinq forages, il est clair qu’ils [Danone] ajoutent aux ennuis qu’on rencontre », conclut-il.

    Massy n’est pas le seul à s’inquiéter des méthodes de la multinationale et de l’attitude de l’État. Le ruisseau du Gargouilloux passe sur le domaine d’Édouard de Féligonde, situé à quelques encablures en aval de l’usine de Volvic. En cette mi-septembre, il n’est plus qu’un mince filet d’eau et les dizaines de bassins de pisciculture du propriétaire des lieux sont quasiment tous à sec. Pour Édouard de Féligonde, qui a d’abord pris la parole dans les colonnes du Monde, c’est bien l’activité de la multinationale qui est à l’origine de la pénurie. « Le comité de suivi de l’aquifère ne suit que les intérêts de Danone », cingle-t-il à propos de l’organe réunissant, depuis 2016, des représentants publics et de Danone afin de surveiller les prélèvements en eau. S’estimant lésé, Féligonde réclame plusieurs millions d’euros à la SEV, dont huit millions d’euros pour la seule remise en état de la partie de sa pisciculture classée monument historique.

    Des accusations confirmées par un document confidentiel de la Société des eaux de Volvic datant de 2017, que Mediapart a pu consulter. Il y est écrit que « l’impact des prélèvements au captage du Gargouilloux » a pu être mis « en évidence » en 2015. Sur le plus long terme, et avec l’aval des autorités, l’embouteilleur a quasiment doublé ses prélèvements depuis 1998, passant de 1,5 million de m3 à 2,7 millions en 2018 (page 29 sur 89 du document). Soit dix fois plus que la consommation annuelle d’eau potable des quelque 4 500 habitants de Volvic (page 5 sur 6 du rapport 2018 de la commune de Volvic). Parallèlement à cette explosion des prélèvements, le débit du Gargouilloux, situé à proximité immédiate du site industriel, a été divisé par sept entre 2013 et 2019, selon les chiffres de la Direction régionale de l’environnement, de l’aménagement et du logement (Dreal) d’Auvergne.

    Danone continue pourtant de relativiser : « Nos analyses mettent en évidence le fait que la modification du débit s’explique essentiellement par des facteurs naturels », fait savoir l’entreprise. Sur son site, elle se veut encore plus rassurante : « L’Auvergne subit depuis plusieurs années un phénomène de sécheresse. Cela renforce les interrogations des citoyens, que nous comprenons aisément, sur la pérennité des ressources en eau. » Afin de préserver cette « ressource essentielle », Danone explique faire toute confiance à ses « experts [qui] veillent à sa gestion raisonnée ». Concernant l’eau pompée par ses soins, Danone se contente de renvoyer aux autorisations préfectorales en vigueur, sans évoquer les variations estivales : « Les quantités prélevées sont toujours en deçà des quantités autorisées par notre arrêté préfectoral. »

    Hasard malheureux du calendrier, c’est en plein bras de fer autour de la gestion de l’eau, et alors que la préfecture a annoncé pour la première fois dans la presse envisager une « baisse » des autorisations accordées à Danone, que l’État vient de valider en catimini, par un arrêté du 26 août 2020, « l’augmentation temporaire des débits » de forage de l’entreprise. Une autorisation qui intervient en pleine période de « vigilance sécheresse » et qui reste valable six mois, renouvelable une fois. « Les eaux du forage pompées durant les phases d’essai seront réinjectées dans l’aquifère en aval », précise l’arrêté, laissant à Danone le soin de réaliser lui-même le « bilan global » de cette opération, sans en préciser les modalités.

    Le but de cette dérogation ? Permettre à la firme de mener à bien la phase test de son tout nouveau forage, supposé remplacer un autre ouvrage, datant de 1968. Une opération qui ne devrait donc pas modifier les quantités globales prélevées par la SEV au cours de l’année, mais qui pourrait bien raviver les tensions, à quelques semaines d’une réunion entre les associations environnementales et le préfet. Malgré ce couac, la préfecture assure être consciente des enjeux. « Une approche globale est nécessaire et nous examinons depuis plusieurs mois, suite notamment à la sécheresse exceptionnelle de 2019, comment l’eau est consommée pour dégager des solutions à différents niveaux, expliquent les services préfectoraux du Puy-de-Dôme. L’approche doit concerner l’ensemble des prélèvements. »

    Si Danone continue de mettre en doute le lien direct entre ses prélèvements et la baisse des nappes souterraines, la corrélation a été confirmée en 2012 par une thèse de l’Institut de sciences et technologie de Paris. Mediapart a pu consulter ce document scientifique, classé confidentiel jusqu’au 31 décembre 2022. Une confidentialité à la demande du commanditaire des travaux, la Société des eaux de Volvic. L’auteur, Simon Rouquet, est formel : « On peut donc penser que le débit pompé au niveau du forage de Clairval [appartenant à Danone – ndlr] a une incidence sur le débit de la galerie du Goulet sur une durée de quelques jours. »

    Cette « galerie du Goulet » alimente plusieurs cours d’eau ainsi qu’une source utilisés pour alimenter les communes alentour en eau potable. Des données que Jean-François Béraud, expert hydrogéologue mandaté par les avocats de Féligonde, résume ainsi : « Quand on pompe davantage en haut, il y a moins d’eau en bas. »

    Une analyse que Danone réfute, préférant voir le verre à moitié plein. « Il ressort de nos études auprès des plus grands scientifiques hydrogéologues que la cause essentielle de la réduction du débit en aval consiste en des facteurs naturels (climat principalement, couvert forestier, etc.) », avance la firme. Avant de conclure : « Nos prélèvements en amont n’ont pas d’impacts significatifs sur le débit des sources de front de coulée en aval et permettent à l’aquifère de se renouveler. »

    Depuis la parution de la thèse de Simon Rouquet, il y a près de huit années, et en dépit de la communication récurrente du minéralier français, le lien entre les prélèvements de Danone et les ressources en eau de la région est clairement prouvé. Et bien connu des services de l’État, qui ont accordé une nouvelle autorisation de pomper à Danone, valable jusqu’en 2032, seulement deux ans après la publication doctorale.

    C’est un fonctionnaire d’une agence environnementale publique qui fut, à l’époque, rapporteur de la thèse de Simon Rouquet. Ce haut fonctionnaire est, entre-temps, passé avec armes et bagages chez… #Danone_Waters.

    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/250920/volvic-danone-puise-et-epuise-l-eau
    #eau #eau_potable #France #multinationales #extractivisme #forages #sécheresse #Puy-de-Dôme #eau_minérale #Gargouilloux #pisciculture #pénurie_d'eau #dérogation #Clairval #galerie_du_Goulet

    Une enquête signée @wereport

    • Wasser marsch !

      In der Werbung wirkt das Land bei Volvic wie eine grüne Idylle. Uralte Vulkane prägen die Landschaft rund um die kleine Gemeinde in der zentralfranzösischen Auvergne, aus der das Volvic-Mineralwasser stammt. Der Konzern Danone lässt es hier fördern, in Flaschen füllen und verspricht dabei, stets „nur so viel Wasser zu entnehmen, wie es die Natur erlaubt“.

      Viele Bewohner der Gegend bezweifeln das. Seit Jahren beobachten Bürger und Bauern, dass die Bäche weniger Wasser führen. An nur einem Tag, so hat eine Bürgerinitiative gezählt, hätten mehr als 200 Lastwagen und einige Dutzend Güterzüge die Abfüllanlage von Danone in Volvic verlassen. Ihre Ladung: Mineralwasser in Plastikflaschen für die Supermärkte der Welt.

      https://www.wereport.fr/articles/wasser-marsch-die-zeit

      #paywall, mais...

      Notre enquête #Volvic avec @dergrenzgaenger est l’article le plus lu et le plus partagé de la journée sur @zeitonline avec près de 150 000 vues

      https://twitter.com/alexabdelilah/status/1310231866499366914

    • À Volvic, la justice s’interroge sur les prélèvements d’eau de Danone

      L’État a-t-il accordé trop de droits de pompage à Danone sur les eaux de Volvic ? Ce 25 mai, la #justice a demandé de nouvelles expertises pour déterminer la #responsabilité de l’État dans l’asséchement d’une #pisciculture à Volvic.

      La justice demande des investigations supplémentaires. À Volvic, la #multinationale Danone est accusée d’avoir asséché une des plus vieilles piscicultures d’Europe pour remplir ses bouteilles. Mercredi 25 mai, le #tribunal_administratif de Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme) a ordonné une première expertise en géologie et hydrologie, pour déterminer si, oui ou non, il y a eu une réduction du débit des sources de l’élevage de poissons — et si cela est lié aux prélèvements de Danone. Une seconde expertise, économique celle-ci, devrait évaluer le préjudice lié à la perte d’exploitation et à la détérioration de la pisciculture.

      Petit retour en arrière. Les #eaux_souterraines de Volvic surgissent en surface à #Saint-Genès-l’Enfant, là où se situe le domaine de la famille d’#Édouard_de_Féligonde. « Les Romains nommaient cet endroit “les sources du dragon”, tant l’eau jaillissait dans un vacarme assourdissant », raconte le notable, propriétaire d’élevage de poissons. En 1927, date des premières mesures, le débit s’établissait à 470 litres par seconde. Mais depuis quelques années, la ressource s’est amoindrie, jusqu’à se tarir. À l’été 2017, les gérants de la pisciculture ont vu les bassins se vider et des centaines de poissons mourir. L’élevage a fermé en octobre 2018.

      Pour Édouard de Féligonde, le responsable est tout indiqué : « Le débit de ma source a été divisé par dix. Dans le même temps, les prélèvements de Danone n’ont fait qu’augmenter. » En 1965, la Société des eaux de Volvic puisait 15,6 litres par seconde. Depuis 2014, l’entreprise, rachetée par Danone, est autorisée par l’État à pomper 88,6 litres par seconde, soit 2,7 millions de mètres cubes par an. Le groupe agroalimentaire assure limiter ses prélèvements — 2,33 millions de mètres cubes en 2020 —, et économiser l’eau au maximum. « Nous avons investi 25 millions d’euros pour réduire notre consommation de 350 millions de litres, nous affirme le service presse du groupe. Volvic prend le sujet avec beaucoup d’attention. »

      « Après l’État, j’attaquerai Danone »

      Insuffisant, selon Édouard de Féligonde, qui a donc attaqué les #autorisations_préfectorales. Il est soutenu dans sa démarche par le collectif Eau bien commun 63 : « Danone et #Limagrain, les deux plus gros “préleveurs” privés du département, ne sont quasiment pas limités dans leurs #prélèvements en période de #sécheresse », dénonce Laurent Campos-Hugueney, porte-parole du collectif et maraîcher près de Volvic. Le préfet a en effet délivré une #autorisation_annuelle : Danone peut ainsi, en théorie, pomper autant qu’il veut en #été, tant qu’il ne dépasse pas la limite annuelle de 2,7 millions de mètres cubes. Les consommateurs s’hydratant plus en période chaude, le groupe embouteille effectivement plus en été qu’en hiver.

      Pour l’État, le coupable n’est pas Danone, mais le #changement_climatique : « Les conditions environnementales, et notamment la sécheresse, ont conduit à une baisse de la recharge de l’#aquifère sans qu’elle puisse être imputée à notre sens aux prélèvements réalisés en aval par la Société des eaux de Volvic », indiquait le préfet lors de son audition par des députés, en 2021. Autrement dit : s’il y a moins d’eau sous Volvic, c’est avant tout parce qu’il a moins plu et fait plus chaud. La température moyenne à l’année dans le Puy-de-Dôme a ainsi augmenté de 2,2 °C depuis les années 1980, diminuant la capacité de la nappe phréatique de 30 %.

      « On est dans une situation de #raréfaction de l’eau liée au changement climatique, dit Laurent Campos-Hugueney. Avant, les prélèvements massifs de Danone passaient inaperçus, maintenant, ce n’est plus le cas. » Pour le maraîcher, il est donc grand temps que la multinationale se sert la ceinture. « On défend des intérêts citoyens pour un usage de l’eau vraiment partagé, souligne-t-il. Mais cette revendication, pourtant légale, n’est pas prise en compte par l’État, il faut aller au tribunal pour espérer se faire entendre. » La mobilisation des citoyens semble avoir porté ses premiers fruits : en septembre dernier, le directeur du groupe à Volvic et le préfet du Puy-de-Dôme ont signé un « plan d’utilisation rationnelle de l’eau ». Volvic s’est engagé à prélever 10 % d’eau en moins sur l’année, avec une attention particulière en cas de sécheresse.

