Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Last newsletter for 2017!  Have a safe and lovely festive season, and thanks for all the ongoing interest you take, and work you do, to create a safe planet. 

Regards,

Susie Burke

Public Interest, Environment and Disaster Response

By Karin Kirk, November 2017, from Yale Climate Connections. 

In this article the author uses a 'common ground' interview approach to help people engage in productive conversation with someone else, like a family member, who holds opposite ideology.  A key consideration in this approach is that individuals can use perspectives outside their own to more quickly reach new solutions. Instead of drowning-out dissenting voices.  

 

Watts et al., (2017). The Lancet, 389,10074

The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is a new international, multi-disciplinary research collaboration between academic institutions and practitioners across the world. It is being established to track the different aspects of the relationship between health and climate change.

http://www.thelancet.com/climate-and-health 

Susan Holmberg, 2017. Boiling Points

Susan Holmberg, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and author of a new report, shows how unequal societies inflict more environmental damage than more economically even societies. 

The notion that inequality is a driver of climate change is unfamiliar, perhaps even counterintuitive. Nevertheless, research shows a clear and positive relationship between economic and social inequality and environmental harm. Is inequality itself the driver of environmental damage, including the higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming? Or are inequality and climate change only correlated, such that societies with high inequality levels are also likely to pollute their environments more? We argue that both statements are true: Drivers of inequality—such as financialization and corporate short-termism— are also drivers of environmental harm, but there are also specific mechanisms by which inequality itself damages our environment.

To protect the environment, we need good jobs, we need a solid tax base, we need a good healthcare system, and we need criminal justice.

Holli-Anne Passmore, University of B.C.

Holli-Anne Passmore says if people simply take time to notice the nature around them it will increase their general happiness and well-being. Her recent study involved a two-week 'intervention' where participants were asked to document how nature they encountered in their daily routine made them feel. They took a photo of the item that caught their attention and jotted down a short note about their feelings in response to it.

Other participants tracked their reactions to human-made objects, took a photo and jotted down their feelings, while a third group did neither. The difference in participants' well-being - their happiness, sense of elevation, and their level of connectedness to other people, not just nature - was significantly higher than participants in the group noticing how human-built objects made them feel and the control group.

Richard Dennis, Black Inc. 

In this sparkling book of ideas, Richard Denniss shows we must distinguish between consumerism, the love of buying things, which is undeniably harmful to us and the planet, and materialism, the love of things, which can in fact be beneficial. We should cherish the things we own – preserve them, repair them, and then gift or sell them when we no longer need them. We must foster new ways of thinking and acting that do not squander limited resources, and which support the things we value most: vibrant communities and rich experiences.

Watch this Yale Climate Connections video of John Cook, Katherine Hayoe, Stephan Lewandowsky and others offer suggestions on how - and how not - to discuss climate change.

Here is an excellent new video by Katharine Hayhoe as part of her Global Weirding series with PBS to create a new myth rebuttal - Climate scientists are in it for the money. 

https://www.skepticalscience.com/new-in-it-for-money-rebuttal.html 

Common Cause are running an introductory workshop and a Communications Masterclass in early 2018 in Melbourne. 

These workshops are tailored for campaigners, communicators, organisers and leaders of progressive organisations who want to motivate deeper and more durable support for their issues and in so doing create a more just, sustainable and democratic world. 

 

The Climate and Health Alliance, and their supporters, have launched a Framework for a National Strategy on Climate, Health and Wellbeing, and are now inviting members of the Alliance to get behind the strategy and promote it widely to parlimentarians and policy makers.  The APS is a supporter of the Framework and we would be very keen to see it adopted in Parliament. We encourage you to meet with your state Health Minister, Federal MP and/or Senators to ensure they are aware of the Framework, and can add their voice to this important campaign.

You can find the Framework here. 

You can find the Campaign here. 

 

Medibank, one of Australia's biggest health insurers, has announced it will dump its holdings in fossil fuel companies amid concern over the health effects of climate change.

"We understand that the health of the environment has an impact on the health of the community ... Medibank acknowledges the science of climate change and the impacts on human health," the statement said.

"We also recognise our role as a corporate citizen, and the increasing expectations the community has of corporate Australia."

Read more here.

 

American artist Hannah Rothstein has created a series of posters depicting climate change.  She’s re-envisioned a series of iconic US National Parks posters from the 1930s and 40s to create the depiction of what the images would look like in the year 2050 with climate change.  Rothstein says she based her posters on scientific research. She hopes it makes people consider the consequences of a warming climate.

Carbon Brief has mapped – to the best of their knowledge – every extreme event attribution study published in a peer-reviewed journal. Their aim is to update the map periodically, as new studies are published, so that it serves as a real-time tracker for the evolving field of “extreme event attribution.

The map shows 144 extreme weather events across the globe for which scientists have carried out attribution studies. The different symbols show the type of extreme weather; for example, a heatwave, flood or drought. The colours tell you whether or not the attribution study found climate change had played a role in that event. 

Climate Outreach's new gallery illustrates how women are often disproportionately affected by climate change due to differing gender roles and existing gender inequalities. However, it also celebrates women as leaders, innovators and agents of change when it comes to tackling climate change.

This new Gender image gallery builds on their previous research into imagery and recommendations for more diverse, compelling images of climate change. What the public desperately needs to see are images of people they can relate to being impacted by, or responding to, climate change.