School Scope: Will NYC Students Join Global Climate Walkout?

Since I wrote this on Tuesday, the DOE has announced that students will be excused to attend the rally.

'Holy Smokes, This Thing Could Get HUGE': NYC Public Schools to Let Students #ClimateStrike ---

Common Dreams

City school
students have
permission to miss
school for climate strike

NY Daily News

15 hours ago

School Scope

Will NYC Students Join Global Climate Walkout?

The Wave | on September 12, 2019

By Norm Scott

https://www.rockawave.com/articles/school-scope-320/

Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg blew into town and is making waves over the threats from climate change and leading a global strike on Friday, Sept. 20 with a rally and march starting at noon at Foley Square in lower Manhattan. If the word has caught on, we may see disruptions in schools where there are student leaders promoting a walkout. It will be interesting to see if students in Rockaway, one of the more endangered areas of the city by climate change, take part. Let me know if you hear of anything brewing.

Author Jonathan Franzen in this week’s The New Yorker says that the people fighting climate change are in essence misleading us just as much as the Republican deniers – giving us hope that we still have a chance. Greta is offering hope but he thinks we should be preparing for the consequences. He points out that “we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching [the target of keeping below 2 degrees Centigrade]. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.” Phew! I’m out of that zone and have no direct descendants to worry about. But if I did—- well, I do wonder about the proud Republican parents in Rockaway, one of the first places to go in what Franzen calls The Climate Apocalypse.

I wonder how one would teach children about climate change and risk scaring them to the extent we children of the 50s were frightened about the coming nuclear wars by hiding under our school desks during drills?
In the good news department, I attended the Labor Day Parade celebrating unionism on the first Saturday after Labor Day. It was thrilling to see the streets thronged with thousands of unionists proudly wearing their teeshirts. Construction workers and teachers marching together. I of course marched with the UFT contingent and didn’t get much of a chance to engage people from other unions. Given that there are about 200 thousand UFT members, 99 percent stayed home and those who showed were among the most committed. Yes, there is a gap between what I call the 1 percent committed and the rest and closing this gap should be a goal of UFT leaders, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Unionists from both sides of the political divide were marching together. Even the divide between UFT members and their bosses in the Council of Supervisor Associates (CSA) – the principals and assistant principals. Former CSA leader Ernie Logan was the Grand Marshal of a Labor Day parade? The very same people who have made so many teacher lives miserable? How we are all unionists when one is the boss is beyond me. But the UFT leaders often use “we are all unionists” as a reason not to attack mad dog principals.

Norm is a mad dog when he blogs at ednotesonline.com

Climate Change -- Growing Right Wing Nationalism Spells Doom

With the election in Brazil going far right, one of the main bulwarks against climate change, the rain forest, becomes an endangered species.

The recent U.N. report has caused a stir. I've been writing that the political climate at a crucial junction is a tipping point on climate that will push us over the edge into runaway greenhouse territory.

Let's take the example of Australia where the crucial barrier reefs are disappearing based on two adjacent articles in the Oct. 9 NY Times:

New U.N. Climate Report Says Put a High Price on Carbon

Here is one interesting paragraph:

... a carbon tax that directly increases the price of gasoline at the pump or electricity rates brings more obvious pain, and hence is more likely to garner opposition.

A case in point: In 2012, the Australian government enacted a cap-and-trade program that effectively set a price on carbon of $23 per ton. Emissions fell nationwide under the program. Yet the policy faced a fierce political backlash from industry groups and voters, and when the nation’s more conservative Liberal Party swept into power in 2013, it quickly moved to repeal the program.

On the opposite page in that edition of the NY Times is this article which discusses the economic impact of the death of corals in Australia that will go far beyond the costs of a carbon tax:

Australia’s Other Great (and Threatened) Coral Reefs

MELBOURNE, Australia — The United Nations issued a dire alert on Monday, warning that many of the world’s coral reefs could die as soon as 2040 as a result of climate change.

Already, warming waters have bleached more than two-thirds of the coral in the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, which covers more than 130,000 square miles and is visible from space.

But the Great Barrier Reef, despite its status, is not the only unique or threatened marine ecosystem in Australia.

Stretching 27,000 square miles along Australia’s southern coast, this life-sustaining seaweed forest could be decimated by the end of the century, according to a recent study. The researchers found that warming waters could kill up to 100 percent of the reef’s kelp species, which provide a habitat for sponges, crustaceans and fish. The reef also supports two of Australia’s most valuable commercial fishing products: abalone and rock lobster.

Together with tourism at the Great Southern Reef, these fisheries contribute roughly 10 billion Australian dollars, or about $7 billion, to the Australian economy per year. (By some estimates, this is more than the revenue generated annually by the Great Barrier Reef.) And though about 70 percent of Australians live within about 30 miles of the southern reef, many have never heard of it.

“The southern coastline is one of the most species-rich, temperate ecosystems in the world,” said Thomas Wernberg, a senior lecturer in marine science at the University of Western Australia in Perth, and the lead author of the recent paper. “It’s important to not forget these other ecosystems.”

Shark Bay

Shark Bay, on Australia’s west coast, is the largest and most diverse sea grass ecosystem in the world. These seagrasses provide habitat for fish, endangered green turtles and dugongs, the only vegetarian marine mammal, which rely on the sea grass for food. Shark Bay is also one of only two places in the world with living ancient deposits of algae, called stromatolites.

But in the summer of 2011, a huge ocean heat wave killed off roughly a quarter of Shark Bay’s seagrasses. Aside from the loss of a valuable ocean habitat, this die-off also meant the release of up to nine million tons of carbon dioxide, according to a paper published earlier this year. It was an “unprecedented event,” said Oscar Serrano, a postdoctoral research fellow in marine ecosystems at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, and one of the study’s lead authors.

“It’s a big loss, but the oceans are dynamic and sea grass meadows have the capacity to adapt,” he added. “What worries me the most is these heat waves are predicted to increase both in magnitude and length. If there is another big heat wave, this may have a more severe impact.”

Ningaloo Reef

Every year, hundreds of whale sharks congregate at Ningaloo Reef, off the country’s west coast. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef, Ningaloo is a near-shore reef: “You can just snorkel off the beach and see coral in a few minutes,” said Verena Schoepf, a research fellow in marine science at the University of Western Australia.

So far, Ningaloo has escaped the kinds of bleaching events that have devastated the Great Barrier Reef and left the coral there weak and susceptible to attack by crown of thorns starfish. But global warming puts Ningaloo at risk of a die-off, according to the United Nations report, and rising sea levels may also reduce the reef’s capacity to protect coastal communities from waves and erosion.

Gulf of Carpentaria

The Gulf of Carpentaria, in Australia’s Far North, is a remote and sensitive ecosystem of mangroves, coral, sea grass beds, mud crabs, fish and shrimp. The mangrove trees — which grow in salty water — provide a nursery habitat for fish and wildlife and help prevent shoreline erosion.

But in the summer of 2016 — the same summer that the Great Barrier Reef experienced one of the worst bleaching events in history — extreme heat, drought and low sea levels led to an unprecedented die-off of mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, in which about 6 percent of the forest was lost. Like seagrasses, mangroves also sequester carbon, and during the die-off, millions of tons of carbon were released into the atmosphere.

“The view has been that mangroves are tough and resilient and survive most things and indeed they can, but there are limits,” said Norman Duke, a professor and mangrove ecologist at James Cook University in Queensland. “It’s a wake-up call,” he said.