      Comme M. de Féligonde, le collectif #Eau_bien_commun_63 espère que la décision du tribunal de Clermont-Ferrand permettra d’ouvrir le débat sur l’avenir de l’eau sur le territoire. « Avec l’eau de Volvic, on pourrait remettre en culture 3 600 hectares de terres, qui étaient jadis couvertes de potagers et de vergers, dit M. Campos-Hugueney. Plutôt que de profiter aux #multinationales, cette eau pourrait permettre de créer des emplois paysans et de soutenir notre résilience alimentaire. »

      Le propriétaire d’élevage de poissons, Édouard de Féligonde, s’est dit déterminé à ne pas en rester là : « Mon nom provient de “felix onda”, l’eau féconde... autant vous dire que je n’accepte pas de me retrouver à marée basse, soutient-il à Reporterre. Après l’État, j’attaquerai Danone. »

      https://reporterre.net/A-Volvic-la-justice-s-interroge-sur-les-prelevements-d-eau-de-Danone

  • How Climate Migration Will Reshape America. Millions will be displaced. Where will they go?

    August besieged California with a heat unseen in generations. A surge in air-conditioning broke the state’s electrical grid, leaving a population already ravaged by the coronavirus to work remotely by the dim light of their cellphones. By midmonth, the state had recorded possibly the hottest temperature ever measured on earth — 130 degrees in Death Valley — and an otherworldly storm of lightning had cracked open the sky. From Santa Cruz to Lake Tahoe, thousands of bolts of electricity exploded down onto withered grasslands and forests, some of them already hollowed out by climate-driven infestations of beetles and kiln-dried by the worst five-year drought on record. Soon, California was on fire.

    This article, the second in a series on global climate migration, is a partnership between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Read Part 1.

    Over the next two weeks, 900 blazes incinerated six times as much land as all the state’s 2019 wildfires combined, forcing 100,000 people from their homes. Three of the largest fires in history burned simultaneously in a ring around the San Francisco Bay Area. Another fire burned just 12 miles from my home in Marin County. I watched as towering plumes of smoke billowed from distant hills in all directions and air tankers crisscrossed the skies. Like many Californians, I spent those weeks worrying about what might happen next, wondering how long it would be before an inferno of 60-foot flames swept up the steep, grassy hillside on its way toward my own house, rehearsing in my mind what my family would do to escape.

    But I also had a longer-term question, about what would happen once this unprecedented fire season ended. Was it finally time to leave for good?

    I had an unusual perspective on the matter. For two years, I have been studying how climate change will influence global migration. My sense was that of all the devastating consequences of a warming planet — changing landscapes, pandemics, mass extinctions — the potential movement of hundreds of millions of climate refugees across the planet stands to be among the most important. I traveled across four countries to witness how rising temperatures were driving climate refugees away from some of the poorest and hottest parts of the world. I had also helped create an enormous computer simulation to analyze how global demographics might shift, and now I was working on a data-mapping project about migration here in the United States.

    So it was with some sense of recognition that I faced the fires these last few weeks. In recent years, summer has brought a season of fear to California, with ever-worsening wildfires closing in. But this year felt different. The hopelessness of the pattern was now clear, and the pandemic had already uprooted so many Americans. Relocation no longer seemed like such a distant prospect. Like the subjects of my reporting, climate change had found me, its indiscriminate forces erasing all semblance of normalcy. Suddenly I had to ask myself the very question I’d been asking others: Was it time to move?

    I am far from the only American facing such questions. This summer has seen more fires, more heat, more storms — all of it making life increasingly untenable in larger areas of the nation. Already, droughts regularly threaten food crops across the West, while destructive floods inundate towns and fields from the Dakotas to Maryland, collapsing dams in Michigan and raising the shorelines of the Great Lakes. Rising seas and increasingly violent hurricanes are making thousands of miles of American shoreline nearly uninhabitable. As California burned, Hurricane Laura pounded the Louisiana coast with 150-mile-an-hour winds, killing at least 25 people; it was the 12th named storm to form by that point in 2020, another record. Phoenix, meanwhile, endured 53 days of 110-degree heat — 20 more days than the previous record.

    For years, Americans have avoided confronting these changes in their own backyards. The decisions we make about where to live are distorted not just by politics that play down climate risks, but also by expensive subsidies and incentives aimed at defying nature. In much of the developing world, vulnerable people will attempt to flee the emerging perils of global warming, seeking cooler temperatures, more fresh water and safety. But here in the United States, people have largely gravitated toward environmental danger, building along coastlines from New Jersey to Florida and settling across the cloudless deserts of the Southwest.

    I wanted to know if this was beginning to change. Might Americans finally be waking up to how climate is about to transform their lives? And if so — if a great domestic relocation might be in the offing — was it possible to project where we might go? To answer these questions, I interviewed more than four dozen experts: economists and demographers, climate scientists and insurance executives, architects and urban planners, and I mapped out the danger zones that will close in on Americans over the next 30 years. The maps for the first time combined exclusive climate data from the Rhodium Group, an independent data-analytics firm; wildfire projections modeled by United States Forest Service researchers and others; and data about America’s shifting climate niches, an evolution of work first published by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last spring. (See a detailed analysis of the maps.)

    What I found was a nation on the cusp of a great transformation. Across the United States, some 162 million people — nearly one in two — will most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment, namely more heat and less water. For 93 million of them, the changes could be particularly severe, and by 2070, our analysis suggests, if carbon emissions rise at extreme levels, at least four million Americans could find themselves living at the fringe, in places decidedly outside the ideal niche for human life. The cost of resisting the new climate reality is mounting. Florida officials have already acknowledged that defending some roadways against the sea will be unaffordable. And the nation’s federal flood-insurance program is for the first time requiring that some of its payouts be used to retreat from climate threats across the country. It will soon prove too expensive to maintain the status quo.

    Then what? One influential 2018 study, published in The Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, suggests that one in 12 Americans in the Southern half of the country will move toward California, the Mountain West or the Northwest over the next 45 years because of climate influences alone. Such a shift in population is likely to increase poverty and widen the gulf between the rich and the poor. It will accelerate rapid, perhaps chaotic, urbanization of cities ill-equipped for the burden, testing their capacity to provide basic services and amplifying existing inequities. It will eat away at prosperity, dealing repeated economic blows to coastal, rural and Southern regions, which could in turn push entire communities to the brink of collapse. This process has already begun in rural Louisiana and coastal Georgia, where low-income and Black and Indigenous communities face environmental change on top of poor health and extreme poverty. Mobility itself, global-migration experts point out, is often a reflection of relative wealth, and as some move, many others will be left behind. Those who stay risk becoming trapped as the land and the society around them ceases to offer any more support.

    There are signs that the message is breaking through. Half of Americans now rank climate as a top political priority, up from roughly one-third in 2016, and three out of four now describe climate change as either “a crisis” or “a major problem.” This year, Democratic caucusgoers in Iowa, where tens of thousands of acres of farmland flooded in 2019, ranked climate second only to health care as an issue. A poll by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities found that even Republicans’ views are shifting: One in three now think climate change should be declared a national emergency.

    Policymakers, having left America unprepared for what’s next, now face brutal choices about which communities to save — often at exorbitant costs — and which to sacrifice. Their decisions will almost inevitably make the nation more divided, with those worst off relegated to a nightmare future in which they are left to fend for themselves. Nor will these disruptions wait for the worst environmental changes to occur. The wave begins when individual perception of risk starts to shift, when the environmental threat reaches past the least fortunate and rattles the physical and financial security of broader, wealthier parts of the population. It begins when even places like California’s suburbs are no longer safe.

    It has already begun.

    Let’s start with some basics. Across the country, it’s going to get hot. Buffalo may feel in a few decades like Tempe, Ariz., does today, and Tempe itself will sustain 100-degree average summer temperatures by the end of the century. Extreme humidity from New Orleans to northern Wisconsin will make summers increasingly unbearable, turning otherwise seemingly survivable heat waves into debilitating health threats. Fresh water will also be in short supply, not only in the West but also in places like Florida, Georgia and Alabama, where droughts now regularly wither cotton fields. By 2040, according to federal government projections, extreme water shortages will be nearly ubiquitous west of Missouri. The Memphis Sands Aquifer, a crucial water supply for Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana, is already overdrawn by hundreds of millions of gallons a day. Much of the Ogallala Aquifer — which supplies nearly a third of the nation’s irrigation groundwater — could be gone by the end of the century.

    It can be difficult to see the challenges clearly because so many factors are in play. At least 28 million Americans are likely to face megafires like the ones we are now seeing in California, in places like Texas and Florida and Georgia. At the same time, 100 million Americans — largely in the Mississippi River Basin from Louisiana to Wisconsin — will increasingly face humidity so extreme that working outside or playing school sports could cause heatstroke. Crop yields will be decimated from Texas to Alabama and all the way north through Oklahoma and Kansas and into Nebraska.

    The challenges are so widespread and so interrelated that Americans seeking to flee one could well run into another. I live on a hilltop, 400 feet above sea level, and my home will never be touched by rising waters. But by the end of this century, if the more extreme projections of eight to 10 feet of sea-level rise come to fruition, the shoreline of San Francisco Bay will move three miles closer to my house, as it subsumes some 166 square miles of land, including a high school, a new county hospital and the store where I buy groceries. The freeway to San Francisco will need to be raised, and to the east, a new bridge will be required to connect the community of Point Richmond to the city of Berkeley. The Latino, Asian and Black communities who live in the most-vulnerable low-lying districts will be displaced first, but research from Mathew Hauer, a sociologist at Florida State University who published some of the first modeling of American climate migration in the journal Nature Climate Change in 2017, suggests that the toll will eventually be far more widespread: Nearly one in three people here in Marin County will leave, part of the roughly 700,000 who his models suggest may abandon the broader Bay Area as a result of sea-level rise alone.

    From Maine to North Carolina to Texas, rising sea levels are not just chewing up shorelines but also raising rivers and swamping the subterranean infrastructure of coastal communities, making a stable life there all but impossible. Coastal high points will be cut off from roadways, amenities and escape routes, and even far inland, saltwater will seep into underground drinking-water supplies. Eight of the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas — Miami, New York and Boston among them — will be profoundly altered, indirectly affecting some 50 million people. Imagine large concrete walls separating Fort Lauderdale condominiums from a beachless waterfront, or dozens of new bridges connecting the islands of Philadelphia. Not every city can spend $100 billion on a sea wall, as New York most likely will. Barrier islands? Rural areas along the coast without a strong tax base? They are likely, in the long term, unsalvageable.

    In all, Hauer projects that 13 million Americans will be forced to move away from submerged coastlines. Add to that the people contending with wildfires and other risks, and the number of Americans who might move — though difficult to predict precisely — could easily be tens of millions larger. Even 13 million climate migrants, though, would rank as the largest migration in North American history. The Great Migration — of six million Black Americans out of the South from 1916 to 1970 — transformed almost everything we know about America, from the fate of its labor movement to the shape of its cities to the sound of its music. What would it look like when twice that many people moved? What might change?

    Americans have been conditioned not to respond to geographical climate threats as people in the rest of the world do. It is natural that rural Guatemalans or subsistence farmers in Kenya, facing drought or scorching heat, would seek out someplace more stable and resilient. Even a subtle environmental change — a dry well, say — can mean life or death, and without money to address the problem, migration is often simply a question of survival.

    By comparison, Americans are richer, often much richer, and more insulated from the shocks of climate change. They are distanced from the food and water sources they depend on, and they are part of a culture that sees every problem as capable of being solved by money. So even as the average flow of the Colorado River — the water supply for 40 million Western Americans and the backbone of the nation’s vegetable and cattle farming — has declined for most of the last 33 years, the population of Nevada has doubled. At the same time, more than 1.5 million people have moved to the Phoenix metro area, despite its dependence on that same river (and the fact that temperatures there now regularly hit 115 degrees). Since Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida in 1992 — and even as that state has become a global example of the threat of sea-level rise — more than five million people have moved to Florida’s shorelines, driving a historic boom in building and real estate.

    Similar patterns are evident across the country. Census data show us how Americans move: toward heat, toward coastlines, toward drought, regardless of evidence of increasing storms and flooding and other disasters.

    The sense that money and technology can overcome nature has emboldened Americans. Where money and technology fail, though, it inevitably falls to government policies — and government subsidies — to pick up the slack. Thanks to federally subsidized canals, for example, water in part of the Desert Southwest costs less than it does in Philadelphia. The federal National Flood Insurance Program has paid to rebuild houses that have flooded six times over in the same spot. And federal agriculture aid withholds subsidies from farmers who switch to drought-resistant crops, while paying growers to replant the same ones that failed. Farmers, seed manufacturers, real estate developers and a few homeowners benefit, at least momentarily, but the gap between what the climate can destroy and what money can replace is growing.

