The Amazon as a Tipping Point and Other Environmental Concerns

I. The Amazon as Tipping Point
Tropical forests in the Amazon and around the world have been so degraded by logging, burning, and agriculture that they have started to release more carbon than they store, according to scientists from the Woods Hole Research Center and Boston University. Carlos Nobre, Brazil's leading climatologist, cautions that humans have deforested roughly 16 percent of the entire Amazon basin -- just 4 to 9 percent from his projected tipping point. This means that the deforestation must be halted -- and soon-- if humankind is to have much chance of avoiding a climate catastrophe.

Brazil is the deadliest country in the world for land defending, with more than 140 killings since 2015, according to the NGO Global Witness.

II. Climate Wrecking Industries
Global warming activists' new target is what you might call the climate-wrecking industry: The coal, gas, and oil companies that have amassed colossal fortunes through the extraction, marketing, and sale of fossil fuels, and along the way, deceived the public about the inherent dangers of their business model. According to peer-reviewed studies by Richard Hade and the Climate Accountability Institute, the business practices of just 90 fossil-fuel companies are responsible for two-thirds of the observed increases in global surface temperatures between 1751 and 2010.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has said: "I think what petrifies the fossil-fuel industry is not so much the possibility of ultimate judgments and liability, but the day of discovery, when plaintiffs start to get access to their internal files. Once the documents become public, and a hard look can be taken at those documents, then the reputational damage for their knowing behavior will begin to pile up." One weakness of campaigning directly against the climate wreckers is that it's simply unrealistic to expect a corporation to abandon the very reason for its existence.

III. "Homies" Getting Solar Jobs
Since 2010, Homeboy Industries has been offering tuition, tutoring and financial support for "homies" wishing to learn about solar-panel design, construction, and installation in the photovoltic-training program at the East Los Angeles Skills Center. There are now 3.4 million renewable-energy workers around the world. According to the 2017 National Solar Jobs Census, employment in the U.S. solar sector has grown 168 percent since 2010 to more than 250,000 jobs.

IV. ACE Means More Deaths
Late in August 2018, the E.P.A. published what it calls the Affordable Clean Energy rules, or ACE. The new rules, which would replace the Clean Power Plan, are rules in name only. They'd allow states to set their own standards; these, in many cases, would  amount to a carte blanche for utility companies. Meanwhile, by the E.P.A.'s own admission, the new "rules" could result in as many as fourteen hundred premature deaths annually, owing to the increased pollution from coal plants. [2]

 Footnotes:
[1] Audrea Lim, "Green Workers Rising," The Nation, September 24/October 1, 2018.

[2] Elizabeth Kolbert, "Fire Alarm," The New Yorker, September 10, 2018.