Dear friends,
Flash flooding is no joke. In “the rainiest hour in 150+ years of recorded history,” tens of thousands of people were leaving an outdoor concert in Central Park and drivers had to be rescued from Third Avenue in Brooklyn and Newark, NJ.
In Tennessee, flash flooding took more than 20 lives over the weekend, and dozens of people are still missing. One town in Tennessee got 17 inches of rain in less than 24 hours, shattering previous records.
One observer noted
“This is the third hundred-year flood that we’ve had in about 10 years,” referencing 2010 and 2019 floods.
Climate change is going to keep bringing “extreme rain events.”
There’s an undeniable feeling that Mama Nature is displeased with us (and who could blame her). In Argentina, capybaras have occupied a gated community that some are referring to as the
It’s a perfect day for climate action.
Climate action usually requires a direct challenge to the corporations that actively impede it. Feed the Truth, a nonprofit, has looked into the political spending of the biggest food and agriculture corporations, which buys them massive influence on policies that affect our health and environment.
Unsurprisingly, these companies go to great lengths to avoid disclosing their spending.
[T]here is very little publicly-available information about how they manipulate the political system to their advantage. For instance, Cargill, JBS, and the larger agribusiness sector spent at least $2.5 billion on U.S. federal lobbying alone since 2000, dedicating a substantial portion of this to blocking climate policy.
Sign the petition to demand that Big Food open the books on its political spending.
My favorite climate news source, Emily Atkin’s Heated, provided my favorite kind of climate news: a round-up of climate actions we can take right now. I picked a few of my favorites for us.
The first is a fun way to waste the time of corporate bad actors. As you have heard all too often, time is money; wasting the time of corporate executives hits them where they live.
Our targets are the executives and CEOs of the institutions — Union Bank, Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, Barclays, Citi and HSBC — banks that are financing the construction of the Line 3 pipeline.
If you have a google calendar, you can participate in this creative campaign to trouble the people behind the corporate logos with our message to stop funding the climate catastrophe. How often do corporate entities waste our time? These folks have it coming, especially since time is running out.
Join a fun calendar-jam action against the banks that are funding Line 3.
Another way to jam up the works of the climate criminals is to make it harder for them to obtain mineral rights. This action takes on frackers, whose dirty deeds contribute to methane emissions, which are 80 times worse than CO2. Emily describes the action this way:
All the Way to Hell, an activist art project in Oklahoma, targets the main cause of the world’s methane spike: fracking. The project attempts to make it extremely inconvenient and expensive for fracking companies to operate by “giving away mineral rights in Oklahoma to as many people as possible,” writes reader/project founder Eliza Evans. “Because it costs developers just as much to acquire 500 acres as it does small properties—they have to track down owners, negotiate leases, and file documents with the county clerk—this aggressive fragmentation of the property will inhibit fossil fuel interest in it,” the project’s website reads.
As long as you are a US citizen or permanent resident, you can be part of a conceptual art project that burns the bad guys and delays fracking.
Sign up here with your name and address to become an owner of a small fraction of mineral rights purchased by All the Way to Hell.
Wildfires in the West are destroying more than trees and property; they are displacing wildlife, destroying their food sources, and causing them bodily harm. The Wildlife Disaster Network has rescued and treated animals with burns and other injuries from California’s devastating wildfires; these animals are often malnourished.
Gold Country Wildlife Rescue, a nonprofit that rehabilitates and releases wounded wildlife is treating multiple animals rescued from wildfire zones along with the birds, squirrels and foxes in its care that weren’t injured in fires. It is caring for two bear cubs, including the orphan from the Dixie fire, and a bobcat injured in the Lava fire.
Support Gold Country Wildlife Rescue.
Tomorrow, we will have a new governor (finally!). Today, as Kathy Hochul prepares to step into her new role, let’s promote an issue that is anti-poverty, rural and urban, green, and supportive of immigrant women of color: Fair Pay for Home Care.
Call our almost-Governor at 518-402-2292 and tell her to make Fair Pay for Home Care her signature initiative. There’s a script and next steps here.
The shortage of care workers is national, which is no surprise given the low pay and punishing conditions for many care workers. We are amplifying the work of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) to build unity, dignity and power for domestic workers:
Sign NDWA’s petition to Congress to demand a reconciliation package with $400 billion investment in home care and community-based services.
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wIth love,
L