    Perhaps no market force has proved more influential — and more misguided — than the nation’s property-insurance system. From state to state, readily available and affordable policies have made it attractive to buy or replace homes even where they are at high risk of disasters, systematically obscuring the reality of the climate threat and fooling many Americans into thinking that their decisions are safer than they actually are. Part of the problem is that most policies look only 12 months into the future, ignoring long-term trends even as insurance availability influences development and drives people’s long-term decision-making.

    Even where insurers have tried to withdraw policies or raise rates to reduce climate-related liabilities, state regulators have forced them to provide affordable coverage anyway, simply subsidizing the cost of underwriting such a risky policy or, in some cases, offering it themselves. The regulations — called Fair Access to Insurance Requirements — are justified by developers and local politicians alike as economic lifeboats “of last resort” in regions where climate change threatens to interrupt economic growth. While they do protect some entrenched and vulnerable communities, the laws also satisfy the demand of wealthier homeowners who still want to be able to buy insurance.

    At least 30 states, including Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Texas, have developed so-called FAIR plans, and today they serve as a market backstop in the places facing the highest risks of climate-driven disasters, including coastal flooding, hurricanes and wildfires.

    In an era of climate change, though, such policies amount to a sort of shell game, meant to keep growth going even when other obvious signs and scientific research suggest that it should stop.

    That’s what happened in Florida. Hurricane Andrew reduced parts of cities to landfill and cost insurers nearly $16 billion in payouts. Many insurance companies, recognizing the likelihood that it would happen again, declined to renew policies and left the state. So the Florida Legislature created a state-run company to insure properties itself, preventing both an exodus and an economic collapse by essentially pretending that the climate vulnerabilities didn’t exist.

    As a result, Florida’s taxpayers by 2012 had assumed liabilities worth some $511 billion — more than seven times the state’s total budget — as the value of coastal property topped $2.8 trillion. Another direct hurricane risked bankrupting the state. Florida, concerned that it had taken on too much risk, has since scaled back its self-insurance plan. But the development that resulted is still in place.

    On a sweltering afternoon last October, with the skies above me full of wildfire smoke, I called Jesse Keenan, an urban-planning and climate-change specialist then at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, who advises the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission on market hazards from climate change. Keenan, who is now an associate professor of real estate at Tulane University’s School of Architecture, had been in the news last year for projecting where people might move to — suggesting that Duluth, Minn., for instance, should brace for a coming real estate boom as climate migrants move north. But like other scientists I’d spoken with, Keenan had been reluctant to draw conclusions about where these migrants would be driven from.

    Last fall, though, as the previous round of fires ravaged California, his phone began to ring, with private-equity investors and bankers all looking for his read on the state’s future. Their interest suggested a growing investor-grade nervousness about swiftly mounting environmental risk in the hottest real estate markets in the country. It’s an early sign, he told me, that the momentum is about to switch directions. “And once this flips,” he added, “it’s likely to flip very quickly.”

    In fact, the correction — a newfound respect for the destructive power of nature, coupled with a sudden disavowal of Americans’ appetite for reckless development — had begun two years earlier, when a frightening surge in disasters offered a jolting preview of how the climate crisis was changing the rules.

    On October 9, 2017, a wildfire blazed through the suburban blue-collar neighborhood of Coffey Park in Santa Rosa, Calif., virtually in my own backyard. I awoke to learn that more than 1,800 buildings were reduced to ashes, less than 35 miles from where I slept. Inchlong cinders had piled on my windowsills like falling snow.

    The Tubbs Fire, as it was called, shouldn’t have been possible. Coffey Park is surrounded not by vegetation but by concrete and malls and freeways. So insurers had rated it as “basically zero risk,” according to Kevin Van Leer, then a risk modeler from the global insurance liability firm Risk Management Solutions. (He now does similar work for Cape Analytics.) But Van Leer, who had spent seven years picking through the debris left by disasters to understand how insurers could anticipate — and price — the risk of their happening again, had begun to see other “impossible” fires. After a 2016 fire tornado ripped through northern Canada and a firestorm consumed Gatlinburg, Tenn., he said, “alarm bells started going off” for the insurance industry.

    What Van Leer saw when he walked through Coffey Park a week after the Tubbs Fire changed the way he would model and project fire risk forever. Typically, fire would spread along the ground, burning maybe 50 percent of structures. In Santa Rosa, more than 90 percent had been leveled. “The destruction was complete,” he told me. Van Leer determined that the fire had jumped through the forest canopy, spawning 70-mile-per-hour winds that kicked a storm of embers into the modest homes of Coffey Park, which burned at an acre a second as homes ignited spontaneously from the radiant heat. It was the kind of thing that might never have been possible if California’s autumn winds weren’t getting fiercer and drier every year, colliding with intensifying, climate-driven heat and ever-expanding development. “It’s hard to forecast something you’ve never seen before,” he said.

    For me, the awakening to imminent climate risk came with California’s rolling power blackouts last fall — an effort to pre-emptively avoid the risk of a live wire sparking a fire — which showed me that all my notional perspective about climate risk and my own life choices were on a collision course. After the first one, all the food in our refrigerator was lost. When power was interrupted six more times in three weeks, we stopped trying to keep it stocked. All around us, small fires burned. Thick smoke produced fits of coughing. Then, as now, I packed an ax and a go-bag in my car, ready to evacuate. As former Gov. Jerry Brown said, it was beginning to feel like the “new abnormal.”

    It was no surprise, then, that California’s property insurers — having watched 26 years’ worth of profits dissolve over 24 months — began dropping policies, or that California’s insurance commissioner, trying to slow the slide, placed a moratorium on insurance cancellations for parts of the state in 2020. In February, the Legislature introduced a bill compelling California to, in the words of one consumer advocacy group, “follow the lead of Florida” by mandating that insurance remain available, in this case with a requirement that homeowners first harden their properties against fire. At the same time, participation in California’s FAIR plan for catastrophic fires has grown by at least 180 percent since 2015, and in Santa Rosa, houses are being rebuilt in the very same wildfire-vulnerable zones that proved so deadly in 2017. Given that a new study projects a 20 percent increase in extreme-fire-weather days by 2035, such practices suggest a special form of climate negligence.

    It’s only a matter of time before homeowners begin to recognize the unsustainability of this approach. Market shock, when driven by the sort of cultural awakening to risk that Keenan observes, can strike a neighborhood like an infectious disease, with fear spreading doubt — and devaluation — from door to door. It happened that way in the foreclosure crisis.

    Keenan calls the practice of drawing arbitrary lending boundaries around areas of perceived environmental risk “bluelining,” and indeed many of the neighborhoods that banks are bluelining are the same as the ones that were hit by the racist redlining practice in days past. This summer, climate-data analysts at the First Street Foundation released maps showing that 70 percent more buildings in the United States were vulnerable to flood risk than previously thought; most of the underestimated risk was in low-income neighborhoods.

    Such neighborhoods see little in the way of flood-prevention investment. My Bay Area neighborhood, on the other hand, has benefited from consistent investment in efforts to defend it against the ravages of climate change. That questions of livability had reached me, here, were testament to Keenan’s belief that the bluelining phenomenon will eventually affect large majorities of equity-holding middle-class Americans too, with broad implications for the overall economy, starting in the nation’s largest state.

    Under the radar, a new class of dangerous debt — climate-distressed mortgage loans — might already be threatening the financial system. Lending data analyzed by Keenan and his co-author, Jacob Bradt, for a study published in the journal Climatic Change in June shows that small banks are liberally making loans on environmentally threatened homes, but then quickly passing them along to federal mortgage backers. At the same time, they have all but stopped lending money for the higher-end properties worth too much for the government to accept, suggesting that the banks are knowingly passing climate liabilities along to taxpayers as stranded assets.

    Once home values begin a one-way plummet, it’s easy for economists to see how entire communities spin out of control. The tax base declines and the school system and civic services falter, creating a negative feedback loop that pushes more people to leave. Rising insurance costs and the perception of risk force credit-rating agencies to downgrade towns, making it more difficult for them to issue bonds and plug the springing financial leaks. Local banks, meanwhile, keep securitizing their mortgage debt, sloughing off their own liabilities.

    Keenan, though, had a bigger point: All the structural disincentives that had built Americans’ irrational response to the climate risk were now reaching their logical endpoint. A pandemic-induced economic collapse will only heighten the vulnerabilities and speed the transition, reducing to nothing whatever thin margin of financial protection has kept people in place. Until now, the market mechanisms had essentially socialized the consequences of high-risk development. But as the costs rise — and the insurers quit, and the bankers divest, and the farm subsidies prove too wasteful, and so on — the full weight of responsibility will fall on individual people.

    And that’s when the real migration might begin.

    As I spoke with Keenan last year, I looked out my own kitchen window onto hillsides of parkland, singed brown by months of dry summer heat. This was precisely the land that my utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, had three times identified as such an imperiled tinderbox that it had to shut off power to avoid fire. It was precisely the kind of wildland-urban interface that all the studies I read blamed for heightening Californians’ exposure to climate risks. I mentioned this on the phone and then asked Keenan, “Should I be selling my house and getting — ”

    He cut me off: “Yes.”

    Americans have dealt with climate disaster before. The Dust Bowl started after the federal government expanded the Homestead Act to offer more land to settlers willing to work the marginal soil of the Great Plains. Millions took up the invitation, replacing hardy prairie grass with thirsty crops like corn, wheat and cotton. Then, entirely predictably, came the drought. From 1929 to 1934, crop yields across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri plunged by 60 percent, leaving farmers destitute and exposing the now-barren topsoil to dry winds and soaring temperatures. The resulting dust storms, some of them taller than skyscrapers, buried homes whole and blew as far east as Washington. The disaster propelled an exodus of some 2.5 million people, mostly to the West, where newcomers — “Okies” not just from Oklahoma but also Texas, Arkansas and Missouri — unsettled communities and competed for jobs. Colorado tried to seal its border from the climate refugees; in California, they were funneled into squalid shanty towns. Only after the migrants settled and had years to claw back a decent life did some towns bounce back stronger.

    The places migrants left behind never fully recovered. Eighty years later, Dust Bowl towns still have slower economic growth and lower per capita income than the rest of the country. Dust Bowl survivors and their children are less likely to go to college and more likely to live in poverty. Climatic change made them poor, and it has kept them poor ever since.

    A Dust Bowl event will most likely happen again. The Great Plains states today provide nearly half of the nation’s wheat, sorghum and cattle and much of its corn; the farmers and ranchers there export that food to Africa, South America and Asia. Crop yields, though, will drop sharply with every degree of warming. By 2050, researchers at the University of Chicago and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies found, Dust Bowl-era yields will be the norm, even as demand for scarce water jumps by as much as 20 percent. Another extreme drought would drive near-total crop losses worse than the Dust Bowl, kneecapping the broader economy. At that point, the authors write, “abandonment is one option.”

    Projections are inherently imprecise, but the gradual changes to America’s cropland — plus the steady baking and burning and flooding — suggest that we are already witnessing a slower-forming but much larger replay of the Dust Bowl that will destroy more than just crops. In 2017, Solomon Hsiang, a climate economist at the University of California, Berkeley, led an analysis of the economic impact of climate-driven changes like rising mortality and rising energy costs, finding that the poorest counties in the United States — mostly across the South and the Southwest — will in some extreme cases face damages equal to more than a third of their gross domestic products. The 2018 National Climate Assessment also warns that the U.S. economy over all could contract by 10 percent.

    That kind of loss typically drives people toward cities, and researchers expect that trend to continue after the Covid-19 pandemic ends. In 1950, less than 65 percent of Americans lived in cities. By 2050, only 10 percent will live outside them, in part because of climatic change. By 2100, Hauer estimates, Atlanta, Orlando, Houston and Austin could each receive more than a quarter million new residents as a result of sea-level displacement alone, meaning it may be those cities — not the places that empty out — that wind up bearing the brunt of America’s reshuffling. The World Bank warns that fast-moving climate urbanization leads to rising unemployment, competition for services and deepening poverty.

    So what will happen to Atlanta — a metro area of 5.8 million people that may lose its water supply to drought and that our data also shows will face an increase in heat-driven wildfires? Hauer estimates that hundreds of thousands of climate refugees will move into the city by 2100, swelling its population and stressing its infrastructure. Atlanta — where poor transportation and water systems contributed to the state’s C+ infrastructure grade last year — already suffers greater income inequality than any other large American city, making it a virtual tinderbox for social conflict. One in 10 households earns less than $10,000 a year, and rings of extreme poverty are growing on its outskirts even as the city center grows wealthier.

    Atlanta has started bolstering its defenses against climate change, but in some cases this has only exacerbated divisions. When the city converted an old Westside rock quarry into a reservoir, part of a larger greenbelt to expand parkland, clean the air and protect against drought, the project also fueled rapid upscale growth, driving the poorest Black communities further into impoverished suburbs. That Atlanta hasn’t “fully grappled with” such challenges now, says Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, chair of the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, means that with more people and higher temperatures, “the city might be pushed to what’s manageable.”

    So might Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Boston and other cities with long-neglected systems suddenly pressed to expand under increasingly adverse conditions.

    Once you accept that climate change is fast making large parts of the United States nearly uninhabitable, the future looks like this: With time, the bottom half of the country grows inhospitable, dangerous and hot. Something like a tenth of the people who live in the South and the Southwest — from South Carolina to Alabama to Texas to Southern California — decide to move north in search of a better economy and a more temperate environment. Those who stay behind are disproportionately poor and elderly.

    In these places, heat alone will cause as many as 80 additional deaths per 100,000 people — the nation’s opioid crisis, by comparison, produces 15 additional deaths per 100,000. The most affected people, meanwhile, will pay 20 percent more for energy, and their crops will yield half as much food or in some cases virtually none at all. That collective burden will drag down regional incomes by roughly 10 percent, amounting to one of the largest transfers of wealth in American history, as people who live farther north will benefit from that change and see their fortunes rise.

    The millions of people moving north will mostly head to the cities of the Northeast and Northwest, which will see their populations grow by roughly 10 percent, according to one model. Once-chilly places like Minnesota and Michigan and Vermont will become more temperate, verdant and inviting. Vast regions will prosper; just as Hsiang’s research forecast that Southern counties could see a tenth of their economy dry up, he projects that others as far as North Dakota and Minnesota will enjoy a corresponding expansion. Cities like Detroit, Rochester, Buffalo and Milwaukee will see a renaissance, with their excess capacity in infrastructure, water supplies and highways once again put to good use. One day, it’s possible that a high-speed rail line could race across the Dakotas, through Idaho’s up-and-coming wine country and the country’s new breadbasket along the Canadian border, to the megalopolis of Seattle, which by then has nearly merged with Vancouver to its north.

    Sitting in my own backyard one afternoon this summer, my wife and I talked through the implications of this looming American future. The facts were clear and increasingly foreboding. Yet there were so many intangibles — a love of nature, the busy pace of life, the high cost of moving — that conspired to keep us from leaving. Nobody wants to migrate away from home, even when an inexorable danger is inching ever closer. They do it when there is no longer any other choice.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html?smid=tw-share

    Quelques cartes:

    #migrations_environnementales #USA #Etats-Unis #réfugiés_climatiques #climat #changement_climatique #déplacés_internes #IDPs

  • Brandalism Take Over 100 UK Billboards | StreetArtNews | StreetArtNews
    https://streetartnews.net/2020/09/guerilla-take-over-of-100-uk-billboards-in-anti-car-protest.html

    nmental activist groups from the ‘Brandalism’ network have installed over 100 parody car advert posters on billboards and bus stops in England and Wales. The guerilla artworks featuring brands such as Range Rover, Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Citroen, Lamborghini and Vauxhall were installed without permission in Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, London and Exeter.

    #détournements

  • Lo spot anti frontalieri. Lo spot dell’Udc svizzera contro la libera circolazione

    Voici le texte, en italien:

    Vedo una natura bella e incontaminata.
    Vedo montagne grandi e imponenti.
    Abbiamo fiumi con acque trasparenti.
    La mia mamma mi dice sempre che viviamo nel Paese più bello del mondo.
    Lo so, dobbiamo proteggere il nostro paesaggio.
    Siamo liberi e non conosciamo guerre.
    Possiamo dire apertamente ciò che pensiamo.
    Io vado a scuola e stiamo ancora abbastanza bene.
    Il mio papà mi dice sempre che la nostra cultura è molto importante. Dobbiamo difenderla e promuoverla.
    Siamo un piccolo paese per il quale il nonno ha lavorato duramente.
    Quando sarò grande mi impegnerò anch’io come lui.
    Da sempre dobbiamo fare attenzione. Molta gente crede di poter approfittare del nostro Paese.
    Sempre più persnoe vogliono venire in Svizzera. E ciò, anche se non c’è posto per tutti.
    C’è sempre più gente sulle strade. Ci sono code e tante auto ovunque.
    Il papà ha da poco perso il suo lavoro.
    Giocare davanti a casa nel quartiere è diventato meno sicuro.
    Nella mia classe, ormai solo Sara e Giorgio sono svizzeri.
    Ogni giorno la televisione parla di ladri e criminali. E ho paura quando in inverno torno da sola da scuola.
    Dappertutto ci sono uomini che gironzolano in strada e alla stazione invece che lavorare.
    Il tram è sempre pieno e non posso mai sedermi.
    Non stiamo esagerando? Perché lasciamo andare così il nostro paese?
    E’ il momento di dire basta!
    Avete la responsabilità del nostro futuro e di quello della Svizzera.
    Per favore, pensate a noi.

    https://www.laprovinciadicomo.it/videos/video/lo-spot-anti-frontalieri_1047819_44
    https://www.laprovinciadilecco.it/videos/video/lo-spot-anti-frontalieri_1047819_44
    #anti-migrants #UDC #Suisse #vidéo #campagne #libre_circulation #frontières #fermeture_des_frontières #migrations #extrême_droite #nationalisme #identité #paysage #géographie_culturelle #liberté #chômage #criminalité #stéréotypes #sécurité #trafic #responsabilité

    #vidéo publiée dans le cadre de la campagne de #votation «#oui_à_une_immigration_modérée»:


    https://www.udc.ch/campagnes/apercu/initiative-populaire-pour-une-immigration-moderee-initiative-de-limitation
    #initiative

    Site web de la campagne:


    https://www.initiative-de-limitation.ch

    #votations

    via @albertocampiphoto et @wizo

    ping @cede

    • A lire sur le site web de l’UDC...

      Iniziativa per la limitazione: chi si batte per il clima dovrebbe votare SI

      Chi si batte per il clima dovrebbe votare SI all’iniziativa per la limitazione. Sembra un paradosso, ma in realtà non è così: è in realtà una scelta molto logica e sensata. Vediamone il motivo.

      Dall’introduzione della piena libertà di circolazione delle persone nel 2007, un numero netto di circa 75.000 persone è immigrato in Svizzera ogni anno, di cui 50.000 stranieri dell’UE. Ognuna di queste persone ha bisogno di un appartamento, un mezzo di trasporto, usa servizi statali e consuma acqua ed elettricità. Allo stesso tempo, la Svizzera dovrebbe ridurre le emissioni di CO2, smettere di costruire sui terreni coltivati e tenere sotto controllo i costi sanitari.

      Per dare abitazione al circa 1 milione di immigrati abbiamo dovuto costruire nuove abitazioni su un’area grande come 57.000 campi da calcio. Si tratta di 407 milioni di metri quadrati di natura che sono stati ricoperti di cemento. Questo include circa 454.000 nuovi appartamenti.

      Un milione di immigrati significa anche 543.000 auto in più e 789 autobus in più sulle strade e 9 miliardi di chilometri percorsi in più. Se la Svizzera dovesse raggiungere davvero entro il 2030 la popolazione di 10 milioni di abitanti, sarà necessario un ulteriore aumento della rete stradale, in quanto sempre più auto saranno in circolazione, emettendo anche ulteriore C02. L’ufficio federale dello sviluppo territoriale prevede infatti che il numero di automobili in circolazione nel 2040 aumenterà ancora del 26%.

      L’immigrazione incontrollata ha conseguenze anche sul consumo di energia. Con la Strategia energetica 2050, la Svizzera ha deciso che entro la fine del 2035 il consumo di energia pro-capite deve diminuire del 43% rispetto al 2020. Ciò per compensare l’elettricità prodotta dalle centrali nucleari, che devono essere chiuse per motivi politici. Tra l’anno di riferimento 2000 e il 2018, il consumo di energia pro-capite è diminuito del 18,8%, soprattutto a causa del progresso tecnico (motori a combustione efficienti, nuova tecnologia edilizia, lampade a LED, apparecchi a basso consumo, produzione interna di energia solare, ecc.) Nello stesso periodo, tuttavia, il consumo totale di energia in Svizzera è diminuito solo dell’1,9%. In altre parole, gli effetti di risparmio di ogni singolo svizzero sono quasi completamente assorbiti dalla crescita della popolazione a causa dell’immigrazione incontrollata

      Secondo l’accordo sul clima di Parigi, la Svizzera dovrebbe ridurre le emissioni di C02 del 50% entro il 2030. Quando la Svizzera siglò il trattato, nel 1990, aveva però 6,5 milioni di abitanti. Con la libera circolazione delle persone, nel 2030 in Svizzera vivranno 10 milioni di persone, che consumano, si spostano e producono CO2. Anche supponendo un graduale rinuncio alle automobili e una netta riduzione di emissioni nel settore industriale, con una popolazione così grande sarà impossibile per una Svizzera con oltre 10 milioni di abitanti di raggiungere l’obbiettivo previsto dell’accordo di Parigi.

      È pertanto necessario che la Svizzera torni a gestire in modo autonomo la propria immigrazione. Una Svizzera da 10 milioni di abitanti non è sostenibile né dal punto di vista economico ne dal punto di vista climatico.

      https://www.iniziativa-per-la-limitazione.ch/artikel/iniziativa-per-la-limitazione-chi-si-batte-per-il-clim

      #climat #changement_climatique

    • C’était il y a 3 ans et déjà (encore, plutôt,…) l’UDC.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqvqq7Tt3pQ

      L’affiche du comité contre la naturalisation facilitée, représentant une femme voilée, a suscité une vaste polémique. Nous avons visité l’agence qui l’a conçue.
      Extrait du 26 minutes, une émission de la Radio Télévision Suisse, samedi 21 janvier 2017.

      #26_minutes, un faux magazine d’actualité qui passe en revue les faits marquants de la semaine écoulée, en Suisse et dans le monde, à travers des faux reportages et des interviews de vrais et de faux invités. Un regard décalé sur l’actualité, présenté par Vincent Veillon et Vincent Kucholl de l’ex-120 secondes.

  • Le #Changement_climatique pourrait bientôt rendre une grande partie du golfe Persique inhabitable
    https://www.les-crises.fr/le-changement-climatique-pourrait-bientot-rendre-une-grande-partie-du-gol

    Source : PRI, Peter Thomson, David Leveille, Nina Porzucki et Joyce Hackel D’après un rapport publié dans Nature Climate Change, à la fin du siècle actuel, les conditions climatiques dans une grande partie de la région du golfe Persique et de la péninsule arabique repousseront souvent les limites thermiques de l’adaptabilité humaine si les évolutions de la pollution par les gaz à effet de serre restent sur la trajectoire actuelle. Ces cartes tirées du rapport représente la température (T), et la température plus l’humidité (TW) actuelles (HIST), dans le cadre d’un scénario futur de contrôle des émissions de gaz à effet de serre (RCP4.5), et dans le cadre du scénario du « statu quo » qui ne modifie en rien la tendance actuelle en matière d’émissions (RCP8.5). (Températures en degrés Celsius).

    Imaginez un (...)

    #Climat #Ecologie #Climat,_Changement_climatique,_Ecologie

  • The Next Great Migration. The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move

    The news today is full of stories of dislocated people on the move. Wild species, too, are escaping warming seas and desiccated lands, creeping, swimming, and flying in a mass exodus from their past habitats. News media presents this scrambling of the planet’s migration patterns as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict and waves of anxiety across the Western world. On both sides of the Atlantic, experts issue alarmed predictions of millions of invading aliens, unstoppable as an advancing tsunami, and countries respond by electing anti-immigration leaders who slam closed borders that were historically porous.

    But the science and history of migration in animals, plants, and humans tell a different story. Far from being a disruptive behavior to be quelled at any cost, migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change, a biological imperative as necessary as breathing. Climate changes triggered the first human migrations out of Africa. Falling sea levels allowed our passage across the Bering Sea. Unhampered by barbed wire, migration allowed our ancestors to people the planet, catapulting us into the highest reaches of the Himalayan mountains and the most remote islands of the Pacific, creating and disseminating the biological, cultural, and social diversity that ecosystems and societies depend upon. In other words, migration is not the crisis—it is the solution.

    Conclusively tracking the history of misinformation from the 18th century through today’s anti-immigration policies, The Next Great Migration makes the case for a future in which migration is not a source of fear, but of hope.

    https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-next-great-migration-9781635571998
    #adaptation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #mobilité #solution #problème #résilience #livre #changement_climatique #climat #réfugiés_environnementaux #migrations_environnementales #histoire #survie #crise #histoire_des_migrations

    ping @isskein @karine4 @_kg_ @reka

    • Climate migration is not a problem. It’s a solution.

      Climate migration is often associated with crisis and catastrophe, but #Sonia_Shah, author of “The Next Great Migration,” wants us to think differently about migration. On The World’s weekly look at climate change solutions, The Big Fix, Shah speaks to host Marco Werman about her reporting that considers how the world would be more resilient if people were given legal safe ways to move.

      https://www.pri.org/file/2020-08-21/climate-migration-not-problem-it-s-solution

      –—

      Sonia Shah parle aussi de #musique métissée, dont celle de #Mulatu_Astatke, qui n’aurait pas pu voir le jour sans la migrations de populations au cours de l’histoire :


      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatu_Astatke

      #immobilité #fermeture_des_frontières

    • Migration as Bio-Resilience : On Sonia Shah’s “The Next Great Migration”

      DURING THE UNUSUALLY frigid winter of 1949, a breeding pair of gray wolves crossed a frozen-over channel onto Michigan’s Isle Royale, a narrow spit of land just south of the US-Canadian maritime border in Lake Superior. Finding abundant prey, including moose, the pair had pups, starting a small lupine clan. Over the next almost 50 years, without access to the mainland, the clan grew increasingly inbred, with over half the wolves developing congenital spinal deformities and serious eye problems. As the wolf population declined — scientists even found one mother dead in her den, with seven unborn pups in her — the moose population came thundering back, gobbling up and trampling the forest’s buds and shoots. The ecosystem’s food chain now had a few broken links.

      The Isle Royale wolf population was saved, however, by a lone migrant. In 1997, a male wolf made his way to the island. Within a generation — wolf generations are a little less than five years — 56 percent of the young wolves carried the newcomer’s genes. In the years since, thanks to ongoing conservation efforts, more wolves have been brought to the island to provide enough genetic diversity not only to save the wolves but preserve the ecosystem’s new balance.

      This is just one of many examples of the bio-benefits of migratory species provided by Sonia Shah in her new book, The Next Great Migration. Hers is an original take on the oft-stultifying debate about immigration, most frequently argued over by unbending stalwarts on opposite extremes, or sometimes quibbled over by noncommittal centrists. There are now more displaced humans than ever — around one percent of the total human population — and the climate crises together with humanity’s ceaseless creep are driving an increasing number of nonhuman species to search for more welcoming climes. That half of the story is popularly understood: the world is on the move. What is less often acknowledged, and what Shah convincingly fills out, is its biological necessity. “Migration’s ecological function extends beyond the survival of the migrant itself,” she writes. “Wild migrants build the botanical scaffolding of entire ecosystems.” Besides spreading pollen and seeds — upon which the survival of many plants depend — migrants also transport genes, thus bringing genetic diversity. Migration is not only a human fact but a biological one.

      But the understanding of migration’s critical import — whether broadly biological or specifically human — has been a long time coming.

      “The idea that certain people and species belong in certain fixed places has had a long history in Western culture,” Shah writes. By its logic, “migration is by necessity a catastrophe, because it violates the natural order.” The so-called “natural order” is actually a construct that has been buoyed for millennia by a broad coalition of scientists, politicians, and other ideologically inflected cavillers. As for the word “migrant,” it didn’t even appear in the English language until the 17th century — when it was coined by Thomas Browne — and it took another hundred years before it was applied to humans. One important migrant-denialist, as Shah details, was Swedish-born naturalist Carl Linnaeus, most famous for formalizing binomial nomenclature, the modern system of classifying organisms as, say, Canis lupus or Homo sapiens.

      Shah goes beyond Linnaeus’s contribution to taxonomy — which, notably, is itself subject to critique, as when essayist Anne Fadiman describes it as a “form of mental colonising and empire-building” — to illuminate his blinkered fealty to the dominant narratives of the day. More than just falling in line, he worked to cement the alleged differences between human populations — crudely exaggerating, for instance, features of “red,” “yellow,” “black,” or “white” skinned people. He sparred with competing theorists who were beginning to propose then-revolutionary ideas — for instance, that all humans originated in and migrated out of Africa. With the concept of the “Great Chain of Being,” he toadied to the reigning theological explanation for the world being as it was; this concept hierarchically categorized, in ascending order, matter, plants, animals, peasants, clergy, noblemen, kings, and, finally, God. To support his views, Linnaeus took a trip to northern Sweden where he “studied” the indigenous Sami people, all the while complaining of the climate and the locals not speaking Swedish. Robbing them of a few native costumes, he then freely fabricated stories about their culture and origins. He later tried to give credence to biological differences between Africans and Europeans by committing to the bizarre fantasy that black women had elongated labia minora, to which he referred using the Latin term sinus pudoris. The cultural backdrop to his explanations and speculations was the generally held view that migration was an anomaly, and that people and animals lived where they belonged and belonged where they lived — and always had.

      Ignorance — deliberate, political, or simply true and profound — of the realities of even animal migration went so far as pushing scientists to hatch myriad far-fetched theories to explain, for example, where migratory birds went in the winter. Leading naturalists at the time explained some birds’ seasonal disappearance by claiming that they hibernated in lakes — a theory first proposed by Aristotle — or hid in remote caves. Driving such assumptions was, in part, the idea of a stable and God-created “harmony of nature.” When some thinkers began to question such fixed stability, Linneaus doubled down, insisting that animals inhabited their specific climes, and remained there. The implication for humans was not only that they had not migrated from Africa, but that Africans — as well as Asians and Native Americans — were biologically distinct. This kind of racial essentialism was an important structural component of what would morph into race science or eugenics. Linnaeus divided Homo sapiens into Homo sapiens europaeus (white, serious, strong), Homo sapiens asiaticus (yellow, melancholy, greedy), Homo sapiens americanus (red, ill-tempered, subjugated), and Homo sapiens afer (black, impassive, lazy), as well as Homo caudatus (inhabitants of the Antarctic globe), and even Homo monstrosus (pygmies and Patagonian giants).

      “Scientific ideas that cast migration as a form of disorder were not obscure theoretical concerns confined to esoteric academic journals,” but, Shah writes, “theoretical ballast for today’s generation of anti-immigration lobbyists and policy makers.”

      Here Shah dredges up more vile fantasies, like that of the “Malphigian layer” in the late 17th century, which claimed that Africans had an extra layer of skin consisting of “a thick, fatty black liquid of unknown provenance.” While the Malphigian layer has been roundly dismissed, such invented differences between peoples continue to bedevil medical treatment: even today, black people are presumed to be able to tolerate more pain, and so it’s perhaps hardly surprising that more black women die in childbirth.

      The idea was “that people who lived on different continents were biologically foreign to one another, a claim that would fuel centuries of xenophobia and generations of racial violence.” Or, put more simply, Linnaeus and other believed: “We belong here. They belong there.”

      ¤

      “The classifications of species as either ‘native’ or ‘alien’ is one of the organizing principles of conservation,” Shah writes, quoting a 2007 scientific study in Progress in Human Geography. The implications of that dichotomous classification are harmful to humans and nonhumans alike, setting the stage for xenophobia and white anthropomorphism. As a case in point, the son of author and conservationist Aldo Leopold recommended in 1963, that US national parks “preserve, or where necessary […] recreate the ecologic scene as viewed by the first European visitors.” The idea of a pristine, pre-colonial era presumes an ahistorical falsehood: that humans and others left no trace, or that those traces could be undone and the ecologic scene returned to a static Eden. While many indigenous cultures certainly live less disruptively within their environment, in the case of both the Americas and Australia for example, the arrival of the first Homo sapiens heralded the swift extinction of scores of native species — in the Americas, woolly mammoths, giant sloths, saber-toothed tigers, camelops, and the dire wolf. Yet the pull toward preservation persists.

      In 1999, Bill Clinton established the National Invasive Species Council, which was tasked with repelling “alien species.” This move was an outgrowth of the relatively recently created disciplines of conservation biology, restoration biology, and even invasion biology. I recall being a boy in northern Ohio and hearing of the horror and devastation promised by the zebra mussel’s inexorable encroachment into the ecosystems of the Great Lakes. One invasion biologist, writes Shah, “calculated that wild species moving freely across the planet would ravage large swaths of ecosystems. The number of land animals would drop by 65 percent, land birds by 47 percent, butterflies by 35 percent, and ocean life by 58 percent.” And while the globe is certainly losing species to extinction, blaming mobility or migration is missing the mark, and buoying up the old “myth of a sedentary planet,” as she puts it.

      For millennia, humans had hardly any idea of how some species could spread. They had neither the perspective nor technology to understand that creepy-crawlies have creeped and crawled vast distances and always been on the move, which is not, in the big picture, a bad thing. Zebra mussels, for example, were not the only, or even the greatest, threat to native clams in the Great Lakes. Besides disrupting the local ecosystems, they also contributed to those ecosystems by filtering water and becoming a new source of food for native fish and fowl. Shah notes that Canadian ecologist Mark Vellend has found that “wild newcomers generally increase species richness on a local and regional level.” Since the introduction of European species to the Americas 400 years ago, biodiversity has actually increased by 18 percent. In other words, Shah writes, “nature transgresses borders all the time.”

      In her last chapter, “The Wall,” she tackles the immunological implications of migration. While first acknowledging that certain dangers do uncontrovertibly exist, such as Europeans bringing smallpox to the Americas, or Rome spreading malaria to the outer regions of its empire, she metaphorizes xenophobia as a fever dream. To be sure, wariness of foreign pathogens may make sense, but to guide foreign policy on such grounds or let wariness morph into discrimination or violent backlash becomes, like a fever that climbs beyond what the host organism needs, “a self-destructive reaction, leading to seizures, delirium, and collapse.” It’s like a cytokine storm in the COVID-19 era. As Shah told me, “the reflexive solution to contagion — border closures, isolation, immobility — is in fact antithetical to biological resilience on a changing planet.”

      ¤

      In 2017, a solo Mexican wolf loped through the Chihuahuan Desert, heading north, following a path that other wolves, as well as humans, have traveled for thousands of years. Scientists were especially interested in this lone wolf, known as M1425, because he represented a waning population of endangered Mexican wolves dispersing genes from a tiny population in Mexico to a slightly more robust population in the United States.

      Like the Isle Royale wolves, “[i]f the two wild populations of Mexican gray wolves can find and mate with each other, the exchange of genetic material could boost recovery efforts for both populations,” a New Mexico magazine reported. But the area where M1425 crossed the international boundary is now closed off by a border wall, and the Center for Biological Diversity counts 93 species directly threatened by the proposed expansion of the wall. This is what we should be worried about.

      https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/migration-as-bio-resilience-on-sonia-shahs-the-next-great-migration
      #bio-résilience #résilience

      signalé par @isskein

  • How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering

    On a hot summer’s day, the neighborhood of Gilpin quickly becomes one of the most sweltering parts of Richmond.

    There are few trees along the sidewalks to shield people from the sun’s relentless glare. More than 2,000 residents, mostly Black, live in low-income public housing that lacks central air conditioning. Many front yards are paved with concrete, which absorbs and traps heat. The ZIP code has among the highest rates of heat-related ambulance calls in the city.

    There are places like Gilpin all across the United States. In cities like Baltimore, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Portland and New York, neighborhoods that are poorer and have more residents of color can be 5 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in summer than wealthier, whiter parts of the same city.

    And there’s growing evidence that this is no coincidence. In the 20th century, local and federal officials, usually white, enacted policies that reinforced racial segregation in cities and diverted investment away from minority neighborhoods in ways that created large disparities in the urban heat environment.

    The consequences are being felt today.

    To escape the heat, Sparkle Veronica Taylor, a 40-year-old Gilpin resident, often walks with her two young boys more than a half-hour across Richmond to a tree-lined park in a wealthier neighborhood. Her local playground lacks shade, leaving the gyms and slides to bake in the sun. The trek is grueling in summer temperatures that regularly soar past 95 degrees, but it’s worth it to find a cooler play area, she said.

    “The heat gets really intense, I’m just zapped of energy by the end of the day,” said Ms. Taylor, who doesn’t own a car. “But once we get to that park, I’m struck by how green the space is. I feel calmer, better able to breathe. Walking through different neighborhoods, there’s a stark difference between places that have lots of greenery and places that don’t.”
    To understand why many cities have such large heat disparities, researchers are looking closer at historical practices like redlining.

    In the 1930s, the federal government created maps of hundreds of cities, rating the riskiness of different neighborhoods for real estate investment by grading them “best,” “still desirable,” “declining” or “hazardous.” Race played a defining role: Black and immigrant neighborhoods were typically rated “hazardous” and outlined in red, denoting a perilous place to lend money. For decades, people in redlined areas were denied access to federally backed mortgages and other credit, fueling a cycle of disinvestment.

    In 2016, these old redlining maps were digitized by historians at the University of Richmond. Researchers comparing them to today’s cities have spotted striking patterns.

    Across more than 100 cities, a recent study found, formerly redlined neighborhoods are today 5 degrees hotter in summer, on average, than areas once favored for housing loans, with some cities seeing differences as large as 12 degrees. Redlined neighborhoods, which remain lower-income and more likely to have Black or Hispanic residents, consistently have far fewer trees and parks that help cool the air. They also have more paved surfaces, such as asphalt lots or nearby highways, that absorb and radiate heat.

    “It’s uncanny how often we see this pattern,” said Vivek Shandas, a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University and a co-author of the study. “It tells us we really need to better understand what was going on in the past to create these land-use patterns.”

    Heat is the nation’s deadliest weather disaster, killing as many as 12,000 people a year. Now, as global warming brings ​ever more intense heat waves, cities like Richmond are ​drawing up plans to adapt​ — and confronting a historical legacy that has left communities of color far more vulnerable to heat.

    The appraisers in Richmond were transparent in their racism as they mapped the city in the 1930s as part of a Depression-era federal program to rescue the nation’s collapsing housing markets.

    Every Black neighborhood, no matter its income level, was outlined in red and deemed a “hazardous” area for housing loans. The appraisers’ notes made clear that race was a key factor in giving these neighborhoods the lowest grade.

    One part of town was outlined in yellow and rated as “declining” because, the appraisers wrote, Black families sometimes walked through.

    By contrast, white neighborhoods, described as containing “respectable people,” were often outlined in blue and green and were subsequently favored for investment.

    Richmond, like many cities, was already segregated before the 1930s by racial zoning laws and restrictive covenants that barred Black families from moving into white neighborhoods. But the redlining maps, economists have found, deepened patterns of racial inequality in cities nationwide in ways that reverberated for decades. White families could more easily get loans and federal assistance to buy homes, building wealth to pass on to their children. Black families, all too often, could not.

    That inequity likely influenced urban heat patterns, too. Neighborhoods with white homeowners had more clout to lobby city governments for tree-lined sidewalks and parks. In Black neighborhoods, homeownership declined and landlords rarely invested in green space. City planners also targeted redlined areas as cheap land for new industries, highways, warehouses and public housing, built with lots of heat-absorbing asphalt and little cooling vegetation.

    Disparities in access to housing finance “created a snowball effect that compounded over generations,” said Nathan Connolly, a historian at Johns Hopkins who helped digitize the maps. Redlining wasn’t the only factor driving racial inequality, but the maps offer a visible symbol of how federal policies codified housing discrimination.

    Congress outlawed redlining by the 1970s. But the practice has left lasting marks on cities.

    Neighborhoods to Richmond’s west that were deemed desirable for investment, outlined in green on the old maps, remain wealthier and predominantly white, with trees and parks covering 42 percent of the land. Neighborhoods in Richmond’s east and south that were once redlined are still poorer and majority Black, with much lower rates of homeownership and green space covering just 12 percent of the surface.

    These patterns largely persisted through cycles of white flight to the suburbs and, more recently, gentrification.

    Today, Richmond’s formerly redlined neighborhoods are, on average, 5 degrees hotter on a summer day than greenlined neighborhoods, satellite analyses reveal. Some of the hottest areas, like the Gilpin neighborhood, can see temperatures 15 degrees higher than wealthier, whiter parts of town.

    Even small differences in heat can be dangerous, scientists have found. During a heat wave, every one degree increase in temperature can increase the risk of dying by 2.5 percent. Higher temperatures can strain the heart and make breathing more difficult, increasing hospitalization rates for cardiac arrest and respiratory diseases like asthma. Richmond’s four hottest ZIP codes all have the city’s highest rates of heat-related emergency-room visits.

    Few neighborhoods in Richmond have been as radically reshaped as Gilpin. In the early 20th century, Gilpin was part of Jackson Ward, a thriving area known as “Black Wall Street” and the cultural heart of the city’s African-American middle class, a place where people came to see Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald perform.

    But with redlining in the 1930s, Jackson Ward fell into decline. Black residents had a tougher time obtaining mortgages and property values deteriorated. In the 1940s, the city embarked on “slum clearance” projects, razing acres of properties and replacing them with Richmond’s first segregated public housing project, Gilpin Court, a set of austere, barracks-style buildings that were not designed with heat in mind.

    A decade later, over the objections of residents, Virginia’s state government decided to build a new federal highway right through the neighborhood, destroying thousands of homes and isolating Gilpin.

    Today, Gilpin’s community pool sits empty, unfixed by the city for years. Cinder block walls bake in the sun, unshaded by trees. While city officials and local utilities have provided many people with window air-conditioners, residents said they often aren’t enough, and old electric wiring means blown fuses are common.

    “The air conditioning unit in my bedroom runs 24/7,” said Ms. Taylor, the 40-year-old mother of two. “Air circulation is poor up here on the upper level of where I live.”

    Gilpin is grappling with a mix of heat and poverty that illustrates how global warming can compound inequality.

    Sherrell Thompson, a community health worker in Gilpin, said residents have high rates of asthma, diabetes and blood pressure, all conditions that can be worsened by heat. They are also exposed to air pollution from the six-lane highway next door.

    There are no doctor’s offices nearby or grocery stores selling fresh produce, which means that people without cars face further health challenges in the heat.

    “It becomes a whole circle of issues,” Ms. Thompson said. “If you want to find any kind of healthy food, you need to walk at least a mile or catch two buses. If you have asthma but it’s 103 degrees out and you’re not feeling well enough to catch three buses to see your primary care physician, what do you do?”

    In Gilpin, the average life expectancy is 63 years. Just a short drive over the James River sits Westover Hills, a largely white, middle-income neighborhood that greets visitors with rows of massive oak trees spreading their leaves over quiet boulevards. Life expectancy there is 83 years.

    A broad array of socioeconomic factors drives this gap, but it is made worse by heat. Researchers have found that excess heat and a lack of green space can affect mental well-being and increase anxiety. Without parks or shady outdoor areas to gather, people are more likely to be isolated indoors during the summer, a dynamic worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.

    “Especially when there’s no green space nearby, the heat traps people in their homes,” said Tevin Moore, 22, who grew up in Richmond’s formerly redlined East End. “The heat definitely messes with you psychologically, people get frustrated over every little thing.”
    Climate Planners Confront Racial Inequality

    Nationwide, the pattern is consistent: Neighborhoods that were once redlined see more extreme heat in the summer than those that weren’t.

    Every city has its own story.

    In Denver, formerly redlined neighborhoods tend to have more Hispanic than Black residents today, but they remain hotter: parks were intentionally placed in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods that then blocked construction of affordable housing nearby even after racial segregation was banned. In Baltimore, polluting industries were more likely to be located near communities of color. In Portland, zoning rules allowed multifamily apartment buildings to cover the entire lot and be built without any green space, a practice the city only recently changed.

    The problem worsens as global warming increases the number of hot days nationwide.

    Today, the Richmond area can expect about 43 days per year with temperatures of at least 90 degrees. By 2089, climate models suggest, the number of very hot days could double. “All of a sudden you’re sitting on top of really unlivable temperatures,” said Jeremy Hoffman, chief scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia and a co-author of the redlining study.

    For years, cities across the United States rarely thought about racial equity when designing their climate plans, which meant that climate protection measures, like green roofs on buildings, often disproportionately benefited whiter, wealthier residents. That’s slowly starting to change.

    In Houston, officials recently passed an ordinance to prioritize disadvantaged neighborhoods for flood protection. Minneapolis and Portland are reworking zoning to allow denser, more affordable housing to be built in desirable neighborhoods. Denver has passed a new sales tax to fund parks and tree-planting, and city officials say they would like to add more green space in historically redlined areas.

    And in Richmond, a city in the midst of a major reckoning with its racist past, where crowds this summer tore down Confederate monuments and protested police brutality, officials are paying much closer attention to racial inequality as they draw up plans to adapt to global warming. The city has launched a new mapping tool that shows in detail how heat and flooding can disproportionately harm communities of color.

    “We can see that racial equity and climate equity are inherently entwined, and we need to take that into account when we’re building our capacity to prepare,” said Alicia Zatcoff, the city’s sustainability manager. “It’s a new frontier in climate action planning and there aren’t a lot of cities that have really done it yet.”

    Officials in Richmond’s sustainability office are currently engaged in an intensive listening process with neighborhoods on the front lines of global warming to hear their concerns, as they work to put racial equity at the core of their climate action and resilience plan. Doing so “can mean confronting some very uncomfortable history,” said Ms. Zatcoff. But “the more proponents there are of doing the work this way, the better off we’ll all be for it.”

    To start, the city has announced a goal of ensuring that everyone in Richmond is within a 10-minute walk of a park, working with the Science Museum of Virginia and community partners to identify city-owned properties in vulnerable neighborhoods that can be converted into green space. It’s the city’s first large-scale greening project since the 1970s.

    Green space can be transformative. Trees can cool down neighborhoods by several degrees during a heat wave, studies show, helping to lower electric bills as well as the risk of death. When planted near roads, trees can help filter air pollution. The presence of green space can even reduce stress levels for people living nearby.

    And trees have another climate benefit: Unlike paved surfaces, they can soak up water in their roots, reducing flooding during downpours.

    A few years ago, in Richmond’s formerly redlined Southside, local nonprofits and residents sought to address the lack of green space and grocery stores by building a new community garden, a triangular park with a shaded veranda and fruit trees. “Almost instantly, the garden became a community space,” said Duron Chavis of Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, which backed the effort. “We have people holding cookouts, people doing yoga and meditation here, they can get to know their neighbors. It reduces social isolation.”

    Richmond’s long-term master plan, a draft of which was released in June, calls for increasing tree canopy in the hottest neighborhoods, redesigning buildings to increase air flow, reducing the number of paved lots and using more light-colored pavement to reflect the sun’s energy. The plan explicitly mentions redlining as one of the historical forces that has shaped the city.

    “Even people who don’t believe institutionalized racism are struck when we show them these maps,” said Cate Mingoya, director of capacity building at Groundwork USA, which has been highlighting links between redlining and heat in cities like Richmond. “We didn’t get here by accident, and we’re not going to get it fixed by accident.”

    Still, the challenges are immense. Cities often face tight budgets, particularly as revenues have declined amid the coronavirus pandemic.

    And tree-planting can be politically charged. Some researchers have warned that building new parks and planting trees in lower-income neighborhoods of color can often accelerate gentrification, displacing longtime residents. In Richmond, city officials say they are looking to address this by building additional affordable housing alongside new green space.

    Richmond’s draft master plan envisions building a park over Routes I-95 and I-64 to reconnect Gilpin with historical Jackson Ward, as well as redeveloping the public housing complex into a more walkable mixed-income neighborhood. That plan is not imminent, but local activists fear residents could eventually be priced out of this newer, greener area.

    “My worry is that they won’t build that park until the people who currently live here are removed,” said Arthur Burton, director of the Kinfolk Community Empowerment Center, who has been working to build community gardens in historically redlined areas like Gilpin.

    While many are optimistic about Richmond’s efforts to focus on racial equity, they warn there’s still much work to be done to undo disparities built up over many decades. Inequality in housing, incomes, health and education “all make a difference when we’re talking about vulnerability to climate change,” said Rob Jones, executive director of Groundwork’s Richmond chapter. “Greening the built environment is absolutely important,” he said, “but it’s only a start.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/24/climate/racism-redlining-cities-global-warming.html
    #racisme #urban_matter #changement_climatique #climat
    #géographie_urbaine #inégalités #discriminations #logement #Richmond #ségrégation #chaleur

    –---

    On parle dans cet article des quartiers signalés en rouge quartier où les investissements immobiliers comportent des risques « because residents were Black »
    –-> voir la vidéo (tirée du livre #segregated_by_design :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/776116

    Et le livre #The_color_of_law :


    –-> signalé dans le même billet

    via @visionscarto

  • Au Groenland, la calotte glaciaire fond irrémédiablement
    https://www.24matins.fr/topnews/une/au-groenland-la-calotte-glaciaire-fond-irremediablementpreviennent-des-scie

    Au #Groenland, la fonte de la calotte glaciaire est irrémédiable, selon des scientifiques avançant qu’elle continuerait à rétrécir « même si le réchauffement climatique s’arrêtait aujourd’hui » car les chutes de neige ne compensent plus les pertes de glace.

    #climat

  • Italian homes evacuated over risk of Mont Blanc glacier collapse

    Roads near #Courmayeur closed to tourists because of threat from falling #Planpincieux ice.

    Homes have been evacuated in Courmayeur in Italy’s Aosta valley, after a renewed warning that a huge portion of a Mont Blanc glacier is at risk of collapse.

    The measures were introduced on Wednesday morning after experts from the Fondazione Montagne Sicura (Safe Mountains Foundation) said 500,000 cubic metres of ice was in danger of sliding off the Planpincieux glacier on the Grandes Jorasses park.

    Some 65 people, including 50 tourists, have left homes in Val Ferret, the hamlet beneath the glacier. Roads have been closed to traffic and pedestrians.

    “We will find [alternative] solutions for residents,” Stefano Miserocchi, the mayor of Courmayeur, told the Italian news agency Ansa. “The tourists will have to find other solutions.”

    Glaciologists monitoring Planpincieux say a new section of ice is at risk of collapse. Homes were also evacuated in September last year following a warning that 250,000 cubic meters of ice could fall. The movement of the glacial mass was due to “anomalous temperature trends”, the experts said.

    The glacier has been closely monitored since 2013 to detect the speed at which the ice is melting.

    In August 2018, a heavy storm unleashed a debris flow, killing an elderly couple when their car was swept from the road that is currently closed.

    In the event of a collapse, it would take less than two minutes for the mass to reach the municipal road below.

    Safe Mountain Foundation experts are monitoring 184 glaciers in the Aosta valley region.

    There are 4,000 glaciers across the Mont Blanc massif, the highest mountain range in Europe, which straddles Italy, France and Switzerland.

    Scientists predict that if emissions continue to rise at the current rate, the Alpine glaciers could shed half of their ice by 2050.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/06/italian-homes-evacuated-risk-mont-blanc-glacier-ice-planpincieux?CMP=sh
    #Mont_Blanc #évacuation #glacier #montagne #changement_climatique #climat #Italie #réfugiés #réfugiés_climatiques #Vallée_d'Aoste #glace #Alpes

    ping @reka @albertocampiphoto

  • Pour une politique patrimoniale cohérente avec le contexte d’urgence climatique
    https://topophile.net/savoir/pour-une-politique-patrimoniale-coherente-avec-le-contexte-durgence-clima

    Tribune. Alors que les journées caniculaires s’enchainent, que tout le monde souffre de la chaleur plombante et que les chauffagistes font fortune en installant des climatiseurs, les architectes du patrimoine Sébastien Clément et Emmanuel Mille, et le philosophe Thierry Paquot appellent à une réhabilitation du bâti existant en phase avec l’urgence climatique afin que nos... Voir l’article

  • Sibérie : la vague de chaleur et les incendies libèrent du méthane qui risque de rendre « hors de contrôle » le changement climatique, alerte un membre du GIEC
    https://www.francetvinfo.fr/meteo/canicule/siberie-la-vague-de-chaleur-et-les-incendies-liberent-du-methane-qui-ri

    Est-ce que cette partie du monde se réchauffe plus vite que le reste de la planète ?

    François Gemenne : Elle se réchauffe à peu près deux fois plus vite que le reste du monde. Et l’anomalie de température est vraiment très particulière. Depuis le début de l’année, on a une vague de chaleur très importante, avec des températures cinq degrés supérieures à la normale et même 10 degrés supérieures au mois de juin.

    shit, ventilateur, toussa toussa.

  • Organizing amidst Covid-19


    Organizing amidst Covid-19: sharing stories of struggles
    Overviews of movement struggles in specific places

    Miguel Martinez
    Mutating mobilisations during the pandemic crisis in Spain (movement report, pp. 15 – 21)

    Laurence Cox
    Forms of social movement in the crisis: a view from Ireland (movement report, pp. 22 – 33)

    Lesley Wood
    We’re not all in this together (movement report, pp. 34 – 38)

    Angela Chukunzira
    Organising under curfew: perspectives from Kenya (movement report, pp. 39 – 42)

    Federico Venturini
    Social movements’ powerlessness at the time of covid-19: a personal account (movement report, pp. 43 – 46)

    Sobhi Mohanty
    From communal violence to lockdown hunger: emergency responses by civil society networks in Delhi, India (movement report, pp. 47 – 52)
    Feminist and LGBTQ+ activism

    Hongwei Bao
    “Anti-domestic violence little vaccine”: a Wuhan-based feminist activist campaign during COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 53 – 63)

    Ayaz Ahmed Siddiqui
    Aurat march, a threat to mainstream tribalism in Pakistan (movement report, pp. 64 – 71)

    Lynn Ng Yu Ling
    What does the COVID-19 pandemic mean for PinkDot Singapore? (movement report, pp. 72 – 81)

    María José Ventura Alfaro
    Feminist solidarity networks have multiplied since the COVID-19 outbreak in Mexico (movement report, pp. 82 – 87)

    Ben Trott
    Queer Berlin and the Covid-19 crisis: a politics of contact and ethics of care (movement report, pp. 88 – 108)
    Reproductive struggles

    Non Una Di Meno Roma
    Life beyond the pandemic (movement report, pp. 109 – 114)
    Labour organising

    Ben Duke
    The effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the gig economy and zero hour contracts (movement report, pp. 115 – 120)

    Louisa Acciari
    Domestic workers’ struggles in times of pandemic crisis (movement report, pp. 121 – 127)

    Arianna Tassinari, Riccardo Emilia Chesta and Lorenzo Cini
    Labour conflicts over health and safety in the Italian Covid19 crisis (movement report, pp. 128 – 138)

    T Sharkawi and N Ali
    Acts of whistleblowing: the case of collective claim making by healthcare workers in Egypt (movement report, pp. 139 – 163)

    Mallige Sirimane and Nisha Thapliyal
    Migrant labourers, Covid19 and working-class struggle in the time of pandemic: a report from Karnataka, India (movement report, pp. 164 – 181)
    Migrant and refugee struggles

    Johanna May Black, Sutapa Chattopadhyay and Riley Chisholm
    Solidarity in times of social distancing: migrants, mutual aid, and COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 182 – 193)

    Anitta Kynsilehto
    Doing migrant solidarity at the time of Covid-19 (movement report, pp. 194 – 198)

    Susan Thieme and Eda Elif Tibet
    New political upheavals and women alliances in solidarity beyond “lock down” in Switzerland at times of a global pandemic (movement report, pp. 199 – 207)

    Chiara Milan
    Refugee solidarity along the Western Balkans route: new challenges and a change of strategy in times of COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 208 – 212)

    Marco Perolini
    Abolish all camps in times of corona: the struggle against shared accommodation for refugees* in Berlin (movement report, pp. 213 – 224)
    Ecological activism

    Clara Thompson
    #FightEveryCrisis: Re-framing the climate movement in times of a pandemic (movement report, pp. 225 – 231)

    Susan Paulson
    Degrowth and feminisms ally to forge care-full paths beyond pandemic (movement report, pp. 232 – 246)

    Peterson Derolus [FR]
    Coronavirus, mouvements sociaux populaires anti-exploitation minier en Haïti (movement report, pp. 247 – 249)

    Silpa Satheesh
    The pandemic does not stop the pollution in River Periyar (movement report, pp. 250 – 257)

    Ashish Kothari
    Corona can’t save the planet, but we can, if we listen to ordinary people (movement report, pp. 258 – 265)
    Food sovereignty organising

    Dagmar Diesner
    Self-governance food system before and during the Covid-crisis on the example of CampiAperti, Bologna (movement report, pp. 266 – 273)

    URGENCI
    Community Supported Agriculture is a safe and resilient alternative to industrial agriculture in the time of Covid-19 (movement report, pp. 274 – 279)

    Jenny Gkougki
    Corona-crisis affects small Greek farmers who counterstrike with a nationwide social media campaign to unite producers and consumers on local level! (movement report, pp. 280 – 283)

    John Foran
    Eco Vista in the quintuple crisis (movement report, pp. 284 – 291)
    Solidarity and mutual aid

    Michael Zeller
    Karlsruhe’s “giving fences”: mobilisation for the needy in times of COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 292 – 303)

    Sergio Ruiz Cayuela
    Organising a solidarity kitchen: reflections from Cooperation Birmingham (movement report, pp. 304 – 309)

    Clinton Nichols
    On lockdown and locked out of the prison classroom: the prospects of post-secondary education for incarcerated persons during pandemic (movement report, pp. 310 – 316)

    Micha Fiedlschuster and Leon Rosa Reichle
    Solidarity forever? Performing mutual aid in Leipzig, Germany (movement report, pp. 317 – 325)
    Artistic and digital resistance

    Kerman Calvo and Ester Bejarano
    Music, solidarities and balconies in Spain (movement report, pp. 326 – 332)

    Neto Holanda and Valesca Lima [PT]
    Movimentos e ações político-culturais do Brasil em tempos de pandemia do Covid-19 (movement report, pp. 333 – 338)

    Margherita Massarenti
    How Covid-19 led to a #Rentstrike and what it can teach us about online organizing (movement report, pp. 339 – 346)

    Dounya
    Knowledge is power: virtual forms of everyday resistance and grassroots broadcasting in Iran (movement report, pp. 347 – 354)
    Imagining a new world

    Donatella della Porta
    How progressive social movements can save democracy in pandemic times (movement report, pp. 355 – 358)

    Jackie Smith
    Responding to coronavirus pandemic: human rights movement-building to transform global capitalism (movement report, pp. 359 – 366)

    Yariv Mohar
    Human rights amid Covid-19: from struggle to orchestration of tradeoffs (movement report, pp. 367 – 370)

    Julien Landry, Ann Marie Smith, Patience Agwenjang, Patricia Blankson Akakpo, Jagat Basnet, Bhumiraj Chapagain, Aklilu Gebremichael, Barbara Maigari and Namadi Saka,
    Social justice snapshots: governance adaptations, innovations and practitioner learning in a time of COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 371 – 382)

    Roger Spear, Gulcin Erdi, Marla A. Parker and Maria Anastasia
    Innovations in citizen response to crises: volunteerism and social mobilization during COVID-19 (movement report, pp. 383 – 391)

    Breno Bringel
    Covid-19 and the new global chaos (movement report, pp. 392 – 399)

    https://www.interfacejournal.net/interface-volume-12-issue-1

    #mouvements_sociaux #résistance #covid-19 #confinement #revue #aide_mutuelle #Espagne #résistance #Irlande #Kenya #impuissance #sentiment_d'impuissance #faim #violence #Delhi #Inde #féminisme #Wuhan #Pakistan #PinkDot #LGBT #Singapour #solidarité_féministe #solidarité #Mexique #care #Berlin #Allemagne #queer #gig_economy #travail #travail_domestique #travailleurs_domestiques #Italie #Egypte #travailleurs_étrangers #Karnataka #distanciation_sociale #migrations #Suisse #route_des_Balkans #Balkans #réfugiés #camps_de_réfugiés #FightEveryCrisis #climat #changement_climatique #décroissance #Haïti #extractivisme #pollution #River_Periyar #Periyar #souveraineté_alimentaire #nourriture #alimentation #CampiAperti #Bologne #agriculture #Grèce #Karlsruhe #Cooperation_Birmingham #UK #Angleterre #Leipzig #musique #Brésil #Rentstrike #Iran #droits_humains #justice_sociale #innovation #innovation_sociale

    ping @isskein @karine4

    • Thread sur twitter :
      https://twitter.com/Disclose_ngo/status/1279049745659559938

      Une enquête de @TBIJ, avec @Disclose_ngo et le @guardian révèle que 2,3 milliards d’euros ont été versés à l’industrie de la viande et du lait par la #BERD et #IFC, deux des principales banques d’aide au développement de @Banquemondiale.

      Principal bénéficiaire des financements de l’IFC et de la BERD : la filière laitière, avec plus de 890 millions d’euros investis en 10 ans. Les filières de la #volaille et du #porc ont obtenu 445 millions d’euros chacune.

      et ses partenaires ont découvert que ces #fonds_publics ont été largement mis au service de l’expansion de #multinationales. Des géants de l’#agrobusiness qui les ont utilisés pour construire des #abattoirs et des « #méga-fermes » industrielles à travers le monde.

      Parmi les bénéficiaires se trouve des poids lourds de l’agroalimentaire français. En 2010, la BERD a pris une participation dans les filiales d’Europe de l’Est et d’Asie centrale du groupe @DanoneFR – 25,3 milliards d’euros de CA en 2019.
      En 2016, c’est le @groupe_lactalis, n°1 mondial du lait, qui obtient un prêt de 15 millions d’euros de la part de la BERD. Les fonds ont bénéficié à #Foodmaster, la filiale de Lactalis au Kazakhstan.

      A l’époque, la #BERD annonce que « ce programme permettra à #Foodmaster d’augmenter la production et la qualité des produits laitiers » locaux. Ces dernières années, #Lactalis a été impliqué dans plusieurs scandales, dont la contamination de lait infantile à la salmonelle en 2017.
      Récemment, l’IFC a validé un prêt de 48M d’euros à la société indienne Suguna, le plus gros fournisseur de volaille du pays et l’un des dix plus gros producteurs mondiaux. En 2016, une ferme de Suguna a été accusée d’utiliser un antibiotique pointé du doigt par l’OMS.

      Autant d’investissements en contradiction avec les engagements de la BERD et de l’IFC en faveur de la lutte contre le changement climatique. Incohérence d’autant plus criante que l’élevage industriel est responsable de près de 15% des émissions de gaz à effets de serre.

      #Danone #France #Lactalis #Kazakhstan #produits_laitiers #lait_infantile #Suguna #antibiotiques

    • Le groupe #Carrefour complice de la #déforestation de l’#Amazonie

      Au #Brésil, les supermarchés Carrefour se fournissent en viande de #bœuf auprès d’un géant de l’agroalimentaire baptisé #Minerva. Une multinationale accusée de participer à la déforestation de l’Amazonie, et qui bénéficie du financement de la Banque mondiale.

      Chaque année, le Brésil exporte près de deux millions de tonnes de viande de boeuf. Pour assurer un tel niveau de production, l’élevage intensif est devenu la norme : partout à travers le pays, des méga-fermes dévorent la forêt amazonienne pour étendre les zones de pâturages.

      L’organisation internationale Trase, spécialisée dans l’analyse des liens entre les chaînes d’approvisionnement et la déforestation, a publié en 2019 une étude indiquant que l’industrie de la viande bovine au Brésil est responsable du massacre de 5 800 km2 de terres chaque année. Cette déforestation massive met en danger la faune et la flore, accélère les dérèglements climatiques et favorise les incendies, souvent localisés dans les zones d’élevage.

      Parmi les géants du bœuf brésilien qui sont aujourd’hui dans le viseur de plusieurs ONG : Minerva. Cette société inconnue en France est l’un des leaders de l’exportation de viande transformée, réfrigérée et congelée vers les marchés du Moyen-Orient, d’Asie ou d’Europe. Selon nos informations, l’un de ses principaux clients n’est autre que le groupe français Carrefour, qui a fait du Brésil son deuxième marché après la France.

      Fin 2019, après les incendies qui ont dévasté l’Amazonie, Noël Prioux, le directeur général de Carrefour au Brésil, s’est fendu d’une lettre à ses fournisseurs brésiliens, dont Minerva. Il souhaitait s’assurer que la viande de bœuf fournie par Minerva, mais aussi JBS et Marfrig, ne provenait pas d’élevages installés dans des zones déboisées. Quelques mois plus tôt, en juin, Carrefour s’était engagé à ce que « 100% de sa viande fraîche brésilienne » soit issue d’élevages non liés à la déforestation.

      Contacté par Disclose, Carrefour qualifie Minerva de fournisseur « occasionnel » au Brésil. Selon un responsable de la communication du groupe, Carrefour Brasil » a demandé à l’ensemble de ses fournisseurs de la filière bœuf un plan d’action pour répondre à l’engagement de lutte contre la déforestation. Dès que le groupe a connaissance de preuves de pratiques de déforestation, il cesse immédiatement d’acheter les produits dudit fournisseur. »

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ACsayFkw_Y&feature=emb_logo

      Le groupe continue pourtant à se fournir en viande bovine auprès de Minerva, mis en cause dans un rapport de Greenpeace Brésil au début du mois de juin. Selon l’ONG, l’entreprise aurait acheté des milliers de bovins à une exploitation appelée « Barra Mansa ». Laquelle est soupçonnée de se fournir auprès d’éleveurs accusés de déforestation. À l’image de la ferme de Paredão, installée dans le Parc national Serra Ricardo, dont la moitié des 4000 hectares de terrain auraient été déboisés illégalement. Barra Mansa, située à quelques kilomètres à peine, y a acheté 2 000 bovins, qui ont été achetés à leur tour par Minerva, le fournisseur de Carrefour au Brésil. Les analyses de données effectuées par Trase indiquent, elles aussi, qu’il existerait un lien direct entre les chaînes d’approvisionnement de Minerva et la déforestation de plus de 100 km2 de terres chaque année ; Minerva conteste ces conclusions.

      Minerva bénéficie du soutien de la Banque mondiale

      En décembre 2019, notre partenaire, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), et le quotidien britannique The Guardian ont révélé que la Banque mondiale et son bras financier, la Société internationale financière (IFC), soutiennent directement l’activité de Minerva. Une participation financière initiée en 2013, date de la signature d’un prêt de 85 millions de dollars entre Minerva et l’IFC. Objectif affiché à l’époque : « Soutenir [le] développement [de Minerva] au Brésil, au Paraguay, en Uruguay et probablement en Colombie ». En clair, une institution d’aide au développement finance un géant mondial du bœuf soupçonné de participer à la déforestation de l’Amazonie. Le tout, avec de l’argent public.

      Selon des experts de l’ONU interrogés par le BIJ, la Banque mondiale doit absolument reconsidérer ses investissements au sein de Minerva. « Compte tenu de la crise climatique mondiale, la Banque mondiale devrait veiller à ce que tous ses investissements soient respectueux du climat et des droits de l’Homme et doit se retirer des industries qui ne respectent pas ces critères », a déclaré David Boyd, le rapporteur spécial des Nations Unies pour les droits de l’homme et l’environnement. Une position également défendue par son prédécesseur, le professeur de droit international John Knox : « Le financement international de projets contribuant à la déforestation et la détérioration du climat est totalement inexcusable ».

      Contactée, l’IFC explique avoir « investi dans Minerva afin de promouvoir une croissance pérenne (…) dans le but de créer une industrie bovine plus durable ». L’organisation assure que sa participation dans l’entreprise a permis à Minerva de prendre « des mesures pour améliorer la traçabilité de son approvisionnement auprès de ses fournisseurs directs », précisant qu’aujourd’hui « 100 % de ses achats directs proviennent de zones qui n’ont pas été déforestées. » Quid, dès lors, des fournisseurs indirects ? Ceux qui font naître et élèvent les bovins, avant qu’ils n’arrivent aux ranchs qui les enverront à l’abattoir ? Ils constituent de fait le premier maillon de la chaîne d’approvisionnement.

      Taciano Custódio, responsable du développement durable de Minerva, reconnaît lui-même qu’ « à ce jour, aucun des acteurs de l’industrie n’est en mesure de localiser les fournisseurs indirects ». Il en rejette la faute sur l’administration brésilienne et l’absence de réglementation en la matière, tout en justifiant la déforestation : « Les pays d’Amérique du Sud possèdent encore un grand pourcentage de forêts et de terres non défrichées qui peuvent être exploitées légalement et de manière durable. Certains pays invoquent notamment la nécessité d’agrandir leur territoire de production afin de pouvoir développer la santé et l’éducation publiques et investir dans des infrastructures. ».

      Depuis le début de l’année 2020, plus de 12 000km2 de forêt ont disparu. Soit une augmentation de 55% par rapport à l’année dernière sur la même période.

      https://disclose.ngo/fr/news/au-bresil-le-groupe-carrefour-lie-a-la-deforestation-de-lamazonie

  • Quand la #banque_centrale donne gratuitement de l’argent aux grandes #banques_commerciales au lieu de financer la #reconstruction_écologique
    https://www.institut-rousseau.fr/quand-la-banque-centrale-donne-gratuitement-de-largent-aux-grandes

    Et toutes ces sommes sont empruntées à taux négatifs, à – 1 % ! Ce qui signifie que la banque centrale donne littéralement de l’argent aux banques privées pour qu’elles daignent venir lui emprunter des liquidités, alors même qu’on refuse toujours de financer directement les États ou d’annuler les #dettes_publiques qu’elle détient. D’ailleurs, les conditions à atteindre pour bénéficier du taux de – 1 % ont été considérablement assouplies. Auparavant, les banques devaient apporter la preuve qu’elles avaient accru leur portefeuille de prêts aux entreprises et aux ménages pour profiter du coût le plus favorable. Dans le cadre de cette nouvelle opération, elles peuvent se contenter de le maintenir à leur niveau d’avant la crise du Covid. Et on rajoute à cela que si jamais des emprunteurs font défaut, il y a désormais de bonnes chances pour que les banques soient remboursées directement par le Gouvernement. Rien que pour la première année de leur emprunt, ce sont donc 13 milliards d’euros qui seront versés gratuitement aux banques par la création monétaire ex nihilo de la banque centrale. Sur trois ans, près de 40 milliards d’euros seront ainsi offerts. N’a-t-on pas mieux à faire avec 40 milliards d’euros, comme lutter contre le #changement_climatique par exemple ?

    Dans le monde des économistes orthodoxes, personne ou presque ne s’inquiète de la « crédibilité » de l’action de la banque centrale, du risque d’#inflation sur les #marchés_financiers (c’est-à-dire de #bulles_financières que ce type d’action ne manquera pas d’engendrer), ou bien de l’impact sur les fonds propres de la banque centrale (qui pour le coup est absolument certain contrairement aux opérations d’annulation de dettes publiques détenues par la banque centrale). En 2008, nous avions été choqués de la socialisation des pertes et la privatisation des profits sans rien faire, sinon des réformes cosmétiques. Nous avons désormais fait mieux en passant dans une phase de couverture intégrale des pertes et de fabrication artificielle des profits grâce à une banque centrale dont l’indépendance farouche vis-à-vis des États n’a d’égale que sa complaisance et sa dépendance à l’égard du système financier privé.

    Si la proposition, portée notamment par l’Institut Rousseau, d’annulation des dettes publiques détenues par la BCE a suscité une levée de boucliers de la part d’un petit groupe d’économistes néolibéraux confortablement installés dans leurs certitudes, leur silence concernant les dérives de ces pratiques est en revanche assourdissant. À croire que l’indignation ne naît que lorsqu’on tente de rétablir la monnaie comme l’instrument d’émancipation sociale et politique qu’elle n’aurait jamais dû cesser d’être, mais pas quand la #création_monétaire de la banque centrale vise à faire des cadeaux perpétuels aux #banques_privées sans aucune contrepartie ou presque.

    C’est pourquoi il importe de rappeler une nouvelle fois que l’indépendance des banques centrales n’a rien de naturel et est foncièrement antidémocratique. Elle ne repose que sur une décision politique funeste, désormais inscrite dans les traités, qui la coupe du pouvoir délibérant de la collectivité et la place sous la coupe des marchés financiers. Cette architecture monétaire et financière relève entièrement d’un choix politique et idéologique qui repose sur l’idée que la monnaie doit être neutre, soustraite aux mains de politiques nécessairement démagogiques et confiée entièrement aux marchés privés qui nous conduiront vers la prospérité grâce aux vertus naturelles de la main invisible et de la libre-concurrence. Il est donc temps de comprendre que le sérieux et la raison ne sont pas du côté de ceux qui, par suivisme ou par intérêt, défendent ce type de pensée magique et nous imposent les sacrifices inutiles qui l’accompagnent, tout en bénéficiant allégrement de la création monétaire qu’ils dénoncent.

  • Climate Strike Software

    Climate Strike Software is software that uses the Climate Strike License, a software license that developers can use to prohibit the use of their code by applications or companies that threaten to accelerate climate change through fossil fuel extraction.

    Une #licence_logicielle interdisant l’utilisant par des sociétés contribuant au #changement_climatique via l’extraction d’énergies fossiles.

    https://github.com/climate-strike/license

    Via https://twitter.com/tristanharris/status/1277136696568508418

    • Un peu en lien avec https://macwright.org/2020/06/21/ethics-in-geo.html qui mentionne https://firstdonoharm.dev déjà cité ici https://seenthis.net/messages/843081

      Ethos licensing is a way of using the power of copyright to do more than just protect your rights or give them away: it’s the idea that you could prevent human rights abusers from using your work via legal means.

      It probably won’t work, at least how you would hope. We’re in the age of legal realism, in which power and money matters more than the letter of the law. And you probably shouldn’t call it ‘open source’ because the OSI, the organization that controls the term (somehow?) says that ethos licensing isn’t open source. But using an exotic license would work in the case of large companies which have explicit lists of allowed & banned licenses, like Google.

  • Richard Heatwave Berler sur touiteur : pour la première fois, une température de 100 °F (38 degrés Celsius) relevée au nord du cercle polaire.

    https://twitter.com/heatwavekgns/status/1274362223444529153

    Saturday 10:24 am: Hottest on record in Siberia...Verhojansk, which has an average high of the day of 68F during June, had their first 100F reading on record today!

    Dewpoints were topping 60F! Was not a ‘dry” heat!
    Verhojansk is ~70 miles north of the Arctic Circle. They are 67’33” North Latitude.